A couple of years ago I stumbled upon Wikipedia and fell in love with the wiki concept. So much so that I downloaded a freely-available copy of the software and installed it on my employer’s intranet (with permission, of course) as a means to capture some of the “intellectual capital” floating around the office.
The effort was a failure, unfortunately…most people didn’t want to take a few minutes to contribute their knowledge about CVS or COM in C++. Still, I was convinced that the medium was a great way to record information and even if my coworkers wouldn’t use it, I’d still use it for my own nefarious purposes.
Trouble is, getting PHP, MySQL and the MediaWiki code up and running wasn’t a trivial affair. Things have improved since then, but it is still kind of a clunky setup for a single user…and so my search for a cleaner alternative continued.
I came across ConnectedText earlier this year and had tried out the time-limited demo. It seemed pretty cool, but I was a bit turned off by having to pay for it. Yeah, I know: God forbid somebody actually wants money for their work. I considered writing a personal wiki application by myself (using C# and Firebird) but with a half-dozen other personal and professional projects on my plate, I didn’t even have the time to start.
A few months ago I checked out ConnectedText again, and was pleasantly surprised at the features that had been added — so much so that I bit the bullet and purchased a copy. My timing was pretty good, because a few days later a new version was released with even more new features that supported timelines and graph plotting.
I guess I’m not sure where I’m going with this post, other than to say “hey, this is a cool application — check it out!” I don’t often get evengelical about software, but this is one of those times; the ability to create a personal wiki for note-taking, authoring and general record-keeping is awfully damn neat, I think. The fact that the newest version of CT supports scripting in Python just adds to the list of its potential uses.
For example, if you’re teaching a class you could use ConnectedText to hold your syllabus. With its Export functionality, you can create a single .exe (a Microsoft Help file) that you can distribute to all your students that contains not just the schedule but links to your lecture notes, relevent photos and presentations.
If you’re writing a paper (or even writing a story for NaNoWriMo), ConnectedText can be a great way to collect ideas and keep track of your drafts via its internal versioning capability.
Wikis aren’t ideal for everything. If MS Word or Notepad meet your needs, stick with what works. But if you’re interested in using the wiki concept for your own projects, I’d highly recommend giving ConnectedText a look. I’m not a CT developer, I don’t know any of the stakeholders personally, I’m just an enthusiastic user.
I have been looking for that kind of software for years, and like you, I avoided paying for software knowing dam well that somewhere someone would develop that killer application to freely organize my thoughts, texts, word processing needs, etc… and I just came accross ConnectedText…humm..I made that exception…I purchased it 29.95, no big deal for what it delivers…it it does big time. I simply wanted to support your statement, and I also have no interest whatsoever in the shareholding position of this company, nor do I know any of their officer or employees.