Building my own personal knowlege manager has been quite a journey. Over the last couple years I’ve taken a “piece meal” approach and slowly built up the features of my system one component at a time. One major feature that has always been on my mind is data portability. Last week I wrote an article on how to sync your digial scrapbook between multiple computers and even sync to your wiki. This feature had me thinking about how I could take portability to the next level.

Begin able to access your personal information/knowledge from multiple places is the ultimate realization of total information ubiquity. Being able to access all of your personal bookmarks, notes, contact information, journal entries, and research data from any computer is obviously useful. Being able to access all of your personal knowledge from a handheld device like an iPhone is absolutely exciting! Without sounding totally nostalgic, this type of portability is in a large part a modern-day realization of what Vannevar Bush had envisioned in his article on the Memex (”As We May Think”).

I had originally planned on calling this article ‘How to Use Cloud Computing to Synchronize Your Digital Scrapbook For Research and Integrate Into Your Personal Knowledge Management Wiki for Extra Credit’

I found a very interesting project from David François Huynh, developer of some impressive projects over at Simile. Parallax offers a new way to browse and explore data on Freebase, one of the largest open and shared (structured) databases of knowledge on the web.

Freebase Parallax: A new way to browse and explore data from David Huynh on Vimeo.

I also discovered a somewhat related research project at Stanford called Vispedia.
   

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for some time, and thought that now is a good time to share.  A few months ago I came across an amazing mindmap at the IQ Matrix called the MasterMind Matrix.  This has to be one of the largest / most intriguing / informative / unique mindmaps that I’ve come across.

“Imagine taking a unique journey through the depths of your mind and stepping into a world of limitless possibilities where every one of your thoughts, habits, behaviors, beliefs, decisions and actions are revealed …

I’ve discovered a number of interesting applications that help people efficiently organize information. There certainly is no shortage of solutions for this problem domain. Many tools exist that offer the ability to discover, save, organize, search, and retrieve information.

I have to admit, when I first came across this software last week I was instantly impressed. I’ve had a fascination with software that allow you to visualize and comprehend information in different and exciting ways. Bee Docs Timeline, an application for Mac OS X (sorry Windows and Linux fans), is a great example of how to create and present smooth, professional looking timelines in a relatively easy fashion.

Great news for mobile/cell owners and those who love learning:

“One of the great things about an iPhone or Android phone is being able to play Pacman while stuck in line at the post office. Sometimes though, we yearn for something more than just playing games or watching videos.
What if you could also access literature’s greatest works, such as Emma and The Jungle Book, right from your phone? Or, some of the more obscure gems such as Mark Twain’s hilarious travelogue, Roughing It? Today we are excited to announce the launch …

Discovered this while Googling for Semantic Wikis and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
Abstract. The use of semantic representations in document-oriented
environments – as formal annotations or embedded instances of a formal
knowledge base – is seen as an enabling technology for intelligent services
which may help knowledge workers in tasks like finding, structuring, or
assessing information. A very high level of formalization may even more
directly support problem solving, e.g., by the application of inferencing
services. A coupling of textual and formal representations in document-
centered knowledge work raises, amongst others, two questions: i) How
can the acquisition of …

I’ve had some down time the last couple days, and figure it was time to cleanup my public project list.  Most of my work this last year has been solely focusing on building my own Personal Knowledge Management system - my Personal Memex.  I’ve written a number of articles in recent months focusing on open source knowledge management, and personal learning environments.  Much of this project has been spent researching tools, integrating them into 1 cohesive system, performing trial and error, and incrementally making progress.  I still have a ton …

Brian Johnson, entrepeneur and philosopher at heart, has created a new site/service called PhilosopherNotes. What is PhilosophersNotes?

Think: Mini-CliffsNotes for Self-Development Books!