I am constantly looking for the ultimate Personal Knowledge Management tool. Most of my work-related KM happens in Outlook Notes. Those little yellow windows suck in so many ways, especially organization, but they have one strong point that is tough to match: the create-edit-save cycle is blazingly fast (Alt-Tab, Ctrl-Shift-N, Paste / Type, Esc).
After using wikidPad for a few weeks, I’m ready to say that Outlook Notes have finally met their match. wikidPad is basically a graphical single-user wiki. If you’ve heard of VoodooPad for Mac OS X, this is roughly the Windows equivalent.
With no web server or browser involved, wikidPad is pretty quick. WikiPages are listed using a treeview control on the left, expanding an item shows each of the WikiWords within that page. On the right is the page editor, a semi-WYSIWYG control (wiki formatting is not hidden). To create a new page you simply select an existing page, type in a WikiWord and double-click on it.
wikidPad comes with a seemingly comprehensive wiki that explains all of the usual wiki features that I’ve barely looked at. There are keywords and attributes, with automatically generated views. There’s search, of course, and special views to find orphaned and modified pages.
When my 30-day trial expired I didn’t think twice about pay the $12 that the author requests, and for the right set of features I would happily pay several times that. Give me revision tracking and integration with a collaborative tool that supports authorization, such as a traditional web-based wiki or something like Groove, and I’ll be in KM heaven. Bonus points if it can sync with a PDA or smartphone.
