3 Explanation of each term

3.1 …work management…

3.2 …knowledge management…

Management vs organization

Definition of personal knowledge management

3.3 …open source…

3.4 …system…

Pomegranate is not just

The terms application and system are used interchangebly in this book. The term application is more suitable when the technical aspects of Pomegranate are mentioned. While the term system is more suitable when the motivation and design principles are mentioned.

3.5 …cross-platform…

3.6 …comprehensive…

Pomegranate PKM manages:

• Goals, tasks, and plans
• Journal and indicators
• Writings and notes
• Resources (books, articles, news, presentations, audiobooks, documentaries, movies etc), and book excerpts, mainly book chapters.
• Documents e.g. Word documents, Excels
• People

Despite this broad coverage, Pomegranate does not aim to be a one-stop solution to all work and knowledge management needs. On the contrary, it aims to make the best use of existing tools and technologies.

It does not replace photo management applications, e.g. Digikam (Linux), audio or video library organizers, e.g. QuodLibet, or PDF annotators. Rather, it helps organize their structures and link them to their metadata.

It integrates with text editors, as will be shown later on.

PKM does not resize photos, split audio, or convert videos etc but can apply metadata to the mp3, jpg and PDF files.

3.7 …integrated…

In technical terms, Pomegranate is a combination of:

• Document management system
• Content management system
• Research index cards and reference management
• Bug tracking systems, applied for the software development and self development
• Lightweight project management
• Powerful task management
• Time tracking
• Blog (e.g. WordPress) client
• Wiki system

3.8 One vs many tools

Why not use the best application in each of the above technologies?

one technology, one language, one env, instead of each one needs special setup, configuration, … integration problem between them. scattered data. possible data loss or corruption when moving from one system to another…

It is not expected or recommended to use all the features and modules from the start. Big and quick changes often backfire. You can easily feel overwhelmed by the demands and load of the new habits and so risk leaving all the endeavor altogether. It is better to introduce changes and new habits gradullay in your routine. This is the most fruitful on the long term. You may disable the features or modules that you do not want to start with when you start using it. So you can remove unneeded saved searches from the homepage. So do so simply go to the list of saved searches, under Administation, and unbookmark those that you do not want to display on the homepage.

• News connected with topics, all is integrated…
• Photos connected to jounal entries, and shown from the journal page.
• Course topics connected with current news
• Goals connected with journal entries that show progress toward them or manifestation of not achieving them
• Link books to writings
• Link all records to a common list of tags

3.9 … web application

• It can be deployed on a personal computer, laptop, the cloud, a self-hosted server, a remote server, or in a cloud, and accessed from any computer connected to them, via wired or wireless network.
• It can be installed on any operating system that supports Java: Windows, Linux, Unit, Mac etc.
• It can accessed via network or wireless connection.
• No installation is needed on the users except a compatible web browser.
• Firefox and Chrome are supported and recommended browsers. Internet Explorer is not and will not be supported. See post 123. The application may work well and look fine in other browser. But they are not test on browsers other than Firefox, the recommended browser, and Google Chrome.

3.10 …written in Grails …

• Highly cross platforms
• Full unicode support, including support for right-to-left languages

you can see the advantages of Grails from the length of the instructions to install it or build it. Basically, it is download, extract, executive start script for installation, and edit run-app script to edit the path to the Grails framework folder and then execute it.

Disadvantages of Java-based systems, and Grails in particular? Memory consumption. You need to reserve few hundred of megabytes of RAM to it.

java, often hosting more expensive than scripted language like PHP.

3.11 Global context of Pomegranate

• Post-Snoden world: Privacy is a big concern. todo.

pkm as the opposite to social media. They are public by default, with optional, often clumsy way to make things private. In PKM everything is private unless you manually post it on a blog, unless you make PKM accessible on the internet and make it accessible without an account, it will become like a blog itself.

Have been in use, for over two years, to manage thousands of records in the ? different modules esp. resources, tasks, goals, writings and notes. By 2014, the project has undergone seven major redesigns.

3.12 Other options

3.13 Using an existing established application

3.14 Using an online application

Data is the most precious assets in the digital world. Not leave it managed by someone else, and not have full control over it.

There are great online tools. Many are paid. Many are excellent tools. But your data is not in under your control. It is managed by systmes tha that you knew little to nothing about.

“Sure there are others out there, but all with annoying limitations - even for sites you actually have to pay for!”

Why we created Mejuba

3.15 Target users

Although it provides data entry and retrieval through forms, and so can be used by the average computer-skilled person, the advanced data entry and retrieval features will be most enjoyed by computer-knowledgeable people, but not necessarily programmers.

Committed to long term organization, planning, and productivity. Although users can get up and running with it in few hours, the real and major benefits comes with time.

Willing to adjust and adapt to a new system to fit their needs.

Are managing big and dynamic volume of information or documents

planning, esp. long-term journaling, study, esp. life long learning, and research writing, publishing

Pomegranate has been developed to support a long list of habits in planning, working, studying and publishing. These habits took years to incorporate in your daily life. So do not aim to use every feature of the system from the start.

b1 the pressing demands of urgent tasks. urgent things may be best managed by paper notes and printed out materials, handwritten tracking etc. for group work, where pkm has a hard time succeeding? urgency-driven environments, change-resistant cultures, oral cultures.

3.16 Origin of name Pomegranate?

Not just because their delicious fruits, Pomegranate trees, native to Asia, bear fruits after a hot summer and their fruits seeds are enclosed in many pulps. So organized!

The P in PKM referred to ‘Personal’ at first. But as Pomegranate can support open collaborative settings, the P, now can stand for Pomegranate.