Ideagraph 0.5 beta

[Danny Ayers]

Hi folks,

Something to play with for those that are interested. Background notes at
the bottom.

Two big changes since previous releases - the whole thing's been rebuilt,
and the source code will be available for non-commercial use. The source
still needs some tidying, but I'm hoping make that available in a couple of
days.

I'd appreciate any feedback to help prioritise the 1001 things that need
doing. Initial reports (thanks Leigh) seem to suggest that it should run ok
on Windows, though apparently the graphics don't work properly on OS X (not
sure if this is a VM or code problem, I haven't got a Mac).

The beta is publicly available (address below), but I'm not going to
announce it on any other lists until the source is wrapped up ready & ready
to go.

I'm off to the uk for Christmas, and as this project is virtually at a
milestone (it can do stuff!) I thought I'd get a release out now, and get a
bit off feedback, before having a break from coding. The current version
includes most of the novel part of the system (the graph user interface),
and so it's probably a good time to get feedback to help prioritise planned
features, and generally get a feel for what people would like to see in a
system like this.

There are hundreds of little bits still to do, and some very big bits too.
Comments, suggestions & feature requests more than welcome - the more
specific the sooner they'll get done...

Ideagraph is a desktop Java app, and should run on J2SE 1.3 or later. The
download is a biggish zip file, all required libs included - installation is
just a matter of unzipping it somewhere convenient. There's a /bin directory
containing the executable ideagraph.jar and an ideagraph.bat file in case of
problems. The app should run on any Java-capable platform, but I've only
tried this version on Windows 98 & 2000.

I have started looking at FOAF support - got as far as foaf:Person ;-)

Cheers,
Danny.

front page:
http://www.ideagraph.net/2002-12/

tutorial:
http://www.ideagraph.net/2002-12/tutorial/ideagraphs.htm
(3 page sketch - essential, some of the features aren't obvious)

download:
http://www.ideagraph.net/2002-12/ideagraph.zip

(everything's under construction)

*** Background notes ***

Ideagraph is a Personal Knowledge Management tool, with a graphic mindmap
style user interface. The main application runs as a desktop application.
The items in the visual mindmaps ("Ideagraphs") may be things like project
notes or links to web sites. Ideagraphs can be represented/exported as
weblogs. Syndication feeds may be viewed using the visual interface, and
their items may be incorporated into Ideagraphs. There's a little gizmo (the
'Idea Box') to enable blogging/quick note taking. It's also possible to
'blog' existing files etc. on your own machine, preparing them for the
Semantic Web. The system manages data using the RDF framework.

If you do have a look at it, please bear the following point in mind: When I
started planning Ideagraph, what I had in mind was essentially a very
user-friendly mindmapping/resource management tool that was backed by RDF. I
only started looking into RSS while working on the prototype (I was
originally just after a vocabulary with a generic 'item' in it!), so in a
way the RSS functionality is an afterthought - just one specific RDF
language that Ideagraph can support. I have spent a fair bit of time working
on bits specific to this (e.g. it should be ok with RSS 0.9x), but
designwise, syndication reading/aggregation is not the core purpose any more
than say 'writing press releases' would be the core purpose of a word
processor.

-----------
Danny Ayers

Semantic Web Log :
http://www.citnames.com/blog

"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." - Chaucer