

Show HN: My minimalist Dropbox+iPhone note-taking app - thedaniel
http://speednotes.helloanteater.com

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zrgiu_
I love apps that do one thing alone, and do it well. A couple tips though:

\- keep the main app colors to 2-3 maximum. You currently have a rainbow
there: red header, blue row selection background, gray app background, white
buttons

\- as ivankirigin said, a web interface would help too. Keep it simple

edit: formatting

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thedaniel
thanks for the feedback, points duly noted.

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kovacs
So the main difference between this and the Evernote app is the speed search
that updates results realtime? I realize this is an MVP and please pardon my
ignorance but why would I use this instead of Evernote (This is not a troll
attempt, I'm not an avid user of evernote yet but have been using it more and
more recently)?

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thedaniel
The main difference is that interface, and that it acts on a folder of simple
text files rather than its own database format. I personally choose to use it
because I prefer my notes to be text files so I can easily edit them with
Notational Velocity on my mac, and emacs on any machine I have Dropbox
connected to. It may be that the many features of Evernote are better for you
- I personally used a variety of note-taking apps and just kept coming back to
NV, so I wrote a companion for my phone.

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dantiberian
I just bought this and really like the Notational Velocity concept. I need an
iPhone note taking app with offline support so this falls down in that area at
the moment. If you added offline support and TextExpander support this could
easily be my most used notes app.

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thedaniel
Offline support is definitely feature #1 in the roadmap right now. I just
wanted to get a 1.0 out the door to see if the app met a need before I spent a
lot of time on the details, plus iOS 5's uncertain treatment of app temporary
directories made my initial approach less simple than I had hoped.

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thedaniel
That's not to say I didn't sweat any of the details! But I think news.yc gets
that 1.0 == MVP

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ivankirigin
Can you add a web editing interface too? The thing about notes is that they
need to be everywhere, not just on mobile and your desktop.

I'll definitely try this out though!

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thedaniel
I haven't added a web interface yet - though if enough people like the concept
enough to use the app and many of them want a web interface, I would happily
add it to the roadmap.

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dmix
I'm looking for an iPhone extension to Notational Velocity.

Does this create .txt files? Can I set which folder it saves to so it shares
with notational?

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thedaniel
I wrote this because I had the exact same need. When you connect it to
Dropbox, you can choose any of the folders there, and if there are already
.txt files in that folder, they will be listed.

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thedaniel
and yes, it creates plain text files.

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dmix
Ok perfect, bought a copy. Initial feedback:

Works well. I expect to use it day-to-day.

I'm a designer so here is my nitpicking

\- Can there be an option for a black background with white text like
notational?

\- most important: the red background looks out of place. Red is the most eye
catching color. I feel like the search bar should be a more understated color
(see Reedr) and the notes most prominent

\- on the list of notes, the titles should be a bit larger and centered. Maybe
it looks odd because none of my notes are long enough to be double lined

\- "Search title or create new" text is too small and hard to read

~~~
thedaniel
Thank you for the feedback!

