As I mentioned several posts ago, information management has been on my mind a lot lately. I regularly use 3 different computers (two PCs, one Mac) and two paper diaries (I’ve resisted a PDA). I’ve started to move computer-specific lists like bookmarks online (to del.icio.us) so I can access them from any computer, but the limitation is that I can still only access them when I’m online.

You may have noticed a growing number of feeds on my home page which link to various services I’ve signed up for to manage various aspects of information that I deal with on a regular basis. So far that includes photos I’ve uploaded, bookmarks of sites I’m reading (or plan to read). While I like the services that Flickr, AllConsuming, del.icio.us and others provide, there has to be a better way of managing information.

The main benefits of these services is that they are web-based, offer RSS and are social (I can see what others are reading and listening to). The downsides are of course, no guarantees that I’ll keep my data if the host decides to suspend the service, the data is stored remotely, there’s yet more passwords and logins to remember, and these services are not integrated with any of my other information.

Besides all the things that the feeds track, there’s a great deal of information that comes and goes every day – emails, blogs, newspaper articles, books, journal articles, etc. Some items I have a copy of, whether electronic or print, and some I don’t. To me, the real crux of the problem is – how to manage information that is both text and non-text, digital and non-digital, owned and not owned, individual and social. How can information management systems be created, where necessary, which work with other systems that we have? If everyone’s information seeking methods are different, and everyone’s ‘information landscape’ is different, is there such a thing as a perfect system or software that can do everything for everyone?

I’ve started looking at different kinds of software to manage information. Hopefully there’s a way to sync the three computers I use regularly (two PCs and a Mac) and my two paper diaries. There’s databases, harvesters, enterprise systems and digital library repositories, but many of the options would fulfil some needs and require an additional piece of software to solve the rest.

Apple’s new Dashboard for Mac OS 10.4 Tiger kind of looks like what I want. With it, I could load up several widgets to check on my Gmail, Bloglines account, del.icio.us feeds, iCal entries and so on. But I don’t have Tiger and I’m not planning on buying it for my 3 year-old iBook.

And while I’ve found a good range of software that I like using for email, podcasts, etc, my computer doesn’t really like it when I open more than one application at once. Keeping up is becoming more and more time consuming.

When I was in San Francisco, I wrote up my wishlist –

The objective: a computer-independent, OS-independent keep-up widget

To: check account changes (Gmail, Bloglines notifications), check journal TOC pages for updates, check podcasts, vblogs and multimedia. Other links to generic useful stuff like links to travel wiki, wikipedia, language dictionaries, jargon/business/tech dictionaries etc, ical todo sync, click to mark for later reading, current and past reading lists, notes etc, library loans, library lookup.

How: browser based? Eclipse? Standalone app? Dashboard-esque widget?

Too much to ask?

I’m going to start by installing TiddlyWiki on my USB drive. I’ll let you know how it goes.