
Show HN: Hiro – Fast and responsive notetaking meets semantic search - sushimako
https://alpha.hiroapp.com/
======
adelevie
This is incredible and ignore the haters.

My advice: fine-tune this for different verticals. I'd really love to use a
tool like this for taking notes for law school classes. Wire up the search
engine with cool parsers (e.g. a legal citation parser[1]) or something that
pulls the decision[2] of a case from Wikipedia just by writing the case name.

[1]
[https://github.com/unitedstates/citation](https://github.com/unitedstates/citation)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission)

~~~
brunooo
Thanks! That's exactly the thinking behind the potentially upcoming pro
version, once we'd see that there's basic interest.

~~~
adelevie
Awesome. Happy to give my $0.02 on any number of potential verticals. My is
email is my HN name at Google's mail.

------
nostromo
I quite like the notes aspect. Good job!

The search feature is a total miss for me however. What problem is it solving?
I already have Google, I don't need subpar search built into my notes app.

And searching automatically on highlighted text seems particularly confusing.
I quite often highlight text while writing, not intending to make searches in
the sidebar. It also took me too long to realize search results were being
appended at the end of the list, not at the top.

The search text is also confusing. "All loaded, keep going." Say what now?

On the business model, $9 a month seems too steep as compared to the value
prop of, say, Netflix. But I'm a cheap curmudgeon, so you should probably
raise prices for all I know!

~~~
brunooo
Thanks for the feedback, @ search bit of reasoning:

"Making lists, remembering good ideas or writing drafts mostly includes a lot
of research. So you normally sit there with a ton of tabs open, copy and paste
things etc. What if those tabs, that are normally lost, can be pinned right
next to your notes? Or you can look up and replace a word with a synonym with
a single click."

In short (especially with the Chrome plugin) it's saving (re)search next to
your note instead of tabs that vanish.

9 bucks: Thought about it rather binary, either you'd pay nothing (you can a
lot with the free plan) or you see a ton value/don't care that much.

+1 on the cryptic buddy'ing status responses.

------
brd
I like it as a proof of concept. I don't like it as a product.

In general, and with notes especially, focus is important. You are essentially
doing the opposite by bombarding the writer with distractions as they write.

I'm afraid your search would have to get shockingly smart for it to provide
any real value to the writing process. Then again, I am only 1 potential
customer and perhaps I'm just not your demographic so good luck!

~~~
brunooo
You can switch off the searchbar with small brackets in the top right corner,
which also adapts the layout a bit. On mobiles its hidden as default.

------
nkurz
First thoughts from Chrome on Mac. Questions are stream-of-conscious rather
than requiring real answers.

Looks sharp. Why is it offering me Wikipedia links in the right column? OK, at
least I can make it go away.

Whoa, why does the page keep moving right-and-left every time I'm about to
type. Oh, it's when I mouse over the left column. I tend to move the mouse
cursor out of the way of my text area when I'm typing, and if I stow it to the
left it triggers the slide-over as it passes over the left column.

Figure out that the 3-stacked-horizontal lines can close the slider. Click
again to re-open --- that makes sense. But if I click to close, then move the
mouse cursor off the page to the left it reopens. Repeat a few times, give up,
leave it open.

Start typing. Nothing happens. Scan the screen for a typing cursor. Can't find
one. Tab? Nope. Type again, don't see anything changing. OK, I guess they want
me to click somewhere. Another couple dizzying screen slides, and I can type.

Ok, let's change the silly title I put in to start with. Up-arrow, up-arrow,
nothing is happening. There seems to be no way to get there from here. Tab,
shift-tab? Nope. Guess I've got to click. But I really appreciated that both
Tab and Return took be back to the text from the title.

Type a bit, looks clean. But not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I'll try
creating a new 'note'. For the first time, open the slider on the left
intentionally. Click 'new note'. Eeeeek! I'm greated with a giant multi-
colored blocker in the middle of the screen. And it's wobbling a few pixels
back and forth at about 2 Hz, making me nauseous.

Escape doesn't work. Back button doesn't work. Must get out of here. Click to
close.

Maybe there is something I can read on the home page that would explain this
better. Wait, the back button still doesn't work? Wait, they've broken reload
as well? Maybe the unlabeled button on the bottom left. No --- that brings the
wiggling nausea back! Fingers reflexively close the whole window with Ctrl-W.

Take deep breaths, write quick first impressions on HN.

I like the simplicity of the overall look. Design is very clean. But I wish
things would't keep happening when I move the mouse, and didn't feel like I
was able to test any of the features before being forced to sign up.

~~~
brunooo
Nate, thanks a lot for the really great feedback.

Will definitely add very brief timeout on the sidebar and investigate where
the Mac/Chrome wobbling is coming from, and also add more autofocus/keyboard
shortcut functions.

------
Veratyr
I've been looking for the perfect note taking application for a while and here
are the things I'd really like that nobody else seems to have in one place (I
understand that these things likely do not coincide with your goals but I
thought I'd put them out there anyway on the offchance you implement them :)
):

\- Strong (technical) security so that the server is a knowledge free
environment (no staff, governments whatever can read my notes). Ideally
through client-side encryption (perhaps the search would grab some tokens and
send them to the server for processing, rather than having the plaintext
document on the server). Perhaps the encryption should be optional and
encrypted notes wouldn't be sent at all? As a non-American, I _really_ don't
like being forced to put my data on American servers where I essentially have
no rights. The alternative to this is having a way to specify that the note
should remain offline (in localstorage or somesuch) and never touch the
server.

\- Ability to take the app offline and have it work mostly the same (without
search of course)/

\- Web clipping (see the Evernote web clipper) with image rehosting

\- Markdown support

\- Desktop client

\- Client side plugins (these make the rest of the above much easier), ideally
written in something like JS or Python.

\- Full-featured API

I really just want something where I can feel like I'm in control. When I use
most services it feels like I'm surrendering something (security, convenience,
privacy, ownership of my data).

~~~
fnbr
Pandoc support would also be fantastic... this would be ideal for taking notes
in comp sci/math courses!

------
gojomo
I suggest that you add a typing-notation which means, 'search this'. Perhaps,
"[supreme court smith maryland]". Then, when the close-bracket triggers the
search, one of the 'pin' options on the results will offer single-click
replacement of the "[*]" with a persistent association to that sticky sidebar-
result.

If different users can plug in different search-backends, many hypertext-
writing domains could be accelerated, including Wikipedia, legal, blogging,
etc. Maybe even you could have an image-suggesting mode for finding quick (and
perhaps liberally-licensed) supporting images?

(I'd add Pinboard/archiving-support as well... so everything pinned gets
snapshot against link rot.)

Your links/refs column is also a bit reminiscent of
[https://gingkoapp.com/](https://gingkoapp.com/) – your two projects can
probably draw inspiration from each other.

Good luck!

~~~
brunooo
Thanks, is also about picking something up again we tried 8 years ago (
[http://techcrunch.com/2006/09/14/systemone-wikis-with-
semant...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/09/14/systemone-wikis-with-semantics-
search-and-ajax/) ), just starting simple this time.

------
RaphiePS
I take almost all of my notes in an outline style, which means lots of bullet
points.

So far, I haven't been able to find a note-taking program that does bullet-
outlines better than Word, and that's a shame.

~~~
alexholehouse
Could not agree more!

I use Evernote, but even there often the bullet points get out of sync and you
have to manually realign everything. Evernote is fantastic, but there are
certain things I don't understand why it lacks (LaTeX support and
superscript/subscript would be another).

~~~
jejune06
Evernote doesn't offer LaTeX support, but does support superscript/subscript.

In the Evernote Mac app, simply go to Format > Style > Superscript or
Subscript.

There are even keyboard shortcuts: ctrl cmd + for superscript ctrl cmd - for
subscript

~~~
alexholehouse
So sub/sup _is_ offered in the Mac version, and on the web, but NOT on the
Windows client. Isn't that crazy!! It's like they're trolling given the CMS
can clearly deal with the idea of sub/sup

------
elag
Yet another notetaking app, What about sync across devices;
security/encryption; lock-in? Only ten notes in the free plan. What does this
offer over notational velocity or Simplenote? This semantic research thing
will have to be shit hot to justify even nine clams a month. What even is the
archive, ffs? Haven't seen any searches. Is Disconnect or adblock+ killing
them? [Update: searches appearing after about 10 mins] At first sight - and
how many apps ever get a second? - this is laughably misjudged. And now I've
noticed it doesn't zoom text reliably in the latest Firefox, trimming the top
or bottom line. To expect to charge for this right now seems a bit bloody
cheeky. And in use:
[http://oi40.tinypic.com/8xn3sy.jpg](http://oi40.tinypic.com/8xn3sy.jpg)

------
Terretta
This is a cool idea and the execution is slick too, but I'd like to know more
about anonymity and privacy of both content and search results.

I'm talking about both the privacy of cloud notes, and of the explicit
searches when terms are selected with the mouse for a narrow search.

People often take notes about things that are private or personal, and this is
explicitly creating a historical association between your thoughts and
(public) web searches on those thoughts.

You normally think of notes as a self-contained thing (even if the container
is in the cloud), while this is broadcasting your note terms to third parties
as you compose them.

I can't find a privacy policy link. So I'd like to know more.

~~~
brunooo
Great line of thinking and very valid arguments, and also the reason we didn't
think of any ad supported model.

Currently we encrypt the notes and store them within appengine, while the
search results are saved/cached as plaintext. No formal privacy policy atm,
but we don't give your notes and neither does one of the third parties (GA as
the content comes after GA, intercom and sentry).

------
DLarsen
I like the idea, but in my brief test drive (before I ran out of searches) I
didn't find much value in the discovered links on the right.

Some samples which illustrate the value of the semantic search would be
helpful. The screenshot shows a virtually empty note with links on the right.
What amount and type of content is best suited to the semantic search?

~~~
brunooo
The semantic search part is pretty limited atm, because we have to build (more
or less guess) entities that form a good Yahoo BOSS query. Thinking about
adding more data sources, whhere we can do basic but full vector space magic.
Signing up gives you 100 more searches, and you can also select
words/sentences/paragraphs to limit the search while playing.

------
bernardom
Although this is really pretty, I'm not sure I get the concept.

Is this a web-based version of Notational Velocity with a sidebar that does a
websearch on certain elements of what I'm writing?

Draftin.com already serves me well as a web-based note-taking thingy, plus
great collaboration tools.

I guess here's the question: what's the use case for the sidebar?

~~~
brunooo
Draftin, iA etc are good when you know what you want to write, but we kept
'quickdump' textfiles on our desktops and the occasional mail to ourselves.

The thinking is really in the details, fast in terms of as few clicks and taps
as possible. Having to click 3 times to open the last google doc or similar
just to paste in an idea or copy something over didn't cut it for us.

------
JoelAnair
This is really cool. The app is beautiful to look at. I find the search
useful, particularly being able to pin results to the document. Highlighting a
word and getting a list of synonyms is great, too.

This fills a niche similar to Microsoft OneNote's, but with the complexity
scaled down admirably. Great job.

------
goshx
I don't get it. It seems like a very basic version of evernote posting
everything that I write somewhere else. I am not comfortable with my text
going to other unknown places.

------
colkassad
I don't know why people are hating the search links on the right. It's a neat
idea. There were many times in school when I had to write a simple paper where
something like Wikipedia sources were acceptable. If it was something I knew
about before hand, I would write a good chunk from memory and then back check
it against Wikipedia and other sources online. This might have been a great
tool for that initial run.

------
timboisvert
Does anyone know of an open-source/forkable alternative that comes close to
matching the functionality here? Not necessarily the searching piece, just the
note management and content editing screens. I've seen a number of them fly by
on HN over the past several months, but didn't capture any of the links.

------
amrnt
I built something like this before: [http://spiktra.com](http://spiktra.com)

------
rattray
some feedback (most of it minor):

\- the text cursor seems oddly tall to me...

\- shift-tab should dedent, not indent

\- the searching google thing.. is weird. I don't get it.

\- not having bullets is =(

\- not having indents maintained on newlines is =(

( notes are often hierarchical)

\- doesn't work offline (can keep typing, but nothing saved). check out
localstorage and appcache.

~~~
brunooo
Thanks! Some browsers render the cursor according to line height. Will ad
shift-tab, the rest would need a proper line based editor, kept it simple for
the first round of feedback. Same unfortunately goes for offline access, where
conflicts are the challenge.

------
hobs
Interesting, I was thinking the semantic search was actually somehow searching
your content and interrelating it and finding patterns. This is pretty cool
too, but imagine a notebook that found the common themes among your own notes.
That would be pretty cool!

------
hansy
Quick little nitpick thing, but how do you scroll within the document? I was
messing around putting a ton of newlines, but I wasn't sure how to get back to
the top of the document without using my keyboard arrow keys.

Beautiful UI by the way. Nice job!

~~~
brunooo
Thanks! And sorry: Which OS/Browser were you using?

~~~
hansy
Firefox 24.0 on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5

------
gafdlo
Can I not share my FB friend list? Otherwise I'd like to extensively try it
out

~~~
brunooo
Sry for the default FB scope, just sign up via mail & password.

~~~
callahad
Have you considered Mozilla Persona instead of passwords? demo:
[http://123done.org](http://123done.org) docs:
[http://developer.mozilla.org/persona](http://developer.mozilla.org/persona)

~~~
sushimako
Yes! We have persona support in a feature-branch, it just didn't get
merged/integrated, yet.

------
zwieback
I like it but wouldn't pay for it. The search sidebar is appealing with the
pin-it icons. Search results were pretty good if a bit generic. Doesn't seem
to be very semantic but still a nice toy.

------
pnathan
(1) who owns this content?

(2) can this be exported?

(3) is this publically searchable?

(4) how is this better than org-mode?

~~~
brunooo
\- You \- Yes (see small cloud icon next to title once you sign up) \- No \-
In the clouds (syncs incl mobile) & less structured

------
tarikozket
The only thing missing is : [https://github.com/daviferreira/medium-
editor](https://github.com/daviferreira/medium-editor)

Good job, well done!

------
msutherl
You could use a filter for "adult" content. The top result for the (non-
pornographic) film list I pasted in was something about "Milf Porn Movies".

~~~
brunooo
Not the biggest fans of text safe search (too many false positives), but
please excuse if anything was insulting.

------
a0
You could create plugins for existing editors like Vim, Emacs or Sublime Text
2. This way the users would feel home but with the semantic search service
helping them.

------
badclient
Good idea!

Nitpick: The _Read More_ section on the right seems a bit of a misfit for a
product that seems to take away distraction. I found it irrelevant and
distracting.

------
JeroenRansijn
Markdown support would be awesome, great interface. Although, the hover to
show the sidebar would be better handled with a click event in my opinion.

------
lelandbatey
I used this in my android, and a big broken part was the lack of ability to
use the back button. Whenever I pressed it, went back to HN.

~~~
brunooo
Hm, is the case on all platforms, nothing is lost though. Which behavior would
you expect?

~~~
lelandbatey
In my case, what bothered me was when I accidentally opened up the various
side bars. Usually on Android, I'd just hit the universal back button to go
back to where I was (text input, not the menu screen). Since pretty much
everything works this way, it's reflex. So it was odd when I hit the back
button and returned to HN.

------
oakaz
It's amazing. I currently use AIWriter and it's not available on web.

Hiro meets all my expectations. Great work. Thanks!

~~~
brunooo
Thanks!

------
Andi
Does not work offline! No choice for me.

------
joelthelion
Where is the search function? A good notetaking app should have awesome note
search.

~~~
brunooo
Wanted to wait for this, currently most usertests show that people use it for
not many, but long documents (ctrl+f works for them in this case). As soon as
the note/user count goes up, we'll think about adding this.

------
volaski
good idea in theory, but the search is "ridiculously" slow. Not to mention the
fact that it doesn't work after the first search. Also, you're using the term
"semantic" wrong.

~~~
brunooo
HN effect, search should be < 500msec normally. It is indeed semantic (POS
tagger & chunker), but as mentioned atm this only tries to build Yahoo BOSS
queries, which can't OR and rank, thus the bit lame results.

~~~
volaski
POS tagger & chunker has nothing to do with search being semantic. Here's the
definition of semantic search:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_search](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_search)

As I said, i think it's a good idea. I just think you should do some due
diligence when using buzz words like "ridiculously fast" or "semantic search".
A lot of people are allergic to buzzwords

~~~
brunooo
After meandering through the Euro SemWeb ecosystem in 2005 i took the
idiosyncratic liberty to include everything that uses semantics (eg POS) in
that bracket. But definitely get the point, ridiculously was the next choice
after "here's your weekly writer app".

------
toblender
This rocks reminds me of NVAlt for mac which I use for note taking locally.

------
xerophtye
Is it just me or is the site down?

------
bhurlow
love it!

------
thenerdfiles
I prefer the phrase: "It's Always Free".

------
terabytest
The home page sounds kind of pretentious, so much so that I'm not even sure I
want to try it.

~~~
terabytest
I said this without thinking. I'm sorry.

