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Mitch Kapor's Open Source Killer App

Mitch Kapor & Andy Herzfeld are working on a powerful new open source personal information manager that will run on OS X as well as Windows & Linux.

In his weblog, Mitch writes:

The product, which is central to the whole undertaking, is a new take on the Personal Information Manager. It will handle email, appointments, contacts and tasks, as well as be used to exchange information with other people, and do it all in the spirit of Lotus Agenda. Agenda, for those who aren't familiar with it, was a DOS product I designed (along with Jerry Kaplan) in the late 1980's which introduced a new kind of database optimized for entering small items of information in a free-form manner, and then adding organizational categories on-the-fly. It was much beloved by a few, despite (or perhaps because) being abandoned by Lotus.

We are trying to make a PIM which is substantive enough and enticing enough to make people want to move to it from whatever they are currently using, which statistically is probably Microsoft Outlook. I'm not going to bash Outlook here. Suffice it to say that while feature-rich, it is highly very complex, which renders most of its functionality moot. Its information sharing features require use of Microsoft Exchange, a server-based product, which is both expensive and complex to administer. Exchange is overkill for small-to-medium organizations, which we think creates on opportunity we intend to pursue (as well of course as serving individual users)

Have I mentioned it's going to run on Macintosh, Linux, and Windows and will not require a server? This is an ambitious goal, but we are convinced is possible to achieve using a cross-platform tool kit. (We are working with wxWindows/wxPython).

Also, everything is going to be fully open sourced.

• Email:
  
  
  
  
  
  • POP/IMAP retrieval
    
    
  • HTML viewing and composition
    
    
  • auto-completion of addressees
    
    
  • stationery
    
    
  • signatures
    
    
  • multiple profiles/personalities/identities
    
    
  • spelling checker
    
    
  • auto-archiving of old mail
    
    
  • fast searching via full-text indexing
    
    
  • importing existing data and settings
    
    
  • in-line viewing of attachments
    
    
  • user-defined views, rules, and filters
    
    
  • user-scripting capabilities
    
    
  • "active" mail - mail with buttons for actions
    
    
  • transparent encryption and authentication of mail
    
    
  • automatic Spam filtering
    
    
  • filing of messages in multiple folders
    
    
  
  
  
• Information Sharing & Exchange
  
  
  
  
  
  • integrated Instant Messaging and presence management (Jabber)
    
    
  • sending contacts and appointments via mail (iCal, vCard support)
    
    
  • remote peer-to-peer browsing of others' data
    
    
  • flexible security model to control access
    
    
  • file and document sharing
    
    
  • remote queries, e.g., look up address in another person's contact list
    
    
  • automatic updating of information from remote sources: receive new contacts, changes to existing contacts automatically (publish-subscribe)
    
    
  
  
  
• Access
  
  
  
  
  
  • home and work PC's with complete automatic replication of data
    
    
  • online or offline use with access to all data
    
    
  • synchronize with popular PDA's
    
    
  
  
  
• Calendar
  
  
  
  
  
  • day/week/month views
    
    
  • recurring appointments
    
    
  • see another person's free/busy blocks for scheduling
    
    
  • see another person's calendars as overlays
    
    
  
  
  
• Other
  
  
  
  
  
  • simple Web-style navigation (back, forward, and home buttons, single click on a link to navigate, bookmarks, URL references to user data)
    
    
  • easily customizable user-defined categories
    
    
  • structure data how you like it, view it that way, change your mind at any time
    
    
  • automatic recognition of names, places, dates, and etc.; automatic categorization of items
    
    
  • developer extensibility architecture
    
    
  
  
  

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