News & Announcements
- August 20, 2010. Planz is now open sourced. Planz has now become an open source application under the XooML project on Google Code Hosting.
- June 11, 2010. Planz 8.2 is available for free download. Planz now supports workflow and clutter control. Planz works with other XooML-based tools including Quick Capture and FreeMindX.
- June 11, 2010. Quick Capture is available for free download. Select text from an email message, Web page or document and then type Windows (button with windows icon flag) + C to create a link anywhere in your file system that points to this item. View your links in Planz or the Windows Explorer.
- April 14, 2010. Planz to put our digital information in its place. Talk given in an alt.chi session at CHI 2010, Atlanta, GA.
- April 6, 2010. Recent directions in the Keeping Found Things Found Project. Talk given at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA.
- April 4, 2010. Everywhere to go but where is home? Building "places of our own" for personal information. KFTF talk given at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
- November 6-7, 2009. PIM 2009 - A workshop on Personal Information Management, sponsored in collaboration with ASIST 2009 in Vancouver, B.C.
- October, 2008. I Give Up! Five Factors that Contribute to the Abandonment of Information Management Strategies accepted short paper to be presented as poster by E. Jones at the annual meeting of ASIST, Columbus, OH.
- October, 2008.
Better to Organize Personal Information by Folders Or by
Tags?: The Devil Is in the Details
accepted paper to be presented by A. Civan at the annual
meeting of
ASIST, Columbus, OH.
Older news and announcments...

What is KFTF?
Much of our lives is spent in the finding of things. Find a house or a car that's just right for you. Find your dream job. Or your dream mate. But, once found, what then?
As with other things, so it is with our information. Finding is just the first step. How do we keep this information so that it's there later when we need it? How do we organize it in ways that make sense for us in the lives we want to lead? Information found does us little good if we misplace it or forget to use it. And just as we must maintain a house or a car, we need to maintain our information - backing it up, archiving or deleting old information, updating information that is no longer accurate. In our digital world, advances in technologies of search and storage have far outpaced balancing advances in tools and techniques that help us to manage and make sense of our information. This project combines fieldwork with selective prototyping in an effort to understand what is needed for us to "keep found things found."
Associated Sites
Selected Press and Presentations
Drexel University talk on XooML in support of a vision for PIM, April 6, 2010. Many tools in support of one unifying organization of personal information.
Yahoo-sponsored talk at MIT, May 5th, 2009. Putting Our Digital Information in Its Place: Lessons Learned from Fieldwork and Prototyping in the Keeping Found Things Found Project.
7th Space Interactive, December 17, 2008, What does it take to make New Year's resolutions a reality?
The Seattle Times, February 15, 2005, UW ponders how to best store and retrieve electronic information
The New York Times, January 22, 2004, WHAT'S NEXT; Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites