![]() The adoption of markdown has been nothing more than spectacular. It is one of those ideas that is so delicious that it found a wide audience fast. Markdown is, basically, a minimalist text-formatting scheme. While I was taking plain-text notes over the years, people were creating a wonderful thing: markdown. So that brings us to the idea of standards. Nor does it mean that I always do, but it's worth pointing out that walled gardens have a cost, in both the small and the large. That doesn't mean I think you should avoid them too. So, I generally like to avoid walled gardens. Besides that, what you end up paying over the years into certain platforms that are little more than repackaged open source can sting your conscience, especially when they don't give back to the community that made them possible. ![]() So walled gardens are a huge problem and portability of any given solution has to take this problem into account. And good luck trying to get any support from Facebook about that. When my email address went away, so did my associated account on Facebook, because I couldn't reset the password or even change the address because it couldn't receive a confirmation email. I know the dangers of these systems firsthand. I have experienced firstand what it is like for HP to buy out my online email provider and end my email address. But, often, it is actively captured by companies interested in profits, who use legal agreements, proprietary file formats, digital rights management platforms, and more to retain control over your content.Īnd sometimes you lose all that content entirely. Sometimes it is only effectively captured, because it cannot be moved without expending such a large effort that it isn't worth moving it. Any content you enter becomes more and more entrenched over time. The problem with a closed platform like any of the above is that once you start using them, you sink cost into them the longer you do. ![]() There are various small reasons why I abandoned each one in turn, but there is one huge reason that ultimately kept me from adopting them.Ī Walled Garden is both a real thing and a useful metaphor for any closed platform. It may not surprise you to find out that over 15+ years, I tried all of these things and more. ![]() And we have reminder software like Remember the milk! And we have wikis like Confluence or blogs like WordPress. And so we have time tracking software like Toggl. If you've followed the "productivity obsession" of the internet age, then you know there are little pieces of software for each of these specific needs. They are actually records of conversations. "Notes" are actually not "notes" at all at the end of the day. □ Consider why people take notes for a moment. But I'd like to also make a few honorable mentions. I had taken up with plain text files when we last left off. In Part 1 of this series, I explained why I gave up paper notebooks, email, and note-taking software like OneNote over the years. ![]()
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