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Snippets are a standard way to share small fragments of information through the world wide web. I created my Snippets because of a long standing interest in "personal information management" and because of my admiration for the ideas and ideals of information pioneers like Vannevar Bush, Tim Berners-Lee, and Ted Nelson.
This is the second version of the Snippets project. The first version was based on FileMaker Pro, and it didn't carry over well to the Windows version of FM Pro. This version is done manually with FrontPage 98; I hope to move to something more structured, like Frontier.
[Jan 2000: ended snippets project for the moment due to inability to locate
approrpriate tools. Integrated with general contents index.]
[Mar 2004: The snippets software i wanted was finally developed about 5-7 years after I
wrote this. It's called Tinderbox.]
Snippets differ from most web based information sharing by their structure, narrow scope, and explicity reliance on web-based indexing engines. Snippets are small fragments of information -- typically information acquired through personal experience (perhaps painful personal experience). Since snippets are intended to be "terminal" sources of limited information, they do not usually contain links to other information.
The first version of my Snippets were a collection of web pages maintained in a FileMaker database with very structured content. I may return to that, but the current version (v2) actually crosses the WWW with newsgroups.
I post a fragment into an appropriate newsgroup, where it will be indexed by DejaNews. I include keywords and language information as text below the fragment.
I also manually maintain a table of contents, with the Snippet title. Currently this index points to the older HTML based snippets and also to my newsgroup postings via DejaNews.
I see Snippets as a way to pass on experiences and personal knowledge that may be of value to the wider community.