Personal Knowledge Base - Criteria and Candidates

Essential criteria.

1. Mobile first.
2. Privacy.
3. Cross platform.
   • At least Linux and Android must be supported.
4. Scalable.
5. Ability to cross link notes.

Desired criteria.

1. Fast search and navigation.
2. Semi automation of organization.
3. Bottom up organization.
4. Fast input.
5. Least effort for initial setup, but extendable according to personal requirements.

Ideal criteria

1. Complete portability
   • The question to consider is: “If I have to run and all I can take is a pendrive, can I take my pkb with me and how effectively can I use it?”
2. Visualization of relationships between notes as a mind-map.
3. Web-clipper add-on for browser.
4. Secure cloud backups
5. Tool-chain for easy publishing

Candidates

1. Evernote: Privacy issues
2. Onenote: Privacy issues
3. Notion: Privacy issues
4. Roam: Privacy issues
5. Zim: No mobile app
6. Org mode: Orgzly is a great mobile app. Unforunately it is more geared towards ‘few-large-notes’ kind of workflow, while I am looking at a ‘many small notes with ability to convert it to large notes’ kind of workflow
7. Tiddlywiki: Not scalable. Usability in mobile is mediocre.
8. Obsidian: Very interesting project. However I was hard pressed to find a feature that is not available as a VSCode Plugin inorder to warrant the swtich to a non-opensource project.
9. Markdown notes - Markor in Mobile, VS codium with plugins in Linux: CURRENT

Interesting links

• Artificial Brain Networked notebook app - Master list of Personal knowledge base softwares
• List of Public Zettelkasten Wikis