IdeaGraph appears to be a personal information manager based on the principles of the semantic web. It is written/maintained by Danny Ayers.

From their site:

So What is it?

Ideagraph is easy-to-use software for creating visual maps of ideas, that can work with web pages, documents and images.

Ideagraph is currently in development - full release is planned for Spring 2003, though development alphas are available for download, and the Java source will be available very soon for non-commercial use.

Suggestions, feature requests and comments are welcome, in fact the aim is to make them the driving force behind the project. If you wish to influence the development of Ideagraph, then please mail me!

The main user interface is a drawing tool which can be used to create clear visual representations of the information, with ideas as graphical objects and the relationships between objects expressed as connectors between the objects. Metadata (data about data) is used to unambiguously identify and relate the ideas. This allows the information to be stored and manipulated based on its meaning.

Ideagraph also feature simple tools for associating text documents, images and web pages with the ideas, together with a system for organizing the maps and documents.

In other words, Ideagraph is a Personal Knowledge Management tool (PKM).

Ideagraph's Advantages

There are already very good commercial mindmapping tools available, but these lack the semantics behind Ideagraph, and though there are related academic projects, none are intended for the general user.

There are also many good personal information management tools available, but these tend to operate at a very crude data level, and usually make little use of the computer's abilities or the potential of web technologies. Ideagraph aims to manage your information at a more conceptual level, as a knowledge management tool.

In essence, the Ideagraph approach is considerably better than most alternatives because it has a standard, machine-tractable way of representing information. Building, merging and filtering of maps (for different views) can be done in a logical fashion. There is major potential for further development, and the system is completely open to extension in all kinds of directions, such as reasoning on the information and collaboration over the Internet.

Additionally, data produced by Ideagraph is Semantic Web-ready.

The details on these pages are solely related to the initial version of Ideagraph. The project will evolve in a way determined by its users. The development philosophy is to respond to "Can Ideagraph do X?" with "Now it can."

What can it do?

At present, not a lot - the application is still in development, but progressing nicely. The plan is for it to be able to do loads! Here are some examples of potential uses :

CategorySoftware

IdeaGraph (last edited 2003-05-01 19:20:28 by AdamShand)