For a 'Show HN', no registration is better for me because I'm just going to put in a fake address and a guessable password anyway...if I bother to provide anything at all.
I'd put it this way, 'Show HN' is a good potential way to get feedback on the implementation and idea for the purpose of improving the project/product. There's a lot of expertise here.
On the other hand, for most projects it is probably about average in terms of garnering emails and page views. PR and marketing aren't going to do better.
Finally, in terms of the project, it looks like something I'd expect to see as open source rather than a product/company. It's cool and potentially useful and if it were rolled into an IDE or an editor it could be a great feature.
But it's harder to see how much I would gain by a business commitment. Collaboration means convincing other people to try it, hoping they find it useful, and then learning how to coordinate use.
But for the collaboration part, it reminds me of Emacs org-mode (which uses a different markup language than MarkDown). Being open source, org-mode might be worth looking at because there is a well-established community of users and a tool that does a lot but does not have strong interactive collaboration. On the other hand, feature parity with org-mode would be non-trivial.
There might be a Github like business model there: a business that improves upon an existing tool and grows by expanding the market.
Speaking about collaboration, most Linux epoch tools don't have a real collaboration and only synchronize files. Current web apps are much more oriented to conflict-free synchronization. Markdown Tree also is.
Now if you can format branches in Markdown, drag & drop images and other files, keep documentation, study notes, code examples and simultaneously write information with a few more colleagues - that's quite useful I think.
Next version of Markdown Tree should support various embeds like: Youtube, codepen.io, Google maps, etc. That would allow to have a nice workspace for various kinds of tasks. And only web apps are capable of it too.
When someone does all those things, what are they making? That is what is the artifact or useful work? For example, a single Emacs org-file can produce calendar entries, a web page, source code files and/or administer a server. It makes stuff that is useful outside of org-mode or Emacs.
In a sense, it captures one of the *nix principles of outputting to conventional interfaces...it makes things rather than being an end in itself. If it had collaboration, people might use it to collaborate on writing a program or a web-page.
Thanks for the advice! We thought it should be quite clear from the the image what it does. But probably you are right. We should make an animated gif.
It could be useful for study notes, programming notes (and code), project planning. It's like a simple Markdown text, but you can nest one Markdown text block to another. You can fold branches you don't need now.
I am trying to spark some innovation in the information organization field.
Most organizational tools are only ok when working with little information. When your notes database grows up, more and more problems emerge: difficult to navigate and efficiently use that much information.
One thing that could help when working with many documents (or notes) is a text referencing in a mindmap.
At OctopusNote I am experimenting with various techniques to find the right mix of features that could improve human's information processing capabilities.
OctopusNote now has a strong technical base and can be easily transformed to various note taking or mindmapping tools based on modern web technologies.
For example:
has a reliable almost-real-time conflict-free sync
has a high performance mind-map engine that can render and navigate tens of thousands of branches without any lag
has a full text search that can search in parent > child relations (for the mindmap part)
has a really convenient document search with tag filter, full text search and instant search
can extract web articles
etc.
There is a possibility I will open source it, if I will find a sustainable business model.
Now imagine what would be a perfect information organization tool that would let you keep, navigate and most importantly use that information efficiently?
Just one condition: the tool must be efficient with thousands of notes.
For me, the thing that keeps me from using mind maps is not laggy software. What keeps me from using them is that I don't use them. This suggests that marketing for a mind-map app might be more about education than features...a lot of technical sales are that way...the competition is not other products it's non-use.
I am trying to spark some innovation in the information organization field.
Most organizational tools are only ok when working with little information. When your notes database grows up, more and more problems emerge: difficult to navigate and efficiently use that much information.
One thing that could help when working with many documents (or notes) is a text referencing in a mindmap.
At OctopusNote I am experimenting with various techniques to find the right mix of features that could improve human's information processing capabilities.
OctopusNote now has a strong technical base and can be easily transformed to various note taking or mindmapping tools based on modern web technologies.
For example:
has a reliable almost-real-time conflict-free sync
has a high performance mind-map engine that can render and navigate tens of thousands of branches without any lag
has a full text search that can search in parent > child relations (for the mindmap part)
has a really convenient document search with tag filter, full text search and instant search
can extract web articles
etc.
There is a possibility I will open source it, if I will find a sustainable business model.
Now imagine what would be a perfect information organization tool that would let you keep, navigate and most importantly use that information efficiently?
Just one condition: the tool must be efficient with thousands of notes.
You mean exporting? Well, there will be an option to export the mind map part as .mm file and notes as Markdown. Also I am thinking about an option to export a single html file with all program logics, mindmap and notes that can be used offline for read-only viewing.
Yes, the videos were made on Ubuntu and Chrome, but to avoid distractions they were cut and inserted in an abstract browser imitation.
OctopusNote is a web app. I am targeting all desktop and mobile platforms, so a web app is the only option. Eventually there will be native apps for Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android. But for now the top priority is to finish the beta version.
Thank you for taking the time to reply! I'd mention somewhere that it is a web app! Other Window users might be less inclined to take a dive if they think it is going to be Linux/Mac only due to the mockup.
