
Ask HN: What do you use to keep track of bookmarks/notes/snippets? - danaw
I’m curious as to the tools or techniques people use to keep track of things like bookmarks, snippets of code or text, etc.?<p>I’ve used a variety of tools (simple browser bookmarks, Pinboard, Evernote, a text file, etc) but have never been very happy with any of the solutions.<p>Anyone have great tools or methods of storing bits of info for later access?<p>I’m thinking something that at a minimum has:<p>- Search<p>- Tagging<p>- Support for different content types (links, text, video embeds, photos, etc)<p>- Also would be nice to have mobile app, browser extension, API, Zappier integration, etc<p>Any suggestions?
======
6510
I found the perfect answer to this question, in a way its comical. __You use a
blog! __Use a blogthis bookmarklet /extension. You select a bit of text on a
web page, click the blogthis button and POOF a wonderful formatted post with a
block quote in an editor comes up. You write your own ramble under it. Add
appropriate tags and/or categories.

If you want to be really meta about it you start blogs about separate topics.
Enable comments if you like but don't make an effort for others. The target
audience is just you. Real traffic is even undesirable since it requires
comment moderation. A private/invitation only blogger blog honestly will do
just fine. Host your own if its not a big deal for you.

Funny notes:

Not a week goes by without an email from someone looking to do SEO on my
bookmarks.

Google search banned one of my blogs one time, probably because it had to many
links or a lot of links to unpopular pages.

I arrived at this formula trying to build an audience for my blogs both high
and low effort postings did nothing. Why should I even care? I find everything
onthere fascinating. The largest one has a ton of people making claims that
seem to good to be true. If it was aimed to create an audience I would have to
endlessly explain to what extend I believe the claims.

[http://blog.go-here.nl](http://blog.go-here.nl)

I even write postings for my own amusement [http://blog.go-
here.nl/8616](http://blog.go-here.nl/8616)

~~~
joleyj
I couldn't find a Chrome extension named "blogthis" or "blog this". Can you
give me a link to that extension? Thanks

~~~
alexweber
WordPress has a bookmarklet called “Press This” which sounds very similar:
[https://wordpress.com/support/press-
this/](https://wordpress.com/support/press-this/)

------
bcrosby95
I use org mode. It's actually why I started using emacs (spacemacs
specifically).

I have a notes folder. Everything goes in there.

I have a raw.org file and a notes/raw directory. This is where I put downloads
(videos/etc) and notes on that content. These notes are unsynthesized but
tagged by content (e.g. dev, python, architecture).

I periodically review recent notes and pull out the especially useful data
into more synthesized files, such as python.org.

I also maintain a couple "log" files, called worklog.org and devlog.org. This
is what I use as a scratchpad for work and personal dev respectively. Each day
gets an entry in the file.

I have an inbox.org file which is where I add a TODO for anything I might want
to do, such as 'read this article in the future'. I don't really move stuff
out of it though - I just mark it as done when I do it. Things get tagged here
too, so if I feel like learning something about elixir, I can just look in
inbox.org for a TODO tagged elixir.

I also have a comprehensive "learn" directory that lives outside my notes
folder. This is where any notes or learning based activities that requires
source files goes. That is organized primarily by tech, then has folders such
as "examples", "basics", and "workbook". Workbook is where I store notes and
code related to going through longer tutorials or books. So for example, I've
been going through elixir recently: I have a folder at
learn/elixir/workbook/getting-started for going through this: [https://elixir-
lang.org/getting-started/introduction.html](https://elixir-lang.org/getting-
started/introduction.html)

I'm not completely happy with how the learn directory works out - it kinda
fragments the structure of my notes. But it's the best way for me I've tried.

~~~
ericax
This. Being plain text is so important.

I don't use org mode because I don't use emacs, but I really like the concept
of organizing your notes and knowledge in plain text, so much that I want to
make my own thing. It's in private beta right now [1], and I've been
dogfooding it for the past two months and really enjoying it.

I especially wanted to have a graph overview of all the links between the
notes. It's also super nice to be able to embed local copies of PDFs, images,
and voice notes, so I know as long as I back up my hard drive, I'll never lose
them.

[1]: [https://obsidian.md/](https://obsidian.md/)

~~~
RMPR
FWIW you can use org mode without emacs
[https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-
mo...](https://opensource.com/article/19/1/productivity-tool-org-mode)

------
kirubakaran
I built [https://histre.com/](https://histre.com/) for this.

It's an "Effortless Knowledge Base".

The idea is that we throw away a lot of the signal we generate while doing
things online and this can be put to good use for ourselves.

Histre aims to help with the whole "knowledge funnel", if you will. It aids
the casual online research we all do (ie the explore -> filter -> decide
loop). For example, it removes friction in taking notes on links you're
looking at, with free-form tags that you don't have to create first and other
such niceties that add up. And it easy to group notes into notebooks and share
with teams. In short, when you have to look at a bunch of links for something
(decide on your next vacation -- after this virus is behind us of course,
people to hire, material for your next blog post, etc) Histre makes your life
easier. But this is just the starting point for what Histre intends to do.

IMHO the biggest problem with apps like Evernote, Notion, Pocket etc is that
it becomes digital hoarding, and not a knowledge base. And the knowledge base
focused apps out there involve a lot of manual upkeep, which almost never
happens, especially at work. Things start out okay and quickly fall into
disrepair. I'm differentiating from the other note taking apps by
automatically putting together a knowledge base (grouped by topic etc).

There is Hacker News integration that you may want to try. It lets you import
and optionally share the stories you upvote.

~~~
DelightOne
How do you fix the never-read again problem?

~~~
kirubakaran
I resurface them when you read similar topics in the future, so that it is
brought up when it is relevant to you again. This is a work in progress.

------
Dowwie
After more than 20 years of bookmarking, I now accept it as irrational
behavior. I don't return to bookmarked and annotated material. Yet, that
doesn't stop me from preparing for the moment that I may.

Maybe I should stop..

~~~
mritchie712
the app I used for meditation wanted you to acknowledge distracting thoughts
head on, then move back to meditation. I'd see this as similar, you
acknowledge it's interesting but don't have time now, bookmark it and move on.
If you didn't acknowledge it, it might nag at you to go back and read it thru
out the day.

~~~
docandrew
That's a nice way to look at it. Like the GP, I almost never return to
bookmarks.

------
superkuh
A flat text file. I will _never_ again use anything proprietary or even non-
human readable. A single text file combined with search does everything. If
you require multimedia then just put the path to where it is on disk as text.

~~~
catalogia
I totally understand avoiding proprietary formats, but why write off non-human
readable formats? I've been using sqlite for things like this. I figure sqlite
is not going anywhere. And in the worst case scenario, if for some reason the
software I use to interact with the sqlite db was no longer tenable, I could
easily dump my data out of it into a text file.

~~~
solarkraft
How is your database structured? One table for everything? Something fancy?
How do you use it?

~~~
catalogia
Nothing too fancy, the skeleton of the schema is basically just:

    
    
        Tags(tag_id, tag_name)
        Files(file_id, file_address)
        FileTags(file_id,tag_id)
    

That's for organizing files using tags. I can organize notes like this by
either putting notes into many text files and tagging them, or by putting
notes directly into the DB with another Notes table. I've prioritized the
former, since many of my "notes" are actually photographs of whiteboards or
other non-text data. Storing textual notes directly in the sqlite database
works well too though.

To interact with the system, I threw together a quick emacs client and a GUI
client. Nothing fancy or pretty yet, but functional enough for my day-to-day
use.

------
allenleein
Here is my flow:

1\. Use Pocket[1] to store anything I want to read it later

2\. Use Reader View extension[2] to store it as a clean PDF file or screenshot
it

3\. Use PDF reader to annotate it.

4\. Save the file to one of my Knowledge-Base folders[3]

5\. Use ripgrep to search it later [4]

\---

[1][https://app.getpocket.com/](https://app.getpocket.com/)

[2][https://add0n.com/chrome-reader-view.html](https://add0n.com/chrome-
reader-view.html)

[3][https://github.com/allenleein/knowledge-
base](https://github.com/allenleein/knowledge-base)

[4][https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-
all](https://github.com/phiresky/ripgrep-all)

~~~
nikisweeting
You can automate some of this with
[https://archivebox.io](https://archivebox.io) if you're interested.

~~~
allenleein
Thank you!Great project!

------
marai2
Hacker News' "favorites" is now my bookmarking service :-) It's like a poor
man's Del.icio.us. (It doesn't checkmark majority of the OP's boxes). But if
your interests align with mine fp, ML, lisp then you may want to check out my
favorites list.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=marai2](https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=marai2)

~~~
weinzierl
I'm the same. I often favourite posts I find noteworthy, useful or I want to
revisit later. It's a pity you can't favourite with a single click from the
list view (e.g. front page) or for comments from the thread view. I think,
especially for comments, the favourite feature is hard to discover and
inconvenient to use. Wish it would be easier so more people would use it
because skimming through other peoples favourites is also an entertaining
pasttime.

~~~
marai2
"pasttime" is a good description. On slow HN days when there is less
interesting content to me on the front page I'll check out my favorites and
then have an "holy cow! I have so many interesting articles I need to catch up
on" moment :-)

What I would really like to do when I have some spare time is write a browser
extension that will randomly inject a few of my favorite links into the HN
frontpage for me so I can passively revisit these posts and discussions I've
saved.

------
satvikpendem
These days, I simply don't. I used to have multiple ways of storing content
but I found that they were write only, as I never went back and read what I
was storing. These days, I simply read the article now or don't bother with
it, rather than procrastinating on reading it.

~~~
oneplane
I have run into the same situation; it doesn't really matter how to write down
'to read' articles if you never actually go back.

I used to drop bookmarks, use a reading list or drag the url to my desktop but
the writing method was never the issue, it's the reading.

------
Groxx
A folder in dropbox, and Pinboard for bookmarks.

I mostly enter plaintext files by date and grep as needed. "tags" == "words in
the file" for me, I make sure to stick a keyword somewhere if I really want to
be able to find it by "tag". Related files go in folders named so they'll be
adjacent to the file that references them. More specifics:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22279802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22279802)

Works on every system, syncs any way I want, and I expect it to still work
decades from now.

Bookmarks tho are currently just in Pinboard (I should fix that), in part
because I _mostly_ don't organize them - I use full-text search with the
archival account. I have a pretty good memory for "I know a thing exists with
this phrase / a couple words, I just don't remember the name", so that covers
the _vast_ majority of my retrieval needs.

------
marcin_ose
I use a wiki. It allows me to find anything that I wrote or published over the
last decade, and I can usually find anything in about 5 seconds. This approach
requires working openly, but is very effective in retrieving anything that I
need to share as I work. Check out my log at
[https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Marcin_Log](https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Marcin_Log)
\- where I have access to the last 3 years on a single page. Thoughts?

------
garyrob
I use OmniOutliner. Before that, existed, waaaaaay back in the early history
of the Macintosh, I used Dave Winer's MORE outliner. So I've been using
outliners for the described purpose for more than 30 years.

Using an outliner has always worked, for me, as well as I could possibly want.
BUT there is one trick I use that makes a huge difference.

I embed keywords into my outlines. I use words starting with underscores (I
started doing this before there were hashtags; now I would use the hash
symbol). So a headline might have a keyword in it, in which case I can
instantaneously find it. On the mac, I can even use Spotlight to
instantaneously find a keyword in whatever outline it may appear in.

Also, for subordinate subjects in subheadings, I embed sub-keywords starting
with *. (The same sub-keyword might appear several times in an outline, under
different main keywords.)

This technique empowers me enormously in saving all kinds of notes, links (to
the web and to on-machine files), etc. and being able to get to any one of
them almost instantaneously, even if I don't remember what outline it's in
(which is rare).

One advantage to using outliners is that there's a common format, OPML, that
most outliners can import and export. So if the product you're using dies over
the decades, you can just switch to another one.

I highly recommend this technique.

------
mntmoss
I don't collect things I "need to get to", if that makes sense. I collect
things I'm willing to spend time curating, which generally means they go in a
file somewhere under a directory called "References". References means music I
like and art I want to study and writing I want to return to. If I want to
have a log of what I was interested in, I privately journal about it(Which I
am happily using Penzu[1] for).

The trick to all personal information management, which recurringly appears in
HN threads on the topic, is to focus on your filters, not your collection. You
collect hastily, in anger; you are not a professional archivist with respect
to your own collection. You will misspell and missort. But it is easy to punch
"Save As" and get it in a file somewhere with a few words to search by. And so
the filter, the post-hoc, is the greater necessity.

Fortunately, when it's in the form of files, you can apply a mix of hierarchy,
tag and search methods. There's software for this. I currently use
TagSpaces[0]. I don't spend a great deal of effort manually tagging, I just
organize a little bit of hierarchy and throw some keywords in the filename.

As well, I expect to lose a little bit of the paper trail at times. Precise
origins and authorship are not always accessible. Redundancies may occur. The
point of the curation is to make a useful product for yourself, one that
accommodates many informational needs - to collect ideas, create a course of
study, or put yourself in a particular mindspace. You have many years to keep
developing it.

[0] [https://www.tagspaces.org/](https://www.tagspaces.org/)

[1] [https://penzu.com/](https://penzu.com/) (Why this and not plaintext? It
has an app, and it auto-syncs.)

------
aasasd
Unless something appeared out of nowhere in the past couple years, I'm pretty
sure only MS' OneNote has most of those features—specifically the variety of
content including web page clipping along with your own notes, and the
multitude of clients. However, I couldn't get past its ‘pinboard’ organization
of stuff in a note, so never really used it.

There's also Turtl that's similar to Evernote—but it uses Markdown for
formatting, so also can't say anything about it.

On my part, I came to prefer my own written notes over clipped content and
media, and IMO an outliner is way better than anything else for organization
of such notes, specifically when keyboard shortcuts are good. Alas the
competition is thin in this space: I used Workflowy for a while, which worked
great for text and shown promise, but was stuck feature-wise after a couple
years. Aside from Workflowy, it's pretty much Org-mode or OmniOutliner. Gotta
say I do miss page-clipping from Evernote, and would be happy to see something
good in this vein for Emacs/Org.

~~~
romdev
I also use OneNote at work for capturing anything worth remembering in a
meeting, and screen grabs from a webex. It captures the text in images and
indexes it for searching later, which I do frequently. I don't mix personal
notes and tasks into this notebook.

For several years I've used Google Tasks for organizing my personal notes
because it's cross platform and works like my brain. I have a small list of
things to do today, that rotates frequently, a well-organized larger "Backlog"
that I pull from after I've emptied the "Today" list. There are other topical
lists like "Music" for notes and tasks that don't usually get flagged as done.
Some bookmarks get into Tasks, if I'm pretty sure I'll use them again. But
mainly I save stories in Newsblur if I think they're worth revisiting.

~~~
aasasd
> _It captures the text in images and indexes it for searching_

Funny thing, that happens to be one of Evernote's selling abilities—I guess MS
is really thorough in replicating the feature set. From seeing the screenshots
and the description for the first time, I knew it's basically ‘MS Evernote’.

------
grumpy8
I use notion as my "inbox stuff". Whenever I see something interesting (book,
article, whatever), I use the chrome extension and send it to that inbox. On
the phone, I can also "share to notion" which sends it to that inbox. Once in
a while, I review that inbox and then prioritize things in other notion pages
or in more actionable items.

It works pretty well. The only big issue is how slow it is to cold start. My
fix is to use google keep on mobile for very quick note (I.e. someone tells me
something), and then I'll manually copy it to inbox later in the day.

~~~
pricci
Notion would be a great tool for me, but the lack of a desktop client for
Linux and a usable client for Android makes it useless.

~~~
input_sh
Their desktop app is just a wrapper. You can "appify" it using Chrome or
Webpin
([https://github.com/artemanufrij/webpin/](https://github.com/artemanufrij/webpin/))
or whatever.

Since I have to use Windows at work, I can guarantee you're not missing
anything by doing that. I just keep it in a pinned tab in Firefox and use
Alt+1 to quickly reach it.

What I am bothered with is the lack of official API which makes it difficult
to auto-populate some stuff.

------
lancesells
I switched to Notion a couple months back and it's been amazing for me. I've
been able to consolidate my notes, my archives, my daily schedule, etc into
one place. They don't have an API and I'm pretty much fine with that. Without
the API I'm much more mindful of what's going into Notion and spending my time
thinking about things instead of automating too many things to be able to keep
up with.

But that's just my use case. I'm sure 99% of their users want an API.

~~~
alfonsodev
would you mind to ellaborate on how do you organise things in notion? I could
use some ideas and inspiration thanks!

~~~
lancesells
I use the PARA method but continually try to refine things. Start here with
Marie Poulin:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebI3zExav2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebI3zExav2c)

All her Notion videos and techniques are worth watching. Also
[https://www.notion.vip](https://www.notion.vip) is a great resource.

------
m-p-3
Joplin [1] to take secure, E2EE notes stored in the cloud and markdown-
formatted.

It also has a web browser addon for taking web snippets, and it even supports
MermaidJS diagrams.

[1]: [https://joplinapp.org](https://joplinapp.org)

~~~
hoistbypetard
I use Joplin too, and like it. I have never heard of MermaidJS before. That
looks really useful. Thanks for sharing it.

The other thing I really like about Joplin is the side-by-side markdown and
formatted view. I've taken saving half-baked blog posts in Joplin until I'm
ready to post them, and it's nice to be able to grab the markdown and dump it
straight into hugo's markdown-ish files.

------
dawnerd
I use wallabag for bookmarks. It’s easy to self host and their browser
extension works well.

[https://wallabag.org/](https://wallabag.org/)

I’m still looking for a good self hosted evernote/onenote style app.

~~~
jinnko
I've been using wallabag for years too and it's worked well for me. I like
that the mobile app downloads the articles for reading offline later and with
minimal distraction.

I'm currently considering using Zotero so I can keep better track of topics
I'm researching so I'm curious to hear more about people's experience with it,
including across devices. For example is there as easy a way to share a URL to
it on Android as there is with wallabag?

For notes I was using Evernote once upon s time then migrated to nvAlt synced
via Nextcloud. On mobile app the notes are available in the Nextcloud app and
editable in any markdown or text editor. Since switching back to Linux I've
been using nvPy.

------
jakub_g
Bookmarks: locally in the browser. Either I use them a lot, or they die
forgotten. Not very good on this.

For code snippets: Gists and StackOverflow. I treat StackOverflow as public
global wiki. The good side of the two is that they are both _very well_
indexed by Google, and it happened several times already I came across my own
gists/stacks from several years ago.

Apart from that, I have a "dotfiles" repo where I have a lot of aliases,
sometimes trivial, sometimes really long complex pipes. Not all of them are
directly usable, but if I remember alias name, I can `type <aliasname>` in
bash and it shows me the command, and I can copy and change it as needed.

Recently, I started using GitHub private repos for tracking random knowledge.
For example, I'm learning about finance and I put random stuff all there
(links, screenshots, quotes, my own analyses) as GitHub issues. The advantage
of this is that I'm always logged in to GitHub anyway on all my devices, so
the friction is lower than any other solution, and I'm less likely to forget
"where did I have this stuff"; plus it's the same markdown syntax I use
everyday, and CTRL-V works for pasting images.

I also started using GH issues for some complex personal tasks, say, I need to
do some lengthy paperwork for government which consists of N things. The
possibility to put screenshost, links, checklists all together is pretty nice
(I don't put any personal info there).

It's a bit weird to use GH so much, but out of my laziness and pragmatism,
this works best for me.

One more place I use: Twitter. There's in general too much stuff I read
everyday to not forget about most of them (even if I bookmark), but somehow
the fact of tweeting about something makes me remember it more.

------
henriquemaia
I'm an academic. As such, I got used to work with Zotero [1], first as a
simple reference manager, but over time as a more robust platform to keep
track "of things like bookmarks, snippets of code or text", and even
associated files.

The why: Zotero is open source, respects privacy, and it allows you to keep a
local repository of your things, disconnected from its cloud. And yeah, it
also offers you a cloud storage solution if you need it. Plus, I love how it
ingrates so seamlessly with my browsing experience.

The how: Zotero works like a three stage tool.

The first stage concerns its browser connector, the plugin that lets you store
the references you want to keep. You can think of bookmarks as references too.

The second stage corresponds to the when the work within Zotero itself. Here
is where you add your notes, snippets, crosslimks, tags, etc. Since it's your
references database, you should invest some time to find a good workflow as to
find in the future whatever you need in as little steps possible. It's worth
the effort to get used to Zotero's possibilities (you can even manipulate its
database directly through sql commands if you're into it).

The third stage is the integration tool that works with your text processor.
This step mostly applies to writers only, the folks who really need to keep
close attention between what they say and where they took it from. This is
where Zotero shines, for it allows you to keep a close tie between the things
you actually quote on your text and the works/data you reference in its
appropriate section.

In any case, what starts as a simple reference manager can, with some
imagination, become a very elegant solution to gather bookmarks, notes,
snippets, etc in just one place.

[1] [https://www.zotero.org/](https://www.zotero.org/)

------
haasted
I use [https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in) for bookmarks. Tag the URL
with the search terms I would have used if I were to find it again using
google.

Having one of the mobile apps that support pinboard is also an essential part
of my workflow.

I use Google Keep for more general life stuff, general notes I need to
remember when people tell me and even shopping lists.

For development and work notes, I rely on the desktop version of
[https://boostnote.io/](https://boostnote.io/).

~~~
hartzell
+1 for pinboard!

------
kontxt
I'm the founder of [https://kontxt.io](https://kontxt.io) and I initially
built it as a solution to effectively save and share information in context.
You can save links, clone websites, convert PDFs (and most other documents
since they can be converted to PDFs) to websites that's enhanced with a real-
time collaboration & note taking layer. Tag everything from documents to page
parts. Organize with folders. Share documents and folders with google doc like
share permissions. You can upload URLs and documents directly, use the chrome
extension, or even add the collaborative features to your own sites.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I'll be adding search soon, a
public feed like Twitter for discovery, and a way to extract and use
highlights across documents. If you try it out, like it, and want to start
using it, I'll add basic search across titles and tags for you this week.

------
apexkid
Google keep.

I make one keep for each of my projects whether it is professional or
personal. Even for daily tasks like shopping and keeping track of payments i
make keep. I color code them according to category and have it as a chrome app
and mobile app.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
What scares me with Keep is that there is no access to the notes beside the
app.

I am a GSuite user so it would be nicely integrated with my workflow but I am
afraid they will close it someday and I will lose them.

Their refusal to add an API is weird as well.

~~~
xearl
You can download all your Keep notes via Google Takeout.

And there's an unofficial Python API, that works well and is actively
maintained:
[https://github.com/kiwiz/gkeepapi](https://github.com/kiwiz/gkeepapi)

------
parpalo
Since 2012 and still happy with the following.

1) Permanent storage: Big flat text file.

2) Fleeting notes: Whatever. If it's good enough (maybe 5-10% of these notes)
I'll make the effort to copy it to permanent storage from slips of paper,
email, simplenote etc. Most of the time, second glance on the fleeting note
reveals it is not worth it and the note can be tossed (rewarding!). They are
important, though, because you need the second glance to know.

I used to stress text files not being "mobile friendly". These days I prefer
not to make permanent notes on mobile. But you can view them easily, they're
just text.

As for local multimedia, I just mention in the text file that I have an image
or video stored somewhere. If I need it, I can find it. Too much hassle making
permanent filesystem URL:s or anything like that.

Max gain with minimum effort. Plus, I LOVE tossing useless fleeting notes.

~~~
manspeterson
May I ask, how you organize your one big text file?

~~~
parpalo
It's been around for quite some time and is not internally coherent, but it is
optimized for search.

I always have Title and formatted date (2020-04-04) and then some text for the
note. I make effort to include keywords as part of my notes, not formal
hashtags. Sometimes I just add new notes to the end, sometimes I make the
effort to put a new note in the middle of the file next to related note. Bit
of a mess, but works with search.

------
AdrianoKF
I mostly use QOwnNotes ([https://QOwnNotes.org](https://QOwnNotes.org)) for
Markdown-based note taking, synced to my private Nexzcloud instance. If it
ever goes away, I'll still have the plain markdown files plus metadata in a
SQLite database.

For bookmarks and long-reads I've mostly made the transition from Pocket to
Zotero ([https://www.zotero.org](https://www.zotero.org)), originally intended
for literature management. One feature I wish it had is support for more
complex semantic relationships between items to be able to create a more
comprehensive knowledge graph (e.g., A _cites_ B, X _is related work to_ Y, a
URL _is the implementation_ of an abstract algorithm in a research paper).
Anybody know of a suitable plugin maybe?

~~~
dethos
I also use QOwnNotes to take and manage my notes and I've been looking for a
solution to store and organize bookmarks for some time, never thought that
Zotero would be a good fit for that.

Could you share, based on your experience, what are the good parts of Zotero
for this use case and where it falls short?

~~~
AdrianoKF
Sorry, I missed your reply..

Here's my workflow in a nutshell: I use the Zotero browser extension to add
items to Zotero, the extension takes care to automatically attach a snapshot
of the web page or paper to the newly created entry in Zotero. For academic
papers or blog posts, I'll try and extract additional web links (e.g. Github
repos) and add those to the entry as well. Within Zotero I have a nested
structure of collections/folders to roughly structure the entries by type
(papers, blog posts, reports, books, ...).

I make liberal use of tags to classify the content and keep track of my
reading status (Reading List and Read), for which I have saved searches in
Zotoro, so I can easily find something to read, whenever I have a bit of time.

For academic papers that I've read in-depth, I'll extract the most relevant
references and add them to the library as well and cross-reference them using
the "Related" feature. This feature is what I was mentioning in my original
post - it only allows for a single generic "related" association between
entries. If I could customize the type of relation, I could model almost
arbitrary knowledge graphs here.

~~~
dethos
Thanks for the explanation.

------
arthurofbabylon
Not exactly an answer to the question, but thoughts inspired by it and in
service of it...

It's in vogue right now to have one tool "do it all," but I disagree with this
approach. 1\. It is driven by business economics and not an improved user
experience. 2\. Simple/focused tools are better suited to particular jobs,
while larger encapsulated toolsets devolve to serve the denominator. 3\.
Reliance on a single behemoth is a fragile position that makes change
burdensome.

So – multiple tools, each optimized for a specific function, is the way to go!

------
rwnspace
Obligatory mention of emacs+org. I've tried everything and anything, and it
seems to be a common pattern that people with a streak of perfectionism go
through a long journey of dissatisfaction with tools, a journey which seems to
settle in emacs+org-mode for many.

I really, really like the combination of Joplin, the Joplin extension and
Pocket. The export tools offered by the Joplin extension combine well with the
readability processing/formatting that Pocket applies. You can save a
markdown-version, save URLs only, the complete HTML of a page, or just some
text you've selected.

I have some boilerplate HTML that adds spoilers and a couple other bits to
make my rendered notes look nicer and help me study, along with a couple of
templates for embedding YouTube videos, Spotify and Github Gists. Most of this
is on the Joplin forums, I encourage you to take a look if that sounds
appealing to you.

There's a mobile app, and Joplin exposes a REST API the extension uses - I
have a few hacky scripts to help me use Joplin as a CMS for a website (still a
messy WIP, might show this & the templates to HN soon).

I'm exploring Emacs & Org-mode right now since it pairs well with Haskell,
which I'm learning during this whole lockdown thing - even with all my Joplin-
based stuff I can see why people accept the trade-offs and buy into it
completely. Now might be a good time to try emacs+org out, for those lucky
ones just riding lockdown out at home.

------
8589934591
Orgmode from emacs. It is a text file, has tags, can embed photos (not sure
about video). I think mobile app orgzly is there iirc.

Previously I have used textfiles for everything. Then I moved to vimwiki. Now
I am currently using orgmode which I find amazing and versatile.

~~~
d0mine
Features I find useful in this context

\- ace-link is great for opening visible links in a couple of keystrokes

\- org-store-link for linking arbitrary places in various (possibly remote)
files inside emacs

\- org-agenda to generate various hierarchical/tags/other criteria views

\- counsel-grep-or-swiper (with ripgrep) works well even for several years
worth of notes without the need for explicit indexing

\- org-attach manages attachements such as pdf files (copy/open/sync/etc) pdf-
tools with a hydra enables convient reading, search of the files in emacs

\- Org Babel for cleaning, querying data (among other things). Inline images
work e.g., generated by emacs-jupyter

\- OrgMobile for agenda views, pushing notes from mobile

------
yokto
For links, Raindrop.io has imho the best combo of features and nice UI. I've
been a happy premium user for years. It has: \- tags \- collection &
subcollections \- search (includes metadata extraction) \- a really good and
fast UI \- a generous free tier \- browser extensions + mobile apps

It has nice extras like \- keep private archives of webpages \- warn you about
broken links \- ...

Alternatively I use Are.na for a lot of visual/conceptual/design stuff.

~~~
yokto
Oh and since you requested it, Raindrop.io does have an API!

------
ivan_ah
I use a low-effort approach based on the OneTab plugin, which doesn't involve
tagging or categorizing in any way—just archival. See
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
CA/firefox/addon/onetab/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
CA/firefox/addon/onetab/) or
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?hl=en)

Basically, when you end up with 15+ open tabs at the end of the day and all of
them were kind-of-relevant to your quest, but you don't have time to read them
right now, just click the onetab button and they get put away for checking
later.

I say to myself one day I will come back to this archive and organize/tag it
properly but that day hasn't come yet ;) In the meantime the onetab list is
very helpful for ad-hoc searches using CTRL+F (e.g. what was that blog post
that explained X that I was reading last month?)

OneTab also has a "share as webpage" for sharing a "bundle" of research links.

~~~
danaw
I use OneTab too in the same way. I guess the part that is missing for me is
that it is only for links and that the content just disappears and I end up
with a huge backlog. It is a cool tool tho!

------
walterbell
DevonThink native apps on Mac, iPhone and iPad. Includes markdown notes, web
scraper, full text search, per-group client side encryption, cross-device sync
via self-hosted webdav or public cloud services. They have been around for
many years, indie devs in Germany, quick response to support emails.

[https://www.devontechnologies.com/](https://www.devontechnologies.com/)

~~~
jesterson
This. Been trying different tools to arrange my data until found devonthink
one day.

------
bemmu
For web links I just don't store them anywhere. If I want to go back to
something, I either google for it again or possibly search my browser history.

For random thoughts I have a flat text file (4MB currently) to which I just
append. I rarely read my past stuff though, but sometimes it's valuable to
grep for something I need to recall. There's also something liberating about
clearing up your mind by writing stuff that's on your mind down somewhere,
freeing up headspace for other things.

For project-related things, and taking notes of book quotes, new words I've
encountered etc. I use the app Things. But here again I'm very poor at
actually following up on the things I add to it. For some stuff I've added
reminders since it has such a feature, but I'm usually just annoyed with my
past self for reminding me of something when there's always something more
important occupying my time that comes up later.

~~~
rntksi
Same here. The use of the note files is for me to grep back at it after a
while and I remember something useful but cannot quite recall.

Are you bemmu that runs candyjapan by the way? Love it. Used to get boxes from
you. Was always fun to guess what would come next. I see lots of other places
doing the same business model now, but I still think you're the best.

~~~
bemmu
Thank you for the nice comment. Means a lot to me since I just had to pause it
because of the coronavirus, hope to restart again after a while.

------
blumomo
Apple users may want to check the note taking, hierarchical tagging, page
scraping and very hacker friendly iOS and macOS app Bear:
[https://bear.app](https://bear.app). I'm a paying customer but there's also a
free version.

~~~
j-conn
Mind sharing what features in particular make it hacker friendly? By page
scraping, do you mean how it fetches the page title when you paste a link, or
have I been missing out on some awesome advanced feature?

~~~
blumomo
For me 3 things make it hacker friendly:

* it uses a markdown like syntax

* all syntactic characters (bold, italic, headline, tags, ...) are always displayed and not converted to rich text format (such as Slack does) while still applying the visual formatting. Like in a code editor, I see all characters which I type

* its underlying SQLite database is documented so that you can integrate/automate to your desire: [https://bear.app/faq/Where%20are%20Bear's%20notes%20located/](https://bear.app/faq/Where%20are%20Bear's%20notes%20located/)

~~~
j-conn
Very cool, thanks for elaborating! Looks like that alpha has an improved
(github flavored) markdown implementation too

------
pling87
Diigo has been my go-to ever since delicio.us folded. You can add any number
of tags to each link, and the tags are easily searchable. The interface is not
cluttered by enormous graphics, so you can view a large number of items on
each page. The browser plugin and mobile app are also rock solid.

Whenever I want to save a article for reading, I add the tag "readqueue", and
next time I want to read something interesting, I just search for that tag.
When I finish the article, I change the tag to "readDONEqueue". I also have a
"watchqueue" for videos.

I use it so much that I even signed up for the paid plan - it's been
incredibly useful and has saved me from bookmark hell these past five years.

------
Torwald
The apps/tools you use are not that important. The task of keeping a bunch of
notes is technically trivial at this point, hence the myriad of note taking
apps…

The important thing are the principles you use, your method of how you deal
with that information.

Several posters here wrote that they never came back to their notes/bookemarks
etc. They used all kinds of tools.

But how do you order and sort your notes in such a manner that you want to
come back to them?

This is a good example: [https://shime.sh/how-i-apply-zettelkasten-to-
roam](https://shime.sh/how-i-apply-zettelkasten-to-roam)

------
swah
Trying [http://roamresearch.com/](http://roamresearch.com/) nowadays. I'm
thinking of moving to-dos somewhere else now, though. Maybe into Notion or
Trello.

~~~
klysm
Microsoft Todo (previously wunderlust) has been great for me - I use it
alongside roam as to-do in roam is awkward.

------
Tade0
I have a text file in Notepad - not even kidding.

For bookmarks I use whatever bookmark solution my browser provides.

My take is that it's rarely about the tool really and more about describing
whatever you have there properly.

------
nicbou
Currently, I use Microsoft ToDo for lists, Google Keep for text notes, and
occasionally [Markdown
Notes]([http://markdownnotes.com/](http://markdownnotes.com/)).

I've been toying with the idea of rolling my own option for years now. These
apps are fairly simple, and being able to manipulate and combine the data as I
see fit would be really useful. However, I also need to access my todo list
and notes from anywhere, on or offline, across multiple platforms.

------
klysm
I use hypothesis ([https://web.hypothes.is/](https://web.hypothes.is/)) to
annotate/bookmark/comment anything on the web. It has a well documented api so
you might be able to squeeze some other features out of it quite easily. The
only issue I have with it right now is that it doesn't archive pages. I've
been looking into ways to integrate existing page snapshotting tools with it
but haven't settled on anything yet.

------
kqr2
[http://strlen.com/treesheets/](http://strlen.com/treesheets/)

 _Open Source Free Form Data Organizer (Hierarchical Spreadsheet)_

------
9wzYQbTYsAIc
Wiki.js is what I’m currently trying out as a way to manually capture things,
but I use a combination of Diigo and Opera’s My Flow as my normal go-to.

I’ve been developing some thoughts around rolling my own database wrapped with
a service api to be used by a custom application that pulls my data down from
Diigo or Pocket, etc. and then stores it locally. It’d be nice to then build
out wiki pages in some way from the local database.

In short, still haven’t found anything that meets all of your bullet points.

------
bharani_m
I run a minimal email-based bookmarking service called EmailThis.me [1].

EmailThis removes ads, distractions, and clutter from web pages and sends you
a nicely formatted email with just the text and essential images. It also
gives you the option to save a full PDF snapshot of each web page which is
then sent as the email attachment.

It is meant to be a simpler alternative to tools like Pocket, Instapaper, and
Evernote.

[1] [https://www.emailthis.me](https://www.emailthis.me)

------
rkallos
I used to use Emacs and Org Mode, but, like many other commenters here, I
noticed that I never went back and reviewed my notes.

Now I'm experimenting with TiddlyWiki, and I've been having a lot of fun with
it. With a small modification, I made it so that tiddlers/pages displayed a
list of all other tiddlers/pages that backlink to them. This made it very easy
to start connecting ideas together, which is something I never succeeded at
with my notes in Org files.

~~~
dmortin
[https://github.com/codecoll/org-backlink](https://github.com/codecoll/org-
backlink)

------
nickjj
I use plain text notes for everything. Have been since 2001.

A while back I open sourced a script that helps me easily create them in a few
different ways without leaving the terminal:
[https://github.com/nickjj/notes](https://github.com/nickjj/notes)

Then I let grep and friends handle the problem of searching as needed.

I don't really worry about things like photos because I treat photos
differently than notes or text snippets.

~~~
petilon
How do you access your Work notes from home, or Home notes from work?

~~~
nickjj
Since it's just a bunch of month dated text files you can easily sync them
using github, dropbox, google drive or whatever file sharing service you
prefer.

------
JoshTriplett
For bookmarks, I've been quite happy with a combination of Firefox's built-in
bookmarks and Firefox Sync. That gets my bookmarks to all my devices, and then
Firefox can search URLs and titles and tags directly from the address bar. I
add tags to bookmarks if I think I might want to find them later by a keyword
that doesn't appear the title or URL; a strong hint for that is if I used
those keywords to find that page to begin with.

------
fastball
I'm building a personal content app[1] which has a primary goal of providing
lots of flexibility in how you take notes / store your content, but then when
you need (or want) to, allows you to very easily share that content with
others. The major difference of the platform is that you take notes in the
form of "cards" rather than documents, which makes everything a bit more
portable and easy to share / structure.

Flexibility is provided by having three different ways to structure your
notes:

\- graph hierarchy: cards nest inside of each other instead of using any kind
of "folder" system, and children can have multiple parents.

\- hyperlinked graph (notes are markdown, and you can easily make links to
other notes in the body of your notes)

\- flat structure using tags

Of course, you can mix-and-match those systems as much as you want.

And then sharing (which is still quite nascent at the moment, but kinda works)
is somewhat complex given the level of control we wanted to give users over
how they share, but the gist is – you can share any card with anyone, or
"publish" a card under a parent that you share with someone else, and they
will automatically be given access to that card.

I'd really love to hear any feedback people from the HN community have. I
realize that many in the HN community are very privacy focused and so would
never use a proprietary / online system for their notes, but I think we
provide enough value to make it worth it for even some hardcore privacy
lovers.

[1] [https://supernotes.app](https://supernotes.app)

------
kanakiyajay
I have been using Twitter as a bookmark system since the past 10 years, it
works great - you can search, tag (#hashtag) as well as supports different
content

You can even download all your tweets and there are hundreds of twitter apps
and tools around it.

Additional benefit is additional followers, cloud sync and it's simplicity

Do have a look at my account
[http://twitter.com/@techiejayk](http://twitter.com/@techiejayk)

~~~
fzaninotto
I'm doing the same. Works perfectly.

------
geniium
That is a very interesting topic. I have not yet found the perfect solution.

Currently I am using a mix of Pocket, Notion, start.me, and sharing instantly
bookmarks between my different devices.

I use Notion for serious notetaking, almost project management stuff that I
want to keep track of in a structured manner.

I have started to use start.me as my new homepage on every devices. What I
really like about it is the ability to add quickly any bookmarks in it, I
still access it from all my devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptop or
desktop computer.

My ultimate goal would be to have everything in a single tool, but this seems
really complicated today. Either the tool doesn’t have the functionality, is
not fast enough or cross platform enough.

I have always favored to minimize the amount of different tools to use for
that.

I am still very surprised that there is no standard tool to annotate web sites
easily. It should be something much more natural that we should all be able to
do, directly in the browser.

Everyone is talking about the JavaScript package fatigue, but we should start
to talk about the application fatigue. There are so much different
applications available, it’s really hard to make choices. And stick to them on
the long run.

Looking forward reading your inputs!

------
ashildr
(DevonThink
Pro)[[https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink](https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink)],
on Mac, iPad and iPhone, with a Scanscnap Scanner. It’s the bees knees.

I’ve been living in it for many years now, it contains every document,
snippet, Video, etc. In multiple Databases, synced over a WebDAV.

------
Kovah
I use flat files written in Markdown for various notes. On my Mac I use
Ulysses for editing, on my Android phone it's Markor.

For bookmarks and long term URL storage there is my open source tool LinkAce:
[https://www.linkace.org/](https://www.linkace.org/) I built this tool because
there were no tool that I actually liked.

------
dhosek
I use instapaper to store any articles I want to read later and I periodically
open it up on my iPad to read things I've saved.

I have evernote notebooks for storing research notes plus occasional phone
pics of book pages when I'm reading things on paper. Sometimes I even remember
what on the two-page spread it was that interested me when I go back over
those pictures.

------
cygned
I was thinking about writing an email based platform for that. Idea being, you
can send an email with whatever content to an unique email address and some
time in the future, e.g. determined by a phrase in the subject, it is sent
back to you. With that, I would manage articles to read, have a way to quickly
note ideas and so forth.

Haven’t had the time to write it, though.

~~~
mewfree
You're describing
[https://www.followupthen.com/](https://www.followupthen.com/) pretty closely.

------
lobo_tuerto
I use a simple git repository and Markdown files.

From there it's easy to convert those into a blog post if needed using a
static site generator.

~~~
lobo_tuerto
As for editing the files, VSCode + markdownlint extension covers the
authoring, file handling and searching.

------
nikivi
For bookmarks I use a wiki:

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge)

For snippets I use wiki too although a different one:

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/code](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/code)

------
danaw
Wow, walked away for a few hours and such activity, LOVE IT! Thanks for all
the response, now to try everything out ;)

------
capdeck
Self-hosted instance of Shaarli - it is simple, fast and reliable:

[https://github.com/shaarli/Shaarli](https://github.com/shaarli/Shaarli)

You can't embed videos, on mobile the web version works well. Has simple
browser extensions and a terminal client. I.e. works everywhere.

------
j45
Diigo. It just works. Has plugins and mobile apps, as well as an outline
building tool for research. One of the few tools I started paying for before
the trial was over. They also have a free plan.

I don't remember bookmarks, we remember sentences, phrases, or images, so why
not just grab those?

My rule is if I'm reading something that I'm not instantly applying, I might
as well keyword it and highlight anything that I might want to remember.

The results? It is super handy to have a search engine to quickly look up
something.

Creating your own tags in a way you remember, also can be really helpful.

There's no reason other tools couldn't accomplish the same, but I've been
using Diigo for over 10y without too much issue.

Happy to look at other alternatives.

------
brnt
I use a directory structered with a wiki Dir, log Dir, a few others, in which
markdown formatted notes are saved, as well as any other kind of file I want
to save. You can use many tools to browse a filetree of markdown files, I use
QOwnNotes on the desktop and Markor on Android. The Dir is synced, I use
Resilio but many tools would do the job. This way I have a privately 'hosted'
'system' which is quite flexible in term of software and longevity; so many
tools exist and are bound to exist to interoperate with this I do not worry
about lockin or things like that. Been using this setup in various forms for
nearly a decade, and I think at least a decade more.

------
kaugesaar
I've setup a Telegram channel with only myself in it. Works great a cross all
my devices.

------
gatleon
i use devonthink.

i keep a www group (~folder) and add web archives and bookmarks to it. it's
become a local internet for me.

i first search there for anything i found useful or interesting in the past.
that cuts out a lot of the noise i see on google. if i can't find it in
devonthink, then i visit google.

i also use devonthink with iawriter to store notes and loose thoughts, but i
keep those in a separate group. [2]

[1]
[https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink](https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink)
[2] [https://ia.net/writer](https://ia.net/writer)

------
darekkay
OneNote for private notes. GitHub repositories for public notes. My own tool,
Static Marks [1], for bookmarks.

[1] [https://darekkay.com/static-marks/](https://darekkay.com/static-marks/)

------
b215826
I use plain text files for notes that don't require major formatting and
figures (e.g., notes on programming, sysadmin, food recipes, etc.). To find
something later, I simply grep -iR <word> inside the notes directory.

I also make notes involving equations and figures, and for that I first make
draft versions of the notes on letter-sized unruled paper using a fountain
pen, and then LaTeX them up when I think that they're worth typing up. I
almost never LaTeX notes without making draft notes first. Sometimes I also
use my office's scanner to scan my handwritten notes.

I also have a Pinboard account for bookmarks.

------
INTPenis
I use a combo of Google Keep, Taskwarrior, Firefox bookmarks, my blog and my
mastodon account.

And of course I use features like Gitlab/Github stars.

It's just then a matter of remembering what you're looking for to know where
to look.

------
didip
after surviving so many bookmarking apps, including my own and delicious, I
gave up and resort to simply emailing myself the link.

That approach is pretty effective so far. I can tag by adding whatever phrases
I want in the email.

~~~
DenisM
I do this, and sometimes I also copy the entire text of the article to
simplify search in gmail.

------
eugenekolo
I tried things with bells and whistles such as tagging, and embedding content
and honestly it ended up just distracting me / creating more work for me to
do. I found myself fighting with stylization, yak shaving small things when
all I wanted was to jot down a link or idea.

I've now reverted back to just a flat files that I attempt to use markdown in.
My home directory has a folder named Notes, that contains these NOTES.md and
such. Write it in whatever text editor you want, but I mostly use Sublime
Text. Email myself bits and pieces to transfer the data between devices.

------
rkuzsma
I recently found Checkvist for note taking. The progressive web app is really
fast to load. The best part is extensive keyboard shortcuts for everything.
Prior to finding Checkvist, I used text files for years.

------
blaydator
I am simply using emails. I have dished out every notes apps, emails are great
to store memos / notes / reminders / posts... You can search them easily, tag
them, filter them. And I do not depend on another third party, well only on my
email provider. Also you are sure to come back to your bookmark as it land to
your inbox, it doesn't die in an app you will never open. I have build a
simple iOS and Android app to send links, images, notes, reminders in one tap
by email, you simply register your email once and you re done.
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/boomerang-email-
myself/id11544...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/boomerang-email-
myself/id1154427984)
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.boomerang....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.boomerang.app&hl=en)

------
robk
I like omni focus. It's got a good web app which has a sharing extension in
ios so I can easily share links to it and tag them. Search is great and the
Mac app seems nice. Web client fine for pc.

------
jspaetzel
Standard Notes. Simple, encrypted, open source, and has nice consistent apps
on every platform.

[https://standardnotes.org/](https://standardnotes.org/)

~~~
jspaetzel
I also use Google keep and google reminders when I need a reminder. Mainly
because of the Google calendar integration which is great.

------
RMPR
A folder with all my org files, under version control and kept in sync with my
mobile device using syncthing I couldn't find better for me, I even keep track
of my expenses...

------
whiskeymikey
I made a Hugo theme based off of the HN design for a link aggregation site
[https://github.com/spaghettiwews/hugonews](https://github.com/spaghettiwews/hugonews).
It's a bit ridiculous in that you have to use Git and CI/CD to update it, but
it was fun to do and I actually use it here:
[https://bookmarks.wews.co/](https://bookmarks.wews.co/)

------
flowerlad
Highly recommend Circles for this purpose:
[https://circles.app/](https://circles.app/)

You can store random links, notes, check lists, todos, and so on, and
optionally share it with others as well.

Notes are plain text so no proprietary formats, and you can download all your
notes as a zip file.

Like other commentators I used to use plain text files on local disk but the
limitation of that approach is that it is only available on one machine.

------
arthurofbabylon
I love the tool I built, www.minimal.app, for exactly this. Among notes apps,
it more closely resembles a real notebook (simple yet powerful).

The big differentiator is the Note Lifetime: after a week or so, unedited and
unpinned notes "die" or get archived, keeping the notes list current/relevant.

It doesn't have every feature (by intention), so it's best used in conjunction
with other tools. It's not an entire desk – just a notebook.

------
Poems
I use jrnl ([https://jrnl.sh](https://jrnl.sh)). I have a bookmarks journal
called "bm", so I can add a new entry with notes by entering `jrnl bm` in my
shell.

It supports tagging and searching, stores everything in plain text, has
optional encryption, and is FOSS. I've tried a lot of the solutions in this
thread and so far jrnl has been the "just right" solution for me.

------
eterps
I use diigo.com , mainly because of its ability to highlight content on any
web page. But it offers support for tagged bookmarks, notes and snippets as
well.

------
jccalhoun
I use pinboard for bookmarks. I put tons of tags on each link so I can look at
them later.

For work related notes I use Onenote and put To-Do things on my google
calendar

------
harrisonjackson
Pocket Extension (iOS Sharing and Mac/Chrome) --> Zapier --> Slack and
Airtable

Slack for searching through the most recent ones easily. I am already in there
so it is a good ephemeral location for something I may want to revisit in the
past week. I've got a channel specifically for link sharing so even though it
is noisy it is easy to hop in and out or mute.

Airtable for long term storage and periodic curated link-sharing.

------
nikisweeting
Here are a few notable solutions that I haven't seen mentioned yet:

\- [https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)

\- [https://www.zotero.org/](https://www.zotero.org/)

\- [https://archivebox.io/](https://archivebox.io/) (+
Pocket/Pinboard/bookmarks for aggregation)

------
ncfausti
I just use a single spreadsheet on Google Sheets. This is mostly for
ideas/things I want to explore with three columns:

Name, Description, Notes

It's been working well so far.

------
faitswulff
I use Firefox's Email Tabs [0] add-on to send full articles, sometimes
multiple at a time, to my gmail address. That makes them searchable and
archived should they ever go down.

[0]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/email-
tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/email-tabs/)

------
etage3
I only ever look for old links in my mailbox (I either save them or send them
to someone). So I use the Linkdrop add-on : one click, and it sends a daily
e-mail with the links. Everything ends up being centralized and searchable in
my mailbox, I'm happy with it.
[https://www.linkdrop.co/home](https://www.linkdrop.co/home)

------
vic20forever
Firefox bookmarks became much more useful to me when I started using its
tagging feature. Combined with the ability to sort search results by last
visited date, it gives me a complete picture of my past work on a topic at a
glance.

For everything else, I'm still relying on OneNote 2016 (not the modern
version), but only because I haven't yet found a suitable replacement.

------
severak_cz
For bookmarks I use my own webapp called Kyselo, which I also use for writing
my diary. See
[https://github.com/severak/kyselo](https://github.com/severak/kyselo)

It has simple Wordpress-like tagcloud. Fulltext search is currently not
implemented at frontend, but I have adminer instance on it and I can search in
it.

------
peytoncasper
I'll speak for Bookmarks and Notes.

Agenda has a date focused format for Notes which is great for keeping track
notes over time. Combining that with the different categories and sections
allows me to easily separate out by subject/project.

Also, they have apps for Mac/iPad/iOS which is great.

[https://agenda.com/](https://agenda.com/)

------
roshni_h
Quiver from Happen Apps : Best Notebook so far . It does have some minor
hiccups, but overall the best app to replace all of the above tools if you can
learn how to organize the content . Its note taking app , and it does that job
super well . Other fluff like cloud sync .. multi level note taking is
something you have to deal with ..

------
ernsheong
Hi there, maker of PageDash here,
[https://www.pagedash.com/](https://www.pagedash.com/)

PageDash works like Evernote Web Clipper but it basically archives the entire
page as HTML and associated resources (without distortions, ahem). We have
search and tagging support as a premium feature. 30MB free monthly uploads!

~~~
x0x0
Hi Jonathan,

Does PageDash allow repeated snapshotting of the same page over time? My use
case is I monitor competitors pages / product features / marketing.

Cheers.

~~~
ernsheong
Hi there, unfortunately no. But I believe I've seen this feature in other
products in specialize in this. A quick google revealed
[https://visualping.io/](https://visualping.io/)

~~~
x0x0
ty!

------
in9
I attentively following this thread. I currently use pocket to save online
articles, but the service feels unreliable, since I'm unable to find some
articles that I have read through them a few years ago.

However, there is a constant feeling in this thread that the saving an article
(or something) and never going after it again is a problem. Why is that?

------
cborenstein
Bytebase (I'm one of the creators) is built for keeping track of notes and
snippets on your own or with your team.

Everything you create is one short snippet or "byte" and these snippets can be
grouped into different "collections" using tags.

Would love any feedback.

[https://bytebase.io](https://bytebase.io)

~~~
UweSchmidt
Nice aesthetics.

I wouldn't want to upload my notes and snippets to your website unencrypted.

------
axegon_
OK, here it goes:

* Bookmarks - as a Chrome user, I'm signed in and I'm syncing my bookmarks. I suppose the fact that I'm annoyingly pedantic kind of helps it because my bookmarks menu is as organized as it can get: [https://i.imgur.com/3XwO5rU.png](https://i.imgur.com/3XwO5rU.png) With this in mind, searching, tagging and so on is a non-issue.

* Notes - that kind of depends. If it's something on the go, Keep does it for me.

* For large data, I'm using a bucket where I just shove everything there, cron for certain folders on all my computers, rsync and that's that. Much like the first point, my pedantic nature takes care of searching and tagging.

* For personal data it's a cloud storage but the sync is custom built(linux and android): encrypts everything with and syncs it. And a small computer at home which pulls everything and keeps it locally(still encrypted, key is kept away and I pull it out only if I need to). That is the part which is largely unorganized but I only keep personal documents there so it's 40-50mb of encrypted data so not a big deal if I need to find something.

* Snippets - github/gitlab, whichever is more accessible at the moment.

------
zorbash
You can use [https://tefter.io](https://tefter.io) It's an app I develop which
has all the features you need plus a command-line app.
[https://github.com/tefter/cli](https://github.com/tefter/cli)

------
gardenfelder
I have just started experimenting with this:
[http://www.topicquests.net:4000/](http://www.topicquests.net:4000/) \- it's
far from MVP status but I am finding it useful to do research. A beginning
user's manual is in the wiki at its github repo

~~~
gardenfelder
The project uses wikilinks to create or update Topic pages which backlink to
the journal entry. It then allows you to connect topics with relations; it
then will paint a graph for each topic that has such connections. Connections
are also topics with the full semantics of the statement made by connecting
two topics; you can then wire connections in a coherence graph.

------
aizatto
For personal/private notes, I built
[https://www.build.my/logbook](https://www.build.my/logbook)

For public notes, I use GitBook [https://www.aizatto.com/why-
gitbook](https://www.aizatto.com/why-gitbook)

------
znpy
I'm considering buying a license of confluence for small teams and run it at
home. The price is ridiculous (like 20$/year) but it's full featured.

I've considered running MediaWiki but confluence is light years ahead,
particularly at editing.

I could run it in docker, set a reverse proxy and be done with it.

~~~
aliceryhl
If it turns out to be useful, I think $20/year is quite reasonable.

~~~
goatherders
Surely the OP meant 20 was super cheap for the value. A nickel a day...

------
AdrianB1
I am using OneNote + Chrome bookmarks synced across devices. OneNote's search
is quite bad, sometimes it does not work and most of the time it cannot get
you where you want, the page layout when you put more content is sometimes
terrible, but otherwise it is good enough.

------
h43z
You won't like this but for notes and thoughts I use a whatsapp group chat
named "Notes" pinned to the top, with myself as the only member. I can access
it on mobile and desktop (through the web version). And it supports all
multimedia one would like to.

~~~
is_true
Same here. It also "supports" media.

------
miguelmota
I use github gists for notes and code snippets. The search tool is great. I
can always export them or create new ones using the API too. Obviously it
doesn’t support all media types but for my use case it’s good enough. I used
to use TiddlyWiki which was decent for text.

------
madsvj
Google keep. It turns everything into an action. Don't have time for it? Set a
reminder and archive it. Done with it? Archive it. Give it tag for
searchability if it's important.

Works well on all devices.

Biggest recommendation: Stop hoarding notes you're not going to use for
anything

------
hprotagonist
pinboard, mendeley, and a versioned org-mode notebook.

------
dravine
I use Instapaper for bookmarks, and Quiver for saving whole pages, and writing
notes. Quiver is Mac / iOS only and the iOS version is read only, but I push
most of my notes / clips to iCloud and have had good results for a few years
with this workflow.

------
rookie101
I use vimwiki to keep a track of this. Its a plugin for vim and I've built a
decent knowledge base in it. The plugin also provides html conversion, so Ive
set a git hook that does this and uploads the html to my server for easy
access from my phone.

------
jeffmorrisjr
I use Roam Research for search, tagging, daily thoughts, and everything else.
The software has changed my life and there is a growing developer community
who is making it better every week. Very culty product that is getting popular
quickly.

www.roamresearch.com

------
jsilence
The Zotero reference manager. Firefox plugin works great and it even saves a
snapshot so that one can access the web page later when has passed into 404
heaven. Synced with their server (paid) to have the same bookmark database on
all devices.

------
rainhacker
On macbook, I use alfred :
[https://www.alfredapp.com/](https://www.alfredapp.com/) It is freemium, and
bookmarking feature is free. It is much more than storing bookmarks though.

------
geocrasher
I keep temporary notes in Notepad++ and then migrate them to Zim Wiki for
search/tagging/hierarchical categorizing, etc. . Works very nicely, but media
must be stored on disk and linked to. It doesn't embed natively.

------
zabana
Personally I use pocket to keep track of my bookmarks. They provide both
search and tagging functionalities and the app is very fast and intuitive to
use.

I'm not sure if they integrate with zappier but I would be surprised if they
didn't.

~~~
klysm
@harrisonjackson mentioned they use poclet with zapier to forward things to
slack:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22782082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22782082)

------
jdr23bc
I use a folder with markdown notes & syncthing to sync them between my
devices. I also run a cron job on my phone to regularly push them up to a
private GitHub repo for online access.

Android - markor

PC - vscode / typora

Online - GitHub's editor & markdown viewer

------
NicoJuicy
Dogfooded [http://handlr.sapico.me](http://handlr.sapico.me)

Has tags, rss, personal mode and etc. And is serving me pretty well.

I emailed bookmarks to myselve in the past ( long time ago)

Take a look and tell me if you like it :)

------
randomor
I created a mobile journaling app that has search, tagging and nothing more.
It’s been very useful for me:
[https://thezenjournal.com/](https://thezenjournal.com/)

------
cparsons3000
I've been very happy with Bookmark OS. It has good search, tags, different
content, and easy to use notes.
[https://bookmarkos.com](https://bookmarkos.com)

------
robenkleene
After going through a series of apps (Yojimbo, Evernote, SimpleNote, Bear,
Ulysses), I now manage all my notes in Markdown files, some in git and some
synced via iCloud Drive. This has downsides, in particular it's only ok on
mobile and lacks integrations. But I find the upside is more important: You
can build your own features with shell scripts (that can then be integrated
into your editing environment), and you can use your notes in many different
applications. E.g., you can use a file manager like the Finder to organize
your notes, and you can use tools like grep and diff to search and compare
them. You can edit them with multiple text editors, for somethings vim is
better for others I like iA Writer.

Over time I’ve built a ton of my own features into the system, for example
I've built my own documentation system. It's essentially like have my own
`man` pages for GUI and CLI apps I use, that just document the features I
commonly use.

An example documentation directory:

[https://github.com/robenkleene/development-
references](https://github.com/robenkleene/development-references)

How you can lookup documents:

[https://github.com/robenkleene/Dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/...](https://github.com/robenkleene/Dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/fzf_documentation_less.zsh)

My own snippet system:

[https://github.com/robenkleene/Snippets](https://github.com/robenkleene/Snippets)

Looking up a snippet:

[https://github.com/robenkleene/Dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/...](https://github.com/robenkleene/Dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/snpt.sh)

My own project management system:

[https://github.com/robenkleene/Dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/...](https://github.com/robenkleene/Dotfiles/blob/master/scripts/slug_project.sh)

(All of the above can be integrated into any scriptable text editor, e.g., I
can use all of these feature from vim, i.e., fuzzy search and open a note, or
the same with VS Code (I’m working on building up VS Code over time as a non-
modal editor to complement vim). I.e., these scriptable text editors become a
custom note taking environment built to my requirements. Since most things are
written in bash, it’s easy to use any text editor on top. All you need to do
is call the shell scripts from the editor and a light layer of text-editor
specific GUI details on top.)

All of this stuff emerged organically over time based on my needs and the
growing complexity of managing more and more information and more complicated
tasks. The problem all single app solutions run into is they just don't scale
and grow with you.

To solve the mobile issue, my process is very simple: I use OmniFocus which
allows me to instantly save a URL, text note, or anything else to my inbox,
and then I just process (categorize and save) the new notes each morning
before I start working. If I really need a note on my phone, Spotlight works
surprisingly well for looking up a note by name in iCloud Drive (just turn off
Spotlight for every app you don't want to search), and I can use Working Copy
for notes in git, finally if I have to, I can ssh to a remote server with
Blink Shell and use shell tools from iOS (for any note that's in git, those
are also on the server).

The specifics of my system aren’t important, what I like is having a system
that grows with me, and that I can customize to my needs.

------
mkbkn
I use Zim Wiki and Joplin. Still learning note-taking though.

Additionally, I use Pocket to save webpages. Later when I re-read them, I
extract useful info from them & save them in my note-taking tools.

------
anderspitman
Saving this to Trello to come back and read the recommendations later.

------
jpn
Sublime & Markdown.

~~~
urlwolf
Intellij and asciidoc, the plugin for it is excellent.

------
benoror
A combination of Stickies.app, Reminders.app, Asana, Google Keep, Trello,
Snoozed Emails drafts, Chrome Bookmarks bar, Toby extension... and a notebook

------
ianmcgowan
Markdown files in a sensible directory structure, hash tags, stored in
Dropbox, checked in to a private github repo, managed in vscode.

Checks all the boxes for me.

------
n8henrie
nvAlt on Mac for plain text notes synced in a Dropbox folder, iOS with 1Writer
(excellent IMO) for mobile, plain old vim with those notes on Linux.

And pinboard.

------
alexweber
I’m liking Firefox bookmarks for this lately. Syncs between Firefox apps on
different platforms, relatively easy to search, extensible, etc.

------
woollysammoth
I put together a chrome extension for saving snippets from YouTube videos, has
definitely been helpful. (ClipSnip on the chrome web store)

------
hartator
Alfred copy/paste history on OSX.

It’s great as it can store anything. URLs, short texts, long texts, images,
random files, and is super searchable.

~~~
klysm
This sounds like an absolutely wonderful abuse of copy/paste history. A
difficulty is probably how much context you lose if you just want to save a
sentence for instance.

~~~
hartator
For random quotes and sentences, it actually works great. I just have to
remember one of the word that is rare enough.

------
mohammedhdotio
I use my email/imap drafts !! Its on my encrypted server and synced to my
email client and can access everything from any device.

------
inakarmacoma
DynaList - it's amazing, free, use everyday

------
_def
Bookmarks: Pocket, Firefox Sync Snippets: Phpaste, MediaWiki, Gogs (git)
Notes: Nextcloud (with Notes Android App), MediaWiki

------
alfiedotwtf
Instapaper for links, textfile for todo lists

------
asselinpaul
OneNote + [https://www.are.na/](https://www.are.na/)

------
buboard
My low tech solution: [https://pinplz.com](https://pinplz.com)

------
kilon
Colored pencils, pens and notebooks. Excellent opportunity to rest my eyes
away from the computer screen.

------
Nabi
Not pretending to be the most advanced tool but most of the times just using
Saved Messages in Telegram.

------
Ideabile
Emacs Org-mode for desktop and beorg to share from ios is being the best setup
so far.

------
gerikson
I use pinboard.in for bookmarking, and Simplenote for private stuff, OneNote
for work.

------
gdilla
Toby is really good. I bought pinboard like 10 years ago when it was cheaper.
not bad.

------
arkanciscan
Google Keep never lets you down

------
reidjs
iAWriter Saves files to markdown on iPhone and syncs across iCloud. I wish it
could sync with google drive or dropbox, but it's the only good markdown
editor I've used.

------
juliend2
I use several tools, but I try to keep the following system:

The main (top level) groups are:

* Personal (finances, insurances, gov, health, personal interests, etc)

* Work

* Church (I'm volunteering for some church-related projects, I keep those projects separated from the Work folder)

I use those 3 main categories for my notes, my calendar events and my
todolist.

Then, in every one of those main categories, depending on the tool, I have
folders for each project. For example, in my Work folder, since I am working
on my startup, I have: NameOfTheStartup, Freelancing (contains small client
project folders), BigFreelancingClient1, etc.

Also, I have a naming convention for folders that are "meta" : they start with
an underscore (so they show on top) and are named in ALL_CAPS. Example:

* _EVENTS (for recurring things to do when something happens within those categories of my life. Those can refer to a _PROCEDURE)

* _KNOWLEDGE (for storing information for those categories, such as PDFs, ebooks, etc)

* _THINKING (for notes about things I think about in those categories. It can contain notes of books I'm reading.)

* _PROCEDURES (for common tasks that I have documented)

* _LOGS (contains text files where I put time-ordered events that occurred within those categories of my life)

Tools I'm using (in order of prevalence):

\- Todoist for short term events/todos

\- The windows File Explorer. They contain Docx, PDF, md, Xlsx and txt files.
(Lacking consistency with file formats)

\- Google Calendar for long term events

\- Standard Notes for quick notes that are mostly grouped by project. They
take the form of BATF (Big-Ass Text-File :
[http://www.43folders.com/2005/08/17/life-inside-one-big-
text...](http://www.43folders.com/2005/08/17/life-inside-one-big-text-file) )
where I simply take notes of commands I need and shell outputs I need to
analyze or keep for later.

\- For bookmarks, I use PinBoard. It's good enough for me.

\- Keybase has file storage, so I use that to store my journaling (in txt
form). For tagging in my journal, I use a special `[tag]` syntax.

My system also has a weekly routine that includes:

* Taking long term events/tasks from Calendar into my Todoist (next 7 days).

* Looking at all the files in all the _EVENTS folders.

* Taking a look at the next 4 weeks in my Calendar.

------
carapace
Is there anything out there that incorporates timelines?

------
elisharobinson
this might sound like nonsense but i keep a small list of titles im really
interested in and just search HN.

------
npx13
Devonthink.

------
satya71
Firefox Bookmarks and Zotero

------
adrianmonk
Documents, believe it or not. And I'm really happy with how it works. I use
Google Docs, but Word or whatever would work too.

One of the key things is I _don 't_ try to create some kind of central
repository of every link I care about. In fact, I explicitly avoid this. (So I
don't have a huge document with all my links. Nor do I have or want any kind
of single, comprehensive database of all my links.)

If I'm dealing with a particular topic, I want those links together in one
place. Eventually when I move on and forget about that topic, the links are
pretty irrelevant, and since they are organized together in that document,
there's basically O(1) cleanup to get that clutter out of my life: just stop
looking at that one document.

Usually how a new document forms is that I'm working on or researching some
topic, and I start getting that feeling that I have a lot of browser tabs that
I don't want to lose. At that point, I create a new document, the title is
whatever topic I'm working on, I create some headings to categorize things by
type, and then in outline format I add links along with a very brief word or
two about what is useful about that link.

You're probably thinking that copy/pasting links and typing stuff is a lot of
overhead compared to just hitting a hotkey to bookmark something. It is more
work, but it's easily worth it. Every time I make one of these documents, I'm
glad I did because it becomes a lot easier to find stuff and remember which
stuff is important. Sometimes the process of organizing it into categories
even helps me understand the topic better. Sort of an exercise in getting
everything in one place and seeing the 30,000 foot view.

So for example, my most recent one is called "COVID-19 resources". The top-
level headings are "Practical Advice" (info on DIY masks, links to charts of
symptoms compared to flu and allergies, a video on hand washing technique),
"News and Info" (the John Hopkins map, other maps, graphs and charts, links to
online discussion forums, CDC and WHO articles, wikipedia articles), and
"Local Info" (state and local government status and announcement, health
department twitter account, local guide to restaurants with takeout), and
"Volunteer Info" (opportunities to help).

Come to think of it, I really need to add a section called "Science and
Research". I've run across several interesting papers and articles about the
disease, and I keep digging to re-find these links when I want to refer to it
again. They belong in this document.

Anyway, hopefully at some point COVID-19 won't be front of mind for all of us,
and I will stop opening this document every day to check the latest stats. But
I'll still have the doc if I want to refer to it.

------
interfixus
Joplin.

------
2ion
Emails to myself.

------
eitland
I use pinboard.in

------
chrisweekly
RoamResearch.com

------
anujdeshpande
Larder

