
Show HN: Extremely Simple Note-Taking - leafbomb
https://notepin.co
======
anilgulecha
A meta-discussion on note-taking: I see Show HNs of new notetaking software
once a month or so. It's like a blog engine: everyone gives a shot to writing
one. (I wrote a note-taking app a few years ago).

But none of these will ever touch the Evernotes of the world. I think the big
step ahead here will be decentralization. Today, my notes are at the mercy of
Evernote/OneNote/Keep.

Some newer options like StandardNotes [1] are taking this head-on. But even
here the focus seems to be on easy import/export, which is a positive action
that will have to be taken by the user to hold on to their data. One thing we
know about user behavior is they they _will not_ do anything that has
friction.

A decentralized storage engine (like IPFS[2]) would be the ideal storage,
which would allow copies of notes to automatically exist, and the user would
not even have to worry about their storage provider going away.

Another point I want to make is that most notes don't have to be private..
anecdotal-ly speaking, most notes would benefit from being public, in that
others will enhance whatever data/research you're collecting. So the next
generation of note-taking will be about majority public, and a few private
notes.

If anyone's interested in discussing this in a bit more detail I could setup a
mailing list to discuss a bit more on the potential architecture of such a
system.

[1] [https://standardnotes.org/](https://standardnotes.org/) [2]
[http://ipfs.io/](http://ipfs.io/)

~~~
notheguyouthink
> which would allow copies of notes to automatically exist, and the user would
> not even have to worry about their storage provider going away.

How is that true? Not citing it's not, just asking.

In my understanding of IPFS, longevity of something is just a byproduct of
it's popularity. If you're writing unpopular notes, then it would inherently
have no longevity, right? Ie, if no one else has read your note, then when
your storage goes down so does your note.

~~~
diggan
Well, it's not true-by-default (in IPFS at least) but you could easily model
applications to make it true.

One way could be to have a more cooperative-like application. Let's say you
join the cooperative by signing up to the application, and everyone agree to
automatically help seed each others notes.

Another way could be to have small cooperatives inside the application, based
on groups/organizations. So you sign up, apply to an group and everyone in the
group help seeding each other.

Yet another way could be when you sign up, you'll just seed your own notes.
However, if you pay 1 Euro per month, the maintainer(s) of the application
will help you seed it. Or combine this with the group-idea and have groups
announce their re-seeding possibility on the network, and pay the group.

Neither of the ideas are perfect and serve just as examples of what could be
possible.

Btw anilgulecha, I would interested in participating in a discussion about it,
and you might want to raise it as an issue on
[https://github.com/ipfs/notes](https://github.com/ipfs/notes), lot's of
people who care about the same thing there.

~~~
anilgulecha
Right, peers can be added to your notes as a simple paid service, thus making
storage a simple commodity you pay pennies for, with no lock-in (peers by
different storage providers).

I'll setup a mailing list tonight. For those that want to join, please shoot
an email to anil.verve @ gmail.

@diggan: ipfs/notes repo seems to be a discussion place for the protocol --
I'd wait until we can come up with a draft spec before starting a discussion
there.

------
ktta
Looks great. Why not make this self-hosted possible?

You can charge a continuing fee like $1-2/yr for updates for the self-hosted
software. This would bring in more users because it's self hosted and they
don't have to worry about them losing their notes on your website or you
spying on them. And you're obviously not looking for a lot of money since
you're not asking for much.

One actual suggestion is to offer more fonts in the premium in case you want
to go ahead with this business model.

~~~
brudgers
$1-2/year is probably not enough to run a sustainable business model around
the software. Basic business overhead of taking and tracking and refunding
payments alongside accounting and legal fees will consume a substantial
proportion of revenue even with 10k or 20k customers.

That's in addition to supporting that number of customers with bug fixes and
updates and newsletters and a website and such. These grow with number of
users. If it's a business, it's better to charge real money because doing so
will validate (or invalidate) the business quickly and provide the revenue for
making it a real business.

~~~
ktta
You're right, but I felt like atleast that was better than a one time fee for
something that had (no offense to creator) no credibility of being a
sustainable business, and can shut down at any moment. I didn't even bother to
see who the payment processor was. (Note to creator) Having a trustable
payment processing system like stripe or even a bitcoin wallet would be better
than a random website prompting for credit card details. I don't think even
paypal is a good option these days because they can see your personal details.

If it catches on, the creator can always increase the prices and grandfather
in the old customers. You might've noticed that the only mention of pricing
was for $5 and it talked about simple features for premium users. So I felt
like that amount was a good deal since no one would blink before saying okay
to a couple dollars a year deal, but have a one time fee, some people won't
take the leap of faith.

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iLemming
I've tried so many ways to take notes and keep a personal journal. And nothing
comes even close (in terms of simplicity and effectiveness) to what I have
today with Emacs's org-mode.

------
wingerlang
Quite nice. Ability to change colors would do good for some basic form of
branding. The contrast is quite low as well.

------
danvesma
I'm sure you're server is busy at the moment, but creating notes is quite
slow, certainly over a second.

~~~
leafbomb
Thanks for letting me know! Will upgrade it!

