TiddlyWiki has some unusual affordances that makes it suited to somewhat different tasks than other wikis I’ve seen (though I remind you that I am a wiki newbie). To begin with, the display allows you to call up a number of posts (which the developer calls “tiddles”) on the same page. This makes it well-suited to help users follow a train of thought across a number of entries. (I’d love to see a similar interface that enables me to aggregate a chain of blog-to-blog links and trackbacks on one page.) It also encourages shorter, one- or two-paragraph posts. Furthermore, TiddlyWiki is 100% client-side, using only HTML and Javascript. This means you can’t do things like version control and roll-back, but it’s incredibly lightweight and easy to install. Calling it a “non-linear personal web notebook” sounds about right; it’s useful for blog-like journaling by an individual but in a more interconnected and non-linear way. I may use this tool to create the educational conversation pattern language wiki I’ve been thinking about.
Found via heyblog.
