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Haystack: A More Compelling View Of Your Data 246

Posted by timothy from the filled-with-needles dept.
Peristaltic writes "MIT's Haystack project has released the source for it's "Universal Information Client", Haystack. In their words: 'Haystack looks into the use of artificial intelligence techniques for analyzing unstructured information and providing more accurate retrieval.' Unlike some attempts I've seen in the past to pull it all together on my desktop, Haystack shows some promise -- One of it's more useful features allows you to take the information you've been wallowing through, and have Haystack continually refine a 'dynamic hierarchy' until you get what you need. Haystack also performs some neat tricks such as combining Email, IM, web pages, etc. into a single inbox."
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Haystack: A More Compelling View Of Your Data

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  • That's great and all, but.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by notque ( 636838 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:12AM (#6115190) Homepage Journal
    Haystack also performs some neat tricks such as combining Email, IM, web pages, etc. into a single inbox

    It may just be me, but this is a feature I never want.

    I do not want 1 large program to run all of my applications. I do not want to get my email, from where I get my web pages, and my IM. I don't want any of this.

    I am quite happy with seperate programs which I can use at my pleasure. I'm happy with the lack of bulk, and the fact I can change an email client without changing a web choice. (although I only use pine anyway.)

    Is this just me? Do all of you want your programs shoved together in one large application?

    I didn't get any options on my cell phone (like text messaging) because I purchased a cell phone. I wanted a cell phone. To make calls. Nothing else.

    • Re:That's great and all, but.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by RevMike ( 632002 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {ekiMver}> on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:16AM (#6115240) Journal
      So should I assume you don't want it embedded within Emacs.

    • Re:That's great and all, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xerithane ( 13482 ) <xerithane AT nerdfarm DOT org> on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:18AM (#6115261) Homepage Journal
      Is this just me? Do all of you want your programs shoved together in one large application?

      You mean like a Window Manager? That's how I see this thing... it's like a Window Manager with applications embedded inside of it (think of a forced dock type thing.) It just handles whatever data you present it with (or the computer presents it with) automatically.

      I didn't get any options on my cell phone (like text messaging) because I purchased a cell phone. I wanted a cell phone. To make calls. Nothing else.

      My cell-phone has bluetooth, PDA functions, games, voice recording, voice dialing... that's the great thing about choice. You, nor I, are the entire market.
    • Yeah.. I have to say I'm not sure how radically different it is compared to just creating yourself a local web-site with a bunch of links to useful files and programs on it, particularly if you include cgi links to shell scripts and what not.

      Perhaps even more significantly... how does this really differ from a decent OS or Desktop-Env? I mean in GNOME I can have a Mozilla window open in a quarter of my screen, a terminal window running Mutt in another corner, OpenOffice in another part and nautilus file br
    • I agree that monolithic apps cause problems (I gave up on Mozilla mail for example), but the particular example of IM and email consolidation is appealing to me.

      I like to document conversations, so I keep and file a lot of email. The IM discussions are often lost from the conceptual thread, unless I manually digest them into an email. If IM transcripts showed up with my email, it would be easier to keep a uniform record of workflow.

      A more interesting solution to me would be that iChat or the like would e
    • And if, after thinking, you still hold the same view, please promptly uninstall your Operating System of choice.

    • Re:That's great and all, but.. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rdeadman ( 675487 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:07AM (#6115787) Homepage
      I think what Haystack is trying to solve is the data management issue. For thirty years we have been living with application-centric computers. So much so that we think in terms of best-of-bread point-tools. Do we know where Mozilla stores our email folders? No, its hidden by the application. (Okay, I do, but that is because I'm a bit geeky and share my Mozilla email folders from a File Server across my intranet...) How about Outlook, Netscape, Eclipse, etc.

      In my inbox I have folders for home, each client project I am working on, future leads, charitable organizations I am involved in. A similar parallel hierarchy is repeated in my file system for documents. My IM tools have their own way of tracking contacts that is unrelated to my email or projects. I store my Eclipse projects in yet another place. Mozilla organizes my bookmarks in yet another hierarchy. It's all a real mess and makes working on a project a job of mentally mapping all the pieces together.

      Now, what would be real nice would be if Haystack could define a plugin API (a la Eclipse) so that my email client could be wrapped and plugged in to Haystack. Same for IM clients, web browsers, etc. The point tool then only has to worry about its job and hands off data persistence to haystack. Then I can choose the best app and let Haystack worry about tying the data together. As someone else mentioned, this sounds more like a replacement for the file system. But it could be more, if each plugin could define how it interacts with other plugins and defines its own responsibilities.

      I'm sure there is a lot of refinement needed, but it is an interesting new paradigm. Activity-centred desktop insteaed of a tool-centred desktop.

    • Re:That's great and all, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:08AM (#6115793)
      I do not want 1 large program to run all of my applications. I do not want to get my email, from where I get my web pages, and my IM. I don't want any of this.

      So I take it you're not running Windows, Internet Explorer, and MSN Messenger?

      Well, even if you're running Linux, Mozilla, and AOL Instant Messenger, they're still running on the same physical hardware and using the same window manager software in order to keep the interface consistant and organized.

      And that's the point of this project and several other next-gen file systems in development now... Presenting users with a unified and organized interface that shows them their data in a way they can find it easily. From a user perspective, it makes more sense to store information as "messages that came in from Bonnie" rather than have a seperate file storage device for e-mail, IMs, voicemails, etc.

      You might think it's simpler to have a physical device manage each communications protocol you use, and I'm sure product manufacturers will continue to support you with products based on that concept. However, most users would rather have their computers keep the difference between protocols to itself.

      It doesn't matter how the information gets to the computer as much as what the information is and which person or organization is credited as the author. That's the best way to present information to a user who doesn't care about tech stuff.
    • Hmmm... That's fine for you, but most things don't work that way. Let's take your logic to its extreme:

      If I want a gun, I'll go to a gunshop...

      Oh, so you wouldn't run to a "Sporting goods" store, where you can get your gun, some ammo, maybe a camo jacket, and some wax for your skis while you are there?

      Integration can get crazy - you wouldn't want to buy a gallon of milk at the sporting goods store, but in some cases (such as the Walmart Megastores) even that can make sense.

      I didn't get any options on

  • Runtime overhead (Score:5, Informative)

    by PureFiction ( 10256 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:12AM (#6115192)
    Beware the load on your system if you wish to try this out. It eats RAM and CPU with gleeful abandon.

    From the system requirements:

    • - Pentium III 700mhz-based computer or better (Pentium 4 2ghz strongly recommended)
      - 12 megabytes of RAM (768 megabytes strongly recommended)

    s/strongly recommended/REQUIRED/

    • Re:Runtime overhead (Score:4, Funny)

      by 3.5 stripes ( 578410 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:15AM (#6115231)
      Big difference between 12 and 768, damn.

      • Re:Runtime overhead (Score:5, Informative)

        by PureFiction ( 10256 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:20AM (#6115290)
        Arg, cut-n-paste errors. Should read 512M

        Please take note of the following system requirements for Haystack:

        * Pentium III 700mhz-based computer or better (Pentium 4 2ghz strongly recommended)
        * 512 megabytes of RAM (768 megabytes strongly recommended)
        * Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Linux (Linux build requires GTK+ 2.0 libraries)
        * At least 1 gigabyte of disk space (or more, as your repository grows)
        * Java 2 Development Kit (JDK) 1.4 or later note that JDK 1.4.1 does not work with Haystack; use JDK 1.4.1_02 instead)
        • Ahhhhh. That makes a lot more sense :)

        • Re:Runtime overhead (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          * Pentium III 700mhz-based computer or better (Pentium 4 2ghz strongly recommended)
          * 512 megabytes of RAM (768 megabytes strongly recommended)
          * Java 2 Development Kit (JDK) 1.4 or later note that JDK 1.4.1 does not work with Haystack; use JDK 1.4.1_02 instead)

          I think we've found your problem son!
        • Isn't 768 memory requirement a little bit outrageous? Can anyone really expect people to have more than 512 in a normal PC? I have never had a problem with 256 even running Visual Studio and 10 tabs in Mozilla.
          Not to mention my FreeBSD box -- it's pretty happy with 128 (yeah, that's because I don't use Gnome/KDE in case you are wondering)
          Well, any new computer I'd buy today would have 512 of course, but 768???
          • Some geek use doesn't even require 512mb, but some do. Geeks who play around with Photoshop semi-seriously like to work with images that are several times larger than what the final copy will be, and if you have more than a couple layers on a 3000x2000 image, you're going to need more than 512mb.
    • - Pentium III 700mhz-based computer or better (Pentium 4 2ghz strongly recommended)
      - 12 megabytes of RAM (768 megabytes strongly recommended)

      Thing is, the average $500 eMachines being sold today meets those requirements.

  • Awesome Mozilla effect. (Score:3, Funny)

    by GraZZ ( 9716 ) <jackNO@SPAMjackmaninov.ca> on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:12AM (#6115194) Homepage Journal
    Wow. Looking at the Haystack site with Mozilla looks awesome! I don't know if it's my version (1.4rc1) or some weird image setting, but the main image on the page stays stationary as I scroll around, but the clipping of the image changes. It's really hard to describe, but looks awesome.

    Of course, IE just renders it properly. BOOOORING.
    • Happens in Opera 7.02 too.

    • Re:Awesome Mozilla effect. (Score:4, Informative)

      by tuffy ( 10202 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:20AM (#6115289) Homepage Journal
      This is the nifty bit of code that generates that effect:

      <div style="BACKGROUND-ATTACHMENT: fixed; BACKGROUND-IMAGE: url(images/cover.png); WIDTH: 520px; height:370px; BACKGROUND-REPEAT: no-repeat"></div>

      Fun with Cascading Style Sheets :) It might've been more effective, however, to stick the big image in an iframe so people can scroll around in it easier and have a look.

      • Re:Awesome Mozilla effect. (Score:3, Informative)

        by GraZZ ( 9716 )
        I agree; the only way to see the left side of the image is to resize your browser narrower...

        I'm sure this isn't what the site's creator intended, as it makes it hard to look around such a pretty interface. :)
    • Wow. Looking at the Haystack site with Mozilla looks awesome! I don't know if it's my version (1.4rc1) or some weird image setting, but the main image on the page stays stationary as I scroll around, but the clipping of the image changes. It's really hard to describe, but looks awesome.
      That just annoyed me. It's just a div layer clipping hack, part of the CSS2 spec. I hate myself for knowing that (I am not a web-*) but I do...

      IE can't handle alpha layers in PNGs yet, I'm not holding my breath for decen

    • Re:Awesome Mozilla effect. (Score:4, Offtopic)

      by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:29AM (#6115387) Homepage Journal
      No, mozilla renders it properly. The relevant code is this:

      <div style="background-attachment: fixed; background-image: url(http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/images/cover.png); width: 520px; height: 370px; background-repeat: no-repeat;"></div>

      So it is supposed to be stationary. Also notice that you don't see the whole image in IE.

      Whoever designed the page must be really geeky if they don't care about it working correctly in MSIE :-)

    • Actually, it's IE that has it wrong, not Mozilla. IE has yet to do CSS properly (funny that they can take the time to invent their own CSS, but can't be bothered to implement the standardized stuff). IE also doesn't support the alpha channel on PNGs, which makes them all but useless from a web-design standpoint. Since IE dominates, we have to design to them... hooray... Nuts to IE.
    • I'm personally getting the Awesome Slashdot Effect right now. :-P
    • Heh, I've got another neat effect going on with that image. The screen shot uses ClearType [microsoft.com] (I'm assuming), so it's optimized to be displayed on an LCD screen based on subpixel rendering. But that's OK, I've got an LCD screen!

      Except that the screen I'm looking at has an BGR striping order (while most screens have an RGB striping order) - making the image look funky.

      If you're on an LCD, compare these two images of ClearType in the two striping orders (courtesy - or stolen from, or whatever, Microsoft):

  • THe real test. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Unknown Poltroon ( 31628 ) <unknown_poltroon1sp@myahoo.com> on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:13AM (#6115203)
    Can it organize 3 gigs of random pr0n?

    • Re:THe real test. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Probably not, however, I'm sure I could help out.

      I'll email you my FTP address, you upload your 3 gigs, and I'll do the rest.

      yeah, I promise.
    • Can it organize 3 gigs of random pr0n?

      Yes, but that will require some optional hardware: eye-tracking camera and moisture-sensing drool-cup attachment.

  • As much as I hate to say it, doesn't this look exactly like the "Outlook Today" page from MS Outlook?

    Or maybe that's just because the A/B comparison is too easy because they're both open on my PC at work now...
  • Not too much to ask, it doesn't even need to be truly a filesystem. Just overload all the file access commands (At this point, probably easier to just write a new filesystem)...

    Group data by category, content, whatever. "Symlink" to the inodes, and you're off. We don't need AI for that and I think it would be a more complete solution. I don't see an AI engine that can correctly categorize my mp3's, I don't think I'd trust it for all of my data yet. Let's start small and get usable systems.

    Spiffy program though, wish it weren't in Java... wish it weren't 42MB... wish it ran smoothly under Linux. I'll stop complaining now.

    On a side note, Did anybody else find that scrolling image annoying and mentally confusing. Er, I'll really stop complaining now.
    • I've been thinking about something like this too. It would be great to have a system automatically attach metadata to any file. There could be a database that catches calls to create files and asks the user to enter metadata if desired, but that may be too annoying. Having some form of AI such as in Haystack combined with a good view of categories and other metadata would be very useful in organizing data. Ideally there would be very little effort by the user to perform the organizing. The AI would do
      • Having some form of AI such as in Haystack combined with a good view of categories and other metadata would be very useful in organizing data. Ideally there would be very little effort by the user to perform the organizing. The AI would do almost all the work and user could just browse.

        I don't even think you need AI. Just fuzzy logic. We already know (for the most part) the filetypes, and all standard files will have a standard filetype identifier. All you need to do is find out what type of filetype y
        • The problem with the term AI is that it usually when something "AI" starts to work well it's being called something else. Remember that compilers and information retrieval (google) used to be AI once. This begs the question: What did you mean when you said fuzzy logic, but not AI?

          Is AI as in symbolic AI (search-based etc.)? It seems to me that all sensible information categorization systems, even those built on top of fuzzy logic could reasonably be called AI. Google uses very sophisticated data-categoriz
          • Is AI as in symbolic AI (search-based etc.)? It seems to me that all sensible information categorization systems, even those built on top of fuzzy logic could reasonably be called AI. Google uses very sophisticated data-categorization algorithms, or at least it seems so based on my search results. Those are probably based on statistical classifiers and other such AI techniques.

            I'm using Fuzzy Logic as just a way of branching true-false trees. Not so much a full-blown AI system, just (as you said) statist
            • I don't view AI as "AI" -- it's mostly types of AI. To me, AI is something that is entirely abstract enough to handle tasks (Think self-configuring Universal Turing Machine) -- otherwise it's just statistical programs over very broad data sets.

              I might misunderstand you, but does this not mean that the "AI"-methods used by Haystack would not be AI? I also have some Neural Network / Statistical processing background so I tend to share this same view that the intelligence is in the designer not in the progra
      • What I think would be cool would be a multidesktop type of environment. No, I'm not talking about multiple virtual desktops either.

        You could have a different desktop for each project. You might have several emails for the given project, a few documents and spec sheets, some pictures, and some code. Keep the hierarchical file system underneath. Everything on the desktop is a link to something in the filesystem. Make it easy to copy, manipulate and navigate between different desktops. Basically, this would b
    • A file system with the power and flexibility of a relational database ceases to be a file system. What are things like "cp" supposed to mean? How do you transfer "a row" through a serial connection? What kind of transactional guarantees is it going to make; if it's going to make DBMS guarantees, it's too slow for many file system applications, and if it's not going to do that, is it really a DBMS?

      If you want a database, just use a database. MySQL and various embedded databases are widely available on L
      • A file system with the power and flexibility of a relational database ceases to be a file system. What are things like "cp" supposed to mean? How do you transfer "a row" through a serial connection? What kind of transactional guarantees is it going to make; if it's going to make DBMS guarantees, it's too slow for many file system applications, and if it's not going to do that, is it really a DBMS?
        I didn't say "relational database" -- I said "relational filesystem." As in, finding documents that are relat

    • Re:I just want a relational filesystem... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by krb ( 15012 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:45AM (#6116103) Homepage
      You say "Group data by category, content, whatever" and then say "we don't need AI for that". Well, you're almost right, but you need some intelligence in order to make decisions about what the content of file X really is. You could say, "well, yeah, that's me..." but the point of this and other Knowledge Management systems is that it takes the responsbility of categorization off of the user, because we are often inconsistent, or, at least, incomplete. Let's say I have a document that pertains to two or more general topics, lets say, Pollution, Energy Use and Windmills. Let's also say that right now i'm using it for a school report on alternative energy, so i classify it, quite sensibly for now, by year, course number, and assignment. That's totally useless in a few years when i'm looking for the information. I *could* have been smarter and manually attached some meta data to the file describing the kinds of topics it relates to, but i may miss one, and plus, that's extra work for me. Projects like this use complicated statistical (usually) analysis to determine the content for you automatically, and maintain a persistent database of all files realted to particular topics/content items, etc. Haystack and many others do this categorization with an ontologie which predefines the topic groups or elements they care about. Some systems derive the content groups dynamically, and include fuzzy searching to allow you to find documents and files related to some keywords (or if they're real good, natural language query) you enter.

      What you mentioned is not that different from what they're doing, except they're not making it transparent -- they're making into a workspace.

      I'll note also that categorization of text into topics or genres, while difficult, is easier than doing the same with music. The kinds of statistical analysis you can do on text doesn't lend itself to fourier decompisitions. To properly categorize music (in my opinion at least, which admittedly counts for little) the best technique would be to separate and identify the individual instruments (voices) in the song. This makes categorization a bit easier because now you can get data for tempo, rhythm, sohpistication of note progression, etc. on a per instrument basis. I'm not sure it's possible tho.

      My 57 yen.
      • Very insightful post I must admit.

        To properly categorize music (in my opinion at least, which admittedly counts for little) the best technique would be to separate and identify the individual instruments (voices) in the song.

        This is probably the "correct" way to categorize music, but since even humans have a hard time categorizing music I believe an automatic analyzer would have a hard time generating good results. Have you noticed that every band is X-Y with a touch of Z and W, where {X,Y,Z,W} are musi

  • Bad news..... (Score:2, Funny)

    by oh2 ( 520684 )
    Can you say SKYNET ?
  • The ultimate test for such a system is putting my inbox into the information stream. At the end of the day, 99% of it better be trashed automagically.

  • The Allinwonder Pro File System? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:18AM (#6115262) Journal

    combining Email, IM, web pages, etc. into a single inbox

    Whatever happened to the "does one thing, and does it very well" philosophy? If I sorta remember that I got something in an e-mail, I look in my e-mail. What's the advantage of throwing away that piece of information (where it came from)?

    Yes, it's nice to use the computer to do grunt work for us, but there are some things that are better left to the user. Some of us like to come up with little "systems" for organizing things that are unique to us. We've all heard stories of the receptionist who files contacts under 'D' because new contacts are always invited for Drinks. An AI is not going to be any more rational than that, and the kooky system it devises won't be in our heads--it'll be in some obfuscated format that nobody will understand, not even the ditzy receptionist.

    • You are not forced to use it. And many people could find this kind of things useful, Sometimes I can't remember when I read about something, and i.e. checking in the web, or all my mailboxes, or all my IM contacts history could be hard, specially if I want to specifically find my first and original reference.

      I think that this is the main focus of the program, to improve our memory not searching all the internet, but specifically what you saw earlier and want to remember.

      Of course, saying that this could

    • The "does one thing, and does it very well" philosophy was based on systems where you could integrate these utilities easily with each other, the UNIX command-line. Haystack is actually similar after a fashion, it makes all information processable within the same framework. With desktop applications you have a separated information into different applications that work on different information. What you would actually want to do is separate the different tasks into specialized interfaces optimized for that

  • So is this another search engine ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:21AM (#6115306)
    I'll believe in their AI when I can type "X free" as a search query and it returns a link to www.xfree86.org instead of a million links to pr0n sites. Does this AI learn what people search for usually ? is it able to determine over time that capital-"X" and "free" in my particular searches are about opensource graphical software, unlike the same query by the dirty old man next door ?

    By the way Haystack people, when you use titles and phrases containing "universal", "seeks to bring [...] to the average user", "artificial intelligence" , it trips my PR bullshit meter. I was about to bail out when I noticed the download link.
  • You could replace a desktop with this sort of interface, where apps you run would integrate into the one tool.. publishing information about their progress, etc

  • Isn’t this named for the problem? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:24AM (#6115337)
    Isn't haystack the problem that this tries to fix? I think this project should have been called 'needle' or possibly 'findy.'

  • Screenshots (Score:5, Funny)

    by ergonal ( 609484 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:26AM (#6115354)
    There was only one measly screenshot in the overview section, and NO screenshots in the screenshot section, so here's another one [highlandfolk.com].

  • up and running is now like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

    *rimshot*

    Thanks /.

  • Opera [opera.com] does all of that - well, okay, it doesn't do Instant messaging, but i don't use that anyway.

    But it does have a download agent, a web browser, a mail client and a newsreader all in one.

    And its only a 3.7Mb download.

  • Hahhahaha suckers! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:38AM (#6115479)
    Nothing like slashdotting MIT to make you feel like you've accomplished something! How's your precious class-A IP registry now?

    Sincerely

    Bunker Hill Community College

  • WTF? No Mac OS X version?!!! (Score:3)

    by alchemist68 ( 550641 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:39AM (#6115486)
    Sure would be nice if this ran fluently on other platforms.

    • Re:WTF? No Mac OS X version?!!! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's assumed that if you don't run windows you are inteligent enough to organize your own info.

      • Re:WTF? No Mac OS X version?!!! (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It's assumed that if you don't run windows you are inteligent enough to organize your own info.

        That would be much funnier if it didn't run on Linux.

        Wait a minute .....

  • What's the big deal? Yahoo and other portals have had customizable news/weather/mail/todo/calendar pages for years.
  • http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:KtKSHcwESUQJ: haystack.lcs.mit.edu/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

  • I was a usability tester... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:04AM (#6115752)
    for Haystack at LCS recently, and was not that impressed. It is designed to do certain kinds of tasks very well (e.g., editing things that are embedded in other types of information - the tests given were things like "edit this picture that's a part of this entry in your Outlook address book"). Unfortunately, at the expense of making these tasks as close to one-click as possible, other things (versatility the most, but also common sense design) have failed.

    I find it easy enough to edit information of the "My Documents" variety without worrying about how it is integrated into other information on my computer, and I'm sure other readers here do, as well.

    The best way to actually use this software would be in the case where John Q. has a specific task to do over and over again but isn't ready to tackle a batch process.

  • Agents... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orn ( 34773 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:09AM (#6115800)
    Haystack is an interesting idea, but I have a hard time distinguishing what it does from what, say, Lotus Notes does. And Lotus is _terrible_.

    I like the idea of bringing all my information together in one place. I don't like the idea of only having it in that one place. What I would like would be an application that can watch how I use the computer, then bring those applications together to make it more seemless.

    For example, I have about four different calendars in my life: the work calendar, the one on the cell phone that I use for stuff that I can't miss, the calendar that schedules airplane rentals, and (of coursE) my girlfriend's calendar. So how do I bring those all together, and yet still be making entries in them separately?

    The same is true for information. I have a primitive blogging system (really just a bunch of text files that are date coded), I have work documents that I use regularly, I have web pages that I monitor (sometimes a little too often) and I have textbooks that I'm reading (instrument flying at the moment). So how do I get all these forms of information - or at least an index into them - together in one place? But again, without changing the current organization scheme.

    This is the tool that will make the computer a lot more useful - an actual organizational tool.

    Rudy

    • Re:Agents... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gobbo ( 567674 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @12:06PM (#6116283) Journal
      Wholehearted Agreement with the parent. Lotus Notes is shoved into our laps at work, and it's been a struggle to part out its functionality into the proper parts: Mail.app, Safari/Camino, Address Book (waiting for propr LDAP support, grr), iCal, and other 'business' tools, on my machine. [Not that I'm an Apple Software Fanatic, but they work and fit into the budget.]

      L.Notes had a whole wing on the now-MIA Interface Hall of Shame. It reinvents the conventions found on other platforms (it tries to be a platform unto itself) and does so badly; it's buggy, slow, and designed for administration [decent encrypted document database scheme].

      Plus, it centralizes, for better or worse, all my information on servers controlled by I.T..

      Now I'd love to have a central app that takes feeds from my favourite info management apps, sorts/ranks/prioritizes/interrelates the items for me according to my usage and prefs, and lets me 'zoom in' to a task by switching to the preferred stand-alone app at will. Haystack has only part of the picture, the model is still gather-control, rather than sift-sort-go.

      One item I've found intriguing is StickyBrain, a sticky-on-steriods app, by Chronos LC, which takes info in many categories and allows for quick index searching, plus offers system-wide info-archiving services and some alarm and word-processing features. I had the same kind of thing running with BBEdit, a notes directory, and grep, but it was like hammering nails with a wrench.

      I want all my info hotlinked to lists of related items, dynamically: make every significant word a keyword, realtime. After all, what are multi-GHz and piles'o'RAM for, anyway, when not rendering?
    • iCal for MacOS X allows multiple calendars, each overlayed in a different translucent color. You can activate or deactivate the display of each independently. It has exactly the same flexibility as the Outlook calendar when it comes to recurring events as well. I thought that was pretty inventive...comes in handy when juggling work, school, and my personal life (red, blue, and green, respectively).

      Whether or not that helps you, I dunno, but applications like that certainly do exist.
  • I need something against my haystack, not a software that does more sedimentary data storage.

  • Six Degrees (Score:5, Informative)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:56AM (#6116190)
    Six Degrees by Creo [creo.com] is another attempt to do this same sort of thing, except that it's commercial and it's been available for Mac OS X and Windows for several months.
  • I've been waiting for this for a few weeks now. I've been looking for a PIM that has email, calendar, and tasks. Apart from Outlook, what product has that? I have recently tried:

    Outlook
    OSAF's Chandler PIM
    Haystack
    Pogomail (not a PIM)
    Eudora (not a PIM)
    Mozilla

    I am now using Mozilla because it has bayesian spam filtering built in and because it has a calendar plug in.

    I have decided not to use Haystack. It is simply not production ready, and I'm sure the guys at MIT wont mind me saying so. It crashes. It lock

  • Scopeware Vision (Score:2, Informative)

    by www!!!1 ( 662326 )
    Scopeware Vision [scopeware.com] is similar but better than this. It only requires 128 megs of ram!

    Try the 30 day free trial. It rulz!
  • operates you!

    No more nasty "thinking." It will tell you "where you want to go today," how you want to get there, how you want to see it and how you store it for retrieval.

    Choice is good, so choose not to be bothered with making your own choices. That's the ultimate choice. Brainless sheep for diversity unite!

    Of course this is just a preliminary step along the way to the ultimate goal. In the Brave Newer World of the future you will turn your computer on, stick it in the closet, and it will simply do ever

  • Another Iteration of the OpenDoc (Score:3, Informative)

    by jonbrewer ( 11894 ) * on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @02:04PM (#6117497) Homepage
    From the Design Principles:

    "...provides a single, uniform interface for manipulation of e-mail, instant messages, addresses, web pages, documents, news, bibliographies, annotations, music, images, etc."

    "...attempts to match a user's own focus on objects in view and what can be done with them. An operation (such as spellchecking, sending an e-mail message, or rotating an image) can be invoked at any time on any object for which the operation "makes sense" (i.e. a blob of text, a person, or an image respectively)."
    Back in the heady days of the PPC 601 and the Newton, one of Apple's software groups was working on this problem exactly. While I don't think OpenDoc could organize your information, it was certainly a uniform interface for manipulating stuff, with the focus on the stuff, and not the application in use. At that point, about seven years ago, I naively believed that one day OpenDoc would provide an environment in which I could edit a web page and all elements (including raster and vector images) without having six applications loaded. Ha!
  • Lotus Notes.

    I used this product back in 1998 on my then job. I liked it pretty well then, and I understand they've made some improved versions even.
  • of this discussion and I'm posting late so this might be a little redundant.

    After reading the information at their web site I think that they are trying to do the same thing that Apple is doing with tthe iApps, just that Apple is slower because they chose to integrate them differently and Apple also has to produce something that people can use now.

    They want to basically integrate the different types of data that we all use on a daily basis, email, web, IM, etc in to one data repository so that any program

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