November 20, 2003

• So a while back I was reading liquid's 'blog, and he mentioned an outline/note taking app called Jot+. I thought it was kind of cool, so I downloaded it on my Winderz machine, and lo and behold, it was kinda cool. So I commented that I'd make the Mac version.

  And I did. Sort of. I mean, I started. I mostly wanted to learn about Cocoa's NSCoding system, so I could just use the saved object graph as the document format for my Jot+ clone. I got as far as a proof-of-concept, and then decided I need to do something like maybe wash the dishes and take out the garbage, and thus, as with all things, the much-vaunted NoteTaker project (what an original name, eh?) was left to gather dust.

  But! I have encountered something BETTER! Something more neet-o and cool-beans than an outliner/note taking app! It's a note taking wiki, right there on your Mac.

  A wiki is a new kind of web site, where anyone can modify any page they want to. It's based on the notion that people are generally mature and intelligent, which could be a mistake, but turns out not to be. There are wikis all over the place on the web, acting as communal repositories for all kinds of information, such as the WikiPedia, a free online encyclopedia created by its users, and CocoaDev, the web site I consulted to learn more about Cocoa's NSCoding system, ironically enough.

  The basic idea with wiki is that you make a web page, and you put WordsCrammedTogether on it, and then the software recognizes that those words are crammed together, and turns them into a link. You click on the link and the software makes a new web page with those crammed-together words as its title. Repeat.

  So now there's VoodooPad, which brings this wiki paradigm to your basic run-of-the-mill note-taking app. It's time to start cramming those words.

  • 6:59 am
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