PKM Weekly - 2024-09-28
A look at the latest Personal Knowledge Management PKM news from the past week.
Hi Everyone,
Lots of updates this week, so let’s get right to it.
Video of this week's update:
CAPACITIES
How to Actually Use the Notes You Take
We have all been there: reading a book or an article, watching a YouTube video, only to find that a few weeks or months later, we can’t remember if and why it resonated with us, and we’re left wondering, “What was it about again?”
Taking notes is one step in the right direction, but here’s the catch: if we jot down our thoughts, only to let those notes sit in forgotten corners of our notebooks or digital apps, there’s no benefit. They become digital dust, rarely revisited or even never seen again.
I'm a Believer Now and Found "The One" After Roam, Tana, Logseq &
Heptabase
Wanted to post a quick follow up now that I've been using Capacities for a few weeks. I have to say...I'm absolutely blown away with joy. Everything just MAKES SENSE after trying all these different tools.
Few things I love about Capacities after playing with it:
The outliner is Capacities is phenominal. It's just as good as Logseq, Roam or Tana. It's so clean, it works the same as every other outliner without compremize. I felt Heptabase's outliner was meh...Capacities nailed it. It literally feels like Logseq but you have the ability to free write if you want to.
Sorting things into Objects is easy and makes your life so damn simple. The flow is great, it makes sense for my brain and I no longer feel like I'm writing and creating into a void. With dead simple organization I can rapidly see and link different objects together. Huge win vs everything being scattered everywhere in other apps that lack the structure.
It works on a block level like Logseq, Roam and Tana vs pages like Obsidian. That's a huge win if you want to get granular linking info.
The customization of the home page will make it into your central home. I'm putting my goals, habits and everything on the home page so I'm reminded what to focus on in my biz day after day.
Full post here.
What’s the One Missing Thing?
For my fellow Capacities users I thought it would be interesting to ask what is the one thing you feel that is missing from Capacities to take it to the next level? What is the one thing you need from Capacities that is not yet available?
LOGSEQ
Database DB Version
A number of updates are being made to the Logseq DB Version to bring it to parity with the md version before being released to a wider set of user. We have SRS, queries, different data types and more.
My 4 types of Logseq Notes
Where do you put your ideas? In this video I'm talking about the 4 types of notes I use most often and how I differentiate between them.
Logseq+Ollama: Integrate Ollama with Logseq in 5 minutes (Windows)
Want to integrate Ollama with Logseq, then check this video out.
“Goodbye Evernote: How I chose Logseq over Notion and Obsidian”
Evernote is one of the most well known note taking apps, but it has changed little since I first started using it in 2009. Since then, several new players have innovated where Evernote hasn’t.
New tools have embraced ideas like Second Brain and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) — these are digital tools and techniques to organize and retrieve information to enhance productivity and knowledge retention.
I wanted see if I could benefit from a PKM system and how they differed from cloud based notebooks such as Evernote and OneNote. Check out the full post here.
TANA
Tana Mobile
The team have been hard at work with the Tana mobile app and are even using it themselves. They are also having the app tested and put through its paces with a select number of users. The small testing group should increase and then it will be released.
Seems like the wait for a Tana mobile app / Tana iOS app is nearly over.
Offsite Office Hours
This week the team was in an offsite get together so the Office Hours was a little different but with lots of cool content.
Your Ultimate Guide to Time Blocking in Tana | Step By Step Tutorial
Interested in Time Blocking and how you can implement this in Tana? Look no further than Ev’s step by step tutorial.
In the guide, Ev shows us how you can implement them in Tana:
1. Traditional hour-by-hour scheduling
2. "Maker blocking" with 4 flexible time blocks per day
3. Batch blocking for recurring task types
I'll walk you through how to set up each method step-by-step, including the exact searches and configurations to use in Tana.
OBSIDIAN
Obsidian adds friction to simple note taking
I love Obsidian, but I can't get out of the habit of using notepad when I need to capture a thought. Opening my vault takes 10 seconds, while notepad is instantaneous. And notepad toggles to full screen, zero margin mode instantly. Notepad also doesn't need to be installed on a new workload. Of course, the reason I started using Obsidian in the first place is that a thousand notepad files are impossible to manage. I have tried plug-ins and custom CSS to no avail so far, but it seems silly that a note taking app doesn't have a simple toggle to be able to expand one's writing palette. I can live with the slow loading but only having access to two thirds of the screen is a real obstacle. I would greatly appreciate any advice from those with the same frustrations.
Check it out here.
How I Published My Obsidian Notes Website For Free
OP Posts a video on publishing with Obsidian, but for free: In this tutorial video, I share How I Published My Obsidian Notes Website For Free as a Digital Garden. I explain how you can selectively publish notes from your Obsidian vault to your own website using GitHub, Netlify, & the Digital Garden Plugin for Obsidian (all links below). Choosing which notes to publish is as easy as clicking a single button. Note, you can also use this same process for publishing a blog OR a digital garden; the choice is up to you.
I also explain how you can connect a custom domain to your new website for a small fee (mine cost $2/year) so that readers can find your website more easily (e.g., mine is https://wanderloots.xyz). Finally, I include a free way for you to secure your custom domain with encryption so that you can better protect your website (free if you use Netlify like I did). I include more details on the settings needed in the links section below.
How To Use Obsidian: The Power Of Linking OUTSIDE Of Your Obsidian Vault
Transform Your Productivity with Hookmark and Obsidian
Other Apps
Tangent
Tangent v0.8.0 just released! I'm back with another update to Tangent Notes! This update has been in-progress since May and includes a whole host of quality-of-life features.
Tangent was made open-source early this year. It's a simple, but powerful note writing tool for your big ol' pile of markdown files. It supports wiki links, code, math, and todos. It also features a custom query language (with savable queries) for powerful search and a built-as-you-write map of where you've been and what connections have been created. I've been working on Tangent for a little over three years now in my spare time. I use it every day, and I hope that it can help others too. Check out the full changelog here.
Heptabase
In the latest version, you can drag AI-generated insights to the whiteboard to make sense of lengthy knowledge sources
Remnote
Anki vs RemNote | Which is a Better Language App? 2025 - In this video, "Anki vs RemNote: Which is a Better Language App," we’ll explore the strengths and weaknesses of two powerful tools designed to enhance your language learning experience.
Drag to re-order options in table "select" properties. The order is used for sorting, display, and search.
AppFlowy
v0.7.0 is out, including loads of small updates and bug fixes.
Drag and drop document blocks
Use an attachment as a card cover / Set a card cover
Support "Ask AI" on multiple blocks of text
Add a code block using triple backticks
Configure the self-hosted server URL through Settings on the startup page
Customize the document width in Settings
Add color backgrounds for the group names in Kanban boards
AppFlowy Mobile is now public available. Designed and built for mobile, fully native applications, support offline mode and self-hosting
Anytype
Anytype Android 0.32.40 Released! Check out the release notes here.
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.
Thanks for keeping me on track with updates regarding the Logseq DB version. Nothing mind-blowing new, but I am sure that not much more happened. 👍