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Show HN: A tool to help you remember shit you are interested in (recall-app.com)
493 points by paulrchds on Nov 1, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 173 comments
I've been working on Recall for a while now, it had some initial traction in the beginning which has since died down now. I am facing the inevitable question of whether to continue with the project. I just put out a new release and it would be helpful to get advice from the community on what they think of the idea and my implementation.



I see what this app is about but at the same time it enforces information overload which is an instant turn off for me. What'll happen if I were to use it: I'll pile up more and more stuff I'm interested into, I'll receive news about all things I've subscribed to and eventually I'll get annoyed from the "spam". Then I'll unsubscribe realizing that information overload can't be handled with apps, I have to solve that problem in my head. In the mean time Obsidian does the job for me if I'm really really interested in something - I write it down and it's still not 100% that I'll come back to it later. That's a no go for me with all the apps that are used to create a "personal encyclopedia". Engineering wise I can't say anything but good about the app. Keep it up someone might see things in a completly different way that me, there still might be a big market for this.


The idea is you collect stuff that you can kinda forget about over time. When you add something new that is related to content you have already added, a link is automatically created which resurfaces the content from the past helping you draw connections that you may have not seen yourself.


I’ve wanted to home-roll something like this as a project. I don’t have interest to adopt a third party platform because,

- Been burned before putting my collected notes into op-software only to find it doesn’t think how I work

- I prefer text files and directories for long term storage. (JSON Data Export _coming soon_? Hard pass)

- I don’t have problem with paying for software that I like to use. But I don’t like software subscriptions that lock up my info or have arbitrary limits. I’d rather have full data access with less functionality, and pay intermittently for better functionality.

- don’t want my data stored off site. Period.

There is interest in this topic. If this is your thing, I say keep at it.


How do you determine that a newly added piece of content is related to a previously added one?


It extracts the keywords and create a card for that keyword (kinda like a tag), when multiple content include the same keywords they get linked.


I used to save everything I thought was important to my del.icio.us account back in the day. How many times did I go back to look something up? Not a single time.


This seems really well built. It's fast and responsive. It looks nice. But I just don't understand what I would use it for.

It seems like the idea is to build a database of people, movies, Wikipedia articles and such and then be able to find them via search/links. But I'm not at all sold on why I need this in my life.

Is there a way to make the value clearer? Am I just not in the target audience? Who is going to see this and say "TAKE MY MONEY" and why?

I'm thinking of products that were instant sign-ups for me...

Spotify: For one price, listen to all the music on Earth whenever you want. TAKE MY MONEY!

Gmail: Fast email with 2 GB storage. This was such an instant sign-up they had to make an invite system to slow people getting access.

Maybe could add something like Lichess: Chess training and games, with modern UX, offered open source as a public good. I mean, if you're at all interested in chess, that's an instant sign-up, right?

Trying to say, this idea of presenting a clear value isn't limited to big players like Spotify and Gmail, but can also be done by smaller companies if the value presented is really clear.

What should someone see that makes them instantly recognize they need this in their life, because that's what I'm totally missing here.


> But I just don't understand what I would use it for.

Isn’t that clearly stated in the name of the post: It “helps you remember shit you are interested in.”

Personally I run into interesting things all the time, and it seems great to be able to have a place to store them so I don’t forget about them. That’s clear value to me. I’m honestly a bit puzzled how you don’t see value.

For me, I would need an app in order to start using this though. Otherwise it’s just to much of a hassle to add stuff (which means I wouldn’t do it).


What confused me about "remember shit that you are interested in" is that I use several different kinds of apps for that already. Google, Pocket, a note-taking app, a list app. Heck, Anki fits the description as well. I watched the short video and it reminded me the way I used to use bookmarks in the browser, organizing big discouraging lists of things that I thought I should follow up on but rarely did. The option to subscribe to news about a topic by clicking a button in an app feels positively dystopian; if I'm not interested enough in a topic to find and follow specific sources, then I'm not interested enough, period. I need an app to help me filter and prune the demands on my attention, not carelessly expand them.


  >Personally I run into interesting things all the time, and it seems great to be able to have a place to store them so I don’t forget about them.
>I use several different kinds of apps for that already. Google, Pocket, a note-taking app, a list app. Heck, Anki fits the description as well.

I've found an unexpected use case here for Telegram. I have Telegram open all the time in the background on all my computers and mobile devices. It has a 'Saved Messages' feature, which shows up in your contacts list like another conversation. Whenever I come across 'stuff' [or is 'shit' the cool word?] I want to remember it's really easy to just copy a link... or image/video URL... or some text I'm interested in... or scribble down an idea I've had and send/share it to 'Saved Messages' in Telegram.

Then, when I've got time to catch up and digest. I just open the 'Saved Messages' conversation in Telegram and there's all my stuff... er... 'shit' including; web previews, photos, embedded videos, etc. And it's there, instantly synced across all my devices. I also find myself using this as a really quick method of sending files between mobile devices and desktop/laptops. For me Telegram syncs instantly and 100% reliably --which is more than I've ever found Google Drive and its ilk to be capable of.


Yeah, Saved Messages is that unexpected feature for me too. I also use it to easily send photos from my phone to my laptop. It makes it convenient because Telegram is right at the top in the Share options, and it’s async, so I can send something now and use it whenever.


can Telegram send the full quality photo file? I recently realised that Signal does not, and couldn't see a way to do so.


It can. There's a check box on the telegram desktop to disable compression and on mobile you can send the image as a "file" attachment as opposed to an "image attachment".


I do the same thing using Obsidian and their Sync service, except I just save the file to disk and the magic happens. Very handy.


It's a PWA at the moment so it works quite well on mobile. But proper mobile versions will come in the future.


Why? What does a "proper mobile version" get you?


Yeah, my take is that the hierarchy is

  web site >> mobile web site >> mobile (cr)app
With the modification that if you have a very small phone sometimes the mobile site comes out ahead.

To take an example, right when a search has brought you to something you want to read on reddit, reddit distracts you with a popup telling you it is ‘better’ to use the app. Well, once you’ve installed the app they punch you in the face right away because you’ll have a very hard time finding the content that led you to reddit. (What did you think would happen, honestly?)

There are some cases where you really need a mobile app but if I have a choice at all I use the web, particularly if it involves viewing content or ordering something.


I find apps almost always preferable. Not only do I get dedicated backup, the apps are usually better for mobile UX. Of course, that excludes crappy apps like Reddit’s, in those cases there are often 3rd-party-apps.


Dedicated backup?


I run a nightly backup (via neobackup [0], requires root) on my phone that backups all APKs and data. With a webapp, I’m at the mercy of the app itself or firefox storage data with no granularity at all.

[0]: https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Backup


Less battery, memory, and bandwidth consumption. A Ui that fits the platform. An easy way for your users to pay for the software.


Mainly just a better user experience. For now I think I will just use capacitor to package it as an app for the app stores. A lot of people just want to be able to install it from the app store.


Try this one? https://cubox.cc/ I use it everyday and when I want to collect, I just use Command + Shift + X!


Thanks I will give it a try. Looks good.


Browser bookmarks are very convenient to add. So why would I use this app instead of just bookmarking pages?


It's definitely not for everyone. The idea is that you can track things you are interested over your life, when you add new content that is related to something you have added in the past, it creates a link automatically resurfacing the old content. It basically build a knowledge graph of all your interests. Thanks for your feedback.


Is this supposed to be limited to things like people, movies, shows, etc.? It seemed that way based on what search box would accept. I couldn't even add a book via search. And there was mention of articles / blogs... but there's no way to import something like that from what I could tell, so it would be all manual entry which seems to defeat the purpose.


One thing use case I can think of is a private detective who is tracking people. It would be a good place to keep notes or links to public information databases, property records, contact information, interview notes, etc.

Another one would be authors that are writing books that involve a lot of places, things, or people that need to be either accurately described or, in the case of sci-fi or fantasy, have an imagined description that needs to be recorded for continuity.

I'm imagining it sort of like an online version of a file cabinet where you have folders on all kinds of topics filled with notes and printouts. A more digital analogy would be a visual, annotated bookmark folder.

I have some folders like this at work. I need to access a lot of various reference manuals or standards that are difficult or impossible to find online, either because they come from a vendor under NDA or come from databases that are expensive or just hard to maintain continuous access to. Sometimes they are scans of hardcopies that I've had to request because the information is just so old. Whenever I get my hands on something I know I'll probably need again, I save a copy to my folder system. I'd love some sort of better filing system for these that would allow me to annotate the documents and provide some sort of synopsis that would help me remember why it's useful or why I used it in the past.


Right now the main datasource is wikipedia and wikidata. I am working on adding more datasources.


Perhaps it’s your vantage point. I just saw this on mobile, and if it does what I think it does, I can’t wait to try it out. At least for me personally I think this may be exactly what I need for knowledge (interest) management.


I would be curious to know how it goes?


<<This seems really well built. It's fast and responsive. It looks nice.

I second that. It was really the first time in a while where I did not have to wait just to see the landing page. It is a little sad that is not considered normal, but here we are.


> Gmail: Fast email with 2 GB storage.

My 2c: Storage and speed are nowhere near as important as spam blocking... Which Gmail is superior at, and the primary reason for it's choice


At the time of its release, around 2002, space was the killer feature. People were either using outlook express with their ISP email and losing all emails frequently when upgrading or changing ISPs, or hotmail which only had 4MB of storage in the free plan. It was normal to scroll through your emails, make sure you didn’t miss anything, and then delete all emails. I think outgoing emails were automatically deleted after 30 days too.


That's a beautiful branding. The UX seems to be very intuitive. I would love to try it without registration. Since you store the data in the browser, have you considered offering a fully offline version that doesn't need registration for users to get hooked? I would like to postpone syncing until the data becomes valuable.

To me, it would also be important that the data is stored in an encrypted form on the server and that the key remains in the browser and has to be stored by me.

Personally, I would like to have the option to discover people who work on similar notes, think travel app [1] for mental journeys. It would also be nice to have some social features like voting on links or sharing notes or sets of notes so that others can annotate them. Bonus points if those social features use an open protocol so that users from other note taking apps can join.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33344734


I have been planning on allowing users to start using the tool without signing up and the data would just stay in the browser.

Unfortunately I would have to redo my syncing if the content on the server was encrypted which I don't plan to do anytime soon.

The social idea is great.


If this were some kind of application I could run locally that didn't require any sign up or send my personal information anywhere I might have a use for it, although it seems like a lot of other solutions exist in the same place in the form of personal wiki's and note apps.

I don't see much value in letting someone else track the things I'm interested in over the course of my life though. Handing that kind of data over is highly likely to result in it being used against me later. Even assuming that you'd never think of using this data for market research or selling it to anyone the truth is that services are often bought up or management changes hands long after people started submitting their data.


From the roadmap:

> Mobile apps in the Play and App stores.

> News subscriptions - this feature will allow you to subscribe to news events relating to a note helping you stay informed on things you are interested in.

> Add more built-in data sources.

> Improved categorization.

> Spaced repetition.

> News/article feed based on user interests.

Charge 5 bucks a month for those features and see if people bite. That's a lot of stuff that most apps don't have. Especially the subscriptions and the spaced repetition functionalities.

If people pay for your work, then you've got all the signal you need to keep going.


Yeah you are right. Charging is the best way to tell if your product is really providing value to users. I have been putting it off always wanting to add more features first.


Honestly. "Cool new things" without some sort of pricing have started to scare me. Either A) I'm the product or B) SURPRISE! The cool new thing now costs absurd amounts of money.

Sure, I like not paying for things (if I don't have to), but if I start to use it and really get into it... if there is no clear monetization... it gets a little scary. Plus if I'm really into it, I want to support it. Some of my favorite apps are solo developers or small time shops (like Inkdrop)


The best products have one feature that people go crazy for and tell all their friends about. Find that feature, make it great, charge for it.


The topical subscription is pretty cool. I'm sure I could hack together some kludge (like Google News filters or something), but if this app's implementation is easy, I'd pay for that.


This seems like a great idea.


I love the concept but I’d be reticent to invest so much in a platform that has the possibilities that if it hits it’s likely to go away from acquisition and if it doesn’t is likely to go away from lack of financial incentive.

We’re storing some valuable stuff here. I wouldn’t want to put the kind of time I put into research and then find one day it’s gone (like Reader, Delicious, etc.)

What are the plans in those instances?


I have and FAQ point that addresses this here. Quoting from the site:

What happens if Recall disappears one day?

It is understandable that there is some hesitation to invest your time into adding your information to a new application and the obvious fear that it may just disappear one day. I want to reassure you that we are fully committed to Recall for the long term. But in the unlikely and unfortunate case that Recall doesn’t work out we will ensure that there is more than enough time for users to export their data so that it can be moved to another application. We would also open-source the project to allow users to host Recall themselves.


If it were easy to export your data to markdown or sync with other apps, would that ease your concerns?


The ability to schedule backups of my data, perhaps emailed or something I can hit periodically myself (API?) would make me hop on and pay now. Until then, I can't justify even investing time to try right now.


Other concerned potential user here. Absolutely, yes. Particularly exporting markdown.


Yea, I would second this as an answer.

Being able to export a snapshot would be ideal.


Thought about pivoting slightly to the left and adding a "content alert" feature? I could keep track of my interests in a hundred different ways, but what I can't do is keep up with them without being inundated with irrelevant information. For example, I want an alert when the bands I like release a new album. Not when they go on tour, not when they have a guest drummer, not any of the hundreds of bullshit "fan engagement" emails or social media alerts. Just content. Same for authors, directors, artists, etc. You build that system and I'd pay a subscription to use it.


Is there seriously nothing that does this?

Doesn't seem too difficult to implement now that I think of it. Could use a likes/retweets ratio to determine what's actual content and what are engagement posts.


I wish someone would come up with an AI system that would filter out GPT-3 style corporate speak and engagement emails, so that we can get proper content. I have signed up on multiple email lists, and it is tedious how every email is worded to tease out maximum subscription - what's the point? I'm already sold on this subject, but can we at least now get sober and short, and to the point?


Yeah, this was a feature I am working on. It shows it on the site. Have a look by "Stay informed - Subscribe to news about the specific things that interest you always keeping you in the know."


It sounds like that's not filtering out the non-content, though. If I just wanted news about my interests I'd use a Google alert.


I have a home-baked system like this, mostly just files in folders and in some cases HTML-based indexes. It's not perfect and nowhere near as usable as Recall looks, but it works for me nonetheless.

I won't use Recall. It's just another Web app, and thus subject to the whims of the owners (selling my data, injecting ads when other sources of income fail, etc). I would be much more amenable to a desktop app I have absolute control over. They keep my data (assuming I were to use Recall) on their servers - but no comments I found talk about data protection or what happens to my online data if they fail, sell or merge with another company.

These days if I don't get absolute control of my data it's just not going to happen.

A model I would be happy with is a desktop app that syncs with a mobile app, encrypts everything, and is purchasable with a one-time payment.

I'm tired of Internet-everything. It always ends in disappointment for me.


I have a similar system except I make use of Zim Wiki for managing it. It's not on mobile but I don't do much of any import on mobile.

I have to agree with you, I didn't comment before because I didn't want to criticise something that has had a ton of work put into it.

If I was going to use something like this it would have to be local only with the potential to backup to the cloud of my choice, and sync (e2e encrypted) to other devices.

I'm not signing up for a subscription or web version for something I'm capable of doing with text files and folders on a computer, or in a notebook by hand.

I do think a ton of work has gone into this and it looks polished but I don't see a business model in it.


For what its worth, your data lives primarily in IndexedDB in your browser. It's then synced on the server for backup and sync between devices. And I don't have any intention on selling data or ads.


Beyond the tool itself, I like what this tool encourages: deliberate, conscious control of how we recall and explore our interests. Not some algorithm hoovering up whatever our lizard brains drove us to do at any given moment and offering us more of that so we spend as much time on the app as possible. Just a faithful servant helping us remember what we want to learn and do and be.

Put another way: Twitter wants you to spend as much time on Twitter as possible. If Twitter can interest you in fake controversies where people get mad about stuff that isn't true or makes no sense, Twitter will happily do that. But you're not gonna put "dig into more fake Twitter controversies" in your recall app. It's there to remind you of what you truly want, not just the things you can be tempted into wasting your life on.

I'd rather pay for an app that's going to make me better than get a free app that's going to make me worse.


> But you're not gonna put "dig into more fake Twitter controversies" in your recall app

This is classic programming from Big Don't Dig Into Conspiracies. Wake up, sheeple!


My 2 cents:

1. The space is fairly crowded, you'll be competing with Notion, Bear, Obsidian, Evernote to name a few. These guys are big.

2. The statement: "tool to help you remember things you're interested in" is too narrow / too weak. Obsidian has "a second brain for you, forever" which I find a lot more appealing (and broader).

3. Focus on your differentiators: the automated data capture and news feed is AWESOME. This is your sales point. Something like "Your personal automated newsroom". What you're selling is a Bloomberg terminal for your own stuff. You could sell to companies to "get notified of your competitors' products"

4. Since things are stored locally, drop the "sign in" part. You'll get a lot more people on board if they only have to install an app. Get people to sign in to allow cloud backup / syncing.

5. This looks like good stuff!


1. Yeah it is, but Recall is not trying to replace those apps as the features are quite unique. So I thinks it's possible for them to co-exist. 2. I have been testing a few different statements. Its quite touch to get something concise that also explains it well. Obsidians slogan is really great. 3. Good advice. Thanks 4. Yeah, I have come to this conclusion too. A lot of people don't want to sign up just to try it. 5. Thank you :)


First off, I'd like to state that this is excellent work you've done.

With that being said, I see two issues:

1. The branding is unrelatable. I don't need help remembering the things I'm interested in. Most people don't, I reckon. However, I'd bet that most people have trouble organizing data related to their interests. This right here is the heart of your product: Bookmarks++. Bookmarks on anabolic/androgenic steroids.

2. "Media" as the default selection immediately makes me feel like this is another Letterboxd. I know it's not. I know it's nothing like Letterboxd at all, but that's the feeling it gives me.

So, yeah… the first feeling I got looking at the homepage was: "Recall? Movie Posters? Is this Anki meets Letterboxd?"

I know that this isn't your intention, but as we both know: the first five seconds are crucial. It's so easy to click away.

Good luck! I hope this helps and I hope you succeed.


1. Thanks for pointing this out. I have been playing around with different versions of the copy. I have been struggling to get something concise that explains the idea.

2. I went with media as the main image as I thought it would be the most relatable. I guess I could put the everything section first.


I love the idea, and the roadmap sounds nice, but I would really like to see a 5 min tutorial or short documenting exactly how I could use it day to day.


My take on this idea (take it or leave it) was a bookmark app for real life. Use cases: Pass a cool looking restaurant, bookmark it. Hear about a movie, book or new series, bookmark it. Concert or event coming to town, bookmark it.

Functionality to build on top of the core concept Reminders, obviously Tools to plan & schedule with friends

Business model: Sell ads or coupons to the bookmarked locations. Unfortunately this model sucks pre-scale, but it could be started locally if that helps.

The idea could definitely be gamified, if people still do that and if the planning with friends feature works there is a viral aspect to the idea.


Thanks for sharing, its a useful idea for me to think about.


I like the concept, but I'm not sure I'm the target audience.

I do a lot of browsing/research from my phone, and I would love a method of better categorizing things than sharing a url to myself on slack.

I would love something like this that I could quickly hit with a share sheet from iOS, add some quick notes/tags, and then just keep on browsing. Bonus if it could include a screenshot that I could markup/highlight or automatically take an archive.is snapshot of the site for later backup reference(I've lost many research references over the years due to link rot).


I'm certainly in the target audience for this. Nice work!

Here's a feature request: make it easy for me to import/dump stuff from the other methods that I've tried to use to store things I'm interested in. For example: HN favorites, Reddit saved posts, Firefox bookmarks, Instapaper bookmarks, ios notes


Awesome, let me know if you would do a user interview?

Thanks for the feature request. I have import browser bookmarks in my backlog. I think I can prioritise it higher. If you share your email I can mail you when its ready.


Another +1 on this, happy to chat further if you want more context.


hey thanks for the offer. I would love that. Would you email me paul@recall.wiki and we could have a chat if you are willing? I would really appreciate it.


+1 request for an import feature

An import from Pocket would be cool


Nice app and concept

I'm wondering if you considered or is using RDF for the linking (since Wikipedia, imdb, etc. seems to implement some kind of ontology)


Can you perhaps sell this as an automated/smart Obsidian? Personal knowledge bases are all the rage now, see a recent discussion of Obsidian 1.0.


For sometime I was actually considering making recall a plugin for Obsidian.


I’m using obsidian and Zotero as an academic workflow for my PhD.

There is a huge market for knowledge tools for students and academics, and universities, libraries and high schools often buy these tools in bulk to be a student resource.

I gather all my academic articles in Zotero and can cite them into my papers from Zotero > Obsidian > Pandoc Cite

I think your tool could be a great way to help me gather all the media around my research.

If you could tie into a citation workflow, into pandoc, you’d be on a big winner.

Look into how academics might want to go from your tool > obsidian > pandoc > word to generated cited references from your tool.

https://citeproc-js.readthedocs.io/en/latest/csl-json/markup...


Actually better yet, take an immersive design approach, look into enrolling into a short degree by research, and as the uni resources you up on ‘how to do academic research’, polish your tool and pitch it to students and academics from the inside.

I didn’t know this before but if you have an undergrad, you can add a one year honours in research even at a different institution or a two year masters by research.

We’ll that’s how it works in Australia anyways.


Sure. Personal knowledge graph should be automatically connected to "global knowledge graph" for better insight and context.

We already have several online database that could serve as "global knowledge graph" (wikidata, golden, imdb, rateyourmusic, goodreads, letterboxd, anidb, etc). The problem of to integrate it.


I'd like a feature that reminds me of a particular piece of information at a logarithmic cadence so I can commit it to memory better by being reminded a few times within a few weeks/months, but then a nudge 6 months down the line, etc.


I built a tool to address that problem with Anki as the back-end[1], Idea being an always-on spaced repetition system can help us review the cards asynchronously.

It has been a huge quality of life improvement for me after I started using it, But I guess Anki and the HW requirements creates friction for a decent adoption of this system.

[1] https://memoryhammer.com/


Have you heard of Anki, the flash card app?


RemNote also does a good job of this.


Yeah, I have a spaced repetition learning feature on the roadmap.


What I really need is an location aware task list, that allows me to easily setup recurring or one-off tasks and reminds me to do it whenever I'm at a location where they make sense. Basically, the "Getting Things done" methodology by David Alen, but updated for the event-driven 21st century man. Here is a simplified version: https://hamberg.no/gtd

For example, if I setup a task that I need to purchase a road toll sticker every year and that can only be acquired at a gas station, the app should track when the current sticker expires and prompt me when I am at a gas station. At the store, I get a notification with all missing gorceries that I've earlier identified back home and inserted in the "Groceries" task list. When I come back home, the app will prompt me to, for example, read the gas meter that is due that day.

I'm currently using Google Tasks for these tasks but it's less than optimal, although the gmail integration is pretty cool. Your Recall app could make up the Archival module of a great tasklist; i.e, if items come up that seem important and I might later need them (such as, say, a particularly interesting hackernews thread or news item), I need a fast and easy way to archive them with as much context and metadata, so I can easily reference them later. Such items could have optional reminders, so I can snooze them and they keep popping up.


This is super cool. I just tried it out by looking into a few health/medical topics. So far, I’ve only tried the “internal” experience of “create note with search”, “expanding” and clicking on links – I haven’t tried saving links from my normal web browsing. It’s a nice alternative to using Wikipedia for quickly researching a topic, the benefit being that it gives me bullet points so I’m not overloaded with information.

I don’t see myself replacing my Obsidian notes with this any time soon, but it could serve the niche of the first pass of research – a quick way to collect information, where afterwards I’d consolidate my findings into more permanent notes in Obsidian.

What would make this really useful is more data sources. As far as I can tell, Recall’s “create note with search” only uses Wikipedia right now. It would be awesome to be able to compile information from multiple sources into one note. For example, I was just looking into anemia. It would be cool if, in addition to Wikipedia, I could pull in some information from WebMD, Mayo Clinic, or Harvard Health, too. A more fine-grained way to pick and choose what information I want to add would also be useful.

Nice project, I’ll keep an eye on it! Also, good job with the mobile UX, it’s pretty good!


Yeah for now the data sources are a bit limited. I combine data from a few place but its mainly wikipedia/data. I am working on a browser extension that will let you save from any page.


This looks cool. As someone who just keeps this info as tabs in their phone browser that I may stumble upon randomly in the future it really speaks to me.

One issue I have with data dumps like this is keeping them from getting bloated. Say I use this a lot and have gathered 10,000 entries over two years -- how can I be sure that 1 entry I want to recall isn't lost in the sea of the other 9,999?


Thats where the bi-directional links come in. When you add something new that is somehow related to something you have added in the past, recall will automatically create a link for you helping you resurface old knowledge when it is most relevant.


Had a quick look, but it seems not possible to make a normal note with normal paragraphs. Every line has a bullet point. That's a showstopper for me.

No tagging system. Categories are not tags. Tags are essential, and also search options for basic things like searching all contents of note, or just note names, or just within a category/folder. Customisation of home screen (recent and fav notes), pinned notes, etc.

This is why I'm building my own notes app, just for me, no plans to release it. I think these kinds of apps end up being very personal, in terms of customisation and features. For example, I need specific UX that allows fast access to notes, and I definitely prefer having an old fashioned "save" button in the note rather than auto-saving as you type (I can't stand that). Lots of little details that please me but not necessarily others. Also.. kind of on the easier side of web app building, which suits me!


Looking at the comments, I think it’s worth bringing this to the discussion:

There are many different “brain types” (apologies if that’s an established term already, I’m using it generally). We know the different types of learners (auditory, visual, kinaesthetic), and we’re just starting to realize the wide range of the different internal senses (aphantasia has now branched significantly and we’re (for example) finding people with nothing but a monotone inner monologue, or people who can easily visualize a 3D shape but can’t use their “mind’s ear” to hear, and many many more.)

Personally, I am a kinaesthetic learner/thinker with object permanence issues and one of the challenges in my life has been keeping track of things. In interviewing people I’ve found that this combination is not very common in the population, but is there. One of the strengths of his combo is “feeling” the connections between things. Like Graph database vs SQL.

This tool strikes me as being written by someone who struggles with similar challenges, whether they have the same combination of mental traits or not.

- “What was the movie with that really meaningful theme? I think it would help communicate what I’m trying to communicate..”

- “I’m at a restaurant. Did I like this compelling menu item the last time I had it or am I going to be re-disappointed?”

- “Friend asked me for book recommendations. What books have changed me for the better and why?”

- “What breakthroughs have happened in (branch of science)? Yes I could read papers, but which ones have I already read?”. I have an example on this one, though I can’t tell you why I remember it clearly: When it came out way back in the day I read one of the first articles about connecting organic material to silicon (Scientific American I think). Over the years that led to OLED technology and I think the whole journey (and it’s offshoots) are pretty cool.

- “Who have I met who would be interested in ______?” / “... who I can ask for good advice about this problem?”

For many these are trivial questions, but for people like me they can be as challenging as climbing a mountain.


I am like this. I even had that restaurant example a few weeks ago. I ended up ordering something different - or so I thought. When it came I remembered it was what I had enjoyed previously :)

My problem with an app like this is that it is a huge investment before it pays off. And will it pay off? Will I check an app while out for dinner? Some people might but I definitely wouldn't.


I’m not sure if it needs a huge investment. Does a system like this get better as you invest? 100%. But if it’s contextual it might have such low friction that you barely notice using it. Like you add a note “Curry 8/10”, and that note gets automatically added to the restaurant (since that’s where you were when you made the note). Next time you go (or plan to go), it would pop up your previous experiences without needing extra taps.

Restaurants are more complicated because of the social view of checking your phone while out with people, but I think a similar place where it shines is the grocery store. The number of times I bought the same flavour of listerine that I can’t stand is upsetting.


I am trying to make it so it very quick to add content which automatically gets put in the right place. This reduces the time investment. But yes, it does take some commitement.


This is very interesting. I am definitely like this to a degree.


Nice stuff.

I want a browser extension to "send to recall"

It could save me to have 100 tabs saved by groups of interest...


Its on the roadmap :) https://www.recall.wiki/roadmap


Yay!


Couldn't the entire thing be a browser extension?


It could.


> I am facing the inevitable question of whether to continue with the project.

No need to figure it out immediately. Here are some ideas that spring to mind:

- Should automatically or manually ingest bookmarks

- Should be able to integrate with macos notes somehow

- Should be able to integrate with email providers - this is bordering on insanity but casual users might like it. Bonus points if you respect privacy and do it securely. HN will hate me for this suggestion, but half of it works at privacy violating corps anyway. Perhaps it could be done as a gmail or google docs addon?

- Integrate with reddit or anything that lets you save or favourite urls

I scatter links all over the place and would be nice to have them all centralised and searchable. Its a really cool app imo.


Thanks for the tips !


That's a very exciting idea! Automatic linking and categorization is absolutely cool! I agree that News pushing more info can be overloading, but News can be used more creatively.

I can see how this could grow into very valuable product:

- Saving web-articles removing all the watery text from it, stripping original down to an essence

- Not just linking articles on similar topic, but coming up with some insights/synthesis of new knowledge by blending linked knowledge (i.e. when several articles exploring some topic from different perspectives it could make whole puzzle come together)

- Feed the news into the insights/synthesis module and notify only if some interesting stuff is generated


I have a need for this and basically use Pinboard and Notational Velocity to satisfy it. For me to switch to your product, which looks nice and well conceived by the way, I would have to see the time investment and value as worthwhile.

Maybe it's having been burned too often by services that I pay for but still fail, but I'd only make the effort if it was independent of your continued operation as a business. If it were all local to my computer or phone and relied on a cloud storage service like iCloud or Dropbox, then I'd give it a whirl.

Sorry, but that's a possible hurdle you're facing if my hesitation is common.


If you could export all your data to markdown files would that ease your hesitation?


I appreciate any kind of export into plaintext, yes.


It's cool that it's offline-first, but make an offline-only version and I'll use it. Or a "bring your own DB" version. I'd even pay a one-time fee for it.

I'm not giving my data to some random small startup.


Are you banned from Google? Searching for "recall app" you don't appear at all.

I also will assume that anyone praising the UI has not actually tested the application but only seen the homepage, because the UX is abysmal. In just 3 minutes it has managed to frustrate me:

- You cannot create a new category from the selector of category while creating a note,

- You have to look for the button to create a new note if not from search, and the fact that it appears on hover only is awful,

- The UI for seeing a note is ugly, the bullet points just seem like a straight up bug because of how weirdly they are placed.


My SEO isn't great, its still quite early stage. Thanks for the feedback on the UI, I will try make it better.


Awesome. Creating something like this has been on my wish-list for some time.

I'd like:

- 2d visualization of the notes and their relationships (just because it's cool)

- some "typed" notes (e.g. for People, or Organizations) so I can keep track of my friend's birthdays, their kids' names, etc. Also reminders to stay in touch for the people you want to prioritize etc.

- a shareable space so you can expand knowledge within your company. People can master areas by learning, and can claim knowledge by passing a quiz or self-assessment. You can also see who knows about what.


Could not find an email on the profile. I have a potential idea which maybe we can discuss. Would help you to answer some of the questions/concerns mentioned in the comments.


his email is on the bottom left corner of the home page


paul@recall.wiki


This is cool, but my browser already has a bookmarks manager which does pretty much the same thing. I'm not going to sign up for a new service for that functionality.


This looks super useful to me. Trying it out right now. Is there a way to have my own tags/collections I can mark notes with? For example I have books that I want to bookmark because I plan of reading them. And there are books I love and want them in another list. I would also like to share the latter with friends when they ask me if I can recommend a good book on a specific topic. For movies I already use public imdb lists for that.


I am working on added tagging. Right now I would tag by just linking to a page called "Reading List" or "Favourite books". But I think regular nested tags are more intuitive for people so I will be adding at some point.


Nice! Any plans for a feature like sharing a particular tag/list?


I have its definitely something that I am thinking about but not on the roadmap yet. If I get enough requests for it, Ill probably prioritise it more.


This seems very similar to Sofa which I've been using for years: https://www.sofahq.com


Ah this sofa looks cool. Hadn't seen it before. Recall is similar but for all your content, not just media.


All I want to know is, does it use Semantic Web? This is like the perfect application for a semantic knowledge base. (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q54837 https://guides.library.ucla.edu/semantic-web/wikidata)


yeah, wikidata is one of the sources used. The browser extension I am working on will parse the semantic markup from the page too.


This could solve a problem I’ve been stuck on for a long time. I read so many interesting things and I make useful connections between topics and concepts, but I don’t revisit it later and forget much of what I have learned. I’ve experimented with journaling about all of the things I’ve learned and read in a day but it ends up being a chore. Maybe this would prove useful to help me literally “recall” what I’ve learned.


Hope it can solve your problem. Please send me feedback on your experience.


This kind of looks like it is replicating DevonThink but with less functionality unfortunately. I hate to be a downer about it but you’d probably have a lot of work on your hands to catch up to that software although it is only available on Mac so there might be a market for Windows and Linux people for something similar.


I will checkout DevonThink. Thanks.


Really interesting. For me, this solves some of the data ingest and manual update problem of creating a "second mind".


Nice concept. Looks great, polished, etc.

If I was investing time in building a personal knowledge base then I'd want to be super-clear about how to export my data from the service. I didn't find any mention of this existing now, just a commitment that it would be there if the service was discontinued.

Good luck!


I am working on export to markdown feature. But its not released yet.


How is this different from using notion ?


This is much closer to a bookmarking tool than to notion. I guess its similar to the notion browser extension but has a key feature that notion doesn't have. And this is it automatically created bidirectional links between the content you add helping you find connections.


I've been using mymind.com (paid), but I like the automatic linking/resurfacing feature of this app.


Yeah I think the automatic bi-directional linking is the biggest value add at the moment.


There needs to be some kind of open API for this that users control.

I don't want Amazon to hoard its information about what books and/or movies I like. I want that to travel with me and let me share it but under my control.


I know someone who uses pinterest in a similar way (saving places to see while travelling). Not sure how big the demand for this is in general, but they would also be interested in a location data and a map view for saved items.


One thought is if you could work on marketing / targeted theme for people with memory issues (like from age, or illness). So perhaps explore if you can sell it as a tool to assist those with medical needs for it.


Be careful not to market as a medical device. This can come back to bite you. "My mum used this tool made for people with memory issues to tell her to remember to take her medicine and it was offline for a day and she's now in trouble".


Not using Recall Graph built on Arrango DB by chance, are you? https://github.com/RecallGraph


Nope, but that looks cool.


Surely people find I useful, as many useful things get lost.

To me, when something gets lost I accept it gladly, because IMHO the thermodynamics of my effort vs my available time make it irrelevant.


If data is stored locally, why would FAQs state that once it becomes non-Freemium, they won’t lock you out of your notes. Shouldn’t that be a given?


Sure, but people were asking so I put it in the FAQ.


Right now, to remember shit I use collections and favorites in browser and also text files. How will recall make it easier to remember shit?


E2EE is my bare minimum nowadays for things like that.


Now I need a tool to help me remember this app...


There's a good chance the lack of traction is a marketing problem, not a product problem.

What have you tried do so far to market the product?


Posted on Producthunt and tweet about it a bit. This post though has by far got the most interest.


If I need a tool to help me remember something I'm interested in, am I truly interested in it?


Yes. For example, when a song you know you like gets stuck in your head, but you can't remember what it's called or who performed it so can't listen to it.

This app doesn't help with this example, but being interested in something is not enough to remember it.


What's a good way to organize bookmarks directly from the browser with an extension?


I'll save this for later.


Remembering is so 1982. One of the main goals of tech is superseding memory.


That is a straight path to becoming an unthinking entity.

The first requirement of thought is memory. You can only think with it.


I didn't say we should abandon memory - that would be indeed absurd to even consider. But the conditions for it should change and are changing. Written text is part of this movement, aswell as, more recently, photography - there's a reason a massive (maybe more than 99,9%?) amount of photos are just abandoned after they are produced. A lot of times "memory" is the denial of time.

I'm not trying to be cryptic here - it's just a very complex subject unsuitable for this medium because of size, and also I'm not native and lack the proper terms for this kind of conversation.

A small anecdote: my father is approaching the age of 80, and recently approached me sharing he has noticed he was "losing his memory" and didn't like it. I surveyed him and we understood the only memories that were sometimes slipping were only stupid stuff like day-to-day low-priority routine tasks - things that he could really go without: the fact he was forgetting them was more impactful to him at that time than not having performed them, because "he always had such a good memory". Long story short: I instructed him on how to use alarms and calendar on iPhone (he's already a frequent and somewhat comfortable smartphone user). He used them for a while and enjoyed the ease of not having to "remember" the tasks. Shortly afterwards he felt annoyed by so many alarms, and drastically reduced usage. Now he's happy and "feels lighter" knowing he is healthy and not at all forgetting stuff he deems important, and can count on easy tech to help when needed. He also now benefits from scheduling long-term important stuff on google calendar, and having multiple notifications to remember him 1 month prior, 2 weeks, 1 week, 3 days. What he's realizing is there's better usage for his brain and energy than storing easy "memories".


As someone who lives and dies based on written notes, thank you. Sincerely.


"For the memory of a lifetime, recall, recall, recall"


Is it basically a CRM for things that aren't customers?


Yeah, kinda.


This kind of reminds me of Collections that is in MS Edge.


For emacs users this is equivalent to org-roam package


How is this different than keep.google.com


It has a lot of unique features that Keep does not have.


Ahh this is great. Well done.


What is your tech stack ?


react/typescript some backend stuff with Python/fastAPI


text files in a directory in git. You dont need much more!


Turds to remember.


Non-starter for me if it's not possible to self host. Self hosting is not only knowing that my data is private, but also that once the company behind the product dies out, my data won't disappear forever.


I just setup FreshRSS for myself to get off feedly and am much MUCH happier.

While I'd like to use that service I have to agree with you. I want to self host this goldmine of personal information myself as well.


This is coming up a lot so I will look at how I can do it. Would the ability to export your data be enough or does it need to be selfhosted.


self hosted. I dont want that data residing out of my control


FAQ says they will add self-hosting if the project dies.

https://www.recall-app.com/faq

>What happens if Recall disappears one day?

>It is understandable that there is some hesitation to invest your time into adding your information to a new application and the obvious fear that it may just disappear one day. I want to reassure you that we are fully committed to Recall for the long term. But in the unlikely and unfortunate case that Recall doesn’t work out we will ensure that there is more than enough time for users to export their data so that it can be moved to another application. We would also open-source the project to allow users to host Recall themselves.


It's not good enough, because there are instances where the project might die but they decide not to.

For example, if they are acquired and shuttered (like when fitbit bought and closed Pebble), if legal says they can't, or if the money needed to open source it after the fact is not available because they went bust and already owe creditors (you might need money to do a license review to ensure that releasing the code doesn't violate any third party licenses in software the project depends on).


Fair enough. There will also be the option to export your data to markdown files.


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