
Show HN: Beyondpad – New kind of note taking and data management solution - dzjosjusuns
http://www.beyondpad.com/
======
anonbanker
This is a brilliant application. I wish I could trust it to hold my brain
dump, but this seems to be registered and hosted in the United States, which
is no longer a secure place to store my data. I'm unable to determine how this
is to be monetized, or if at all, so would it be possible to free the source
of this application, so that it can be hosted in a trusted location, such as
Seychelles?

~~~
azeirah
I have a similar project, it's licensed under the GNU license. You can host it
wherever you want to.

It's early in its development stage, and I would love all and any kinds of
feedback.

[You can find it
here]([https://github.com/Azeirah/brainstorm](https://github.com/Azeirah/brainstorm))

~~~
anonbanker
exactly what I was looking for. I plan on installing this tonight. thank you.

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leichtgewicht
Some of the user-interface problems I recognised in my few-minute-test:

\- Many notes I have are longer: I.e. tend to be made of headlines etc. So i
need something like markdown for structuring. Using the mouse seems to
cumbersome and to hard to maintain a visual consistency.

\- The delete button (particularly on the default notes) was too hidden in the
menu. I had to search for it.

\- Adding a link didn't automatically select the link field to immediately
copying the link.

\- Copying a link in a empty text field didn't convert it in a link field
(seemed like a good opportunity to shine)

\- I didn't find a "new note" button after entering a first node (because I
had to save it... doh). I think I would prefer an auto-save and/or a "new"
button to avoid the confusion.

\- When clicking "link to tag" I have no method of aborting my uneducated
request (esc?) I had to enter the tag to safe it even though I changed my
mind.

\- I often had to click "..." when trying to edit an entry. 6 menu items: I
think they could all be shown side-by-side?

~~~
dzjosjusuns
I must agree, there are these subtle usability issues. I'll be definitely
addressing these in next updates. Thanks!

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dontpanic
Do you plan an open source version for self-hosting?

~~~
rkhassen
Please. Another vote for this. This would seriously become my tool of choice,
but I would become so dependent on it, as an extension of my working style,
that I wouldn't want to invest unless I knew I could know that it wouldn't go
away and that I could also hack changes into the code. Would definitely be
willing to pay for the Open Source Version. I've also had ideas very similar
to this, but am much more interested in having it than developing it.

~~~
azeirah
I'm working on something that's very similar. It's early in development, and
lacks many features. But if you private host it, it's already very usable.

Take a look here
[https://github.com/Azeirah/brainstorm](https://github.com/Azeirah/brainstorm)

------
tait
The video went pretty fast for lay users to follow.

As a survivor of online projects that ended up closing down, I will wait for a
way to export data before using this seriously.

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codingdave
That video give me no sense of how this really works. I just see a jumble of
boxes and colors, and a voiceover who keeps throwing single words out there
without any context. Nothing on that page or in the video makes me feel like
this would truly organize my work any better than my trusted, permanently
open, plain text to do list.

~~~
RadioactiveMan
I wonder if creating relationships between notes would work well for me and my
very large to-do list. However, it may be a moot point since at the current
rate it's more like a never-do list. ~/ideagraveyard.txt

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Mickydtron
It looks interesting. There are two features that would make me really excited
(could be that I just didn't find them in the few minutes I looked for them).
The first is the ability to link notes directly to each other and then view
the notes in a graph view, mind-map style. I see the graph view for tags, but
nothing for viewing notes in a graph. The second is a mobile app, cause I do
most of my note-taking on my phone. The web interface is useable on my phone,
but not really ideal, as many of the controls are too small for my finger to
reliably hit. I don't know how much I line up with the target audience here,
so there could be good reasons that those aren't planned or prioritized.

~~~
dzjosjusuns
Mobile is with high priority. Linking notes to each other - basically if you
promote note to tag (from options in edit mode), then it can be linked, to
other note. but simply linking notes, not at the moment. As for mind-map
feature - similar thing you described is also in a future vision - basically
you should be able to vie your notes in graph with relation to other tags (and
thus maybe even create meta links/tags to link those together).. but that's
for the future of Beyondpad!

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gk1
Looks very interesting. Like a combination of Subtask and Trello. Each of
those have limitations that keep me from adopting it for all my note-taking
and project management... Perhaps this is the perfect middle-ground.

One thing, though: That demo video went waaaaaaay too fast. I couldn't keep up
with it at all, and just stopped watching. I understand you're trying to fit
all the many features into a single, short video, but that's just too much.
Why not go at normal pace and just feature the most "a-ha!" features?

~~~
dzjosjusuns
Thanks I guess ill do that with video, split it in kinda introductions to main
parts of the app

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mgmeyers
This looks awesome, well done!

What are your plans for the future? Is this just a hobby project, or is it
something you plan on monetizing or open sourcing? The reason I ask is, I've
seen a lot of projects like this fizzle out, which makes me weary of investing
any time into using it.

That being said, I'm excited to see your future developments and refinements
on this project!

~~~
dzjosjusuns
Plan is simple - to keep going, keep improving, making it better. Vision and
pipeline is full of awesome features. And maybe some day Ill manage to
monetize :)

~~~
TkTech
Good luck :) By the way, on the map and calendar view, you have "can be seen
_hear_ " instead of "here".

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kuhnster
This looks pretty good. It's similar to Sortd.com but is without the very
useful email integration.

Sortd has just released another 200 invite codes. Apply fast at
[http://www.sortd.com](http://www.sortd.com) to get into the private beta or
Tweet for an invite code.

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nchudleigh
Seems really good, takes some things from google keep and adds the complexity
that keep lacks.

Nice!

------
rodolphoarruda
It looks very interesting. Congrats!

Is it possible to have more than one widget associated to an item. Let's say,
I create an item and add a countdown timer and a to-do list. Would it work?

~~~
dzjosjusuns
Yes you can add multiple same type items to a note, no problem!

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fiatjaf
I like the idea, but I think there's probably more friction than I wanted to.
Nevertheless, I'm not your target customer, I don't have a team or manage
projects.

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dzjosjusuns
I've also published this app to chrome web store -
[http://goo.gl/nH6Cqj](http://goo.gl/nH6Cqj)

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teyc
Awesome. Can you make that an app for offline use?

~~~
dzjosjusuns
This feature is partialy developed, I plan to enable it in a while when i'll
fugur out all sync quirks and edge cases

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magikid
It's like a productive Pinterest.

------
nobodysfool2
I was looking at this because I want to make something similar. I've been
looking for the software I want for the last ten years, and nothing comes
close to the image in my head as to what software can do. So, I'll explain
what I want.

I want something similar to this, which will replace email. It doesn't
necessarily have to replace email, but it will accept emails and you can send
emails out of it. The idea being that email will manage the projects. I'll
explain. You create an email to people. You tag it as 'project' and it will
create a new project, a distribution list, and automatically give the project
a name (based on the subject). Any files emailed between you and others in
that project via email will automatically be added to your project's
workspace. Appointments set will be assigned to the project, and each
appointment occurrence will have notes that you can keep for that occurrence.
Tasks can be created for projects as well, and people can be assigned those
tasks, and get email reminders.

With those features, if I don't recall what happened in the last meeting, or
some client is asking about a file that I supposedly received, I don't have to
go looking around trying to find which email on which day it was, as I'll have
all project's emails together.

Once a project is finished, then emails between people in that project won't
automatically be categorized, but there will be 'suggested' categories.

\-- that said, this is nice, however, I can't figure out the ordering here, it
appears there is none. Here's a simple test. Add 21 new notes. Just 1 enter
enter 2 enter enter... it appears that the new notes are added to the left and
that pushes everything else to the right, except when it comes to the extreme
right and then it pushes that one all the way to the left and down one. That's
an easy way to do it, but it's not easy to read. People are used to reading
newspapers, Newspapers have a columnar format, and you read your columns.
Classified ads are vertical columns as well, and if you are looking for
something you look vertically within the categories. This on the other hand is
horizontal categories, which is very confusing, especially since the category
something is in is related to what's left of it, and how large that left thing
is... in the example I give, you notice now 1,2,3 are from right to left on
the bottom. Then 4 is slightly higher than those, on the very left. and then
go right again, 5,6,7 all good, and 8 is once again higher... continue on
until you get to sixteen, and now it all looks nice and tidy. Now edit 14 to
say "14 this is a much longer note just as a test to see what happens with the
columns". Now the whole thing looks like a mess.

tldr; use vertical columns to make the output predictable. People are used to
spacial relation, so changing that because the content of one cell changes,
makes the spatial relationship memory useless.

~~~
dzjosjusuns
Nice read! About ordering - notes are shown in order they were added or
reorganized. As for masonry layout - you are absolutely correct in cases it
can be hard to read, that's why Beyondpad has two options in settings, max
number of columns and should those columns be arranged in rows or tiles, I
guess Row layout is what you would preferred (this layout option can be
changed also from context bar (three dots near search bar)) About email
solution - that would be indeed interesting to see implemented in some email
client. Just to give some reference context in Beyondpad - one point in vision
is to allow attaching emails to tags, thus when adding tag to a note or stuff
that note would be shared with those contacts.

~~~
nobodysfool2
Not quite, row layout gives too much white space between items. I would prefer
columnar layout. It's like row layout but vertical.

Oh, and this should be delivered over SSL... but I'm sure that's in the works.

~~~
dzjosjusuns
Yes I understand, I need to think about that and ordering.. cause then it
seems to me that scrolling would have to happen horizontaly.. but thats and
interesting idea! Meanwhile there are lists :)

~~~
ipedrazas
+1 to SSL

~~~
dzjosjusuns
Will do in few days, its nothing much but I want to wait till traffic calms
down not to disturb initial users.

------
innguest
Seems like the kind of note-taking app I was looking for - something that does
not constrain me to the one-dimensionality of text, and isn't just a poor
work-around that fact as outlines are. I particularly like that one can
visualize the nodes in a canvas and then switch to the columns view. This is
really good.

Now the dealbreaker question: can I export my data without losing relationship
metadata?

~~~
dzjosjusuns
At the moment if you are into it you can get all your data, including
relations in json format just by inspecting traffic source and getting that
json. But I plan to add more civilized way of getting your data out!

