Everyday Information, Made Useful

Remember those 3x5" notecards you used in college when you were researching a term paper? You would jot down some notes or a quotation on a notecard, then add a title on the top line. Once you'd done enough research, you would start arranging your cards in piles based on their content. Or maybe you would tape them to a wall and move them around until you had them arranged in a way that made sense. It wasn't a perfect solution--especially if you felt that one card belonged in several places--but it worked.

If you're not overly technical, here's a description of what InfoML is and why you might be interested in it. (You can also go straight to the FAQ or the technical description.) An InfoML file is like a set of notecards, in the same way that a web site is like a newspaper--the metaphor is loosely descriptive, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. So, just as a web site can offer so much more than a newspaper can, an InfoML file can be far more than the electronic equivalent of a stack of notecards.

InfoML is a specification for storing "units" of information. Although the InfoML format can store numeric data and non-textual information, it is especially suited to the capture of human thoughts and relationships among such thoughts. InfoML uses the metaphor of a notecard to make data stored in the InfoML format easy to visualize. One unit of information in the InfoML format is referred to as an "InfoML card" or, for convenience, an infocard.

The InfoML format is very versatile, and people can create custom infocard formats to meet specialized needs. However, the InfoML Standard describes a standard infocard format that will meet most people’s needs; any end-user software that is InfoML-friendly (that is, that supports the InfoML Standard) will be able to recognize and manipulate any infocard that uses the standard format. Because of the extensibility of the InfoML format, end users can attach "add-on" content to any standard infocard (think of adding "sticky notes" to a regular notecard) without destroying the ability of InfoML-friendly software to recognize and manipulate it correctly.

And InfoML becomes even more interesting when people start using it to share information.

If you are a student taking notes, InfoML is for you. If you are part of the team researching a big project, InfoML is for you. Writing a book? Keeping track of the details of your kitchen remodeling project? Organizing the museum's collection of Mayan pottery fragments? InfoML can help.

InfoML is a design, pure and simple. And it has the potential to be much more.

The specification for InfoML is freely available to anyone who wants to use it. It's like a blueprint for a really, really great house--and you don't have to pay anything to use it. You can use it to build your house and be perfectly happy with it. If enough people use it, the end result will be like living in a community of smart, helpful people.

Today, you can get the specification for InfoML. Eventually, there will be useful applications that can read and write their data as InfoML files. Browse through this site and let us know what you think.

Oh, one more thing. This idea is just getting off the ground, and you're a bright person. Maybe you have some ideas of what you'd like to see happen. Maybe you'd like to make it happen. We'd love to hear from you--check the "get involved" page for details.

Gregg Williams (greggw@InfoML.org)
site manager