
Show HN: Hibou – Use spaced repetition to remember what you read - willlma
http://gethibou.com
======
rcy
Nice work.

Any plans for creating notes with cloze deletions? I have been looking for a
lightweight implementation of an incremental reading system as described at
[http://www.supermemo.com/help/read.htm](http://www.supermemo.com/help/read.htm).
Part of the system includes converting what you have read into question/answer
material.

~~~
willlma
Thank you, and I'm so glad this is the top-rated comment. Rereading isn't the
same as retrieving information, and I want to work on this.

I'd love to implement cloze deletions. My thought is that if there is a note
associated with a highlight, the user could click an eye icon to toggle the
highlight's visibility. Cloze deletions would then be achieved by copy-pasting
the highlight and removing the portion that you want hidden.

If you're familiar with the Hibou UI and have other ideas on how I could
smoothly integrate cloze deletion, let me know.

~~~
Nadya
Below the pencil for note taking have a ? or lightbulb that allows the user to
enter a question? Since I think users creating their own cloze tests or
prompts would be beneficial. This also lets it be optional.

e.g

[http://i.imgur.com/YKrI6Ad.png](http://i.imgur.com/YKrI6Ad.png)

------
diggan
Hm, very interesting idea. The extension seems to be a buggy. Or, maybe I'm
not supposed to use the Firefox addon they have since the founder writes here
that this is a Chrome extension.

Anyways, I'm logged into two Google accounts, one work and one personal. I
want to use Hibou with my personal account, so in the extension I selected my
personal one. But when I use the webapp, it tries to log me into my work one,
since it's the first one I logged in with on Google in general. So I switch
the account in the top right but then the application dies, reloads and
doesn't allow me to login again.

And, I can't really figure out how to save the text I've selected, it just
stays yellow forever

~~~
willlma
I'm sorry to hear this. It should work okay if you only have one Google
account. Unfortunately, maintaining the Firefox version isn't a priority right
now. I love Firefox and it was a tough decision to switch to Chrome, but it's
the more popular browser these days.

As I wrote below, updating the Firefox version really depends on how
successful the Chrome version becomes and how many people request this.

If you write me an email (will@gethibou.com), I can keep you up to date with
my plans to update the Firefox extension.

------
willlma
Founder here. Hibou is a Chrome extension that allows you to highlight
whatever you find interesting, then sends you a notification when it's time to
review those highlights. Spaced repetition is a proven technique that waits
until you're about to forget something before reminding you to review it, thus
helping you remember as much as possible as effortlessly as possible.

I'd love to hear the thoughts of the HN community

Will

~~~
viraptor
So are you a techzing listener, or was it a coincidence?

~~~
phrasemix
This was the first thing that I thought of. Jason calls the idea "Memory
Hole", which is both a much better and much worse name than "Hibou".

~~~
willlma
Hahaha, I totally agree. I've just reached out to them for some feedback.
Seems like they've spent a lot of time thinking about this.

~~~
jayro
Nice work! I think we need to bring you on the show.

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Nadya
My first thoughts was "Slander / Abuse". I'm going to go with the naming
wasn't meant to be in Japanese (or Chinese), but thought you might want to be
aware of that. :)

This is great. A reminder to go through what I'd normally slap in a bookmark
with an intention of "reread later". I'll give it a test-drive.

~~~
willlma
Wow, thanks for the heads-up. It means _owl_ in French and is pronounced ēbu.
Owls being wise and all.

Thanks for trying it out. Hope you like it.

~~~
Nadya
When I get home you'll be getting another 5 star review. I saw the algorithm
you use on the About page which was my only question. Being familiar with SRS,
I'm already trusting of how SRS works, so I'm not judging the app based on
"what is it supposed to do" but rather "how does it look and function".

It's well designed and easy to use which is all I could ask for for an app
like this. Thanks for sharing!

Two things I've found that are both minor so I'm not "docking points" ;)

 _> Click the Hibou highlight button. It will be saved here until you make a
highlight._

I think you mean "Highlights you make will be saved here."?

And if I activate Hibou on a page, I can't seem to disable the highlighter
without refreshing the page. Pressing Alt+H doesn't get rid of it and neither
does clicking the button to deactivate the highlighting cursor. This is an
annoyance, but it's unlikely that I'll ever press Alt+H without the intent of
highlighting something - so isn't an issue I'd run into day to day.

Clicking onto the page to close the app dialogue and then re-clicking the icon
to bring open the options shows that the highlighter reactivates itself. Upon
reactivation or clicking the bubble I expect it to remain disabled until I
activate it again.

[http://i.imgur.com/SQGXKbI.png](http://i.imgur.com/SQGXKbI.png)

Lastly - it should be clarified what benefits "Logging in" gives. How does it
make Hibou "even better"?

~~~
willlma
Awesome. Thanks for the review and thoughts on design.

>Click the Hibou highlight button. It will be saved here until you make a
highlight.

 _Here_ refers to the _Reading list_. If you click the highlight button, but
don't make any highlights, Hibou will save that page in the reading list (the
left-most icon in app.hibou.com). That way, you can go back and highlight it
later. You won't get any reminders or notifications until you create your
first highlight on that page, at which point it goes from your _reading list_
to your _queue_ (middle clock icon), and of course the highlights are saved.
I'll make that clearer.

Thanks for pointing out the disabling bug. If you only use the keyboard
shortcut, enabling and disabling should work fine. If you use the popup,
disabling seems broken. I'll fix that today.

Logging in allows you to * see your highlights on another device (which means
another computer right now, but will soon mean your phone) by going to
app.gethibou.com and logging in with the same gmail account. * Store an
unlimited number of highlights. Everything is saved locally if you don't log
in, and you're limited to 5mb of local storage in an extension, so eventually
you'll run out of space (you'll get a warning if you're running out of space).
* Sort all highlights by tags. As I roll out features, sometimes things need
to be coded on the server _and_ within the extension. In those cases, I'll
write the code on the server first, so by logging in you'll get access to
newer features. Sorting by tag is the first of those features.

I'll add this to the guide.

------
DennisP
Do you have a way to quiz the user? If it's just review instead of attempted
recall, it's not near as effective.

~~~
willlma
Not yet, but I agree. See my reply to @rcy's comment.

------
th0br0
The newest update had me remove the extension straightaway. I don't need a
'get started with hibou now' layer on all my pages if I haven't used it yet on
which I can't even press 'not now' because Hibou injects some google analytics
which µblock blocks of course causing the JS to break...

~~~
willlma
Sorry, you're only supposed to see that once. That should be fixed as of
0.4.6.

------
petra
Very interesting. Are you planning to do a firefox extension too ?

~~~
willlma
This was originally a Firefox extension, and it is still available if you
visit the above page on Firefox, but as pointed out in another comment, it's a
bit buggy and I'm not sure when I'll have time to bring it up to speed with
the Chrome version. Frankly, I had high hopes when Mozilla announced that they
were making it easy to port Chrome extensions to Firefox, and my plan was to
contribute to [that project]([https://github.com/jetpack-labs/chrome-
tailor](https://github.com/jetpack-labs/chrome-tailor)), but it doesn't seem
to be very active.

It really depends on how successful the Chrome version becomes and how many
people request this.

If you write me an email (will@gethibou.com), I can keep you up to date with
my plans to update the Firefox extension.

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Nadya
Upon updating Chrome this morning I got this page:
[http://i.imgur.com/iCU0100.png](http://i.imgur.com/iCU0100.png)

The button didn't work and I'm leaning towards this being a bug. If this is
intended, I'll be uninstalling. I do not approve of this behavior in apps.

~~~
willlma
Definitely a bug. Are/were you on 0.4.6? Someone else mentioned this being a
result of µblock, but even with that installed, it should now be working
correctly.

~~~
Nadya
No idea to be honest, just glad to hear it was a bug. Given it was more or
less non-functional I was erring towards "bug" over intentional to begin with.
:)

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alisson
This is awesome! Loved it. I'd love it even more if there was an android app
with offline access.

~~~
willlma
I glad you enjoy it. Given that I'm working on this alone, I won't have the
resources to make a native app soon. That said, I'm working on the mobile
webapp right now and will try to implement service workers so you can get
notifications and have offline access.

Install to home screen removes the browser UI, so it won't be native, but
it'll be close.

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/20/8454613/push-
notifications...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/20/8454613/push-
notifications-android-chrome-42-mobile-web)

Hopefully iOS will support service workers in the future.

