NoteTaker As Metadatabase: Oblique Strategies For Enhanced Information Management (A Conceptual Road Trip)

A meditation on metadata, Uma Thurman, multi-solution applications, the American Film Institute, search engines, Keith Olbermann, information management, drug-addled trips to Las Vegas, regressive databases, writer’s block, recombinant software features, Brian Eno, embedded Web browsers, technology-as-Meat-Loaf-songs, the nature of blogging, Hunter Thompson, WebKits, Citizen Kane, pre-blogging, Myst, Web notebooks, camera obscuras, live chat inside a notebook, Alice in Wonderland, templates, The Matrix, and--oh yeah--NoteTaker; definitely NoteTaker . . .(Did I mention Uma Thurman?)

It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
"She blinded me with science!"
And failed me in biology
--Thomas Dolby

Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place
In which the Author grapples with the present Work

A confession: As unbelievable as it seems, sometimes I’m at a loss for words. And since much of my living is predicated on my ability to stare at a blank word-processor window and conjure-up something, these Now What? Moments can be more than disconcerting. After all this time, I’ve never worked out where the words actually come from and thus, at the start of every new piece of jangled prose, there’s an instantaneous crossing-of-fingers and the hope that my mental tuner is still able to pick up WRIT (Good morning, Writers! You’re listening to All Inspiration All The Time, and this one is going out to Kevin Sheridan in Washington, DC!).

My regularly occurring scrutiny of the authorial abyss has, of course, given rise to a craftsman’s superstition: I keep a deck of Oblique Strategies on my desk. I got my first set of these cards in 1975 and they’ve since become a serious and pricey collector’s item. This cool factor has necessitated a stand-in deck for everyday use; an easily available reissue.

The creators of Oblique Strategies, composer/producer Brian Eno and the late artist Peter Schmidt, describe them as “Over One-Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.” The cards are further categorized as “a set of possibilities.” They are intended to be used when a problem occurs in a working situation. I use them in this way: When I’m stuck, I draw a card and attempt to apply its advice to my work. The beauty of this ritual is that should every atom of my writer’s being rebel at what’s being suggested, I simply ask myself why the card is definitively wrong. Answering this involves articulating what the piece is about and where it’s going--which invariably jump-starts the prose.

I bring up Oblique Strategies because for a while now I’ve wanted to post something that’s only incidentally about blogging with NoteTaker; something so stand-alone that NoteTaker users would benefit even if they never used the application for blogging. However, I was unsure how such a posting would fit into the overall weblog-centricity of this site. And so the deck inevitably came out of its swank black-and-gold box:

Look at the order in which you do things, advised the first card. Make something implied more definite, the second one stated. Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them was the advice of the third.

Let’s think about this. The order in which I do things? Sure, I blog with NoteTaker--but before I do that, I need to be a proficient, less-specialized NT user. Much of NoteTaker’s power as a weblog client comes from putting its inherent capabilities at the service of blogging. Clarifying something implied? Well, I’ve certainly mentioned much of what NoteTaker can do, but I’ve always taken care to focus on using it to blog. Abandon current recipes? What if I let blogging explicitly take a back seat to an examination of what NoteTaker can potentially do in the context of any project?

All these triggered insights were promising, so I drew two more cards: State the problem in words as clearly as possible and Where’s the edge? Where does the frame start?

The problem is that I want to extensively discuss NoteTaker’s potential as a metadatabase, but this has precious little to do with using it to blog. Or does it? Where’s the edge between NT as metadatabase and NT as blogging client? Where does the frame really start? NoteTaker gathers, organizes and distributes. In the main, blogging is about distribution; something that can’t (well, that shouldn’t) happen independently of gathering and organizing.

So see this post as an examination of the pre-blogging potential of NoteTaker.(Seen from the other side of “the edge,” an interesting case could be made that the act of blogging is actually apres-research.) Let’s spend some time looking at the dog, rather than its tail. In the words of another Oblique Strategies card, let’s Abandon normal instruments.

Warning: Getting this piece where I want it to go will take a while. I foresee many tangents and even more asides. Some of these will be highly useful and informative, while others will be admittedly self-indulgent. By necessity, this post is going to be like rock climbing: Where we’ve been is going to determine where we’re going and how we get there; conceptual toe holds will need to be cut into hard-core assumptions and on occasion switchbacks may be the unavoidable.

In the words of Hunter S. Thompson, Buy the ticket, take the ride. In fact, a clarifying metaphor for this installment is to see it as a geek version of HST’s fateful ride to Las Vegas: Improvisation bludgeoned into somewhat linear prose. To paraphrase Thompson’s Raoul Duke, there’s nothing in this world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of a blogging binge, and framing the thing with Oblique Strategies. Indeed.

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten
Being a realization that posting is only part of blogging and not even the Main Event

Since the first post, a leitmotiv of this site has been the observation that though blogging is new in the sense that now everyone really does have their own printing press, (with no pesky, Real-World overheads like ink, paper and trucks), its precedent remains publishing. Claims that blogging is pirate radio or conversation simply don’t hold up under scrutiny--see, well, pretty much the rest of the site for more about this particular eye-tic; My duly registered protests are so numerous, I’d risk repetitive stress injury creating anchor links to all the instances hovering above this entry.

Because of this view of weblogs, I tend to hold bloggers to a set of ideal publishing standards. And while it initially seems ludicrous to whack Loathsome Teen Diarists with a yardstick based on The New York Times, using a single pole-star measurement keeps everyone honest. After all, home movies and porno films are, by implication, measuring themselves against the Aristotelian ideal of Motion Picture. In these instances, the modifying adjectives let us know we’re talking about mutant strains (AKA genres ). And no, I’m not trying to reinvent the High Art/Low Art model; as an obvious pop-culturist, I find qualitative delineations between fine and popular art meaningless. But having a standard--albeit theoretical--measure is extremely handy for placing Citizen Kane and Plan 9 From Outer Space along a continuum. You know--in case the American Film Institute is burning and you only have time to rescue, say, five movies.

Two cornerstones of this blog publishing standard are engaging mind before keyboard, and being prepared to articulate and defend the chosen topic. These are the main drivers for making NoteTaker my blogging client--and being evangelical about it. Unlike other “proper,” pure-play weblog authoring tools, NoteTaker has the inherent ability and the power to support all the pre-blogging stuff that should theoretically occur: The research, the compilation of supporting materials, the incremental and ongoing organization of selected resources and--of course--the crafting of the actual blog post.

Nearly all other blogging clients are either trapped by their metaphor (Hey, we’re like iTunes! Hey, we’re like emal!) or make the tacit assumption that--somehow--all the preparation has occurred upstream of the actual blogging. (Which, now that I think about it, is yet another entrapping metaphor: Blog Client As Typewriter.)

No matter their flavor or techno-inflection, most weblog clients assume that authors work improvisationally and without a net. Bloggers simply sit down at the keyboard and channel Hemingway or Dickens or Edward R Morrow. “Assistance” is too frequently defined as simply giving authors spellcheck, WYSIWYG HTML formatting and then getting the hell out of the way. I find this curious, because if I contacted these presumptive developers and informed them that creating new software was only a matter of sitting down and coding something on-the-fly, boy, would they set me straight.

NoteTaker, on the other hand, is specifically designed to gather, organize and distribute information and content. It possesses almost every basic tool needed for highly effective content management. Not coincidentally, another motif of this site is that blogs are really cheap, scalable content management systems. Clearly, NoteTaker wasn’t specifically designed to be a blog client, but damn, can it manage content. Given the choice between a seamless weblog client that’s useless in terms of research and preparation, or NoteTaker--which is perfectly suited to pre-blogging, but in need of a few blog-posting hacks--guess not which I choose--but why.

The way I see it, all bloggers who do the thing properly sweat with the effort--don’t let Wired or Business 2.0 or LiveJournal promotional pitches tell you different. Forced to choose between legal-pad-and-PostIt hell or getting crafty about fooling NoteTaker into posting to a blog, powerful research and smooth-flowing preparation win hands-down.

Give the game away
In which other pertinent parts of NoteTaker are examined

And Kids, this is what my weblog has really been about for these many months. In truth, ‘getting crafty about fooling NoteTaker into posting to a blog’ is Deep Water: It’s been eight months, and I’m still not through with this topic. However, like the developers of dedicated weblog clients, I think I also might have been sucked into the Point-of-Blog vortex. The irony is not lost on me. So focused have I been on the posting aspect of my NoteTaker System, I’ve given short shrift to the whole reason I’m passionate about using NT as a weblog client: All that pre-post horsepower.

Those of you keeping score have noticed that I’ve taken a three-week blogging hiatus. I wasn’t resting, however. With the recent release of NoteTaker v1.9, I decided to commit more effort to exploring the content-creation side of blogging--and, therefore, the ways in which NoteTaker can be a singularly powerful information-creation and -parsing tool. To this end, I’ve spent the past few weeks living-up to the unofficial slogan of this site: “Blowing Up Things So You Don’t Have To.™" With the complete facilities of the Banzai Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Strategic Information at my disposal (especially their state-of-the-art blast-proof chambers), I’ve made a number of discoveries that point to significant, new ways of using NoteTaker.

Part of the inspiration for these explorations was the previous post, which discussed embedding in NoteTaker Java-based Zoe (an email client and RSS reader). It reminded me that even groundbreaking technology can be diminished by software literalism. Which, in turn, made me think about the general perception of NoteTaker’s ability to include live Web browser on its pages.

The most common reaction to NoteTaker’s embrace of the Apple WebKit, was an adrenaline-rush of delight: Wow! A working Web browser on a notebook page!. Though the novelty eventually wore off, that first impression lasted. Not surprisingly, NoteTaker users began to access websites from within their notebooks. The reasoning was impeccable: “I have an embedded browser; let me go find a website.” But this was slit-scan logic: Like a laser-guided missile, it targeted traditional websites to the exclusion of everything else. It was the opposite of the adage about a man with a hammer seeing everything as nails: Armed with a Web browser embedded in NoteTaker, most of us ignored everything except traditional homepages.

Do we need holes?
Where the Author comprehends that sites, among other things, comprise the Web

My epiphany after the Zoe posting was the realization that Web-based email and RSS feeds are not Internet destinations; they’re services. Although I might not have been able to articulate it at the time, I had intuitively pointed my embedded browser at what was essentially an application, not a site. I began to think long and hard about this.

NoteTaker’s use of the Apple WebKit makes access to traditional websites possible--but this is merely part of a larger potentiality. Eerily mirroring those books in Myst, NT enables a user to kick a hole through the center of her virtual page, and lett the Internet rush in. All of cyberspace; not just Google, CNN and handful of regularly read blogs. The whole damn thing comes flooding through that window. It’s an equal-opportunity deluge: Deserted Internet approaches mix with current strategies. And among this virtual flotsam and jetsam there are also newer, cutting-edge online entities, including NoteTaker web notebooks.

Like Digital Alice, a NoteTaker user can tumble through a hole in the notebook page and arrive at an online outpost. But an embedded Web browser is not merely a tidy camera obscura, reflecting what’s just across the Internet street. It’s an Internet terminus--capable of whisking the user anywhere in cyberspace, even as he remains inside his notebook.

As we’ve seen, there are Web-based applications out there, providing long-distance functionality; there are also services like translation, maps and even grocery shopping; there’s a seemingly endless variety of search engines; and, intriguingly, there’s every kind of database imaginable. NoteTaker’s ability to embrace this “other” Internet is not new. But the difficulty in conceiving of cyberspace as more than a few well-worn paths to a handful of predictable places has kept many NT users from fully tapping the power of embedded browsers.

Think: Inside the work/Outside the work
In which the origins of User Literalism are pondered, only to remain conjecture

When confronted with powerful, multidimensional applications like NoteTaker, many users do something paradoxical: At an abstract level, they more or less comprehend that the sum of a program’s useful capabilities is its features set. But in practice, there’s a tendency to atomize this collection, treating it more like a set of discrete tools. Most NT users serially reach for embedded browsers, web notebooks, entry-level linking to the Internet and newly integrated Java applets. It’s a succession of individually used features, much like wrenches giving way to hammers that are then put aside for screwdrivers.

Thus far, everyday use of NoteTaker hasn’t been based on combination-tool strategies; the sort of solution analogous to reaching into a tool box for both a hammer and a chisel. Over the past three weeks, I’ve wondered why this is and have come to the conclusion that it’s a genuine instance of a “user issue.” NoteTaker’s tools are clearly defined and neatly intuitive. Accessing them is logical and easy. The problem seems to be one of users not getting sufficiently jiggy with the application’s potential.

This, in turn, may be ascribed to NoteTaker’s status as a solutions platform rather than a clearly defined, single answer. In this, NT is not alone: Think about any of NoteTaker’s competitors or FileMaker or even Microsoft Office as a meta-application. What are their respective elevator pitches? At their top levels, all of them are Possible Tools awaiting specific problems to inspire specially configured solutions. These programs are basically like my nephew’s Transformers--ready to become Something Else as circumstances demand.

There is, of course, a reason for this nebulousness-by-design. While computer users may have difficulty wrapping their heads around a Swiss Army Knife application, something even more problematic happens at the other end of the spectrum. If a developer of a multidimensional application too aggressively promotes one type of use, there’s a distinct danger the current and future user base might resolutely latch-on to that solution, never to be budged. I think this is a real concern. Undoubtedly, there are users who fail to get past the notebook metaphor when imagining uses for NoteTaker--God knows what would happen if NoteTaker was further being billed as Your Notebook Solution for Vacation Memories. In fact, forget I even said it.

While still pondering the literal use of browsers embedded in NT and the way in which they seem to exist apart from NoteTaker-generated web notebooks, the two ideas collided. On one hand, I had a window into cyberspace from the middle of a NoteTaker page. On the other hand, I had online NoteTaker notebooks floating in the digital aether. Clearly, both NT capabilities could be used together to genuinely new effect. In short, I introduced the hammer to the chisel.

Once the search is in progress, something will be found
Where Discovery is admittedly driven by two lusts: Techno- and Uma-

A smarter man might lead you to believe that viewing NT web notebooks through NT embedded browsers was Sherlockian in nature--that I curled up with a pipe, played a little violin and worked out the problem. Unfortunately, I’m not that cagey.

In truth, the conceptual fission occurred while I was attempting to get NoteTaker to work with one of my other techno-fetishes: Search Engines. My sad admission is that I can never have enough search engines. You may be fine with however many search sites are running on your machine, but not me. Lurking around every corner is always Another Search Engine: one that will make my research Easier, Better, Faster, Deeper, Wider, More Precise, Less Fuzzy and Highly Attractive To Uma Thurman. Especially that last bit.

My increasing integration of Web search and NoteTaker is a neat metaphor for my shift away from embedded browser literalism. At first, there was the aforementioned reveling in the novelty of the Internet helpfully sitting in the middle of my notebook’s page. And, given my Search Thang, I immediately slapped Dowser between two entries simply because I could. Later, of course, I became more cool-headed about where and when to insert the Researcher’s Best Friend. But we’re talking about me, okay? Too-much-tech-is-never-enough me. Over-the-top-tech me. If-tech-were-music-mine-would-be-Bat-Out-of-Hell me. Soon the miracle of accessible Dowser anywhere within a notebook was not enough. Like some low-rent junkie, I needed another, stronger hit of Search.

Search-engine aggregators were my next dalliance--I started to embed them in NoteTaker because a single web entry could give me access to four, five or more engines at once. But even this wasn’t satisfactory. The process slowed me down: Yes, it was a single browser, but I was still obligated to perform four or five consecutive searches.

I finally turned to the secret weapon of the Smart Researcher--metasearch engines. One embedded browser, one search string--composite results. My hands even stopped shaking for a bit. At least until it occurred to me that metasearch engines differentiate themselves from each other in obscure ways (search algorithms) and explicit ones (the search sites that are tapped). This was no good. As long as Search Supremacy eluded me, Uma would always be more attracted to someone with greater research savvy.

And it was then--in the midst of this unhealthy collision of research frenzy, techno-lust, uber-geekiness and a crush on a certain six-foot-tall actress--that I had a really, really really good idea that is guaranteed to change the way you use NoteTaker. I’m sorry that the circumstances couldn’t have been more heroic, but there you have it. So it wasn’t like the discovery of radium or the cure for a disease: Sue me.

The problem was clear--I wanted one embedded web browser in NoteTaker from which I could pretty much access every search engine I knew of or might discover. But I wasn’t willing to use a search engine as front-end to access or find other ones. Too much work, too many keystrokes, too much like even more research. No, I needed 24/7 anywhere access to every search engine I might need within, say, four clicks. And, further, I’m talking mechanistic, no-brainer clicks here--not four stages with soul-searching and decision-making sandwiched between them. Bam , Bam, Bam, Bam, and then, in the words of Trinity, I’m in.

Which frame would make this look right?
Where search-engine Nirvana is attained, proving there can never be too much of a Good Thing

That’s when I made my hammer/chisel introductions. Because the way to accomplish what I wanted was this:

I created an NoteTaker notebook filled with a rigorously organized compilation of every search engine that ever caught my eye, saved it as a web notebook and then accessed it from an embedded NT browser.

This web notebook could be shared with a team by posting it to an online server. However, as a private resource, I hosted it locally on my hard drive. I merely dragged the web notebook’s index page to my target notebook and double-clicked NoteTaker’s @ icon to reveal the embedded browser. Since the browser is accessing my hard drive, significant speed gains are realized in comparison to an online server.

My current HTML search notebook is a work in progress; it’s not yet guaranteed Uma Bait. Right now it weighs-in at 133 pages and features a search-engine per notebook page--each expanded and sized to the alloted space. Further, the various engines have been organized both topically and functionally. This means there is a degree of cross-indexing. For example, one search engine appears in the “Metasearch” functional section and also in the “News” topical area. Search engines in sections are arranged by their frequency of use, and not alphabetically. Experience has taught me that I daily use a core group of search tools, with more esoteric engines being tapped less frequently. Thus, the organization of the notebook sections avoids the more orderly but less-helpful alphabetization.

Beyond the explicit power of having more than 80 of my favorite search engines organized in one place, there are three other less-obvious benefits. First, it adds almost nothing to the size of the host notebook. After all, the embedded browser is only referencing a URL, not actually housing the contents of the search notebook.

The second benefit has been noted in the post about Zoe: Embedded NoteTaker browsers can be floated above their host notebooks and behave independently of them. This means I can hover my search engine collection above my notebook, turn to any page, and continue to use it.

Benefit three is the ability to drag content off a floating browser window and onto the notebook page below. This means more than simply pulling lists of search results to a page. Within the floating browser, you can display the actual sites found by the search and drag those to your notebook.

Initially, I preemptively crerated search-engine entries on select pages of my notebook, trying to second-guess where I might need search. However, this proved to be unsatisfactory. The problem I was trying to solve is the pesky fact the URL of the search notebook index page--no matter if online or on my hard drive--is an extremely long one; something not easily inputted on-the-fly. Clearly, some kind of pre-fab solution was needed, but preemptively creating search notebook browsers ahead of myself was not the answer.

However, thinking about pre-fabricating search notebook browsers forced me to question assumptions about their persistence: Is there any reason for a permanent, embedded search notebook? In esoteric circumstances, perhaps--but as I wanted to normally use my search engine collection--as momentary reference, with results dragged to the host notebook--the answer is no. I wanted search access where and when I wanted it, for only as long as I needed it.

The trick, of course, was implementation. What I had in mind called for the effortless, rapid insertion of search notebook browsers; genuine just-in-time delivery. Creation so easy that the browser could afterwards be deleted without second thought or regret. After unsuccessfully trying to hack NoteTaker’s New Plug-In Entry menu command, it occurred to me that what I wanted to do was to create a single entry pointing at the same URL, and to do this over and over. My need was deeply static and cookie-cutter in nature. Hey wait a minute--isn’t that a description of a template?

And so NoteTaker’s template-making ability was also merged into my embedded browser/web notebook solution. I dragged the index of the locally hosted HTML search notebook into a new entry, creating an embedded browser for my search notebook. With this entry still selected, I used the NT menu bar (Tools > Templates) to create a template based on it. The next step was ensuring the availability of a quick-access template menu was available on my NoteTaker toolbar. It had to be configured so the template menu wouldn’t crowd the NT search box. This was accomplished by selecting Templates for inclusion on the toolbar and moving it near the bottom the order. This created a double-arrow “more” icon on the NT toolbar, which, when clicked, displayed my templates in a submenu.

Here’s how everything comes together: I’m doing research for a future blog posting. On a page of collected background clips from the Web, I find a topic that needs further investigation. Selecting the clipping in question, I choose from my NT toolbar a template cunningly called Search Engines. A collapsed embedded browser is inserted directly under the entry that needs more research. I expand the browser and then float it. From the hovering notebook’s contents page, I chose the search engine I want. And, well, I’m In. Depending on how you count, it can be seen as four operations-cum -clicks.

Thank you! Thank you! I’ll be here all week--please tell your friends! Drive safe!

Use an old idea
In which the Author amplifies his Discovery in a back-to-the-future fashion

Okay, time for a conceptual pitstop. As Keith Olbermann would say, What Have We Learned?

Base-level, we’ve learned not to be so literal regarding the NoteTaker toolset. Embedded web browsers are not exclusively express lanes to the CNN homepage, the Smith Family vacation photos or--on occasion--an Uma Thurman fan site (cough). Web notebooks are not simply a workaround for making NoteTaker content available to Windows users. And templates are not necessarily about inserting address book grids or other form-structured information. Hopefully, we’ve learned not to judge a tool solely by its name--or use it strictly according to its description in the accompanying documentation.

Secondly, we’ve learned to think about the NoteTaker toolset as an organic whole, and not simply a box of discrete tools with as much relationship to each other as a rush-hour subway car full of New Yorkers. NoteTaker tools can and should interact with each other. Because when they do, significantly--sometimes shockingly--new things happen.

Are we all clear on this? Good. Because, Kids, we’re not through yet. We need to hunker down and grapple with the deep and far-reaching implications of my search-fetish-made-science-project.

It’s critical not to be blinded by another, larger kind of literalism. Appearances to the contrary, this post has not been about Kevin’s Excellent Search-Engine Adventure. Its point isn’t solely to encourage you to roll your own search notebook (although you’d be insane not to). In short, this hasn’t been a kind of After School Special for geeks, with the blueprint for an embedded search notebook as the payoff.

Rather, the importance of this epic screed is its demonstration of how the digital equivalents of Filofax inserts can be integrated with NoteTaker notebooks. Remember those? If not, here’s Kev’s QuikBackgrounder™: The premier organizer-cum -fashion statement of a pre-Palm world, its ring binding allowed for the inclusion of specialized inserts pertaining to one’s profession and/or interests. I actually ran the editorial and production departments of one of my magazines from a monster Filofax, using special publisher-specific fold-out inserts. In the organizer’s heyday, there were more than 400 specialized Filofax inserts. Frost dates for the continental US? Yup. London Tube maps? Check. Mini-guidebooks to various cities? Sure. Weights and measurements? Yes.

It can easily be argued that embedding a collection of search-engines inside a notebook is a deluxe, dynamic FiloFax-style insert for NoteTaker. But it’s equally clear that a collection of search engines is not the only possible specialized dataset that can be added to an NT notebook.

The importance of this post is the forging of a NoteTaker Insert Paradigm, My beloved search engine collection is just one kind of insert: Once you’ve melded embedded web browsers, web notebooks and NT templates, you pretty much have a dataset insert factory at your disposal.

Think of other possible types of inserts . . . Actually, I’m not content just to think about them: I’ve charged ahead like the proverbial bull rushing the Haviland china. I’ve actually prototyped a number of embedded datasets for NoteTaker. Among these is a “News” insert, which includes overviews and close-ups of world news via dynamic visualizations, a section featuring the front pages of newspaper across the nation and the complete exploded contents of selected daily publications. The whole thing can be inserted into a host notebook in the time it takes to choose a template.

I’ve also created a “Maps” insert, a “Yellow Pages” insert a “Group Calendar/Group Task” insert and--wait for it --a live IM-style “Chat” insert. All of these (and more) now patiently wait in my Templates menu for instant inclusion whenever and wherever they’re needed within my NoteTaker notebooks.

Because web notebooks can be comprised of live websites, web applications and web services (the prevoiusly discussed Zoe email and RSS reader could easily be transformed into an web notebook insert), NoteTaker dataset inserts aren’t simply a hi-tech riff on the FiloFax add-ons. Given their ink-and-paper status, FiloFax inserts could only be static compilations of generally useful data--even the contextually specialized ones. In contrast, NoteTaker inserts are inherently dynamic, drawing data from live, real-time web sources and--being constructed by the user herself--are perfectly customized.

Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
Where metadatabases finally make an apperance in the manner of The Slab from Kubrick’s 2001

Wake up! There still more. Ultimately, this post is not about Digital-Age FiloFax inserts for NoteTaker in the same way it isn’t about about collections of search engines. That’s just more literalism which must be pushed beyond. What’s indicated now is a Matrix Moment; we need to stare past surfaces and see the green, streaming code.

Recombinant, leveraged NoteTaker tools made possible an embedded search-engine notebook. In turn, the search notebook created a paradigm where many other kinds of dataset inserts are feasible. And finally, we’re there. Q: What does the highly practical presence of dataset inserts suggest? A: That NoteTaker has all along been a metadatabase--or, more properly, has had the potential to be one.

In the same way that metadata is data about data, NoteTaker is a hierarchical, multimedia, freeform database about other databases--or rather, can be--if the user is of sufficient vision. Further, given the ability of NT web notebooks to contain live data sources that may tap other information, there’s the possibility of regressive databases--data within data within data.

Also consider this: With sufficient memory, you can float multiple databases from one notebook. Imagine you’ve turned to a new page in a notebook housing resources for your report to the board of directors. You’re about to write the sales projection section of the report, and above the blank page float windows containing an Excel spreadsheet of last year’s budget, the sales department’s projected and actuals from the previous 12 months, RSS-feed summaries of market projections for upcoming year and competitive intelligence about a rival product. Merely dragging-and-droping from these floaters will result in something quite close to an instant rough draft.

The implications of NoteTaker-as-metadatabase on the pre-post stages of blogging are as numerous and far-reaching. If you’re doing more than listing the courses of last night’s dinner or explaining why your Ex is, well, your Ex, myriad research possibilities are no doubt already suggesting themselves.

Is it finished?
In which the Author reaches the end of his Journey, enlightened and changed by its rigors (but also heartbroken by the continued absence of Uma Thurman)

And so as the 7,000th word comes into view, what are the take-aways?

First, with multiple-solution applications like NoteTaker, asking “What does it do?” is simply the wrong question. It’s far more effective to wonder “How do I get it to do this ?” NoteTaker depends on specific projects to frame how it’s used.

Second, it’s best to approach NoteTaker--and all applications--holistically. By necessity, documentation atomizes the various functions and features of software. While understandable from a learning perspective, the onus is on the user to put Humpty Dumpty together again. A few years ago, there was a story, possibly apocryphal, that on Alaskan Air Force bases, Native American mechanics had demonstrably better success in repairing planes than other of their peers. When surveyed, it seems that as a group, they more often treated the jet fighters as single, complex, interrelated systems rather than as collections of individual parts. This is something to keep in mind as you approach applications like NoteTaker.

And third, be aware that solutions based on recombinant features can often be significantly greater than the sum of their parts. In truth, the ability to review Washington Post file video on Afghanistan in one floating window while dragging related new RSS feeds from a hovering reader and onto a notebook page may not have been the goal (or even conceived) when the NoteTaker design team decided on Apple WebKit integration, HTML output of notebooks and templates. But using all three in concert results in amped-up value that trumps the individual utility of these three features.

Sorry this took awhile, but I think the discoveries shared here make negotiating my idiosyncratic style well worth the effort. Just remember--you only visit my head; I, on the other hand, actually have to live in it. Thankfully, however, it’s time to put this Bad Boy to bed: I’ve just drawn a final Oblique Strategies card asking Do the words need changing? And the honest answer is Yeah, probably.So a final edit seems to be in order. I’ll be over here with my cell phone on--you know, just in case Uma calls . . .

The section heads of this post, though not cited, are from Oblique Strategies, by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, copyright 1975 and 2001.

The composition of this entry was made possible in part by In the Factory from the album "Before the Poison" by Marianne Faithfull

Wednesday, February 9, 2005 11:24:51 AM

Comments

[Kevin Sheridan]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for your comment. I am also a registered user of DEVONagent, which is a fine piece of software in its own right. I mention this at the outset because I want to clarify a possible misunderstanding. When I call NoteTaker a metadatabase, I literally mean it is a database about other databases--a collection of search engines being a likely useful candidate as one kind of database that can be embedded in a NoteTaker notebook.

This doesn’t mean that I’m suggesting that NoteTaker can function as DEVONagent or TheConcept or Grokker--all of which compile and rank search results across engines. In fact, if I could work out how to embedded any of these products in NoteTaker notebook in a real-time, dynamic fashion I would. (Hint to the Grokker folks--talk to me!)

This is a probably a case where hair-splitting is really valuable. In my own idiosyncratic opinion--beyond the obvious Metasearch Thing--the software niche defined by DEVONagent/TheConcept/Grokker is actually one that features database processors----software that acts on databases on behalf of the user in user-customizable ways. The “agent” in a DEVONagent, if you will.

NoteTaker currently does not have this capacity, which is why I also have quite a few of these database processors lurking in my applications folder.

However, as a metadatabase, NoteTaker does things that are simply beyond the current capacity of the database processors. The logical and philosophical second shoe dropping with regard to NoteTaker-as-metadatabase is simply this: Its ability to access online data and its new ability to run Java applets as notebook entries, when combined with its inherent and better known powers of organization, outlining, linking, word processing and handling multimedia (along with the way-cool ability to create an instant website out of a notebook), make NoteTaker a *platform* for researchers and writers. In most instances you can simply stay inside NoteTaker and get the job done better for doing so.

With database processors, there the not-so-small problem of what to do with results. This is not a criticism; its simply their design paradigm. Having found the killer search result giving you Brian Eno’s eight-word middle name, what--in the words of David Allen--is the next actionable step? The one thing we can say for certain is that it involves *other* applications: The outliner is fired up (take your pick), the word processor is launched (choice is yours), the email client may need to be open, there may be an RSS reader lurking up there in the corner, the website authoring tool stands at the ready (easy or industrial strength), the blogging client may also be reached for (again, easy or industrial strength) and--yes--other database processor windows also pop-up as still other searches occur.

And no, it’s not the fact that I do most of my work on 12- and 15-inch PowerBooks (although that’s certainly part of it). If I had the largest Apple monitor made, that’s still a hell of a lot of applications to orchestrate. But logistics aside, this juggling act is not ideally how writers, well write. Clarification: It’s not how I naturally write--nor the dozen or so others I know well enough to be apprised of their habits. Back there in the Analog Dark Ages, there was an implicit platform that was touched by many sources--it might have been a legal pad, index cards, or a typewriter. Everything happened *there*--with reference books, telephone calls, folders of photos, interview transcripts and printout databases briefly “materializing” by being briefly pulled closer to the Analog Instrument of Authorial Creation--and then pushed away again.

The promises of “office suites” aside, unless you are very adept with AppleScript, computer-predicated workflow (as contrasted to individual stages of work) remains mindbendingly fractured. It’s shape is the defined by the inherently siloed applications residing on all of our hard drives. And, in truth, as writers, we have given up--creatively, all of us now work in fractured, Picasso-like cubistic fashion because we have been bludgeoned into submission by the discrete and distributed nature of computer “workflow.”

A quick aside: My present gold-standard computing paradigm is that scene in Speilberg’s Minority Report, where Tom Cruise stands in front of that screen and seamless reaches for data and information, juxtaposes and views it, and then pushes it aside without second thought. Yes. Here’s my bias: I want the potential to seamless connect everything to everything else on my computer. Ludicrous flexiblity to do seemingly stupid things like associate a gallon of milk on a grocery list with a phone number. And to the greatest extent possible, I don’t want the interface to change as if I’ve just jumped from the front seat of a Camero to that of a Jaguar. After all, my IBM Selectric didn’t morph if I bashing out novels, annual reports, newsletters or love letters.

To recap: I want to seamless pull information towards me and then push it away. I want to connect everything and anything with everything and anything else. And I don’t want interface design and ergonomic whiplash each time the functionality changes.

I am, of course, dreaming. However, in NoteTaker, with its multi-functionality and its temporary embrace of online data, I see a nascent platform; something that’s beginning to behave like the computing paradigm of my desire.

And that, jgregjones@mac.com, is what I mean to suggest in the main post. It *always* takes me a while, doesn’t it.

In response to the second part of your question, about an example, I haven’t approached AquaMinds about hosting such a thing because I can only imagine they are already Profoundly Afraid about a word-drunk maniac weekly trying to make their software do all sorts of Demonstrably Undocumented Things. True, while AquaMinds was wonderfully helpful in implementing my Loony Blogging Idea by creating a mission-critical AppleScript, our relationship can be summed up in this fashion--they are Clarise Starling and I am Hannibal Lector; and very reasonably, they are careful not to get to close to the plastic partition. Who can blame them?

Here’s what I can do, however, in the public area of my dotMac account, there is a very, very, very early prototype of the search engine notebook converted to HTML/XML by NoteTaker. I deserted it when I discovered the greater convenience and speed gains of locally hosting HTML/XML notebooks.

Here’s what you want to do: Create a new NoteTaker test notebook. paste this url into a new entry

http://homepage.mac.com/kulturhack/Search_Me/index.html?1

and double click on the NoteTaker @ icon to open the embedded browser. Before you will be the rough-draft search-engine collection, live and dynamic.

Now Ctrl-click in the little left-hand margin of the browser entry--the one that’s created when you select the entry. in the resulting submenu you’ll see View and a further submenu option of Float. Choose it. Hovering above your notebook is however many search engines that early draft contains. All ready to be accessed. Now turn to another page in the test notebook. Do a test search and pull the result from the floating window to the notebook page below. Click close to put the floater away (if you create a template, as described in the main post, you can easily create a new version of the search notebook whenever you need it.

At some admittedly nascent level, you stayed in “one place” and pulled temporarily pulled data and information to you--only to shove it away after use. I can’t speak for you, but this simple action deeply resonates with me. Now imagine that the floating window contained other, non-search-engine material. Say, a 125-page Miles Davis discography. Pull it toward you, push it away, process the results: All while staying within one application.

Genuine apologies for the length of this reply, but you asked a very good question that neatly got to the heart of what I began to suggest in this post.

Kevin Sheridan

[Greg Jones]

Kevin, interesting post on the use of NoteTaker as a metasearch tool. I am however having some difficulty visualizing how the documents come together to create metadata, or data about the data. I was wondering if perhaps you could submit your NoteTaker documents described here to AquaMinds for inclusion on their examples page? As a side note, I currently use DEVONagent which is an excellent rmulti-search engine research tool.