Since Plone was mentioned as being one of the top 5 Open Source applications, I figured the least I could do would be to visit their homepage and snoop around a little. Plone is a python-based CMS (content management system) which is sort-of structured like a wiki. Plone itself sits on top of Zope, a "widely-used Open Source web application server and development system." Whatever that means.

The first thing that popped into my mind was "Hey, I could use this to take notes for next year!" It's true: using Plone could (and most likely would) be beneficial to me for taking notes out at college this year. However I'm still a little uneasy when it comes to going completely electronic with notes. What if something happens to my Plone server? What happens when there's a catastrophic crash, resulting in me never being able to read my sweet, sweet notes ever again? I don't know if my heart could take it.

I suppose there's always the possibility of just making backups. This is usually the best choice when dealing with really important data, and is the reason that my friend and I will be running a mirror raid for our server next semester.

Another aspect I'm worried about is whether or not I'll be able to even access a server over my Uni's network. Last year they had things pretty tightly bundled up, accepting almost no traffic from the outside world (or even across their own networks). The university does allow all students their own unix account, making it possible for me to setup my own webpage. However, they only ration off 5MB of space per student. C'mon, 5? Really? A little detective work will show that this would only house between 1/6 and 1/7 the space required for Plone.

I may end up just scrapping the idea, since last year's method of just taking notes in a text editor seemed to work just fine. However it sure would be nice to be able to link in-between notes instead of switching between two different files at once. Oh well.