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Show HN: Kobble – Notes app that saves directly to GitHub
- Eun 9y agoWould be nice, if there is a mobile friendly version.
- kobble 9y agoMobile is coming soon.
- coalaber 9y agoThis feels excessively complicated to me. what's a track? what's a channel? why do I need filenames for everything? why does it take 3 minutes for a new user to write a single line of 'note' ? a beautiful notes app (to me) would be one where you start with writing a note
- kobble 9y agoEverything in Kobble can be shared. Channels are there to organize tracks - your tracks and tracks from other users. Kobble can be used for much more than just note taking. It's meant to share meaningful content with other users. A track is like a project, and channels make it easy to share them.
- Etheryte 9y agoWhy did you choose obscure names instead of something everyone could understand right away? To me, it seems "channels" are just "groups"/"categories"/"folders" and "tracks" are just "notes"? The fact that you need to explain it is a good indicator that it's unnecessarily complex.
- kobble 9y agoThe model is very similar to other popular apps, like YouTube or Spotify. Instead of organizing songs or videos into channels, you organize tracks.
- pvg 9y agoBut these terms make some amount of intuitive sense on YouTube or Spotify. I don't have to know anything about YouTube or Spotify other than they deal with video clips and music to have a decent idea what a 'track', 'video', 'channel', 'playlist' might mean. These terms don't translate that well to 'notes', though.
- kobble 9y agoKobble can be used for much more than just notes. You organize 'tracks', which are more like projects. Tracks can contain notes, but also more meaningful content. Anything you can create with markdown (plus links, etc.)
- grovegames 9y agoIf they are just like projects, then call them projects. You're using music and video names for paper analog components. You're spending a lot of time defending the naming here. I'd recommend taking notes, and changing the naming. Also, add some mechanism where I can just hit a + button or something, and can start adding a note right away. I don't want to have to immediately organize all notes into a draconian structure. I just need to quickly record something for later use. I feel that should be a primary function of a notes app. Pretty is secondary to function, and the functionality of this is complex and obscure.
- ytjohn 9y agoIn the (desktop) editor [quiver] that I use, all new note go into a notebook called "Inbox". I can start writing immediately and later move it a more appropriate notebook. [quiver]: http://happenapps.com/#quiver http://happenapps.com/#quiver Also, check out http://standardnotes.org/ http://standardnotes.org/
- kobble 9y agoFair enough. Naming is hard. Even 'project' has connotations.
- coldtea 9y ago>Everything in Kobble can be shared. Channels are there to organize tracks - your tracks and tracks from other users. I first want to write -- directly, as a thought/task/etc comes to me, and only later to organize. And much later I'd care to share my note (if at all).
- raarts 9y ago> It's meant to share meaningful content with other users. A track is like a project, and channels make it easy to share them. I'm sorry. I just don't know what this means. Can you show some examples? EDIT: I tried it. Tried adding a URL, but just got errors. Filenames worked though. Now how do I share it with my mom? Does she need a github account to look at it? I don't immediately see the use of this. You may need to explain it better.
- kobble 9y agoYes, you do need a GitHhub account.
- mixrm0n 9y agoIn playing around with your app, I intuitively kept clicking the right arrow on the slides and completely missed the additional info on the ORGANIZING YOUR DATA slide on the first go around. Sometimes that the only shot you have to convey a message and explain your Item/Track/Channel system in further detail. I feel like that could use a "(Learn more below.)" or something like what's found on the first slide.
- paulcole 9y ago>Kobble can be used for much more than just note taking. You can see the confusion, given that you described it as a "notes app" in your submission title.
- jbpetersen 9y agoSeen https://blankslate.io/ https://blankslate.io/?
- Etheryte 9y agoJust FYI, the site doesn't have a valid HTTPS certificate.
- tommynicholas 9y agoFixed!
- ihattendorf 9y agoIt's because it was issued by StartCom. https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new-wosign-and-startcom-certificates/ https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2016/10/24/distrusting-new... https://security.googleblog.com/2016/10/distrusting-wosign-and-startcom.html https://security.googleblog.com/2016/10/distrusting-wosign-a...
- awqrre 9y agoI use Firefox 53 and this certificate appears to be valid in my Browser (green lock), I wonder why...
- icebraining 9y agoMozilla only distrusted the certificates issued after October 2016; theirs is from September.
- kobble 9y agoPlease note that the invalid cert is for blankslate.io, not kobble.io. Kobble is hosted on Firebase.
- tommynicholas 9y ago(Creator here) ugh that's such a bummer. I didn't know that I don't see that in my browsers. Anyone have a suggestion for a better cert I could get? Starcom was so nice and simple but seems like it's causing issues for users now that Mozilla and Google are going to distrust the cert.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y agoYes, why the obscure abstraction that isnt analogous to anything? Tracks are associated with audio and channels with video. This isn't something that should be unique or creative. The notebook/note paradigm works exceedingly well becayse everyone intuitively understands it. I spent two minutes before I just quit. its too bad, the apo seemed nice
- kobble 9y agoMany shortcuts will appear next week, making it easier to get started, so please check back.
- insomniacity 9y agoWhat does this have over Standard Notes? https://standardnotes.org/ https://standardnotes.org/
- kobble 9y agoKobble can be used for much more than just note taking. It's more of a general purpose content creation and sharing app.
- angryasian 9y agothanks for sharing this, I've been looking for something like this for awhile. I've just been using wrangler and having a bunch of docs open in the side window. I also tried using scribbleton, but hate how big everything is. This is great.
- jclos 9y agoI commented a while ago with the list of note apps I was considering to replace Evernote. Might save you some time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13642527
- angryasian 9y agowhich one are you using now ?
- jclos 9y agoStrangely enough I switched mainly to google keep for stuff I need to pin and set a reminder for a time/gps location, and a standard text editor + dropbox for the rest.
- BlackjackCF 9y agoOh my god, thank you. This is something I've been looking for as a replacement to Quiver. I love Quiver, but it no longer cuts it since I've migrated to Linux.
- danellis 9y agoCurious as to what makes this "beautiful".
- ythn 9y agoCSS and animations
- devopsproject 9y agosame. they also forgot to add "made with <3 in san francisco" at the bottom
- kobble 9y agoMade in New Zealand!
- devopsproject 9y agoStill no ascii heart or emoji. This will never succeed :P
- lol768 9y agoInteresting tool, I like that it works with GitHub and the repo support will be cool to see. The design is neat (I generally like dark themes) although the fading animations got a bit annoying after a few minutes using it. Some of the dialogs could do with supporting common shortcuts (e.g. enter to create a new track, escape to close the dialogs). Sometimes I managed to click outside of the presentation view without realising, and then left/right arrow keys stopped working. Sometimes I wasn't sure where to find certain functions (e.g. I looked for "Edit" on a presentation item on the context menu, but then realised I had to click it and then click the pencil icon). I couldn't get the Share functionality to work, and wasn't sure why it was in its own context menu with no other items. I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the tracks/channels distinction. I can understand creating a project to store presentations (items) in, but why is there another level in Kobble?
- kobble 9y agoPublic and private repos are available now.
- kobble 9y agoAs you mention, a track is like a project. It's a tree of items, and the items can be markdown, presentations, links, etc. Channels are for organizing tracks. Everything in Kobble can be shared. So say you make a track for some project and want to share it. Another user can add your track to a channel to follow it. It's similar to sharing in YouTube or Spotify, except that instead of grouping videos or songs in channels, you're grouping tracks.
- matt4077 9y ago> Kobble is the only app available where you own all of your data. What? I find that highly unlikely. In what way do I not "own" the texts I write in–for example–Apple's Notes.app? And what is even meant by "own"? Even for something like Facebook, I'm pretty sure that I still own the copyright for texts I write in their app.
- detaro 9y agoNormally I'd expect something like "it is stored under your control" for the slogan "own your data", but that doesn't square with "saves directly to GitHub"
- ams6110 9y agoExactly. I see very little difference whether my notes are stored in a github repo or a google drive folder. In either case they are under "my" account but I don't think I would say that I really "own" the data because either service could hypothetically be gone tomorrow.
- kobble 9y agoThat's precisely why we use GitHub. It's unlikely to be gone tomorrow. No data is stored on our servers. In fact, we don't even see it. The data is transferred directly from your browser to GitHub.
- taormina 9y agoIs there any plan for a general git integration where I could point this at my own, hosted git solution? Then it could truly be owning my own data on my own hardware.
- Graphon1 9y agoWeird that everything is saved as a gist. I feel like it would make more sense to store them in one repo. I went looking for the notes I created in github, and found a bunch of flat gists. ??
- webwanderings 9y agoHow do I use this? Is there a bookmarklet?
- ronilan 9y agoShameless plug time again... * My summer project (2016): http://public.docs.xstatic.site http://public.docs.xstatic.site * The pitch goes something like this: <xstatic>| Docs is a simple, fast and easy to use, web based document editor. It generates static (but editable) HTML files that can than be easily shared and printed. Like Google Docs inside an AWS S3 bucket. * More info in this document: http://docs.xstatic.site/markdown_db86ac26-f232-4400-a544-d59e9dc06b0d.html http://docs.xstatic.site/markdown_db86ac26-f232-4400-a544-d5...
- always_good 9y agoI think a Show HN is the one time it's bad form to shamelessly plug your own product.
- ronilan 9y agoBut your username says otherwise ;) More seriously - Why so? I think that: 1. It's on topic. 2. It's a project not a product. I ain't sellin anything. 3. There is no thunder to steal. Usually, more comments, more votes, more rain for the show. 4. Shameless has to be shameless. 5. It adds to the discussion. See, it just did...
- duiker101 9y agoIt's like going to the inauguration of some new shop giving out flyers for your own competing shop. It's just bad taste.
- ronilan 9y agoI think it is like coming to a jam session and blowing your trumpet with a whimsical tune. There is no competition. P.S - I've reread this: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html just to make sure I wasn't in the wrong.
- arthurlockman 9y agoI like this quite a bit. Thanks for sharing!
- lfender6445 9y agoi would love something like this for free bitbucket private repos, is there any planned support? realtime updates would also be great
- Namrog84 9y ago30 second impression: The landing page has side arrows? Is this meant to be a Powerpoint slides deck type app? Why isn't it just a 1 page vertical scroll to showcase the 'notes app'? Or do all the pages in notes have to be a click page arrow? edit: I looked around a little more (never logged in) but all I ever saw was the slides. I am still not sure if that's the only mode, or is there another preview showing other modes/styles of notes? As boring as it may be, I'd love to see some generic notes examples: grocery list, todo, programmer's notes, school notes, lorem ipsums, or anything more representative of a real world notes and less of just listed features.
- kobble 9y agoYou create content using Markdown with Kobble. The content can be rendered as simple markdown or as slide decks. Our landing page was created with Kobble as a markdown slide deck. If you log in (with GitHub), you'll see the rest of the UI.
- Namrog84 9y agoIt does look neat and definitely beautiful. Thanks I'll login and check it out some more.
- passivepinetree 9y ago> Kobble is the only app available where you own all of your data. If it's hosted on Github's servers, you don't really "own" it. Or at least you don't have sole proprietorship of your data.
- philliphaydon 9y agoI registered localnotes.io or something a couple of years ago to make a notes app (just a side list of note files and then a markdown editor) that would persist to local storage and could be synced to private gists and images would store as base64 encoded files under that gist. I got a proof of concept working but was too lazy to integrate with GitHub and canned it. Working on something more fun now and learning vue.js.
- kobble 9y agoAs a side note, Kobble was created with 100% Purescript. Highly recommended.
- hk__2 9y agoNote that you can store images and other binary files in gists; no need to base64-encode them. Gist are git repos too and can be cloned and commit/pushed to.
- philliphaydon 9y agoDidn't know that. Awesome.
- orschiro 9y agoCan I use Kobble offline?
- philters 9y agoAnyone looking for a nice interface to manage your Gists should take a look at http://www.gistboxapp.com http://www.gistboxapp.com
- fudged71 9y agoIf I'm not much of a coder, is this app okay for regular documentation/notes?
- philters 9y agoThe main use case for Gists and thus Gistbox is storing code snippets. However you can save any kind of text you want. Gistbox lets you organize your Gists under labels so they're easy to find back. Moreover it offers you the option to save private Gists. Using a tool like nativefier you can even turn it into a desktop app.
- aorth 9y agoSmall, non-technical pet peeve: they repeatedly spell GitHub as Github.
- baby 9y agoUnfortunately I cannot access this because it can read my private gist. I understand why it needs the access though :(
- kobble 9y agoGitHub Integrations are coming!
- grogenaut 9y agoWhy do you need access to my email address?
- jaquers 9y agoHaving read your explanation of channels/tracks - I get it, you have to serialize your storage into something and it's neat that it's representable through url. I was a little confused at first. I agree with others that the organization seems a little bit too forceful or opinionated for the primary use case of a "notes app" which is jotting down a quick note. Maybe you could have an "unsorted" channel by default, and then split out the context dropdown into little icons? Simplify the work flow to be: 1. Click "new markdown" button, 2. Write some markdown. 3. Save. If you defer asking the user to name a file up front, you can auto generate a filename based on the contents of the document (like parse 1st line for # My Title -> my-title.md). The only sacrifice you pay is making them click "save" the first time; but IMO that is a lot less friction than having to name documents before I even start writing. Plus even if your parsing fails - you're no worse off than where you started by asking the user for a filename.
- kobble 9y agoThese are all great suggestions. You'll see shortcuts drop next week. Maybe even better than you expect :).
- abrussak 9y agoI think I'm able to view all other gists. If I open the Gist on https://gist.github.com/ https://gist.github.com/ then go to the original gist at 'kobble-git/channel-groups.json' I can navigate to all the forks and see data for other users.
- kobble 9y agoI'd just like to announce public and private repo support in Kobble. All data is now stored in a public or private repo, depending on how you log in.
- ytjohn 9y agoOh wow. Look at that. https://gist.github.com/kobble-git/87ea625d421177f9e9307c6cee259e63/forks https://gist.github.com/kobble-git/87ea625d421177f9e9307c6ce... And each fork is a link to a secret gist.
- elzi 9y agoAaaaaaaand revoked.
- mjmasn 9y agoA timely reminder that online services _have_ to prioritise security if they want to be taken seriously. I guess day one is a good day to learn that lesson though...
- zjs 9y agoOuch. It does seem as if anyone can view any users' content this way.
- kobble 9y agoI'm one of the Kobble devs. This is intentional. Please read the comments above about public and private use of Kobble. The intros on the web have been clarified also.
- stevejackson 9y ago
- bdickason 9y agoI'm into the idea (I currently use Ia writer saving to a folder in Dropbox). Is there a desktop client or only the web version?
- thanatropism 9y agoSo I have (and bought!) not one but two plaintext editors for iOS that save directly to Dropbox or iCloud: iWrite Pro and 1Write. I have both apps because iWrite is my reach-for text box while 1Write opens to a Dropbox folder that has a semi-organized idea box (a "personal wiki" of sorts, but informally so). Why do I want this instead? Versioning? I've thought of moving my ersatz "personal wiki" to Github for that, but I don't wish to make it visible to the world.
- thanatropism 9y agoSo I have (and bought!) not one but two plaintext editors for iOS that save directly to Dropbox or iCloud: iWrite Pro and 1Write. I have both apps because iWrite is my reach-for text box while 1Write opens to a Dropbox folder that has a semi-organized idea box (a "personal wiki" of sorts, but informally so). Why do I want this instead? Versioning? I've thought of moving my ersatz "personal wiki" to Github for that, but I don't wish to make it visible to the world.
- peterburkimsher 9y agoI like the idea of saving directly to Github. I'm using Github API for dictionary changes in my Chinese text translator that I'll release soon. The user interface is, indeed, beautiful. But that's not enough to make me use it. Notes on my iPhone can't be stored in a hierarchy of subfolders. In order to do that, I made my own notes app in PHP, but it's pretty awful. I plan to port it to JS+Github, but I have other priorities right now. Is it possible to only commit changes to a file using git, instead of re-uploading the whole file? I wish there was an easy way to append to a file without a download-append-upload process. Please teach me if you know how to do this in git!
- rileytg 9y agomobile?
- b88d80170 9y agoI think adding encryption at the client side would make more practical, like what laverna does. https://github.com/Laverna/laverna https://github.com/Laverna/laverna
- rekshaw 9y agoDevs, pro tip: if you call a file "minified", please minify it. Your main.min.js is a whopping 4.7mb of un-minified JS.
- anticodon 9y agoI use Zim Wiki. Also, it has version control plugin, so you can store your notes on the GitHub or BitBucket or GitLab if you want. I prefer plain old backups.
- masukomi 9y agoAll this is is a presentation with a boatload of text and absolutely NO indication of what the app looks like or how you go about using it. Even before i saw the note about the security issues i wouldn't click on try because why should i invest my time in trying it. I have no clue what it does beyond saving markdown files to github. I've got plenty of markdown apps that I like quite a bit, and uploading my notes to github is not something i've been going "damn i wish i had an app that would do that" because anyone who knows about github already knows how to commit their files and push them up... doing it in gists is even worse (ignoring security aspects) because at least with my manually managed notes their organized in folders, browsable, greppable, etc.
- kobble 9y agoI'm one of the devs for Kobble. Since Kobble is such a versatile tool, it can be quite difficult to tune a marketing message clearly. We are working on it! One of Kobble's primary uses is as an open content sharing platform. GitHub gists were chosen for this purpose intentionally, because the discovery mechanisms are built into GitHub. On top of that, we have built a flexible data model (similar to YouTube) for organizing and sharing the content. Private repos (which are coming shortly) address the other use case where you want to keep data private. We have clarified this in the intros.
- tylerbrazier 9y agoOne problem with using gists is that each modification adds another entry in the response's history array; over time the responses get larger and larger.