PKM Weekly – 2024-06-08

Hi Everyone,

Another week packed with updates and news from various PKM apps out there. From mobile app news to new releases and future portability, let’s get to it.

The developments from this week come from:

CAPACITIES

  • What’s next? A preview of what to expect in the next months. In this article, the Devs comment a few things to come in the near future, including:
    • The general release of our updated and much improved mobile app to the iOS app store and Google Play store for everyone.
    • The first version of our Web clipper is waiting for approval in browser extension stores.
    • Our first version of AI semantic search is currently in the test phase. Semantic search will enable some very cool related features.
    • Continuing to make Capacities an offline-first application
    • Tablet Version
    • Media Types 2.0 (Overhaul of all existing media types, Video object type, Media x Search x AI)
    • Deeper AI assistant integration & smart context
    • Importing
    • Simple Task Management

  • What if Capacities was gone tomorrow? Here’s what we can say about it. After some users asked about what would happen if Capacities shutdown, the devs took some time to give their thoughts. In short:
    • Capacities will not shut down tomorrow. Rather the opposite is true: We’re just getting started. We are more than ever fully committed to our mission and are working full steam on it.
    • See a path for open-sourcing Capacities
    • Export already exists

My Thoughts: Some great posts by the devs this week to give guidance on the direction of the Capacities and what we can look forward to in the near future. Some reassurances, but also some golden nuggets of what might be possible longer term. It is refreshing to see devs of such a small team being so open and communicative. Looking forward to the future of Capacities.

TANA

  • Following the release of Tana Core, users’ attention moved to the mobile app. While a sneak peek has been posted online (check the Tana Slack), a few comments were made to give us more details:
    • Working tirelessly to get the mobile app ready for the community beta launch, but there are still a few steps to go. But getting there.
    • We won’t set a date for the launch, since there are some hard problems we still haven’t solved (complex live searches).
    • There will be Android-app. But we have more internal iOS resources than Android resources, so we would love to get in touch with experts that can increase our Android velocity.
    • Android is obviously important to us. We are actively looking for additional android resources, so if you know of any great consultants or agencies that could help us speed up the process, please reach out to the Tana team.The good news is that the App is being worked on and it does look good. The bad, no indication of when will be released and likely that the Android version will lag behind.

  • For those wondering about the invite process / accessing the app. “Our invite process is currently being rewired.  No invites are currently being sent as we update.  Any invite sent will arrive when the new process is implemented.  Will give an update next week.”

  • Tana Navigation Hour for Beginners is making a comeback. Wednesday, 12 June (see link to join and event time in your time zone). In the session, the Navigators will look at
    • answering any burning questions on Tana
    • Helping you to figure out how to set up your workflows
    • Guiding you if you want to start your journey in Tana

  • Andrew Altshulerpublished a case study of the system he built to accelerate his expertise in complex geopolitics. His my most complex build in Tana by far including:
    • Applying the first principles thinking to break down the domain
    • Designing complex ontology/scaffolding
    • Enriching environment with data
    • Building and applying custom frameworks
    • Extending & expanding build to cover new use cases
    • Incorporating & integrating diverse knowledge
    • Using different representation
    • Making the most of Tana Paste to integrate different tools

My Thoughts: From the above lack of mobile and pending invite system (amongst a few other limitations), I reiterate my comments from last week – I think the Tana team jumped the gun / were forced into an early push of Tana Core. A few too many fundamental things are missing. But in fairness, a business needs to make money. Let’s see what this week brings.

OBSIDIAN

  • Obsidian 1.6 Public Release:
    • RTL UI and mixed-direction support. The interface direction is now mirrored when the app is set to an RTL language.
    • New vault profile. The vault name is now always visible in the primary sidebar, making it easier to switch vaults.
    • The app ribbon can now be hidden in settings or by right-clicking on the ribbon and selecting “Hide ribbon”.
    • Character count and word count now update based on the current text selection.
    • Faster workspace loading and parsing longer Markdown files.
    • See full changelog here.

  • Obsidian updated their Roadmap, but unfortunately it was just to Remove Right-to-Left improvements given that this was already released. So many cool things in the “Planned” section so can’t wait to see these move up to the “Active” section.

  • AI in Obsidian…Kepano comments, Obsidian is local, offline, and privacy-first, so we won’t consider adding AI features until they can fit with the principles in our Manifesto. In the meantime, there are dozens of awesome Obsidian plugins that allow you to work with LLMs.

  • Why I’m Still Using Obsidian in 2024 There have been TONS of developments to the note-taking and PKM app landscape in the last four years – new apps, new features, and… AI. And I’m still sitting here using Obsidian. WHY? In this video, we’re going to explore the reasons behind sticking with Obsidian.

LOGSEQ

  • A bit of movement on the Logseq Roadmap for DB Version:

Image

  • Logseq for personal knowledge management – 2024 has been the year of my trying Logseq as my personal knowledge management app. Now that I’m about six months into my Logseq experiment, I thought I’d share some of the philosophy behind how I use the app on a daily basis. Check out the article here.

REMNOTE

  • June 2024 RemNote Team Focus
    • Polish & Bug Fixes – We’re heavily focused on polishing and fixing bugs, going through every corner of the app to tie up loose ends. We want every part of the app to feel super smooth and easy to use.
    • Offline First – We’re continuing to optimize the performance of every part of the app. RemNote’s offline-first architecture makes the core of RemNote lightning-fast, and we’re working to resolve any performance bottlenecks that prevent this speed from shining through.
    • Mobile Improvements – We’re tightening up the mobile experience as well, ensuring every part of the app is optimized for mobile and tablet screens.
    • Alpha – Text to Speech We’re building out a new Text to Speech learning mode for your queue. Enable it by clicking “Text to Speech” in the top-right corner of your queue.

APPFLOWY

  • v0.5.9 is out with a new-and-improved AppFlowy sidebar!
    • New Favorites: pin/unpin favorite pages to the sidebar.
    • More quick page actions, such as collapsing all subpages and changing icons.
    • Improved sidebar look and feel.
    • Support for searching the workspace by page title. Access it via the sidebar or CTRL/CMD + P. More search power to come!
    • Added the Video block to the document page – embed a video with a URL.
    • Introduced a hotkey (Cmd/Ctrl + 0) to reset the app scale.

  • Upcoming releases
    • Space: Create multiple public and private spaces to better organize your work.
    • Publish to web: Publish a document/database page to the web with a customized namespace.

  • Mobile feedback Please leave us feedback on Google Play or TestFlight to help improve your mobile experience

Productivity Thoughts

  • For us mere Windows users who can only watch in awe of Mac users being able to whiz around and do all sorts of things with Alfred, the good news. In my searches, I recently came across Flow Launcher. Admittingly it will likely not have all the functions of Alfred, but definitely worth a look.

  • Edge – again something for us Windows users but with a bit of controversy. After playing around with Arc on Windows, I thought why not check out Edge (I am a heavy Chrome user). I have to say it is a lot better than I remember, and slowly becoming my default browser: – Quick – Picture in Picture – Split Screen – Sidebars / vertical tabs amongst many other advantages of Chrome.

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.