PKM Weekly – 2024-08-17
Hi Everyone,
This weekend, we not only have the start of the Premiership, we also have lots of great updates from several apps. Getting together seems to be the order of the day with a Logseq DB hangout and a special AMA from the Tana team.
This week we have updates from:
Video of this week’s update:
CAPACITIES
Release 40 – Towards offline mode and date ranges (and much more)
With this update, we’re introducing huge performance updates and a much more enjoyable overall note-taking experience!
Performance updates and better offline support
Brand new date picker, date ranges and natural language
Improved Web Highlights Integration
Small Improvements
Bug Fixes
Community & Content Roundup
Thank you!
Check out the full post here.
Date ranges, natural language dates and more!
Want to see the above update in action? The look no further than the below video. Beth talks us through the date picker huge upgrade, and added a few more features while we were at it. Here’s what’s new: New look, Natural language input, Pre-1800 dates, Date/time suggestions, All day toggle, Date Ranges and Date property settings. All features advertised are on the Capacities Basic plan.
The app is not designed for large notes?
An interest post on Reddit. I decided to use Capacities as my main one and started transferring some of my notes for the test. Everything was going well until I got to large notes – lectures and lessons with a lot of content. I took one of the notes made in Obsidian and tried to transfer it to the app and it completely froze, I had to completely close the process and restart app. Well, I thought that the note must be very large (800,000 characters), so I selected only a third and got the same result. This note opens and edits in a one second in Obsidian, but Capacities freezes dead when trying to copy less than a third part of it. For reference, I am using MacOS 14.6 on a Macbook Pro 16 M1 Pro and the native app. So this is not a problem with my hardware. Also, I am not considering the option of splitting the lecture series into separate notes, since I need to preserve the original structure and then use the parts in different places.
After trying out Capacities Pro for 24 hours…I’ve decided to wait_
OP says “I thought I’d done it: I’d found my One App, the place where I would put every morsel of a thought and every crumb of an intention I’ve ever had. I was even being savvy about it, making sure to port my data incrementally by only putting new stuff in and testing out—and falling in love—with the Markdown export. It was a done deal. You can stop selling me on it. Cap was going to be my best friend.
But after trying out Pro for 24 hours I think…I’ve decided to wait. The thing about block references is that they’re a honking great idea, right? Add to that the magic words, “time-based notetaking” and like some of you I imagined every piece of my recorded life falling into their proper places. But I hit some snags that I really wanted to work around but couldn’t” Well worth a read.
Sometimes it is tough being at the top.
LOGSEQ
Logseq DB Alpha Testing is under way
Happy to say that the Logseq Alpha testing of the DB mode is underway. From what I understand it is a little more up to date and being developed with changes being pushed out quicker than the db.demo online version. Very initial thoughts are that it is impressive. There are some tweaks needed and improvements to be made but I guess that is the point on an Alpha test.
Well done to the devs for this huge milestone. Here is a sneak peek:
Logseq’s New Database Version, Relationships and PKM Combiningminds and ToolsonTech
Dario da Silva and @ToolsonTech were looking to chat about the DB version of Logseq, but there were too many interesting things to cut out. Also treating it as an experiment in sharing more personal stories. Check out the video here.
Logseq DB Hangout
After one week of testing Logseq DB, let’s talk about our likes, dislikes, and how we’re adapting our workflows to the new possibilities of the database. It will be held in Discord Saturday 17 August @ 17:00 CEST. To join, click here.
TANA
Tana AMA Thursday 22nd of August 17:00 CEST / 08:00 PDT
Post you questions / more details here. Will include the founders (Grim Iversen, Tarjei Vassbotn and Olav Sindre), as well as Matt and Brage. During the AMA, they will provide insights and updates on progress and look to address any concerns or confusion in the community.
Tana Updates / Communication and Roadmap
Tarjei Vassbotn commented on a recent Slack post. No doubt we have room for improvement on both feature improvements, roadmap transparency and communication.
We have one almost all-consuming focus going forward: Mobile (and yes, we’re aiming for iOS + Android, if not exactly at the same time, very close together). It’s hard for us to say an exact date, but we would be very disappointed if we were not able to launch it before end of September ’24.
We completely understand and share the frustration. This has taken way longer for us than we thought it would. But many of the hurdles we’ve had to pass on the to way to releasing mobile, are fundamentals that are needed to solve some of the other issues, like speed, search quality and import/APIs.
September 2024 – launch month of the app it is. You heard it here first.
Tana for Beginners: Start HERE — How to Use Tana for Task Management
Learn how to use Tana for beginners with Santi. In this video, he talks us through How to Use Tana for Task Management.
OBSIDIAN
Obsidian: The Most Powerful Learning Technology in History?
Obsidian is an extremely powerful learning tool and so much more than a note taking app.
NEW: Obsidian 1.7…Tab Switcher
Nick Milo showcases some new features on the mobile app in this quick video.
A Pro Tip for Obsidian Users
I am a fairly new user to Obsidian and love how it gives you a granular control over everything. I shifted my whole workspace from Notion to Obsidian but I couldn’t help but notice how the obsidian vault eats up the storage of my Mac and iCloud Drive. At notion, I wasn’t really worried about storage space since it was all up in notion cloud and everytime I would open a page, it would load all the attachments in real time. However in obsidian, everything is stored locally. It fills a major chunk of my macbook’s measly 256GB storage and it was a burden on iCloud too when it had to sync everytime making the overall wokflow significantly slow.
However, I found a workaround to it. There’s a free app called ImageOptim for Mac Users. It basically reduces the file sizes of your PNGs and JPEGs by a significant amount, all while keeping the quality same as original. Since most of the attachments (other than PDFs) are images, it’s a good practice to run your images through ImageOptim once in a while to reduce the storage size of your vault, so it eats up less space and syncs quickly. You don’t have to do anything, just drag your images into it and will reduce size and replace the original images all by itself without hurting file structures or image links inside notes. I reduced my vault size by 70-80% (No kidding). For windows users, there are alternatives for this too.
Other Apps
AFFiNE 0.16: Better organization via Folders, Multi-tab support and AI chat blocks.
You can also see the full update here.
Anytype for Beginners: Everything You Need in 1 Video
Useful video by Tool Finder (Francesco) on how to use Anytype.
Anytype has been out in the garden landscaping and finding bugs!
After some serious digital landscaping and bug-fixing, we’re introducing features such as a redesigned sidebar, inline LaTeX & new widget types – it’s all tethered to the wider web of multiplayer spaces for personal and collaborative use. Enjoy!
SiYuan Keeps on improving
Lots of cool updates of late from the SiYuan team. Think they just need someone to vocalise their app a little better as it is certainly very impressive. Release v202408102219 · siyuan-note/siyuan (github.com)
Heptabase iPad split panel
In the latest version of the iPad app, you can use the split panel to view your cards on the whiteboard! (check it out in action here).
Craft Back to School Offer – Save 30%
Craft recently announced that September is almost here. We prepared some fantastic things:
Back to School Sale – Save 30% on all our plans!
Campus Champions – Help us spread the word about Craft
Updated Help Site
Find everything here: https://documents.craft.me/back-to-school
Productivity Thoughts
Please Help Me With My PKM Struggles
Davíð Matthías posts a great article asking for help on a very important topic of “I am struggling with the concept of “file over app.” I think we have all been there. Davíð is “at a crossroads. I love plain text, but I want to use flashy shiny apps like Capacities or Tana.” Check out the post here.
Roam Research vs. Obsidian: Which Note-Taking Tool Is Best?
Bit of an unusual post from the ClickUp team but worth a read nonetheless. “we’re taking a closer look at two heavyweights in the note-taking arena: Obsidian and Roam Research. Each has unique strengths and quirks, and choosing between them can be a bit of a puzzle.”
Roam Research vs. Obsidian: Which Note-Taking Tool Is Best? (clickup.com)
Lost and Found: Religion and G-d
Not so much a productivity thought, and more an excellent write up from my buddy Dario on life, thoughts and general feelings.
Lost and Found: Religion and G-d – by Dario da Silva
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.