Sat | 8 Feb 2003
PIM Papers
15:12 EST |
PIMs are Personal Information Managers. The purpose of this class of software program is to help us manage our personal information, particularly such things as appointments, to-do lists and phone numbers. As is suggested in some of the papers referenced here, PIMs have been around for many decades, and have always failed to catch on, so eventually they seem to become moribund and die.
There is, I think, much that can be learned from the study of some of these PIMs. We now have about 30 years of history of creation, use and rejection of this technology. Yet we are continually treated to new versions of the software, generally without any indication that the lessons of the past history have in any way been internalized. Instead, there always seems to be the assumption that the previous generations failed because something was wrong with the interface, never considering the prospect that the core problem may have been that there wasn't really a useful problem to be solved. So here comes another generation.
In the documents of the project, Kapor discusses some of his own beliefs about the system. This is a parallel-ogue of that particular paper.