I didn't really do as well with the ListConverter as I had hoped to. It is a working application as it stands now, but it does not have any decent amount of error handling, though I did at least note where I would need to put it. So I have been thinking about what I might be able to start working on next. For quite some time I have been thinking about creating an application to store notes. Though If I let it, it will quickly become far more complicated than that.

An original idea for a notes program is to stop using my email account to send emails to myself with bits of information. I normally do this from work or when I'm on a public pc with only webmail access. Sometimes its just a note and others it might be a URL or maybe a book someone has told me about.

The more I thought about it the more I considered it might be interesting to develop something like a personal knowledge base. And this is where the title of this post comes in, I started to wonder if it would be a collection of information or knowledge or maybe both. I found this page gives what seems to me to be a decent description of the terms: http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm .

Here's the short list taken from a work by Russell Ackoff

1. Data: symbols

2. Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions

3. Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how" questions

4. Understanding: appreciation of "why"

5. Wisdom: evaluated understanding.

So from that I do think my possible application would store both information and knowledge. I would view something like a URL or book name to be information but if I recorded how I solved a certain issue in programming that would be knowledge. At least that is my view so far.

So to start of I am going to have a search around again to see if anything exists already that does a similar job to what I want. I'll post again in the future with more details of the features I would like to see. Mainly its something to store the information/knowledge in an easily retrievable format and to eventually have it cross platform and based on the same database so I can access it anywhere.

References:

* Ackoff, R. L., "From Data to Wisdom", Journal of Applies Systems Analysis, Volume 16, 1989 p 3-9.

Tags: Project Idea