
Show HN: Graph-based notebook for data scientists and researchers - hsuominen
https://www.amie.ai
======
rsp1984
The live demo is a really neat detail, but it can be overwhelming for an
uninitiated user.

I first didn't even notice it was a live demo until my mouse was over it and I
wanted to scroll down and instead the graph in the demo zoomed out.

Some feedback:

\- Just today on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18410628](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18410628)

\- I would not do a live demo but instead illustrate using pictures and
perhaps a little intro video.

\- It's not made clear enough what the core differentiators of the product are
vs. existing process tools, such as Trello or Asana. In fact I currently don't
see the benefits of a graph-based approach over other tools. Doesn't mean that
there aren't any, just that they aren't made clear.

\- In the live demo: the box being displayed when I hover over a tree node is
almost always (partly) off screen.

~~~
edraferi
I like having a live demo available, but not on the landing page. It should be
one click away to avoid this kind of confusion.

~~~
johannesbeil
Noted, thanks!

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Frizi
The "need more pixels" message is quite frustrating. I get that it might be
not practical to support small resolutions, but I was unable to see the demo
even on "desktop mode" in landscape on a really big phone. How many pixels do
you need? If it's still not practical to support that, a demo video player
would be a great fallback.

~~~
giulioungaretti
You are absolutely right, we shall soon make a video for that scenario. For
now we just bail if the device has less than 400x600 pixels "big" viewport,
and if the "zoom" property is not supported. The demo would actually work fine
but we feel the ux becomes too awkward :/

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maxkrieger
Great concept. It seems like the graph view is begging to convey more
information. At the very least it seems appropriate for the nodes to have an
icon based on what kind of data they contain, for instance, a paperclip or
document for an attached paper, a histogram for univariate data, a regression
plot for bivariate, etc.

~~~
johannesbeil
Noted, thank you for your feedback!

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giulioungaretti
If anybody is curious, CTO of amie here, we run on elm and a mix of Haskell
and go, our db of choice is of course postgres !

~~~
jonahx
Could you give more info on how this is better (or when this is better) than
an ordinary notebook like evernote. I read through the homepage and found
this:

> which lets you directly model your workflow and document your reasoning
> without the mental overhead of a folder structure.

but honestly i still don't understand what the main value prop is.

thanks.

~~~
johannesbeil
Of course, thank you for asking. An ordinary notebook only lets you order
notes linearly. As soon as you try out different paths and switch back and
forth between them, for example, different models, you can lose the overview.
With the graph, for any result, you can always go back an understand exactly
where it came from. We make this extra easy by letting you plot the notes
according to the parameters they are tagged with. You can try it in the live
demo by clicking on the graph button on the top left and select "model_name"
and "mae" to compare how the models performed. Besides this (compared to
Evernote or a paper notebook), we also have a python client that lets you
integrate documentation directly into taking data from equipment or data
science.

~~~
scarcely
Is this intended to be a notebook in the jupyter sense or in the evernote
sense? Initially I thought the former (and so pretty much discounted the
possibility of using it as a personal knowledge base) but your response made
me wonder if I'm missing something

I've tried pretty much everything on the planet looking for a good knowledge
base/personal wiki that is graph based. My current tool of choice is a humble
little app called Scapple, but it's far from satisfactory.

~~~
unga
Both and neither ? :P

We think knowledge is much complex than a simple linear note taking process
(Evernote), but also needs (at times) simpler tool than a full fledged
computing platform (Jupyter).

With amie one can enrich ones notes with whatever metadata one wants to track,
we call them key value pairs, branch off whenever one is exploring parallel
ideas and connect every piece of ones knowledge via references.

One can do it all via a Gui, just like in Evernote, but also via our python
client giving the user full flexibility.

While we have a lot of visual features coming to make the note taking part
neater, we won't support a fully featured markdown-like input for text entry
in the near future tho.

Let us know if you can use it to build your personal knowledge base, we think
you're going to love amie!

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HenryBemis
For some reason I have added intercom.io on my NoScript in the past. I
DuckDuckGo-ed it and it returns: "Intercom is a priceless tool that helps us
drive Sales and Support through every step of the funnel."

I now will add sentry.io in my AdBlock+ list.

I am getting a login in screen with nothing else. I value my privacy over your
service. But I sincerely wish you the best on your endeavors.

~~~
johannesbeil
Thanks! Sorry to hear, but we need those tools. We are an EU company and
thereby regulated by GDPR, so we are obligated to treat your data very
responsibly. You can learn more about the product (without intercom and
sentry) on our blog: [https://medium.com/amie-ai/amie-use-case-data-driven-
winemak...](https://medium.com/amie-ai/amie-use-case-data-driven-
winemaking-62a7570dae8b) Feel free to get in touch!

~~~
dotancohen
Not GP, but this is exactly the reply that I was hoping to hear. The GDPR has
done more for human rights for the masses than any other initiative in the
past 70 years.

~~~
curiousgal
>The GDPR has done more for human rights for the masses than any other
initiative in the past 70 years.

Talk about being egocentric. The world has larger parts that don't even have
access to Internet.

~~~
elliekelly
Internet access shouldn't be a threshold issue when it comes to data privacy
rights.

Facebook, for example, likely has a fair amount of personal data about a lot
of people who don't have meaningful internet access. Something as simple as
their contact information being saved in the phone of someone who uses
Facebook mobile is enough for the company to create a "shadow profile" for
them. That kind of data collection doesn't benefit the data owner by providing
a "free" service in exchange for their information and it occurs entirely
without their knowledge or consent. This is exactly the kind of privacy
violation GDPR seeks to curtail and I think the benefits can and do extend to
the global masses more than most people realize.

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fs111
The layout looks weird in firefox, did you only test with chrome?

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johannesbeil
Yes, only Chrome and Safari are fully supported right now. It should tell you
actually. Thanks for asking!

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totony
I've been working on a similar project for a bit now, really think this is a
good idea and good job for shipping!

~~~
johannesbeil
Thanks! Feel free to get in touch, maybe we can exchange ideas.

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auganov
Just random nitpicks: The "interact with me" emoji is hard to make out, looks
like a glitch at first. Emojis should be images, for both consistency and
making sure people don't get boxy question marks if their browser can't
render. "toggle fullscreen" is off-center vertically. The demo frame is messed
up in Edge. The text in the about page needs a max width. Like others
mentioned the demo is a bit overwhelming, it also has some minor UX issues and
is generally the weakest link design wise at the moment.

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gdfasfklshg4
Why do I need to allow your cookie just to view your landing page?

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johannesbeil
The page contains a live demo, that needs a cookie.

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OJFord
But you can't tell that without allowing the cookie - you just get a login
prompt and 'not allowed to view this resource'.

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johannesbeil
Thanks, yes, we have to fix that.

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dmolony
Not very well I'm afraid. Firefox/uBlock/noScript just results in a blank
page.

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skybrian
Supposedly this is for any device, but it doesn't work well on my cell phone.
The interactive demo says "not enough pixels" and the chat widget gets in the
way.

For smaller screens, I think it's better not to try to put as much stuff on
the front page? A button going to another screen might work better than a
widget.

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internet555
I would have loved this during my post-doc!

~~~
unga
you can always do another post-doc :P

Jokes aside, if you have time to get in touch with us we'd love to chat about
the experience you had with the tools (or the lack thereof ) during your post
doc!

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higginsc
I've been waiting for a graph view for Jupyter since it was called IPython.
This is great!

~~~
unga
You are going to love the next update which will bring full integration with
Jupyter notebook and Jupyter lab! Keep an eye open!

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dhairya
Apologize, but I'm super confused about this product. How is this compared to
say codalab
([https://worksheets.codalab.org/](https://worksheets.codalab.org/)) for
organizing experiments?

~~~
unga
No need to apologise :D It is very different in our view because we build a
graph that connects all experiments you do. This allows you to get an overview
of your entire discovery process. In our approach users can use the full power
of a programmatic access, via our python client, and the full power of a Gui.
With amie one can see for example: which feature performed best using a model
Y after a grid search that resulted in parameter Z.

Coda lab is great tho, and we have a lot of features in the pipeline that will
actually add containerised, reproducible artefacts of your scientific
computing work and environment straight from a Jupiter notebook.

