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I made the switch to Simplenote, and I've had a great experience so far. The main "sacrifice" is that you can only store plain next. It was created by Automatt

I made the switch to Simplenote, and I've had a great experience so far. The main "sacrifice" is that you can only store plain next. It was created by Automattic, Matt Mullenweg's company.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago
I made the switch to Simplenote I have a problem committing to a program/site that says: it’s all completely free How can they stay in business? Is their business nothing more than data mining my files? Is that something I want to allow? Is that a long term strategy for viability?
- netmare 11y ago
  Automattic make money from Simperium and they provide Simplenote as a freebie to showcase the technology I guess.
  - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
    That is very helpful. Now their business model makes sense. I wonder why they don't even mention Simperium on their home page? It's not even mentioned under Help. It's a secret? They even have a a perfect opportunity to mention it. E.g. in Simplenote Help they say: Q: How does syncing work? A: All notes are synced between your device ... they automatically and wirelessly show up in the other locations I guess they want us to hypothesize that magical "Data Fairies" do this syncing?
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >I guess they want us to hypothesize that magical "Data Fairies" do this syncing? No, they hypothetize that the average user wants a high level description, not to read about servers, incremental sync protocols, etc.
      - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
        They could have added this sentence, more or less: The secret sauce underlying this syncing is Simperium, a service for developers to move data everywhere it's needed, instantly and automatically One extra sentence would have overwhelmed the average user? Bah.
        coldtea 11y ago
        That doesn't provide any more information to the average user -- which I thought was what was being asked for here. What's "Simperium"? Just a name they don't know to them.
mintplant 11y ago
Simplenote was actually created by Simperium (YC S10) [1], a company founded by Fred Cheng and Mike Johnston and acquired by Automattic in 2013 [2]. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/simperium https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/simperium [2] http://simplenote.com/2013/01/24/simplenote-supercharged/ http://simplenote.com/2013/01/24/simplenote-supercharged/
revorad 11y ago
Another vote for Simplenote - does exactly what it says on the tin. In 2-3 years of using it, I had only couple of issues with sync. When I reported them, support was super responsive and the issues were fixed with subsequent updates. They also offer easy exports of your notes. If you've never tried, give it a shot - http://simplenote.com http://simplenote.com
balladeer 11y ago
Simplenote is where I keep my plain text notes now (Notational Velocity on Mac and official app on Android). My local copy of notes reside in my Dropbox folder and my (pretty much) entire ~/ is backed up to CrashPlan cloud. For notes or docs that need diagram etc I use Google Docs. Even my team uses the same (as part of the Google Apps suite). What I love about Simplenote is that it does what it says - just plain text notes. No gimmicks, no extra load and bells and whistles. But I have a feeling that they will shut it down soon. They had a paid tier and they removed it some time back. There has hardly been any update I guess and iirc they don't really update their Android app frequently either. Do they encrypt the notes at client side before sending it their servers? I would love to use a self hosted app that has such a functional and minimal interface and clean sync feature.

I made the switch to Simplenote, and I've had a great experience so far. The main "sacrifice" is that you can only store plain next. It was created by Automattic, Matt Mullenweg's company.

PhantomGremlin 11y ago

I made the switch to Simplenote I have a problem committing to a program/site that says: it’s all completely free How can they stay in business? Is their business nothing more than data mining my files? Is that something I want to allow? Is that a long term strategy for viability?

netmare 11y ago
Automattic make money from Simperium and they provide Simplenote as a freebie to showcase the technology I guess.
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  That is very helpful. Now their business model makes sense. I wonder why they don't even mention Simperium on their home page? It's not even mentioned under Help. It's a secret? They even have a a perfect opportunity to mention it. E.g. in Simplenote Help they say: Q: How does syncing work? A: All notes are synced between your device ... they automatically and wirelessly show up in the other locations I guess they want us to hypothesize that magical "Data Fairies" do this syncing?
  - coldtea 11y ago
    >I guess they want us to hypothesize that magical "Data Fairies" do this syncing? No, they hypothetize that the average user wants a high level description, not to read about servers, incremental sync protocols, etc.
    - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
      They could have added this sentence, more or less: The secret sauce underlying this syncing is Simperium, a service for developers to move data everywhere it's needed, instantly and automatically One extra sentence would have overwhelmed the average user? Bah.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        That doesn't provide any more information to the average user -- which I thought was what was being asked for here. What's "Simperium"? Just a name they don't know to them.

mintplant 11y ago

Simplenote was actually created by Simperium (YC S10) [1], a company founded by Fred Cheng and Mike Johnston and acquired by Automattic in 2013 [2]. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/simperium https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/simperium [2] http://simplenote.com/2013/01/24/simplenote-supercharged/ http://simplenote.com/2013/01/24/simplenote-supercharged/

revorad 11y ago

Another vote for Simplenote - does exactly what it says on the tin. In 2-3 years of using it, I had only couple of issues with sync. When I reported them, support was super responsive and the issues were fixed with subsequent updates. They also offer easy exports of your notes. If you've never tried, give it a shot - http://simplenote.com http://simplenote.com

balladeer 11y ago

Simplenote is where I keep my plain text notes now (Notational Velocity on Mac and official app on Android). My local copy of notes reside in my Dropbox folder and my (pretty much) entire ~/ is backed up to CrashPlan cloud. For notes or docs that need diagram etc I use Google Docs. Even my team uses the same (as part of the Google Apps suite). What I love about Simplenote is that it does what it says - just plain text notes. No gimmicks, no extra load and bells and whistles. But I have a feeling that they will shut it down soon. They had a paid tier and they removed it some time back. There has hardly been any update I guess and iirc they don't really update their Android app frequently either. Do they encrypt the notes at client side before sending it their servers? I would love to use a self hosted app that has such a functional and minimal interface and clean sync feature.