Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised May 31, 2026

Tinderbox (application software)

Tinderbox is a personal content management system and personal knowledge base.

Last revised
May 31, 2026
Read time
≈ 2 min
Length
366 w
Citations
11
Source
Wikipedia ↗
Tinderbox
DeveloperEastgate Systems
Initial release2002 (2002)
Stable release
10.2.0 / May 2025 (2025-05)
Operating systemMac OS, Mac OS X
TypeContent management, outliner, personal information manager
LicenseProprietary
Websitewww.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/

Tinderbox is a personal content management system and personal knowledge base.

It is a tool for storing, arranging, exploring, and publishing data.1

Developer

Tinderbox was developed for Mac OS and Mac OS X by Mark Bernstein,2 Chief Engineer of Eastgate Systems.34

Features

Its functions include storing and organizing notes, plans, and ideas, and sharing ideas through blogs.5 Novelist Giles Foden describes its hypertextual features as useful for pattern-making when planning a novel, as well as for organising research notes.6

It also offers functionality similar to that of outliner and spatial hypertext/mind mapping tools, in addition to knowledge management, database and agent (persistent search) tools.

Tinderbox is used for a wide variety of tasks:

  • As a personal web publishing system, with good support for blog creation and management 7
  • Personal information management 8
  • Outlining and mind mapping9
  • Concept mapping
  • Note-taking10
  • Plot and story construction and writing11
  • Creating hypertexts
References

References

  1. Minifinders: Multimedia to Organization Software, MacWorld, May 18, 2004. Archived May 28, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
  2. Interesting Software Update: Tinderbox How-To, Jerry’s Brain - James Fallows The Atlantic, 9 March 2015
  3. Tinderbox 1.2: multipurpose app sparks, stores, and shares ideas., MacWorld, September 1, 2003. Archived May 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  4. Hurrah For Great Mac Software by Jeremy Wagstaff, The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2003.
  5. Eastgate Tinderbox product page, August 16, 2007
  6. Foden, Giles (2003-10-16). "Method and the medium". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-06-08.
  7. Flint
  8. Mark Bernstein, "Composites, Construction, Hypertext", Proceedings of the fourteenth ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia, ACM, New York, 2001. pp. 122-123.
  9. See the Tinderbox manual
  10. Notes about Notes and Tinderbox Prototypes
  11. Plotting With Tinderbox. YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11.
Further reading

Further reading

External links