More on Snippet Keepers
Read this morning's TidBITS article by Matt Neuburg on what he calls "snippet keepers", this time a product called DEVONthink (which, true to the serendipity model that humans seem to work under, also prompted me to look up what he had previously written on Tinderbox). Matt has been exploring this subject for quite a while and he outlines essential "lessons" in how information is recalled for retrieval:
- A hierarchy is good, because it groups related things; but it's not enough, because you can't anticipate what circuitous path of association your brain will be using later when you're hunting for something. There needs to be some other way to locate the desired article based on whatever sense of its subject matter occurs to you at the time.
- The storage needs to accept any kind of entity, like the Finder. It can't be confined to a single type of entity because the information might not come in that form.
- One must be able to see a document's contents directly, without bothering to open it separately. Internet integration would be nice too, since (as in this case) information often comes in the form of Web pages.
- The storage needs to be central - a single, certain place where you go any time your mind says, "I think we've got something about that somewhere..."
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07575
(TidBITS, March 9, 2004)
Posted by Tom on March 09, 2004
