draft notes in progress (based theory of publishing entire process):
i am “saddened” to quote Tom Daschle to feel that I must mention that VoodooPad isn’t paying me to blog about it!*
VoodooPad.
You put your brain in it.
That’s the short explanation. If you are familiar with Wikis, then go ahead and delete all this text and get started- this is your homepage, have at it. However, if you aren’t already familiar with what a Wiki is, here is the slightly longer explanation:
You’ve got too much on your mind. Little snippets of information, phone numbers, contacts, meeting info, research, everything. VoodooPad helps you out by providing a single document to store all that information, and then again by providing various ways to access that information.
In VoodooPad a document is made up of multiple pages, much like a website. In fact, VoodooPad can be thought of as a self contained website, and like a regular website VoodooPad provides hypertext links from one page to another. But here’s the really cool part- unlike a regular website, you can edit every little bit of text on these pages.
Making links in VoodooPad is super easy- select a word or phrase and choose “Link” from the Edit menu or Toolbar. VoodooPad will take you to a new page where you fill in the details. Go back to the previous page and you’ll see the text you selected earlier, only now it’s highlighted and blue just like a link on a website.
So don’t be afraid to edit the text on this page. In fact, we want you to. As soon as you are done reading, delete everything on this page add your own spin to it. This is your document’s homepage, this is where it all begins.
The foundation of VoodooPad’s existence is a special type of website called a “Wiki” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki for a great example). Typically to create a new page in traditional wikis you would mash two words together like so: NewPage. When this happens the wiki will create a “potential link” out of it. A potential link is a link to a page that doesn’t exist yet, but when clicked on a new page is created and anytime the mashed word is found again, it turns blue and underlined just like any other link.
VoodooPad goes further than that though. You can also drag and drop images, urls, files, and applications into VoodooPad and they will be linked and ready to be brought forward. Control VoodooPad via AppleScript, export to the iPod, and apply rich text formatting other Wikis can only dream of.
So that’s the slightly longer version. If you need help or are looking for further instructions, choose “VoodooPad Help” from the help menu, or visit http://www.flyingmeat.com/ for more information.
Until you have purchased VoodooPad, there will be a limit of 15 pages per document (unless you are using VoodooPad Lite- then you are home free! But also without out all the great features.). We think that is plenty of room to try out VoodooPad and decide if you would like to purchase it. And when you are ready, visit http://flyingmeat.com/voodoopad/ to buy yourself a copy!
links to earlier entries about voodoo pad
glossary entry
arthur saying he’s just starting to get it
the amber analogy: if it exists you go to it; if it doesn’t, you create it by going there.
threatens to swallow all my other systems, or learn to talk to them i hope, because it’s a much better interface to my info and records than the desktop filing cabinet b.s. i’m so sick of.
wishlist:
- mediawiki support for vwiki api
- applescript to output voodoopad in textpattern format (theoretically possible per dean allen)
another question:
equivalent for Windows?
that keyboard shortcut evangelist ibm guy at berkeley conf (blogon?)
* in the Power of Many economy on the Living Web, I volunteer my endorsement out of sheer enthusiasm, and people who consider me a trusted acquaintance or friend or correspondent thus lend me credibility and their hypervaluable scarce attention. If I bare my influences and transparent about my business relationships, then astute readers can factor that in, just as you learn to use movie reviewers by factoring in their.
One time when I was doing information design and project management my boss, a prominent blogger, told me he had to treat me well because he knew otherwise I could “flame his ass” in my own weblog.
I’d recommend bloggers be careful not to piss that credibility away.