Wiki's have been setting the academic World abuzz for quite a while now. But noone is exactly sure what exactly constitutes a wiki. Collaborative editing is one of the features. But the success of these wikis depends on having either a dedicated individual or a motivated group. But that's not enough! A wiki is also commonly associated with a particular style of easy editing by marking text with easy to remember tags. There are many things called wikis that only include the collaborative aspect. But there is also one project that focused on the ease of editing. A few years ago Jeremy Ruston had the idea of making a portable wiki that can be used on any computer with a browser (or any computer). It's called TiddlyWiki.

Sometime ago I was looking for a piece of software to keep notes on some research. I considered OneNote, EverNote or even designing a database. But none of these were easily portable or flexible or gave me all the features I wanted. Then I remembered TiddlyWiki. It's now in version 2.2 and it has all the features a qualitative research would want.

• it's fast
• it allows tagging of content
• it makes it easy to link entries
• it allows rich content
• it works on any computer
• it allows people to collaborate over the network or can be put on the web
• and it has a large user and developer community that keep on working to make it better

Here's the blurb from the website:

Works with all major desktop browsers on Windows, Macintosh and Linux and many mobile browsers such as the Apple iPhone and the Nokia 770/N800
TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook

All you have to do to install TiddlyWiki on your computer or on a USB thumb drive is to copy one file. But there is even a way to set it up online using a free service called Tiddlyspot.com. Here's a quick video introduction: