Ask HN: what would be in your ultimate information manager?

[resdirector]

I'm building a web-based information manager.

Basically, I got fed up of not being able to find important pieces of information, when I needed them. So I'm building a web app (still in closed beta) around the idea that I should be able to store anything to do with my life (notes-to-self, ideas, to-do's, bookmarks, and, eventually, pdfs, photos, music etc). And then I should be able to find any of my stored info, in about the time it takes to do a Google search.

So this is what I've come up with:

* A windows explorer-like layout.

* Search-as-you-type

* Quick creation of notes and folders.

* Nested labels: any note or folder you create, can be in multiple parent folders. So you can use a hierarchy-like structure to store your data, or a flat label-like structure, or a combination of the two, depending on your mood, etc.

But, I was wondering: what kinds of features would you like to see in your ultimate information manager? iPhone app? A calendar? GMail plugin...?

[petercooper]

I had the same issue and found Evernote. It now fills the roles you mention (well, I would't put music or photos in it as I use iTunes/Spotify and iPhoto/Flickr for those, but you could). So, perhaps I'll just say what about Evernote makes it awesome for me, and what, in a new thing, could make me switch..

I use and need a reasonably flat-form environment with tagging. I don't care for folders, hierarchies, or whatever, because I'm too impatient and have a bad memory for structure. I just want to throw stuff in and have it use tags or similar to figure out my intent. When it's time to get stuff out, I'd rather type in a query than go digging through folders, for instance (the Google vs Dmoz/ODP approach).

Separate to tagging, though, I want to also search all content Google style, but with tags and filetypes having extra "weight." So if I search "pdf gasoline receipt", I want PDF files tagged with "receipt" and containing the word "gasoline" to come up higher than, say, the text of this comment (if I archived it.) Evernote doesn't quite get this right, but it's OK.

I almost don't care about the layout as I don't want to live in the app. I want to do two things: get info in and get info out. Other than that, I don't want to see anything. So I have it globally hotkeyed and then do one of those two things.

A very important matter is that I can create notes easily without getting bitched at constantly that I've "forgotten" to fill out a field or whatever. Evernote gets this right. Once I click "New Note", I can tab through title, tags, and then I'm in content. There I can drag whatever I like, type what I want, and it's indexed. It needs to be as simple, yet flexible, as possible.

Lastly, and Evernote gets this very wrong.. I don't want an information manager changing my info! Evernote's rich text editor keeps screwing up my formatting and fonts.. even on "plain text" stuff. I wish they could just let me have a totally plain text view without any of the rich stuff.

Oh, and make it sync somewhere - preferably through the file system so I can use Dropbox to sync it across computers myself. In fact, if you did that (and recommended users use Dropbox), then you solve the backup issue too and could use Dropbox's affiliates thing ;-)

[resdirector → petercooper]

Agreed re "get info in quick, get info out quick". That's been a driving principle behind my app, (http://www.folderboy.com/index.htm).

Re creating notes, folders, what I've done with FolderBoy is (1) made it easy to create a note or folder: type in a text-box and press <enter> (2) essentially dropped the distinction between notes and folders...any note you create can be turned into a folder by expanding it. E.g., if you make a note "book restaurant", then you can bust that open and put in the restaurant details.

I tried Evernote before deciding to create FolderBoy. What I didn't like was that I couldn't create folders and notes and drag and drop them around real-quick. Maybe they've fixed it, I haven't checked. Apparently they have good iPhone app, and OCR.

Yup, definitely using Dropbox API would be sweet. MVP at the moment :).

[petercooper → resdirector]

On the Dropbox point, I actually prefer apps that let me choose the folder they use, and I can just set that someplace in my Dropbox folder - no hard work needed :-) 1Password does this and it keeps my passwords synced everywhere.