
Nototo – Build a unified mental map of notes - dirtyaura
https://www.nototo.app/
======
danicgross
This is very cool.

Relatedly: I often run while listening to podcasts. When I do, I remember
_much_ more of the material. And when I revisit certain blocks around the
neighborhood, I find myself recalling what I heard during the run.

The spacial encoding of memories seems very potent and under-investigated.

~~~
juliend2
It's called the Method of loci:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)
Another term for that is the "memory palace".

BTW, I wonder if anyone here in HN used it to learn significant things using
this method?

~~~
netsharc
I first learned about memory palaces in the book Hannibal, named after the
character in Silence of the Lambs [0], but the description there is of a
lavish imaginary palace inside your mind you can wander in. I did use this
technique to try to remember some physics formulae for an exam once, in my
memory palace there was a room with giant equations.

This website is a bit of a let-down for me since it's just a bird's eye view,
it would be cool to create a palace using a 3d game engine, with signs that
point to things like physics formulae, and then some Sims or Google-Sketchup-
like tool to add objects that you want to remember.

[0] The relevant excerpt about Hannibal's memory palace:
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-
chasers/hannib...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-
chasers/hannibal-lecter/) , it describes a painting that he uses to remember
the fictional address "3327 Tindal, Arlington VA 22308".

~~~
erikig
One cannot build a 3d world without first building a 2d map

~~~
netsharc
And one cannot have a discussion with pretentious, profound-sounding, smartass
one sentence replies.

~~~
godDLL
Ima one-up you both on that ass scale now.

No one can arrive to use a memory palace technique proper good without first
learning to visualize space-time. That is FOUR dimensions, not a 2-d map, not
a 3-d picture, an actual space you can walk around that changes.

------
masukomi
I love the idea. My concern is that it's _so_ specialized that when the
developers eventually stop working on it, or paying for the servers, I'm going
to be screwed.

I feel that apps like this can be incredibly useful but ultimately, if they
work for you, you'll spend years shoving data into them only to have it lost
the moment the site shuts down, or in the case of desktop apps, the app stops
working with the latest OS upgrade.

If it was open source and I could host it myself I'd _seriously_ consider
using it.

~~~
glup
Exactly the same thought here: I absolutely love the idea, but my first and
most important criterion for a note taking app is that it doesn't have vendor
lock-in. Even if the display code is proprietary, I want access to the
underlying data. Also I want a version that works offline.

------
landryl
Definitely going to give it a shot.

The way I study math usually (actually not usually, because it's not very
pracrical, but the most productive way I found) is by locking myself in a
classroom, laying all my notes spread on different tables, and using the
chalkboard as a temporary playground to redo demonstrations and exercises, and
sometimes explore ideas on my own.

Theorems and objects end up having a literal spacial position in the room, and
I have to move around to study. It feels like being a craft man in his
workshop.

It's fun, really. It got me excited to study maths.

But I need a room for it, and I can only get one if I come super early, before
class starts, to get 3 or 4 hours of productivity.

Maybe a virtual one like that can work. It's really appealing.

~~~
vanderZwan
> _Maybe a virtual one like that can work._

That to me sounds like a key thing. This app looks neat and probably will work
for some, but I think it will only fully click for me if I ever would get a VR
equivalent of it where I can have a full embodied experience of walking
around. It's one more reason why I really hope Dynamicland will "escape" out
of its experimental lab setting

~~~
0xFluegel
In current VR technology that's going to be hard and annoying:

> Text is tough in VR. It’s hard to read, given the resolution of today’s HMDs
> and it’s hard to write, since you’re typically blind in a headset and it’s
> annoying to be tied to a keyboard at a desk when you’d rather walk and move
> around in VR. I tolerate these problems with RiftSketch by making the text
> in the editor extremely large. I can only see 20 lines of code at a time in
> VR whereas my physical desktop has a 4K monitor where I’m usually looking at
> 140 lines of code per file with several files open side-by-side.
> ([https://uploadvr.com/riftsketch/](https://uploadvr.com/riftsketch/))

And that isn't even trying to give you a pen & paper experience. (<\-
something I'd also like to have.)

~~~
vanderZwan
That's why I mentioned Dynamicland: it kind of inverts VR by projecting onto
real-world objects. It might be a way to bypass these issues

------
chenxi9649
Hey! I'm actually one of the makers of Nototo. I'm quite surprised to find my
own project trending on HackerNews!

If anyone has questions feel free to ask me here! or at chen@nototo.app

~~~
DonHopkins
Great idea, I totally get it! Your graphics are beautiful, and the layering
and gridding look helpful.

It reminds me of some experimental user interfaces with pie menus I designed
for creating and editing memory palaces: "iLoci" on the iPhone for notes and
pictures and links and web browser integration in 2008, and "MediaGraph" on
Unity3D for organizing and playing music in 2012, both of which I hope will
inspire you for ideas to implement (like pie menus, and kissing!) or ways to
explain what you've already created.

A memory map editor can not only benefit from pie menus for editing and
changing properties (like simultaneously picking a font with direction, and
pulling out the font size with distance, for example), but it's also a great
way for users to create their own custom bi-directionally gesture navigable
pie menus by dragging and dropping and "kissing" islands together against each
other to create and break links (like bridges between islands). (See the
gesture navigation example at the end of the MediaGraph demo, and imagine that
on an iPad or phone!)

I think your crisp clean abstract graphical style would go nicely with
something like Simon Schneegans' designs for Gnome-Pie, Coral-Menu, and Trace-
Menu:

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-
menus-936fed383ff1#ed08](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-
menus-936fed383ff1#ed08)

Some HN posts (updated with updated links):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982329)

I wrote an iPhone app called "iLoci" [1] that was based on the Method of Loci
[2], which had a gestural interface that let you construct and navigate your
own networks of locations by dragging rooms around and "kissing" them together
to connect and disconnect them. Another way to think of it is as a pie menu
editor.

Later I elaborated on the idea in a Unity prototype called MediaGraph [3],
which lets you arrange your music in an editable gesture navigable map.

[1] iPhone app iLoci by Don Hopkins @ Mobile Dev Camp:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ddG3jWF98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ddG3jWF98)

A talk about iLoci, an iPhone app and server based on the Method of Loci for
constructing a Memory Palace, by Don Hopkins, presented at Mobile Dev Camp in
Amsterdam.

Illustrated transcript:

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/iphone-app-iloci-by-don-
hopki...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/iphone-app-iloci-by-don-hopkins-
mobile-dev-camp-6192ca6b5dcd)

[2] Method of Loci:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)

[3] MediaGraph Music Navigation with Pie Menus Prototype developed for Will
Wright's Stupid Fun Club:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc)

This is a demo of a user interface research prototype that I developed for
Will Wright at the Stupid Fun Club. It includes pie menus, an editable map of
music interconnected with roads, and cellular automata.

It uses one kind of nested hierarchical pie menu to build and edit another
kind of geographic networked pie menu.

Discussion of the pie menus:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262849)

Pie menus frame this kind of interaction as pop-up menus, which provide a
"self revealing gestural user interface". The menu pops up and leads you
through the possible selections. That feedback trains you to rehearse the
gestures. Soon you begin to make the gesture without looking at the menu, then
wait for the menu feedback to confirm you're doing the right thing. Finally
you gain enough skill and confidence through "muscle memory" to make the
gestures quickly without even looking at the screen or requiring any feedback.

It's best if the menus can provide real time in-world feedback, like applying
the effect of the interaction immediately as the menu is tracking. That makes
it feel more like immersive "direct manipulation" than indirect "menu
selection". It's important that pie menus support "reselection", which makes
them much more forgiving and differentiates them from traditional blind
gesture recognition, so you at any time during tracking you can change the
selection to any item you desire.

Pie menus completely saturate the entire possible gesture space with usable
and accessible commands: there is no such thing as a syntax error, and you can
always correct any gesture to select what you want, no matter how bad it
started out, or cancel the menu, by moving around to the desired item or back
to the center to cancel.

Handwriting and gesture recognition does not have this property, and it can be
quite frustrating because you can't correct or cancel mistakes, and dangerous
because mistakes can be misinterpreted as the wrong command. Most gestures are
syntax errors. Blind gesture recognition doesn't have a good way to prompt and
train you with the possible gestures, which only cover a tiny fraction of the
possible gesture space. All the rest of the space of possible gestures is
wasted, and interpreted as a syntax error (or worse, misinterpreted as the
wrong gesture), instead of enabling the user to correct mistakes and reselect
different gestures.

Even "fuzzy matching" of gestures trades off gestural precision with making it
even harder to cancel or correct a gesture, without accidentally being
misinterpreted as the wrong gesture. That's not the kind of an interface you
would want to use in a mission critical application such as a car or airplane.

Another way to reframe the gestural, self revealing and reselectable qualities
of pie menus is as navigation through a map, as opposed to climbing up a
hierarchical menu tree. Instead of laboriously climbing up a tree of submenus,
you simply navigate around a map of "sibmenus" \-- sibling menus that you can
easily move back and forth between by moving in opposite directions.

This demo of an iPhone app I developed called "iLoci" demonstrates the idea,
enabling users to create their own memorable maps of "locations" instead of
"menus", which they can edit by dragging around, that are related to each
other by two-way reversible links. It exploits the "Method of Loci," an
ancient memorization technique from the time before iPhones when people had to
use their own brains to remember things, in order to leverage your spatial
navigation memory and make it easy to learn your way around.
[http://vimeo.com/2419009](http://vimeo.com/2419009)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci)

"The Method of loci (plural of Latin locus for place or location), also called
the memory palace, is a mnemonic device introduced in ancient Roman and Greek
rhetorical treatises (in the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero's De
Oratore, and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria). In basic terms, it is a method
of memory enhancement which uses visualization to organize and recall
information. Many memory contest champions claim to use this technique to
recall faces, digits, and lists of words. These champions’ successes have
little to do with brain structure or intelligence, but more to do with their
technique of using regions of their brain that have to do with spatial
learning."

I like the idea of moving away from hierarchal menu navigation, towards
spatial map navigation. It elegantly addresses the problem of personalized
user created menus, by making linking and unlinking locations as easy as
dragging and dropping objects around and bumping them together to connect and
disconnect them. (Compare that to the complexity of a tree or outline editor,
which doesn't make the directions explicit.) And it eliminates the need to a
special command to move back up in the menu hierarchy, by guaranteeing that
every navigation is obviously reversible by moving in the opposite direction.
I believe maps are a lot more natural and easier for people to remember than
hierarchies, and the interface naturally exploits "mouse ahead" (or "swipe
ahead") and is obviously self revealing.

Here is another video demonstrating a prototype exploring this interface that
I developed in Unity3D for Will Wright. It shows both an "iLoci" map editing
interface, as well as traditional pop-up pie menus using "pull-out" distance
parameters with real time in-world feedback to preview the effect of the
selection (plus it also has cellular automata, at Will's request!):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc)

~~~
rl3
As soon as I saw Nototo's demo vid, I immediately came here to say "This
reminds me of Don Hopkins' MediaGraph!" It seems I am late to the party,
however. :)

MediaGraph has a special place in my heart. Back in 2014 I built a zoomable UI
prototype that very much embraced the concept of real-world objects as
metaphors, which I think is vastly underappreciated. An antithesis to
traditional graph visualization techniques of sorts, and it even had radial
pie menus!

That project grew in scope and work on that prototype was discontinued in 2016
pending a major redesign.

The funny part is, I didn't discover MediaGraph until just a couple years ago,
so it blew my mind to learn I was unknowingly on a very similar path back
then, long after I had mothballed the thing.

As a solo founder, to find out my thinking was even in a remotely similar
neighborhood as you and Will, was incredibly meaningful. It was and still is
one of the few tiny little kernels of hope I hold on to that keeps me going.
Thank you.

------
makach
Finally, I can stop taking my notes in Minecraft.

~~~
mrspeaker
I don't if this was totally a joke, but I use a mincraft world I made years
ago as my "memory castle" \- and have pretty detailed notes about making a
voxel world "memory scrapbook" like Nototo!

------
donpark
Suggestions from an old side-project: automate land management.

\- Placing a note automatically creates an island around it with a
recognizable landmark nearby. Add a tree after each addition. Add or enlarge a
pond after each deletion.

\- Dragging a line between two islands/hills either merges the two or moves
them closer, depending on the size of the islands/hills involved and the
population of the area. Locations, distance, and scale can change but the
relative direction should not.

~~~
rapnie
I was thinking of using an old game one was addicted to for the memory palace.
I still remember a lot of the maps in Doom, which I played as a student, for
instance.

~~~
LaundroMat
Interesting! I spend quite some time sim-racing, so I know some track layouts
very well. I might try and use them as a memory palace.

As a trial, I'll map all James Bond movies in chronological order to the track
while I drive through it and see whether I'll be able to recall them more
easily than I can now.

------
spc476
My initial reaction was "Cute, in a 'dots I's with hearts' type of way, but
not really for me." And after watching the video and reading the site, I still
feel that way, but I can see where you are going with this, with spatial
memory. It isn't a bad idea.

But I do have a question though---I have my island with the "World Domination"
plans on it. On that, I have a plateau with plans for the "Mega Death Laser".
But those are related to Tesla's patents, and all his stuff is over there on
the other island. Is there a way to link the Tesla patents "over there" with
the Mega Death Laser plans "over here"?

~~~
DonHopkins
See what I wrote about linking by "kissing" islands together in iLoci and
MediaGraph in this other message and the videos I linked to:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22089694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22089694)

------
anigbrowl
Seconding the native app. The concept is great and I'd like to put it to work
right now but (like a few other commercial products) it's a non-starter to
store my data on your servers.

------
seltzered_
Neat! Some inspiration if this ever delves into references and connections
between notes beyond just spatial relations:

\- Older ideas based around Xanadu ZigZag (e.g. fenfire.org):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPav69eW78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPav69eW78)
.

\- Tinderbox guide videos

\- An old HN comment I rediscovered that lists out many older note-taking
projects:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401550](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401550)
(notably realized connectedtext had a feature akin to roamresearch)

------
emmanueloga_
When I heard about "memory palaces" I thought it would be cool if there was
some sort of "hashing function" from concept to 3D space, to initially
accommodate the thoughts/notes of a certain kind in a certain area of that
space. That way you would get closely related concepts closely together in
space too.

Wilmot's Warehouse also comes to mind [1] :-)

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcyPIJYOx4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcyPIJYOx4)

------
raidicy
This is slightly tangential. But, in line with visual representation of ideas
to aid with memory I found that memories of things I did in VR were more like
"real life memories" than anything I ever did in a 2d game.

I have a few odd memories of Echo Arena where I swear I can remember feeling
the cool air of the arena on my skin and smelling the cold metal walls mixed
with sweat. It felt like I was "there".

I wonder if some memory palace concepts could be combined with VR.

~~~
aronowb14
I agree, I always thought in theory it could be possible to mix memory palaces
with VR.

Someone did a research study on it here if you're interested.

[https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10...](https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10055-018-0346-3.pdf)

~~~
raidicy
Thank you for the link! I'm very interested in reading it.

------
dazhbog
Please make an offline version with a one-off fee. I would send you lots of
lentils for this.

~~~
glup
Agreed.

------
mettamage
I just saw the intro video. I agree with the key insight (I'm a psychology
graduate, I'm basing it on that knowledge).

Here's some raw feedback from an n = 1. I'm being as critical as I can here,
because your project can take it.

Personally, I don't think this is the final answer to the problem your solving
but a good step towards it. I see some UX issues. It feels like I'm looking at
a Blackberry (in a pre-Blackberry era) and not an iPhone.

So in conclusion: you found a key insight _that everyone missed_ , executed
well on it, but I'm missing a certain polish. I wouldn't know what this
certain polish is, otherwise I'd have told you. It's simply a gut feeling (and
gut feelings are terrible at picking things apart).

I know it sounds a bit nitpicky, but view it this way: your one step away from
world domination as far your product is concerned in my eyes. I'd say in a
sense that's really positive feedback, isn't it?

\---

I'm going to riff on this idea in my free time: how can visual layout
information help recall? I mean, one quick thought I have is: you can also
make a VR app for this. Not sure if that would be the way to go (I think not),
but I can imagine how it could help.

~~~
rijoja
There should definitively be a VR app made from this!

------
cookingrobot
Since this seems tailored for remembering content, it might be nice if you
published some content in this format rather than just having it be a blank
note-taking tool. For ex, let people explore a world that represents a biology
textbook, or drivers-ed manual, or something else that commonly needs to be
studied & memorized.

~~~
citruscomputing
I think an example or two would be nice, but much like spaced repetition, I'd
guess a lot of the value comes from building the material yourself.

------
howmayiannoyyou
This is the repository I want to leave my kids when I'm gone, with curated
content from my life experience the can explore when they feel as if they need
some guidance.

It's also got a ton of potential as UI for blockchain exploration, where the
elevation and other topographical features are influenced by transaction
characteristics.

~~~
klondike_klive
That's a very cool idea. Although it also reminds me of a longform article
from about ten years ago (can't remember where from) by a guy who every so
often visits the Minecraft worlds he built with his daughter. She is grown up
and has gone to college.

------
pascoej
I love the idea. However I tried playing with the product for a while and
there's no way I can recommend any of my friends to use this in lecture. It
uses 70% CPU and 10% GPU causing the fans to spin up. I've found that outlets
can be rare when taking and reviewing notes so high power use is a non-
starter.

------
bfung
Having played and playing a MMORPG where there are farming/fishing/shop points
on a map, these types of things start to lose organization when it gets to
around 70ish nodes. While a bit better than text, it's not 10x better.

Along the same lines about digital habits & itunes and gmail:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087406](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087406)

Why do I still need to sort & remember where I put my note/email/idea? Why not
just search for keywords and bring all the relevant notes up? I do agree that
part of the problem/key is how the user inputs their idea, but the memory tool
should bring it back w/o myself remembering.

Nice execution on the tool - my criticism is in challenging what the right
recall mechanism should be vs. the input mechanism.

------
bryanrasmussen
I've often thought about wanting to build something like this, as I find
something enchanting about the memory palace idea.

However in my case I think it wouldn't do anything for me, I'm not a visual
thinker, I think in paragraphs, I understand things that are written down,
even simple diagrams of server client interaction can slow down my
understanding of what something is supposed to do in my job. Perhaps that's
why I find it enchanting, it seems a fantasy because my brain doesn't work
that way.

All that said I think my daughter's brain works completely visually, she
struggles with language, her memory for abstraction is not good, but she is
great with visual ideas. I guess I might start her on this, however like other
people I find myself a little hesitant given that you haven't figured out a
cost for the service yet.

------
egypturnash
So what happens when I fill up an island and I want to capture an idea in the
proper place RIGHT NOW? Especially if I've got it surrounded by other islands.
Aw shit, I just lost my fragile new idea while getting distracted by
landscaping.

Also holy crap the body type in these notes is microscopic.

~~~
chenxi9649
Great point! The idea of running out of real estate is something that we
thought quite a bit about in the beginning.

So, we used to have somewhat like a tag system that we thought would lower the
friction required to make a note. Where you can open up a notebook anywhere
and we'll put it on the correct island for you after #tag it. But it kinda
defeated the purpose of this app, for people to place their notes down like
how they place a lego block down.

Also, it turns out, people usually don't fill up their islands to the point of
collision. They have a lot of empty spaces between notes. So, it's actually a
problem that we haven't encountered yet.

Additionally, note blocks can be seen as their own word documents and the tiny
words on top are previews. So you can also just "open up" one of these blocks
and put your idea there.

OR, what I do, is I have an island for random ideas like that. Write it down
first, organize it later.

lastly, we will add a font size option for the rooftop fonts soon, don't wanna
get eye damage lawsuits haha.

~~~
rckoepke
Definitely need that font size option! ... or, better, just good dynamic
autoscaling based on f(text_length, box_size, zoom_level) and maybe a font
size override option for static association.

Also need a drag feature for increasing island size, not just click. I would
like to be able to create a large island quickly, like using a paintbrush
almost. Even if I don't have notes to populate it with anytime soon.

Really love all this though.

------
ericsanchez
This is cool. I agree about the pricing page. If you're going to charge,
charge.

I like where this is going. You are right that humans are visual. But we are
more than that; we need to create more tools that complement our biological
form. This is a cool step.

------
tkainrad
Cool idea! "Unfortunately", I have grown too accustomed to Notion's usability
feautures (e.g. markdown, slash commands, organizing in databases) to switch
apps again.

I think it would be cool to visualize notes of other apps (Notion, Evernote,
...) with maps via APIs. Maybe even automated somehow.

If you are interested in reading more about knowledge management in a software
engineering context, you might like my blog post:
[https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-
ba...](https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-base/)

------
aapeli
I quite like this idea. It seems for now to be fairly simple: I think more
"decorations" and higher detail on trees, or whatever, might be important.

It seems that it's only 2.5D though. Have you considered making it truly 3D
somehow? There's a surprisingly large amount of extra space you gain with that
third dimension.

Also, fun idea: what if the island evolved over time? Like every time you
visit, trees grow a bit and some new trees grow next to them, so eventually
you get a forest, etc. I wonder what the implications of this would be to
remembering things? Would the constant change help, or no?

------
KillerRAK
Very interesting. There’s certainly something to this associative memory
phenomenon. Case and point. I stumbled across this on accident, by listening
to the radio while commuting to work in the morning. Some shows repeat
themselves throughout the day. If I hear the repeat on my commute home, I can
recall an amazing number of details around my morning commute at the same time
in the show. It’s pretty amazing and I’m trying to find a way to exploit this
outside of listening to Howard Stern on my commute to/from work. :-)

------
zozbot234
Hey, it's a Unix system! I know this!

...and everything old is new again, apparently.

~~~
rckoepke
I need help understanding the analogy!

~~~
chris_st
It's a quote from the first "Jurassic Park" movie; one of the characters sees
a graphical representation of a directory tree, and says the, "Hey, it's a
Unix system! I know this!" line.

------
jl6
I’m the family archivist and it’s long been a dream of mine to build some kind
of 3D virtual museum to host all the content (audio, video, photos,
documents). I looked into using Blender to construct some “museum geometry”
but it seems more suited to organic modelling of objects rather than
environments. It feels the technology isn’t quite ready for what I want to do
- scaling to tens of millions of assets.

Memory palace is a good description of what I want and this app encourages me
that others are doing work in the same space!

------
jesuslop
Nice concept. I'm thinking in a possible nebulous improvement. A potential
problem here is that it can scale with problems as hundreds of notes are
added. We organize knowledge in a hierarchical way, just as we do files in
folders, or places in continents, countries, states, cities, neighborhoods and
streets. Maybe a tree model of exploitable nodes, and order of magnitude
slider, or something to do with what Prezi does. But yes, conceptual proximity
as topographical is a great metaphor.

------
karthikpaga
Very creative approach. There are flavors of abstraction of information The
spatial visuals / artifacts are definitely helpful.

Much more relevant and sustainable than logs of notes.

It's pretty interesting that people remember much more about their own
Minecraft creation than their notes/ tasks. This balanced approach is very
interesting! Cause of concern: business/ pricing model.

------
aiokos
Now you too can keep notes like you're playing [Wilmot's
Warehouse]([http://wilmotswarehouse.com/](http://wilmotswarehouse.com/)).
Really reminds me of that game and how I floundered at creating a warehouse
that was organized such that my spatial brain could actually remember where
everything was.

------
dwagnerkc
Slick. I’ll be following the project.

I’ve been tracking the Munx VR [0] app which is similar, but unable to try it
out without a VR headset. They just announced desktop version support so going
to give that a go soon along with this Nototo app.

[0] [https://linguisticator.com/p/munxvr](https://linguisticator.com/p/munxvr)

------
thisisastopsign
This is pretty cool, and I want to try it! but I was expecting it to be a paid
Mac native app, not a web app behind a sign-up process... If you plan to keep
it web-based, I'd encourage you to create a demo portal that doesn't require a
signup. But I'd love a native app with export functionality (so I can use my
own backups)!

~~~
chenxi9649
Hey! Thanks for the encouragement!

A native app is definitely on the to-do list. The reason why we chose the
browser is mainly so that we can distribute it to a broader audience. Also, I
use a MacBook and my Co-founder uses windows, and we'd both like to use the
app ourselves haha.

I may be wrong on this, but I think the friction to download a native app is
much higher than a web app. And we really want as many users, from as many
demographics, as we can to test the product and guide our development.

A demo portal/sandbox on our front page would be cool too! But we have some
bugs/features that are much higher on our todo list.

Again, thanks a lot for the feedback!

~~~
Meph504
I think the threshold for downloading a native app vs a web app is when you
have to start putting your person data in the application.

what you are creating is something that will be filled with peoples personal
data. Many of us, are required by employers, law, or a sense of owning the
data, are going to prevent people from storing the data on your server.

you could look at a native app, if your rending is done client side, you could
make the data files exportable, and make use of client side encryption.

Think the way a lot of password managers are working.

Additionally, on your demo video, I know voice over can be a pain for small
devs, but have some on screen techs would really be helpful, or hell even some
background music.

I know I personally started checking my headphone, trying to see if they were
muted.

~~~
chenxi9649
"Many of us, are required by employers, law, or a sense of owning the data"
Ahh, interesting. I've never thought about this when it comes to web vs
native. It is surely one of my blind spots. Thank you for pointing that out!

We will definitely work towards that, however, at this moment we are quite
limited by our development speed. So it is unclear how long it will be until
our #1 prioritization becomes creating a native app.

Also, will definitely make the demo vid better, eventually!

Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate them.

~~~
rckoepke
You're doing great work. This is a fantastic product. Keep it up. Good luck
keeping it running.

------
Jemm
"Free at the moment" is not the way to go. I Don;t want to sign up and invest
my time in a product not knowing how much it will cost when you do decide to
start chat]raging. Better idea, is either day free for now but____ in the
future,

------
kovek
If we could model a room of our favorite design and store notes in drawers
that would be cool.

This is awesome!

------
nspassov
Looks really cool, however I would be more comfortable if this was a
desktop/mobile app rather than a web app. I would like to have some sense of
control over my data and prefer if it is not stored on a server somewhere.

------
bogoman
Very cool idea.

I have been thinking about how augmented reality might help with notes/todos
and a memory palace might be it. Still unsure about how to execute this but
intriguing nonetheless.

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plutonorm
Take my money. I've been thinking about this for a long time, just dont have
the energy. Implement this well and I think it's a kick ass idea.

------
keyle
Interesting concept. The brain does store information with visual location so
that works in that way.

reminds me a bit of Jurassic Park's OS :)

~~~
p_l
The OS in Jurassic Park (the original movie) was plain Irix running
accelerated GL X11, with a well known demo program for 3D.

~~~
mattrp
I remember we got one of those workstations at work. No one could figure out
what it’s purpose should be.. someone suggested it would make a decent mmorpg
server... and it was.

~~~
p_l
I recall that one of the demos included with some versions of Irix was a
multiplayer fighter combat simulator, one of the first users of IP multicast
:D

------
rosstex
First thought: "what the flying fuck"

Second thought: "wait, this actually makes perfect sense. I want it"

Kudos for the great idea!

------
EternalAugust
I've been using visuospatial techniques like the method of loci (i.e. memory
palaces, but I don't call them that) to enhance my memory for about 10 years -
here are a few reasons why I think this particular solution won't really
improve your memory, at least compared with normal diagramming/outlining
techniques.

1\. How you navigate through the environment matters. A lot. Let me use an
example to try to illustrate how navigation plays a role in the method of
loci. You're tasked with remembering how to solve a maze you must walk
through. Consider how your brain ultimately end up encoding the solution. The
brain only retains information that's (likely) relevant to solving some
problem it is motivated to solve, and, also noteworthy, it tries to encode
this information as sparsely as possible. Thus, what you end up remembering is
not the precise spatial layout of the maze. Instead, you remember a stack of
instructions/decisions associated with certain visual cues that contain a very
small handful (say 1 to 3) of precise identifying details framed within a very
undetailed visual "gist".[0] How does this relate to the method of loci? Well,
as the encoding of your memory palace matures in your brain it is precisely
these pictorial memories that end up solidifying in long term memory and
becoming the "loci" in which you place the items you want to remember.

This entails some important things: first, to actually use a "method of loci"
it is important that the environment change little. The solution here does not
appear to afford that; you generate the environment, you can change the
environment, etc. Well, learning is ultimately a generative activity, so this
is okay. Chunking is a generative activity, and that is a highly effective
memory technique. But I am going to guess that this, as a generative activity,
is not significantly more effective than the generative activities of spider
diagramming or outlining in a word document. Worse, if it's implemented poorly
or lacks certain features it's probably worse. Second, to actually use a
"method of loci" it is important that you have a clearly defined path to
navigate. Again, the solution here does not afford this, as you seem to be
constantly moving around wherever you like in the environment. Exploration is
fine as a learning activity but if you never boil it down to a specific path
(like you do in the maze example), you're not creating a true "mind palace"
and getting the benefits thereof. Third, each loci must have specific and
fairly apparent details that distinguish it from the others, or else your
images will tend to get confused. Doesn't look like this solution offers much
in the way of that with the little models you can place on the islands. I
assume that will change over time.

As a side note, I also once tried to use the method of loci with such a top
down perspective as you see in the demo (specifically I was using the Sims 2,
ah how I love that game...). I found it didn't work that well.

Some years ago my experience was further validated by reading Mary Carruthers'
work on the medieval idea of _ductus_, a core concept in medieval
memorytechnique. Ductus doesn't have to do with a defined navigation of your
body through an environment, though, but a defined navigation of your eyes
through an image.

To sum up point #1, this solution does not help you produce strong loci like
you get with a true method of loci. The "loci" it helps you produce are, if I
had to guess, not significantly more effective than the "loci" you produce in
your mind when you create, view, and encode the spatial relationships in, say,
a draw.io diagram.

2\. The loci are not being populated with imageable contents, and the method
of loci works best for imageable content. I remember reading some cog psyche
studies showing this somewhere but CBA to go find them. Also, the more
specific the images the more memorable. E.g. apple is worse than Macintosh is
worse than "that one Macintosh apple I saw on the floor at the store last
week".

3\. Related to #2, converting non-imageable concepts to images is expensive
and, when you don't have at least a partly preconceived "memory language" of
images, this almost always offsets the advantages of using the method of loci.
I think the problem with non-imageable content is probably the biggest
obstacle to using the method of loci for real work (There are some exceptions
to this, e.g. if you're learning Art History or Medicine) and this does
nothing to solve that big problem. Again, I think this puts it in the same
league as other diagramming/outlining techniques.

<long tangent> The solution to this problem I found was creating a bunch of
rules for creating such a "memory language". Most of these images (I call them
"esographs") are compiled and a few can be made JIT when you need them.
Another advantage of using these rules is that creating and using the
esographs can be a mnemonic/memory exercise in of itself that can be used for
real work. An example. I might use a black chicken to represent the concept of
a decimal point. The connection comes from a story that I heard from watching
the TV show QI[1]. The story goes that John Napier, the inventor of the
decimal point, had a thieving servant. Now, to figure out which was the thief
he persuaded his servants that he owned a magic black chicken that could
identify thieving hands when touched. He placed this chicken in an empty room
and had each servant go in and touch it. In reality, the story goes, the
chicken was actually covered in soot and he identified the thief by seeing
which servant had clean hands.

Now you can see that this image packs a whole parable-like story (which is
itself a memory techniqe), and every time I use this image it reinforces my
knowledge.

The trick to creating a "memory language" like this is to get into the habit
of creating these images whenever possible and eventually you will build up
enough images to have some sort of fluency in the language. Admittedly, this
is a difficult habit to pick up. But after a while it has been paying off in
my case, and can be enhanced with the method of loci. YMMV.

Digging through some old notes I found a list of good "rules" for converting
non-imageable concepts into imageable ones. I'm not sure if I should share
them since this post is already really long.

In any case, such a framework is actually more important than the method of
loci since, without it, it's very difficult to use the method of loci for real
work.

Funnily enough, such images representing abstract concepts is also core to
medieval memorytechnique and also seems to be a major underlying motivation
for religious iconography. And of course you can use the iconography as
readymade images for certain concepts. </long tangent>

I guess the last thing I will mention is that the method of loci seems to work
quite well for some people, especially when they are highly motivated and
interested in content that is more imageable, but it does not seem to be all
that effective for others. So YMMV.

[0] Anecdotally, I have a long commute that doesn't require a lot in the way
of cognitive effort to navigate. I noticed that it took a very long time for
me to remember the landmarks on long stretches of road where I don't have to
turn.

[1] Season 3, Episode 3

~~~
EternalAugust
Replying to my own comment cuz, well, I wrote this long post at 3 AM and one
is apt to write some incoherent stuff at 3 AM. So, forgive me for any parts
that don't make much sense :P Would be happy to elaborate on anything for
anyone interested.

------
j7ake
It worked great on Safari. On Chrome the islands were not showing up.

------
Giho
Great app. That makes me want to use minecraft as notetaking.

------
xorzarle
Damn... Ive had this idea for the longest time

------
Waterluvian
Why does this have to be a cloud app? Just make a great app, sell it for
download for ten bucks, and go away. Repeat this if you come up with more
awesome ideas.

~~~
chenxi9649
A very good question!

I think given the amount of manpower we had, it was the best choice to make
the browser version first. If we desperately want a desktop version, we can
use Electron or some tools to convert the browser version into a desktop
version. The performance may not be the greatest, but it's cheap. We can do
the same for iOS and Android.

This may just be me, but I feel like the app is somewhat like my kid. This may
make it tough if we need to ditch the app or pivot one day, but yea...great
question!

~~~
rckoepke
I will feel like my note-world is my kid if I spend a year putting notes into
this. Will I lose all my notes if you shut down the app?

~~~
chenxi9649
If somehow I can't work on this any more for the rest of my life, I'd probably
still just keep it running. The amount of credits we have for these hosting
services is enough to keep it running for a long time.

Also, it's quite unethical to just shut the app down without giving people the
ability to export the notes. I can't really see myself doing that. And I don't
think neither of my 2 teammates would allow that to happen.

------
maebert
Soooo... Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole point of taking notes on
your easily searchable computer that you _don’t_ have to remember them?

------
JVIDEL
Are you going to support evernote?

------
julienreszka
Sadly it's not mobile first

------
OmarShehata
Their pricing page really bothers me:

> We are just three engineering students in an apartment living room, eating
> lentils everyday, and spending every waking moment of our lives trying to
> make Nototo into something that people love.

> Therefore, we really can't afford to spend time and figure out the best way
> to take money from you.

I really dislike this trend of "formulating a business plan for our business
isn't important for us". It's supposed to come off as "we care so much about
delivering a great product that we don't care about money" but once you remove
the stigma about making money (you're a for profit business, you should be
making money. It's a good thing. There's no shame in that) it just comes off
lazy. Designing a pricing system and monetizing strategy is just as much a
part of making a product as designing the frontend or the tech, and all that
directly affects me as a user.

It doesn't really inspire me to try it if I have no idea if their pricing will
be something I'm ok with or if their product won't exist because they didnt
think coming up with a business plan was important.

~~~
bromuro
Yet i remember the times where people where doing things on internet for free.

~~~
hueving
It works when it's just software that you can support on your own later (open
source). It doesn't work when it's SaaS.

------
jakobmi
Where to download it?!

------
rijoja
Very very cool!

------
ospider
Unified xxx == Yet Another xxx. See
[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

------
Brave-Steak
It looks like there’s no desktop app of any kind? The idea looks fascinating,
but unfortunately it’s a complete no-go for me without a native and offline
option.

------
gonational
@dang - is this some kind of marketing post that was promoted? There’s very
little chance that there are this many people this excited about some note
taking app where you drag your notes as trees and park benches on a windows 95
looking map UI.

Also, the number of people requesting a native app for purchase and talking
about pricing… Something isn’t right here.

~~~
dang
Not as far as I can tell, but I only have my phone and can't do much with
that. I'll check again when I've got my laptop. But the votes look clean and
the comments I saw so far are by established users.

It's not uncommon that a post like this strikes a whimsical chord. Promotional
behavior is usually more mechanical and samey.

