PKM Weekly 2024-08-03
Hi Everyone,
Unlike the Paris Olympics 2024, PKM Weekly tries to avoid controversies, so let’s see what the dev teams and users have been up to this week.
This week we have updates from:
If you prefer to see a visual representation of this Week’s PKM Weekly post, check out the below video.
Trying something a bit different and hope you enjoy.
CAPACITIES
If you’d like a way to bring highlights into Capacities, then check out the updated Web Highlights integration in this video.
Interesting article from the Capacities team on “People ask us how we are using the daily notes in Capacities. Here’s my answer.”. Michael heavily relies on the daily note and uses it to structure his whole day and come back to it throughout the day. For this he uses the following template. To read through the full article, click here.
What offline-first means for you? In the latest newsletters and posts, Capacities talked a lot about the transition to making Capacities offline-first. This is a very abstract idea in the software space. Here’s why this is so big and what this means for us as users. With an offline-first app, you’re more independent. Server outages happen all the time, everywhere. And sometimes, we don’t have a stable internet connection. With an offline-first app, this won’t affect you. You will be able to continue working. While not every detail of Capacities will be offline-first, most of it will. No core functionality will require an internet connection anymore. On top of that, you don’t need to wait for content to be loaded; it’s already there. The technology you use for your work is no longer the bottleneck. You now define how fast you work. While Capacities is not perfectly fast yet, you can expect to see huge improvements in the transition to offline-first. We promise that you’ll feel the difference. Check out the full article here.
A couple of tutorials were recently posts by the team: Take you backlinks to the next level with indentation (Backlinks are a super important part of Capacities, and this one simple change can make them so much more useful.) and Capacities as an outliner (Capacities is a great tool for outlining your thoughts, ideas, and projects. This article will show you how to use Capacities as an outliner.)
Capacities continues to impress with the openness of what they are doing and the path they are on. For such a small team to be able to maintain the dev work at its peak, keep the crowds informed and (hopefully) find time away from the computer is impressive.
TANA
Unlock the Power of Tana’s New AI Chat: A Step-by-Step Guide by Ev Chapman. In today’s video I cover how to use Tana’s new AI Chat feature available as part of the new Tana Core Paid Plan. Now you can chat with AI right inside of Tana & reference any of the notes in your workspace. This is your notes powered by AI & it’s revolutionary. Learn how AI Chat works, some of the hidden features and why you should consider cancelling your chatGPT subscription for it. Check the video out:
A user going the other way – from Tana to Capacities: Why I Switched from Tana to Capacities for Project Management. For the past 18 months, Tana has been my go-to project management app. It’s been an incredible journey, and I’ve found immense satisfaction and joy in using it daily. Tana has significantly improved my confidence in managing projects and related data, something I struggled with before. I’ve invested in courses to learn best practices for Tana, and it has paid off handsomely. At first glance, Capacities seemed like just another block-based app among many. I initially dismissed it after a brief trial a year ago. But the continuous development and enhanced features of Capacities caught my attention again recently, prompting a re-evaluation. The onboarding process and learning curve were surprisingly smooth, and the developer’s transparent communication about the app’s roadmap was encouraging.
Lots of users asking for a bit more insight into the what is coming up next / what is in the pipeline with Tana. This comment, I think sums it up very well “Roadmap/What’s Next: Look at how openly and honestly Capacities communicates about the current status and upcoming features on their website. I myself work in the communications field, and Capacities does this almost perfectly. At Tana, I have absolutely no idea what you are currently working on and what is planned next. I don’t need exact dates, just an overview: What has priority for you right now?”
Things have been a bit quiet of late in the Tana channels. There is a distinct lack of any official communication since Tana Core was launched. Could be down to the dev team getting some well earned time off following what I am sure was a mad push to the line, or could there be more to it than that?
LOGSEQ
The Logseq Database version seems to e completed in the Trello roadmap. Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that as a message from the team on Discord states: “The next step is several months of closed alpha testing before a public alpha will be released”. Little while longer to wait it seems
A user was really keen to test out the DB version. After MD import in DB version, lots of nodes appear as having no connections in graph view but have backlinks when opened. Difference between DB (left) and MD (right). Goes along the lines of the above, still some work to be done before this is ready for the masses.
Logseq iCloud Sync issues – you are not alone. This post gives a few suggestions of what to try out if you are facing issues with Logseq and iCloud – in short, do not use, due to know conflicts, and use another means to sync notes instead. Logseq iCloud Sync issue : r/logseq (reddit.com)
Bas (Tools on Tech) did a live stream on cleaning his graph. A little to clean things up and also to get ready for the sought after DB mode. Check out the video here.
OBSIDIAN
User comments that After using Obsidian for 3 years – have only just realised this! Page preview lets you preview a page when you hover the cursor over an internal link, without needing to navigate to that page. By default, hovering over a link will preview that file in File explorer, Search, Backlinks, and more. To preview a page while in Editing view, press
Ctrl
(orCmd
on macOS) while hovering the cursor over the link. There is also an option to requireCtrl
(orCmd
on macOS) while hovering to see the file. The settings for this option are under Core plugins > Page preview.
Some interesting comments on “My Obsidian note-taking workflow” by various users. Some sticking to a daily notes, others creating a weekly one. Others not creating a time note at all. Wide variety of responses so well worth checking out.
NOTION
Notion 2.43: Suggested edits are here + new Notion AI features. Lots of useful stuff, but also a lot of un-requested / not needed additions.
Suggested edits – Collaborating on docs used to be a pain, so we made it much easier to track changes! Now any collaborator can make suggestions, and you or a teammate can quickly accept or reject.
A better Inbox – It can be hard to keep track of all the activity happening in your workspace. So we’ve grouped suggested edits and comments into easy-to-read threads. And as you jump from page to page to resolve comments, your new
Inbox
stays open to keep you focused.One-click AI skills (no prompt required) – Using AI can feel hard—unless you know how to write a perfect prompt from scratch. These one-click skills make it much easier! Brainstorm ideas, make a diagram, summarize notes, or translate content—all with one click.
One AI tool to chat & search – Notion AI can answer any question! It finds the right info from Notion, Slack (soon Google Drive & Github too), and models like GPT-4. No need to search a bunch of tools. And with a full-page window, you have a distraction-free place to chat.
Notion AI global shortcut – Now, if you’re designing in Figma, responding to a customer in Zendesk, or analyzing data in Hex, you can summon Notion AI to answer your questions right then and there. Use the new global shortcut (
⌘ + shift + J
for Mac,ctrl + shift + J
for Windows) when you have our desktop app installed.
Check out the full release notes here.
Productivity Thoughts
In a recent video on my YouTube channel, I compared ChatGPT, Perplexity AI and Claude AI. There are some differences between each tool depending on what you are looking for, but all work fantastically well. I recently came across a new tools called Strom by Stanford (STORM: Synthesis of Topic Outlines through Retrieval and Multi-perspective Question Asking) which I reviewed and played around with.
Here is something I am sure no-one expected. Bending Spoons (owners of Evernote), purchased WeTransfer (popular digital file-sharing and collaboration platform). Surprising stuff.
That’s all for this week. Thank you very much in advance for reading and I look forward to bringing you more PKM news next week.