from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you like to centralize your notes/bookmarks/etc.?

by samh748 on 1/1/23, 9:55 PM with 2 comments

On one end we have the centralized "Everything in one place" approach, whether it's done semi-automatically with a smart-app or manually in a digital/physical commonplace notebook. And on the other end we have the context/technology-specific bookmarks, saves, highlights, etc. dispersed throughout various places.

The former often seems more organized, though it's hard to implement well, takes a lot of work, and often misses out on context. The latter is often the default, baked-in option, but when there's many sources it can feel very scattered.

Where do you sit on this spectrum? What's your strategy to managing information from various sources?

  • by sweetjuly on 1/1/23, 10:28 PM

    I'm very much a centralized person and I've been loving Zotero. It's great for taking notes and categorizing content from a wide variety of sources. It's primarily meant for research and so if you write papers you'll love the citation tracking features but it is just an all around great program.

  • by LunarAurora on 1/2/23, 1:29 AM

    I like thinking about centralizing personal data when it does not get bogged down in technical minutiae, but rather clear your mind and help you trace the bigger picture (on the place/aim of information in our lives)

    By implication, I mostly sat in the middle. But the recent GPT-3+ advances convinced me to prepare for loosening the centralizing grip a lot more.