(2011-07-20) Archos Android Private Wiki

I run a Private Wiki using PikiPiki on my MacOs X Lap Top. (Currently 1750 nodes, each a PlainText file with no file extension. Total 9MB (really 3MB plus file-block overhead).)

I would really like it to be available (80% for reading?) when away from my Lap Top. Ideally on my Archos70 Tablet.

• hmm, could I live with doing 100% of my editing on the Tablet, to avoid Data Synch hassles? Probably not, haven't enjoyed typing enough on the tablet so far...

My first hope was to run PikiPiki on the Tablet, but that doesn't sound too likely...

I could move the Private Wiki to my MoinMoin server used for this WikiLog, but the Archos70 only does WiFi not 3G so wouldn't really be available all the time.

I've considered using Tiddly Wiki for this, but haven't been able to get any version, including And Tid Wiki, able to save on my Tablet.

• I guess I could do read-only on Tablet, but that doesn't smell satisfactory...

What if I use SimpleNote's service (built on Google App Engine), with Notational Velocity or Nottingham on the Lap Top, then one of the Android editors on my Tablet? (Idea inspired by this - Under Preferences/Notes/Storage, I’ve set it (Notational Velocity) to store notes as plain text files. This allows me to email individual text files to people if necessary, to open them in other text editors, and to access the files from my phone if needed. I also have it synchronizing with Simplenote’s online service. I don’t use Simplenote as I don’t have an iPhone (if I did I would) but I like having all my notes backed up and accessible online. You can do this under Preferences/Notes/Synchronization. It’s free.).

• Here's a paean to the SimpleNote PlainText Data Synch concept. See related 2007-06-15-MayerPlaintextTodolist.
• a couple comparisons of NV and Nottingham. I'll probably try NV first since it's free.
• installed Notational Velocity. Tweaked prefs to use my PikiPiki folder. It recognized the handful of files that had kind="SimpleText format", but the bulk of the files in the directory have just kind="Document" and were not recognized.
  • huh, all the sudden the other files showed up! I guess it was crawling/indexing.
  • of course, maybe this didn't matter, since I don't actually intend to edit in NV.
• Created my SimpleNote account.
• Went back into NV and turned on SimpleNote Data Synch. All the nodes are now in the WebApp!
  • edited a note in WebApp at 12:41. Going to wait a little to clarify Data Synch process. Update: yes, need to launch Notational Velocity on Lap Top to trigger Data Synch there.
• Now I have to pick from the many Android apps. Of course, many of those might not be accessible to my Archos70!
  • Archos Apps Lib shows just "SimpleNote!" which doesn't seem related.
  • Amazon shows just FlickNote. Checked a couple others to see if they have non-AppStore ways to download directly, but no dice. Which makes the decision easy.
    • Amazon made me set up 1-click mobile shopping and pick a payment method, even those this app is free.
  • installed FlickNote, set up SimpleNote and triggered Data Synch (13:23). Update: all good!
  • Wow, FlickNote even has a setting to auto-link to other notes! It's a WikiEngine!

Jul22 update

• installed Swift Key X on the Archos70 yesterday.
• Today I'm finding FlickNote unusable - each keypress lags by 2sec!
• Switched from Swift Key X, no change. Uninstalled Swift Key X, didn't help.
• Rebooting...
• Nope.
• turned off the FlickNote Wiki-like linking to other notes. That did it. Dang.
• Will want to try turning that back on some other day to see if it instantly makes things worse again.

Jul27 update: have now had the 2nd time that a file got renamed to have a period at the end of its name. I don't know if that's some sort of Data Synch conflict alert or what...

Aug23 update: I Commented to pitch this to some EverNote users.

Nov28 update: apparently there was a SimpleNote API change recently, and FlickNote isn't synching properly. There's a new version of FlickNote available, but only via the official Android AppStore, not the Amazon or App Lib collections, so my Archos70 can't get to it!

• a couple weeks later I found that synching was working again, without having updated any apps!
  • update: still run into issues sometimes
    • I turned off auto-synch, thinking that maybe sometimes it tries to start synch before the WiFi is really active and fails but sets a last-synch flag. That seems to have helped a little, but could be my imagination.
    • sometimes I go into web-view of SimpleNote and make pointless updates (add space) to the recently updated notes to force a synch
• Feb08'2012 update: ack, discovered a case where synch ran, and some recently updated notes seemed to have synched (based on mod-date), but the content hadn't been updated! Wow that's the worst possible failure!
• Feb15'2012: Amazon AppStore got update for FlickNote last night, which I ran, and now FlickNote won't launch at all!
• They emailed me a fresh APK, so I uninstalled the old stuff the did a fresh install, and now it's working.