Too Much Cookies Network

Information management is a complex field and the solutions available - be they freeware, open source or commercial - to gather, organize and interlink information range from small post-its up to complete version-based and multi-author capable wikis and project content management systems.

Me, I’m used to creating simple and small text files with a more or less descriptive title and the information needed inside of them. The files are optimally placed in one directory where i normally have to search for the bits of information that i currently need. As a formal Windows-user i was used to using the standard “My Documents”-folder - which became bloated very fast - to place those files because this is the fastest directory to open and save files from and to. The main problem with this approach consists in the files being so many and no obvious and plain system can be derived to organize title and content of the files. Often, when I’m writing to one file about a subject I would include other information simply because they flew by me while writing.

Yesterday, while searching for a simple todo-application for work, I found the small application “StickWiki“. It’s a wiki-system that consists of only one (!) html-file which updates itself using javascript.

Wiki on a Stick (in short WoaS) is a wiki that lives in one self-modifying XHTML file. It’s perfect to be used at home or at office, on your laptop or USB pen drive (along with Portable Firefox if you want) and even in a floppy disk! It can be used as a personal notepad, calendar, repository for software documentation and many other things; it allows full customization and extension by your own scripts or libraries. It also offers true AES encryption of pages.

Of course the StickWiki has to be placed on a writable media such as usb-stick, but since most people seem to be using those, this shouldn’t be a problem. On the other hand time will show how effective the system is for a larger set of information, especially if it’s encrypted.. I hope i won’t forget to backup the file..

In general I think the idea is marvelous. Though I use to place much of the information that I need to be as mobile as myself (i.e. at work and at home) on my server and access through some internet connection, this is a much easier and stable way of accessing and organizing small bits of information. Have a look for yourself!

http://sourceforge.net/projects/stickwiki/