Blogs, wikis and note-taking apps

[steve]

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tchomby wrote:
| A friend of mine is doing a university course and needs a good way of
keeping notes. Some way to write down all the thoughts she has as they
flow and before they end up in something highly structured like an essay
or dissertation, and a way to organise and edit them so she can refer to
them later.
|
| For myself, my university provides me with linux shell access and a
webserver. I installed pyblosxom (a weblog) and git (a version control
system) and checked my pyblosxom posts into git. Using git I can copy my
blog content to the individual computers I use (my laptop etc.) and view
it locally there, make changes, and when I want to publish them I push
the changes to my central git repo. I keep the online copy of the weblog
itself behind a .htaccess file or at an unreachable URL so that the
notes remain private. But I can read them from anywhere and download
them onto any computer.
|
| The chronological and categorical organisation of notes that a blog
provides has been a really useful way to structure all my thinking. But
my approach involves a lot of command-line usage, understanding many
different programs and how they work together, and the ability to fix
things when they go wrong (which has happened a number of times). It is
not easy enough for my friend who is not so computer-literate.
|
| It doesn't have to be a blog. A wiki would do. Or generally, some sort
of note-taking and organising application. Originally I just used text
files and folders. But one not-so-obvious feature of the blog is that is
seems to motivate and compel me to develop a writing habit, even though
my blog will not be read by anyone other than me and sometimes my
immediate supervisors.
|
| So how can I provide something equivalent that is easy and fool-proof
enough for my non-computer-literate friend? She happens to use Ubuntu.
|
| There are lots of free blog hosts on the Internet. But do any of them
allow for private blogs? And would they allow her to easily download a
local copy of all the notes, structure intact?
|
| I could consider getting her an account with some webhost and
installing a blog software. This might be the best thing. But again,
privacy and backup are priorities. I don't want some random webhost
losing her notes.
|
| Or she could use Tomboy notes. The problem with these is that they're
local to one computer. The always-available centralised nature of a web
server is important. I noticed that Tomboy now has a synchronization
feature and I could setup the SSH folder for her to facilitate this. But
there is still the trouble that she has to be on a computer with GNOME
and Tomboy to use them, she has to remember to sync often, and if a sync
operation goes wrong it can destroy both copies, unlike with a version
control system where any change can be reverted. Also I don't know how
stable that feature is in Tomboy yet.
|
| It's very important that it be extremely difficult for her to lose her
notes. I know my notes, taken over a number of years now, are so
valuable that it'd be a disaster for my studies if I lost them. But
since I have mine in a git repository that is synced on several
computers, one of which is backed up by the university, I'm not gonna
lose them. But like I said this is too difficult for her.
|
| As you can see I have the beginnings of a number of possible solutions
but don't quite know how to complete them. Any hints? Any other
possibilities I missed?
|
| Oh, and free software is strongly preferred ofcourse!
|
| Thanks
|
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|
if your concerned about a "public" server why not just run apache off a
desktop at home for her with a weblog or wiki?  then backup that drive
to your storage space that is more secure.


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