Yoz is digging into some software archaeology, exploring the characterstics of the Ur-PIM, Lotus Agenda. Mitch Kapor was the inventor of Agenda. which allowed users to enter free-form notes, such as "Call Mom on Wednesday about Neil's birthday," and would figure out what "Mom," "Neil," "Wednesday" and "Call" all meant and assign to-do items and so on accodringly. Now, Mitch is working on an app called "Chandler," an open source, non-profit PIM (personal information manager) that's being billed as an Outlook-killer, with lots of features that are reminiscent of Agenda. Yoz's history of Agenda's strengths, weaknesses and lessons learned really make me slather for Chandler. Can't wait can't wait can't wait.
Also interesting are the reviews of Agenda, which are written by reviewers who need not only to explain what makes it a good PIM, but what a PIM is. Brings me back to the heady days of new software categories, when hundreds of column-inches in Byte were devoted to explaining what a spreadsheet is and why anyone would use it.
(via Doc)