Apps To Go

Personal Knowbase

"Once in a while, a piece of software comes along which is just so helpful that it becomes an indispensable part of everyday life. For some people, it might be their web browser, email client, or word processor. But for me, Personal Knowbase has become an essential program to manage freeform databases on a daily basis. Over the years, my dozens of "knowbases" containing thousands of articles have helped me to note, plan, brainstorm, record, archive, etc all manner of things for both work and personal use. Although proprietary software, Personal Knowbase has proved its worth on many occasions. That's why it merits this special feature." - Douglas McFadzean

Personal Knowbase is an exceptionally useful and well-crafted database manager for freeform text. Easy to learn, with splendid documentation, it has a multitude of applications, including, but certainly not limited to:

Notes and ideas
Planning and to-do lists
Contact details
References and research
Creative writing
Inventories
Archives of emails and bookmarks
Meetings and calls
Membership and subscription records
Tips and FAQ

Personal Knowbase uses a unique indexing system based on keywords to store and retrieve related information in a natural way, by association. Its ability to assign an item of information to multiple keywords has a great advantage over tree-based organizers (such as TreePad, TreeDBNotes or KeyNote) where each item can belong to only one branch. You can also build and save powerful customized queries in Personal Knowbase by combining keywords with logical operators.

Articles are the basic units of information held in Personal Knowbase, and these can be formatted in various styles. Spell-checking of article text is also possible from version 3.1. Text information can be entered into articles directly from the keyboard, pasted from the clipboard, or imported from a variety of common document formats. Articles can have attachments and may contain hypertext links to further data sources. Articles can be sorted and retrieved by their title or date as well as by keywords or keyword combinations. There is a tagging facility to instantly access important articles. Facilities to export data are also provided. For added security, a whole database or private articles can be encrypted and protected with a password. There is essentially no limit to the size of databases or the length of articles which can be stored.

Personal Knowbase is shareware, with a fully functional 30-day trial available. Support from the publisher Bitsmith Software is excellent and there are also helpful forums. Detailed screenshots of the program in operation can be viewed on the publisher's site.

The program is officially supported on Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP, and Vista (unofficially it also works with Windows NT if certain DLL files are made available). From version 3.1, a Personal Knowbase installation can be fully portable; older versions require certain techniques for portability (see below). Personal Knowbase runs well on Linux via Wine with some simple adjustments (see below).

Personal Knowbase Reader

Personal Knowbase Reader allows you to share Personal Knowbase data files with friends, colleagues or students, even though they don't have a copy of Personal Knowbase itself. With the Reader, your associates can view, search, export, and print Knowbase articles, but cannot modify articles or create new ones.

Personal Knowbase Reader is free for personal use. For business or government use, a licence is required. The program runs on the same operating systems as Personal Knowbase.

Free! Download knowbase of AppsToGo applications (42 kB) which you can view with the Personal Knowbase Reader.

Running portably

Version 3.1

A fully portable installation of Personal Knowbase (and the Reader) version 3.1 can be achieved in either of two ways:

running pksetup.exe and specifying an installation folder on a removable drive
running pksetup.exe -portable where the command parameter -portable forces a portable installation no matter whether the installation drive is considered removable or not

A portable installation uses the file knowbase.ini in the program folder to store its configuration data rather than the Windows registry. You will be prompted for your registration information the first time you start Personal Knowbase on any given drive. Please see your software licence regarding installations on more than one drive.

Version 3.0

Personal Knowbase (and the Reader) version 3.0 can be run on Windows as a portable application with a little help from the Windows reg command, if available. The following example procedure can be used for Personal Knowbase:

Copy the Personal Knowbase folder from your existing Windows hard drive installation to your portable drive.
Export the existing registry data for Personal Knowbase using this command, issued from the Personal Knowbase folder on your portable drive:
```
reg export "HKCU\Software\Bitsmith Software\Personal Knowbase" pkb.reg
```

Create the following batch file pkb.bat in the Personal Knowbase folder on your portable drive:

@echo off
:: pkb.bat [file]
:: Runs Personal Knowbase portably, by D McFadzean 22/02/08
reg import pkb.reg
start "Knowbase" /wait knowbase.exe %1
reg delete "HKCU\Software\Bitsmith Software\Personal Knowbase" /f

On another host computer, launch Personal Knowbase from its folder on the portable drive using the command:
```
pkb [file]
```

Running on Linux

Personal Knowbase (and the Reader) can be run on Linux via the Wine package. The following tips may help: