Haystack: the universal information client [LWN.net]

The Haystack project has come to our attention: "Haystack is a tool designed to let every individual manage all of their information in the way that makes the most sense to them. By removing the arbitrary barriers created by applications only handling certain information "types", and recording only a fixed set of relationships defined by the developer, we aim to let users define whichever arrangements of, connections between, and views of information they find most effective. Such personalization of information management will dramatically improve each individual's ability to find what they need when they need it."

Haystack is a cross-platform project, it is designed to run on Linux and several versions of Windows. The system is dependent on the Java 2 Development Kit (JDK) version 1.4 or later. It is recommended that users have a 2 Ghz Pentium 4 processor, at least 512 MB of RAM, and 1GB of disk space.

A summary of Haystack's characteristics include:

Haystack aims to put all information in one place.
All types of information can be accessed by right-clicking on them.
The system has an information centered view instead of the traditional application centered view.
All information can be dragged and dropped into other information.
Haystack integrates email and instant messaging (IM).
A personal digital library is included for organizing information.

The project overview has detailed documentation with examples of how someone would use all of these capabilities.

A preliminary release of Haystack is available for download, it is still in development, so expect bugs. The download page says that Haystack runs slowly under Linux and the embedded web browser is not yet functional. The system has been released as open-source under a Copyright from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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