PKM Weekly - 2024-09-07
A look at the latest Personal Knowledge Management PKM news from the past week.
Hi Everyone,
This week we are back to a normal Saturday posting, but from a different location.
Capacities
Logseq
Tana
Obsidian
Heptabase
Other Apps
Video of this week's update:
CAPACITIES
What Next?
The team published an article giving us a preview of what to expect in the next months. This includes:
Tablet App
Offline Mode
Calendar 2.0
Media Types 2.0
Deeper AI integration
Importing from other note-taking apps
Reader integrations and Annotations
Simple task management within Capacities
Faster Capacities with less bugs
Basically a lot of amazing stuff to look forward to. Do check out the full post for more details on what is coming next.
Capacities and AI
Give that AI and your notes can be somewhat of a sensitive subject, and with deeper AI integration planned in Capacities, the devs publish an article on their views. "AI is not a feature, it's a fundamental part of Capacities. Integrating AI into Capacities is a project that will take many months to complete. We have a clear path for the upcoming months and a more general vision and fuzzy ideas for the more distant future."
Check out the post here.
Create a Network of People in Capacities
We probably all have a person object type in Capacities, so here are some ideas for making the most of it. We'll see how networked note-taking and object types can work together to create an intuitive network of notes and connections that help you achieve what you need.
LOGSEQ
Updates on the Logseq DB Alpha - A Walkthrough by Bas / Tools on Tech
Bas tested the new Logseq DB Alpha and gives us his initial thoughts. If you want to see what the Logseq DB Version can do, some new functionality, some limitations (for now), then check this video out.
Note - Development is going fast, a lot of things I talk about and have ideas on have already been picked up. Most notable the discoverability. There will be a new video once we get out of Alpha and things are more set in stone.
What’s the difference between the `logseq-db-demo` and `test.logseq.com` instances?
OP asks "I want to continue testing the DB version, but I’m not sure which “instance” is going to be updated more frequently as the team builds through updates to the Alpha. Should I use https://logseq-db-demo.pages.dev/ or https://test.logseq.com to be on the latest update?"
The response is: They both get refreshed often. https://logseq-db-demo.pages.dev/ is refreshed several times a day; more bugs here. https://test.logseq.com is refreshed several times a week, or less frequently. This is what is used for Alpha testing.
None of the should be used with production data. Please keep that in mind, until the devs have communicate a stable release
Is Logseq dead?
I have seen a few people ask if Logseq is no more / dead / abandoned. This mainly stems from the fact that there has been no new release since about mid-April 2024 and a lot of the communication has been in the Discord where not everyone accesses / keeps up to date.
The short answer is no, Logseq is not dead. In fact, it is well and truly alive (see above video from Bas). The devs have been hard at work rewriting the code of Logseq to implement the Logseq DB Version. If you look at the DB branch, there is a hive of activity.
Having said the above, I guess the communication could be a little better and with the DB version still a few more month away, does this mean we will have to wait for any updates to the main / md version of Logseq?
TANA
New Tana Team Members
A couple of new members (Emmanuel Galanos and Theo) are now part of the Tana Team The team is excited to have two of our most helpful community members join the team full time. Along with other Tana Navigators, their deep Tana expertise and willingness to help has been such a positive in our community. Here's a small glimpse of their impact -
Theo has replied to 2,554 slack posts, curated the World's Greatest Tana YouTube Playlist and released SNACK
Emmanuel has replied to 3,255 slack posts, helped with bug reporting and sent 2,588 emojis
Well done to both and keep up the good work.
Flurry of Twitter / X Activity
The Tana team is back and posting lots of great updates on Twitter / X. Here are a few:
With video calls, manual note taking is a great habit, Combine it with Tana's meeting agent. Link
Tana capture running in your pocket, recording, transcribing and organizing every idea automatically. Link
Real-World Tana Demo: Unpolished Walkthrough
A great tweet by Ev on journalling and the methos she uses to get the most out of journalling using a process called Incremental Journalling. Although Ev mentions show does this in Tana, you could very easily replicate in just about any other app. Tweet.
Release Notes
Short and sweet release notes;
Improved - We no longer list nodes that only contain a single inline reference in @-mentions (Nodes and references)
Fixed - Fixed bug where a workspace would sometimes not show all of the available options on autocomplete with @-mention (Nodes and references)
Fixed - Fixed diacritics when using autocomplete in a field, so for example typing Eric will show you Éric as an option (Nodes and references)
Fixed - Cleaned up duplicate Event URL fields created by Google Calendar integration, and switched to using system field (this is stored internally, use debug node to see) (Calendar integration)
OBSIDIAN
How take notes + my Obsidian setup
Sebastian shares with us how they take notes in Obsidian. "For the past year, Obsidian has been my note-taking companion. I don't care about fancy features like backlinks, canvas… I like Obsidian because it's fast, minimal (up to you!), customizable, works with Markdown files, and has a good enough mobile app.
I've slowly grown towards a more consistent way of taking and organizing notes. While I'm using Obsidian, it's a system that can easily be ported to any other tool as long as you have something that resembles a filesystem."
Check out the post here.
How to Manage Tasks in Obsidian: I Turned Obsidian into the Ultimate Task Manager
Ever wonder how to manage tasks in Obsidian? In this video, I explain the pros and cons of plain text task management, the key mindset shift you'll need to make it work, and a complete walkthrough of my personal task management system (including a detailed walkthrough of my Task Dashboard and all queries used).
Obsidian vs. Notion: The ultimate battle for your second brain
Obsidian and Notion are two of the top note-taking and knowledge management software solutions. Thanks to their unique approach to productivity and flexibility, both platforms have gained a devoted following. While Obsidian is laser-focused on delivering a personal and interconnected knowledge base, Notion takes a different route with powerful and customizable collaborative workspaces.
In this post, we will compare Obsidian and Notion based on UI, features, philosophies, note-taking style, organization, and pricing, and discuss their unique strengths and drawbacks to help you pick an ideal tool for your workflow.
Obsidian vs. Notion: The ultimate battle for your second brain (xda-developers.com)
HEPTABASE
Insight Generator
In the latest version, you can use the Insight Generator, an early alpha feature that helps you grasp the knowledge structure of a long article ten times faster and quickly navigate to different parts of the knowledge source that are useful or interesting to you.
https://x.com/Heptabase/status/1831280665058312464
Multiple Windows
A further update to Heptabase means you can now open multiple windows at the same time! Can be achieved through Ctrl + Shift + N shortcut and means it is now possible to have 2 windows side by side or easily switch between one canvas and the other.
Visual note taking advantages?
Although not specific to the visual note taking app, Heptabase, a user asks "Hi, I bought Scrintal for a lifetime. Is anyone using Heptabase or Scrintal for visual note-taking? Although I see the advantage of sharing data, I think the visual method will help us understand faster and make it more fun. But have you noticed any advantages to taking notes in these visual note-taking systems?
Tools like Miro are good for demonstrations or illustrations. But having knowledge on the canvas with links and backlinks feels cool. But does anybody actually using this type of system find it productive?"
Some interesting responses here in case you are in the same boat as OP.
Other Apps
Remnote Fireside Chat
Paper Reading Style Chat: We'll be continuing the reading and discussion of https://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html together as a community. We'll go live on: 12 September 2024 see link for time in your time zone https://discord.gg/82HrWfEER9?event=1275932323560558744
Scrintal
Bianca talks us through her favourite Scrintal feature in this video. She also shows us how we can replicate something similar in Obsidian so well worth checking out.
Journalling
Not an app as such, but TFT Hacker posted using Journaling for Stress Relief: Practical Techniques to Calm Your Mind Stressed? Your notebook holds the key. Explore five writing techniques that can transform your mental landscape and boost well-being. Check it out.
Journaling for Stress Relief: Practical Techniques to Calm Your Mind (substack.com)
AFFiNE
Did you know that AFFiNE comes in multiple languages? Thanks to our wonderful community contributions to the AFFiNE i18n project, AFFiNE comes in English as well as Arabic, French, Korean, Chinese, Russian.
Roam
Neat updates deployed for mobile
copy+paste images into Roam (override bug fixed)
the `#` will also allow you to create new pages and delete them directly from the selection toolbar: reference will be replaced by text
Appflowy
v0.6.8 is out with loads of small (big) updates. https://github.com/AppFlowy-IO/AppFlowy/releases/tag/0.6.8
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.