Bumped into the ZOE project about a month ago and have finally had time to play around with it a bit. ZO?is a Java project that’s basically an information aggregator. To get things up and running on Windows it’s just a matter of unzipping the archive and double-clicking the Zoe.jar file.
ZO?has it’s own webserver and runs standalone on your local computer, you interact with it through a web browser. What was interesting for me about the software was a) its minimalist, Zen interface, and b) its unified handling of aggregated data.
The idea is that you use ZOE to handle your email, as an RSS aggregator, as an FTP client, etc. Then ZOE links the data in terms of data sources, be it people, blogs, websites, or emails. All are searchable via a single interface powered by the Lucene search engine.
What is going on behind the scenes in terms of the built-in database must be quite interesting. And what a luxury to be able to use the software with zero technical knowledge or setup work – double-click and you’re off.
Here are some screenshots to give you an idea:
