

Ask HN: Review my idea for a notes app - WesleyJohnson

As I mentioned in a previous post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=874827), I typically don't seek out feedback on any of my ideas. However, I'm trying to turn over a new leaf in letting go of that mindset and to start I'm asking for some feedback on an idea I've been fleshing out.<p>The basic concept is a web based application that is kind of a hybrid between notes, bookmarks and markups. Think Noteable meets Evernote meets Delicious. At any time, on nearly any website, you would be able to attach a "sticky note" to the page you're currently viewing. The twist or gimmick is that it is literally attached to the webpage. It's not in some text file on your desktop that you forgot you created. It's not sitting on a piece of paper on your desk that will eventually get covered with bills, todo lists or coffee stains. It's not hanging out over on Evernote, where I personally spent more time adding notes that reviewing or using them. No, it's on the website where you put. If you leave, shutdown, close the browser, switch computers, what have you, you're note is there for you the next time you navigate to said website. Keep in mind this is not "my" website. This is any website.<p>Application ideas:
Distraction deterrents – Leave yourself a note on HN that kindly reminds you that you have a deadline to meet and you shouldn't be browsing Ask HN threads.<p>Bookmark reminders – Ever navigated back to a bookmark and forgot why you bookmarked it in the first place? Well what if you just left yourself a note, right on the website, explaining why you found the site worthy of saving.<p>Designers/Developers – Markup the website you're currently working with notes, suggestions and corrections so you can review and implement them later. Also leave notes on websites you've bookmarked for inspiration.<p>These are just the more obvious use cases I could come up with at the moment. I'm sure there are other ideas or offshoots of these ideas as well. The flip side of this is that the notes would act as bookmarks as well. You could pull up the application's website, login and review all your notes and what websites their on. Notes would be grouped or categorized as well, for things like research papers or design inspiration. What you would essentially do with tags or folders, could be more effect with notes. Not only could you pull up every note that was grouped under "design ideas" for "project x", but you would also have your actual note to see "Would like to mimic this UI" and which ones had "Really need to steer clear of a cluttered interface as I see here."<p>I have a few more ideas on how to broaden the appeal of the idea, but I just wanted to start out with the root idea first. I hope I'm explaining it well enough. It's basically "sticky notes" for websites, but it's targeted at end users, not individual websites.<p>I would thoroughly enjoy any feedback, criticisms or questions.
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dryicerx
Interesting concept, I think I'd personally use it if it's implemented :)

I am trying to see if it's possible to do in a completely webapp type method
(you can't really expect web developers to integrate code on server side to
support this). A definitely possible method is a browser plug-in some way, if
so I see the idea being implementedin a similar fashion to to Foxmarks/Xmarks
in the way do the browser plugin -> sync to servers and across all your
browser locations.

~~~
WesleyJohnson
Agreed, the browser plug-in/extension is the way I would like to go. You're
right in that you couldn't expect web developers to integrate anything and
with that method, they wouldn't need to.

I actually have an extremely basic proof of concept going using Chrome
Extensions, XML and jQuery. If I decide to keep going with it, then I would
need to start looking into targetting Firefox, Safari, IE as well.

~~~
neohacks
Good idea. Firefox already has a similar addon. Hope you are thinking of
better features. <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8658?src=api>

