[OT somewhat] personal notebook

David Faught dave.faught at gmail.com
Thu Apr 13 16:07:24 UTC 2006


Josh Gargus wrote:
>Hi David,

Hi Josh,

>I know that you're aware of my Sketchbook prototype...

Yes, in fact I went back and scanned your white paper again before
writing this reply.  My impression of what you describe is that it
could be a "page", or even an item embedded in a "page" in what I am
thinking about.  The term "page" here is more symbolic than literal. 
It could refer to a journal entry, a Wiki item (which can be several
to a page view in some Wikis), or some other encapsulation of a single
thought or idea.  The methods of searching, indexing, reorganizing the
"pages" is a big part of what I am looking for, which I don't think
your Sketchbook really addresses.

I have looked at several of the references from your paper, including:
Ken Perlin's Whiteboard ZoomPad (and several other cool things of his)
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/whiteboard/
http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/

The Electronic Cocktail Napkin (and several other cool things here too)
http://depts.washington.edu/napkin/
http://dmg.caup.washington.edu/xmlSiteEngine/browsers/stylin/research.html

and also things like:
KidPad
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/kidpad/

FreeMind
http://sourceforge.net/projects/freemind

>Sophie might also be useful for this sort of thing; I can't say for
>sure since I haven't used it.

I haven't used it either so I'm talking though my hat, but my
impression is that Sophie is more intended to produce a final
published work (albeit a wonderful multimedia extravaganza!) than to
be a working assistant.

>I also used Squeak's out-of-the-box authoring capabilities +
>Connectors for a few years, but stopped that in favor of working out
>my ideas in a 9x12 artist's sketchbook.

There are some things that I haven't fully explored in Squeak, like
AniAniWeb, SmallBlog, SmallWiki, Garden, Gardner and I'm sure several
more.  I'm tantalized by Alan Kay's mention of The Analyst the other
day.  It's truly a sad comment, but many times first impressions of
software descriptions are all that I get.  Based on that miniscule
information, I don't think any of these are the app I'm looking for,
but I'm certainly open to changing that impression.

>On Apr 12, 2006, at 11:09 AM, David Faught wrote:
>> What would be the best current Squeak example of
>> a high function, technology-leveraged journal/notebook that is
>> portable and easily and optionally Internet web-accessible?  What
>> might be a good approach to building the ultimate electronic notebook?



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