Evangeline Digital

I'm searching for the one app that rules them all—a personal knowledge management system that serves as a single source of truth.

This second brain of networked thoughts needs to support, first and foremost, bi-directional links.

Also important are privacy, security, cloud storage and multi-device access, easy-of-use, markdown support, user adoption, and company longevity.

These are some of the top SaaS solutions that support bidirectional links:

• Roam Research
• Obsidian
• Stroll
• Amplenote
• Athena
• Zettlekasten.de

Of that list, Roam Research is the top contender. I like how they've built their solution. It's easy to use. You just log in and start typing.

The key idea for using bi-directional links for me is to avoid repeating thoughts. Instead, you link to them by embedding past text. You can also use bi-directional links see your aggregated thoughts in one page.

These concepts are not new. It's a foundational to the Zettelkasten Method, which uses physical cards (Zettels) to contain a summary references. This method has since been translated to the online space.

Therefore, if Roam didn't come up with the method of organizing thought, then there must be other solutions out there that use the Zettelkasten Method. Refer to the bulleted list above for solutions that I've come across.

One thing to note about these solutions that they all use Markdown. If you are not familiar with it, I recommend acquiring the skill.

Roam certainly put up a high bar. At the same time, it's not perfect.

• There's lag with loading pages. I especially notice this on the Daily Notes page. It's an uneasy feeling to think that you won't be able to access your notes. This thought has been lingering in my mind as I use Roam.

• In their Slack community, there was a recent concern about the lack of security. I don't quite understand the ins and outs of the problem, but it sounds like a cross-site vulnerability where your private Roam graph can be hacked.

The security issue has made me wish that Zettelkasten.de (which is hosted locally) was just as robust as Roam with being able to easily call up and view related notes.

So this wish was the tipping point to deciding on Obsidian. Just like Roam, it works out-of-the-box.

Unlike Roam, it's installed locally. And if you create the local folder in a cloud folder (Apple storage or Dropbox, for example), then you can access it from your other devices. This solves the possible case that your computer is lost or damaged.

What's great is that you don't need to create an account to use Obsidian. You just install it, create your vault name, point your vault to a location (such as ~/Documents/obsidian/), and it will create a folder with your vault's name.

I'm assuming that you will be able to create multiple vaults to create instances of networked thoughts. So, you can have a vault for work and another for personal use.

The most annoying part of the setup was turning off dark mode and locating the plugins area. Most of the plugins are turned off by default.

You have to go to settings icon (lower left of the window), which is difficult to see, and I could not find the instructions in their help docs.

I had to do a YouTube search to find this walk-through of Obsidian.

Some early thoughts on Obsidian:

• I like that the interface feels more like document writing than writing bullets. It feels more distraction-free and free form. Roam, on the other hand, can feel like I'm writing in a congested area, which takes away that sense of creativity.

It was a pleasant surprise to know that Obsidian was a side project from the makers of Dynalist.

Just a quick note on Bear.app. It's a beautiful writing tool, which is why I decided to support them a second year. But unfortunately, I'm not using it anymore. It lacks bi-directional linking and the idea of not having to repeat yourself.