[Design] normalization

[petite_abeille]

Another important issue is to be able to "normalize" any esoteric piece 
of information to boil it down to its fundamental attributes: the three 
Ws (Who, What, When). With the fourth W being Where.

The Dublin Core already tackle this issue somehow:

http://dublincore.org/documents/1999/07/02/dces/

This could provide the draft of an "universal" set of attributes 
supported by any given entity the system may encounter. And most likely 
all those information can be extracted automatically. Which is a good 
thing as nobody likes tedious and repetitive tasks:

"What an amazing, truly useful, piece of software to take something as 
chaotic as years of accumulated email and neatly, logically organize it 
for you. Weren't computers always supposed to do this stuff?"

— Nicholas Riley
http://radio.weblogs.com/0100148/2002/09/07.html#a484

Which is what a "Personal Information Manager" should aim at.

PA.