Voodoo Review
On Erin's via Lenoard's reccommendation, I tried Voodoo Pad, Flying Meat's "digital junk drawer where you can jot down notes, web addresses, to-do lists... Anything on your mind." Bascially, it works like a personal Wiki site for your computer + internet digital worlds.
For the past week I have used Voodoo Pad to create one document with a center Index for my entire digital note-taking life. I started at the very beginning, with my homepage:
As you can (kind of)see, I started with the basics. Projects, Classes, Work, Journal, and the original homepage, which included some tips.
In order to create a link, it's as easy as highlighting the text and clicking on "Link." A new page immediately pops up for me to edit. I used this feature the most while taking notes for classes. Trained in the traditional I. A. 1) a. method of breaking down notes during a lesson, I found the wiki-page method translated easily, as I just translated each list of subjects into a series of pages, one for each subject.
Next time I type in that word, it automatically generates a link. So everytime I type in the word "Positioning", it links to my page with Mike Maser's definition of "Positioning" from my Business of Interactive Media class, and that page then leads to various definitions and resources on the subject of "Positioning."
Also, in order to create links to other documents, videos, music, and other media on your computer, I only have to click and drag the file into the body of the text, and it generates a convenient link to that file. (I have not seen if/how much it freaks out if you move where that file is located, though.) In order to create links to internet sites, I can copy and paste or type the url, and the link is created(like in Word).
As a personal organization tool, it felt like I was redesigning my "Finder" with notations. In fact, one could use VoodooPad for simply that purpose. Instead of sorting through folders in organization methods that have long since been dated in my memory(remember that time I was sorting everything by what food I was eating that day?), this way the folders can be organized and cross-references in a variety of ways; whatever catches my whimsy. Maybe it's the digital equivalent to the "organized mess" - even though it looks a bit crazed, I know where everything is.
All in all, despite my lack of use of Wikis on the internet, I found a Wiki to my life very intuitive and extermely handy. Is it wise to centralize my entire life into one program? I decided it was worth the risk, and invested in the program after my trial too quickly expired.