For passive logging, I've got Orger, set of scripts that are pulling data from different APIs and render it as org-mode [1]. Having it as org-mode allows me for quick search and recall in the logs.
There is also Memacs that uses similar approach [2].
You basically coerce all manner of new formats into soemthing you can easily manipulate in the future - which is kind of the essential feature of a note taking system.
You will obviously have to update those scripts a little as these other formats change but then again you’ll only have to do so for the systems u really care about.
Would be great if you could wrap all this back up into a emacs package for easy install ;)
Not really planning for emacs package:
- I don't feel very efficient coding in Elisp
- lots of infrastructure required (e.g. scripts for fetching data) is not worth rewriting in Elisp. Actually most of it is quite Emacs-agnosic and it would be a trivial task for Orger to output Markdown/HTML instead of Org-mode if one wants.
- it's a bit more accessible for other people when it's written in Python. I probably wouldn't be wrong if I say that people who are comfortable messing with Emacs are a strict subset of people that can run few Python scripts in cron :)
That said, if you think there are some benefits in having it tighter integrated with Emacs, I'd be really interested to hear!
I'm using an iphone, do you have any suggestions about how to sync up entries made on the move?
Don't have iphone, so don't know about the apps. But, even if I didn't have any org-mode specific apps, a tool that merely indexed org-mode files as plaintext and allowed me to search it would already be massively helpful.
For synchronising files across your phone and computer, I'm sure there is Dropbox or Syncthing for Iphone. It's periodic sync, so there is slight possibility of conflicts, but if you use separate files to log on desktop and phone, just merging them now and then, it's not an issue.
That said, in the business world I have enjoyed the many features of evernote, but it's been a few years since I used it.