Online Outlining

Posted by grapeshot
Dec 25, 2006 at 11:42 PM

I’ve been poking around looking at PIMs and note taking software lately. (It’s a good way to procrastinate since it feels like I’m doing something useful.) I haven’t seen anything particularly handy that works on-line.

Google has a notebook feature, but it’s very rudimentary. It acts like a large bin into which you can throw your notes. It’s hardly more than what your browser’s bookmarking feature offers with the ability to write in or paste in notes. I’m not that impressed with it, however it does allow sharing if you set up a public notebook.
http://www.google.com/notebook
I’m not sure how it would serve for linking to document files or storing images so that the whole group could access those as well. You might need some webspace for storage of those items and use Google Notebook for linking to them. Google Notebook is free.

You could also just go for a Backpack account, which could serve the same purpose as the Google Notebook. It doesn’t offer any sort of organizing tools, but it does offer a place for a group to store documents and files. It also offers a feature that allows on-line document collaberation. You would have to have a subscription to do any serious on-line note sharing using Backpack.

Neither of these offer what even the simplest note-taking software offers.

I also came across something called DeepaMehta which might come closer to what you may be looking for. http://www.deepamehta.de/
It’s advertised as mind-mapping software, but the “interactive example” on the website seemed to indicate that it could also serve as note-taking. The website offers to let you use it on-line. You have to email the owner of the website for an account. I imagine that several people could share an account and thus be able to share notetaking on-line. I sent away for an account just to satisfy my curiosity. I don’t know if any resulting notes or mind-maps from the on-line version can be turned into a document and downloaded or e-mailed.

You could also take a look at using something like TiddlyWiki (http://www.tiddlywiki.com/) loaded on a webspace somewhere, but you and your collaberators would need to learn how to use it (it’s not that hard) and you’d have to figure out how you might want to customize it (which is a little harder). I just now tried loading my personal TiddlyWiki file up on my personal webspace and it looks like some modifications would have to be done to it so that “tiddlers” could be added by a public group. (“Tiddlers” is the software’s name for notes.) I imagine that you’re looking for something that is a litte more “ready to go”.