Readwise for storing highlights and excerpts from books, articles etc. Lots of customization under the hood.
Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
61–70 of 113 posts
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#62I use DEVONThink. It has powerful features for automatically classifying documents you put into it.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#63I've jumped around all over the place, I can never settle on a tool and it's really frustrating I've been through * evernote - slow and buggy UX, properietary format * emacs org mode - good but you need buy in to org format, user experience across devices e.g. mobile not so good) * quiver - pretty good, markdown format, but lacking android support * git + markdown files - ok, but a bit finicky, again annoying across…
Devonthink supports cross-device, has okay UI, excellent organizational tools, scripting capability, external opening support, a Web version, excellent search, and excellent "Classify" support that can automatically organize documents.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#64A year ago, I found a perfect solution for myself. I'm using https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki , writing there everything I find useful. From articles and quotes to lose ideas, notes, project information, or todos. It has support for markdown and export to HTML, which I can style however needed.
DEVONThink documents can be opened in Vim and supports WikiLinks natively.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#65Text files in a google filestream with daily incremental encrypted backups 2x onsite 1x cloud
I’ve gone down the special note taking software and formatting route before (OneNote first, OpenOffice later). What a mess.
Tempted to try a self hosted wiki though. Definitely never touching a commercial solution again though. Evernote and co. Might replace filestream with nextcloud though
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#66I realize this may not be the place for this comment, but a few of these comments got me thinking.
Human memory is squishy, and that's great. You retain facts + feelings that help you make future decisions and everything else is integrated into smaller and smaller summaries until it fades away entirely. I spent years clinging to every experience wanting not to forget anything, and being horrified when I couldn't remember. I documented everything. I wanted my memory to work more like infinite dropbox storage and less like a tool, evolved over millions of years, to keep me safe and making good choices.
These days, my personal knowledge base is whatever I've bothered to remember. Usually I don't know I've kept something tucked away until I'm in the middle of a conversation and realize it's still there. My memory of events shifts and degrades over time, and I'm fine with that.
If you don't use a tool to document every page you visit and every thing you read or learn, that's completely fine too. It all fades away eventually, and if it remains relevant enough you'll hold on to the important bits.
The real power-up isn't keeping it all, it's being able to change and grow, with just enough focus on the past to make good choices.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#67i email documents, links, files, etc. to myself
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#68I recently started using DokuWiki. The reason I like it is that it is actually storing the current copies of pages as .txt files, so I don't have to worry about databases failing or migrating out of the platform or anything like that. It just puts kinda a clean browsing and editing experience on top.
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#69I probably have the biggest personal public wiki at this point. Over 720 files and 13,000+ lines across all the files. All files: https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge/blob/master/SUMM... The way I did it was by treating the wiki as extension of my brain and having a perfect workflow for editing it at a speed of thought. In my case it's Sublime Text + Alfred + some macros. https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/other/…
This is awesome! I feel inspired! :D
Re: Ask HN: How did you build up your personal knowledge base?
#70I've been using TheBrain (https://www.thebrain.com) for ~10 years now and haven't found anything that comes close to it in terms of flexibility. If you haven't looked at it in awhile, it's worth checking out again. They have a new desktop app, much better mobile apps, and even after all these years, development continues steadily.
I've got 16,399 thoughts in mine and add more just about every day. Anything I think I may want to know later goes there. More ephemeral notes go in Apple Notes (I used Evernote for a long time but became annoyed with their business model and haven't missed it). Everything else goes in The Brain.
Search great, the ability to link notes as parent/children/siblings is extremely powerful once you get the hang of it.
It's not free, but it is, in my opinion, easily worth the cost.