6 ms·
Show HN: Thoughtwriter – a digital whiteboard for your thoughts
- ericls 9y agoI don't think it's a whiteboard per se. But it's definitely better than a whiteboard in the sense that it forces you to generate useful thoughts.
- dela3499 9y agoTrue enough. It was the best metaphor I could come up with. Maybe scratchpaper? (But you throw away scratchpaper. In this app, you erase everything when you're done, which is more like a whiteboard.)
- dela3499 9y agoHowdy, I'm Carlos. I made Thoughtwriter to avoid losing all my best ideas in long notes (I have 2000 notes in Evernote, many of which are more than a thousand words long.) I've been using Thoughtwriter for the past year in various forms, and figured I'd finally polish and share it. I don't use Evernote anymore, and now often write thousands of words a day, solve various problems, and keep just 5-10 keywords to remember the solutions. Rather than being buried piles of text, my best ideas are now stored in a short list I can review in seconds. I'd love to get feedback on how to improve Thoughtwriter, and see if anyone else has experimented with a workflow like this.
- ericls 9y agocan you make the dark/light theme setting persistent
- dela3499 9y agoDefinitely! It's started to annoy me too. I should be able to fix it tomorrow.
- tpeo 9y agoIs the stuff in the dashboard(e.g "5w+h") supposed to be writing prompts? If so, rather neat. Have you considered making them modifiable?
- dela3499 9y agoYep, they're writing prompts, and they could be made modifiable. I figured I'd just try to make a good set of fixed prompts to start off. Do you have some ideas on how you'd use the prompts if you could modify them?
- tpeo 9y agoWell, I'd make them more specific to the task I'm trying to solve. For instance, if I had to write what was the results of some paper and what is it's contribution to my field in 1000 characters or less, I'd make that my writing prompt. Other than that, if I'm not trying to actually tackle something important I'd probably try to use them in goofy ways, such as writing ones with "are you done yet?" or "memento mori". That, or use them as post-it notes.
- dela3499 9y agoThanks for sharing specific use cases. A couple notes: 1. I use this for thinking, not really for writing publicly. I actually made a variant of this tool for writing short blog posts. Here's the prototype - https://carlosd.org/tersewriter/ https://carlosd.org/tersewriter/ 2. One idea is to make custom prompts, but another is to have a set of fixed, community-curated prompts. So, I could have memento mori in there if lots of people found it useful. 3. I hadn't thought of using the prompts as post-it notes, but that's an interesting idea.
- pritianka 9y agoCool you have tersewriter! I have to really get my act together on blogging and I think this might help. Have you thought about the potential of your suite of products? Thoughtwriter, Tersewriter, the app you use to save things? I would probably polish them up and not charge anything for initial usage. If people want multiple whiteboards, or want to save their Tersewriter blog posts, you could charge for that.
- clusmore 9y agoLooks great. If I understand correctly, it persists to LocalStorage? Is there a way to create additional whiteboards? You say you previously had 2,000 notes on Evernote - how have you managed to compress this to 5,000 characters and still leave yourself with enough scratch space to flesh out new ideas before compressing them?
- dela3499 9y agoThanks. Yep, it persists to LocalStorage. It's just one whiteboard for now. I had multiple before, which meant I didn't have to clear them as often, but it actually gets harder to clear them the longer you wait. (I'd forget what was important to keep, and what could be thrown away.) I have 2000 notes in Evernote, but I've just left them there and mostly ignored them. It would take tens of hours to review them all. The whiteboard is just for thinking about new ideas. When I'm done, I clear it. To be even more explicit: 1. Whiteboard is empty 2. I write for 20 minutes 3. I review to see what's worth saving, and try to compress it into just 4-5 words. 4. Save 4-5 words in a personal list (I have another custom-made app for this.) 5. Delete all the text on the whiteboard (CTRL + A then backspace) (then repeat)
- clusmore 9y agoAh, okay. Thanks for the clarification. The point I was missing was number 4 -- I thought you were leaving the summaries on the whiteboard.
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoWhat you have so far is really cool. But I want your second app to be a part of this. After my note is written, help me compress it to the 4-5 word title, set categories, save and store, and I would definitely pay $5 a month for it. The best part for me is the prompts. A special new "prompt of the week" would be very cool.
- pritianka 9y ago100% agree. I would want the second app as well to save the results of my brainstorming. Is it available anywhere or do you recommend anything if you aren't releasing your own?
- cr0sh 9y agoI'm only barely groking what this is for; probably because I don't really take a lot of notes during the day. Maybe I should do this more often. I like how it is persistent via localstorage - but what if I want to access my notes both on my desktop, and on my phone? Obviously localstorage won't work well for that purpose. But it would be nice if there were a way to be able to have this digital whiteboard be persistent across devices (phone, desktop, tablet, etc). Also (and this is probably on your list) - can we get a way to draw on the whiteboard? Perhaps also some way to scale and move on the whiteboard (so in effect it becomes an "infinite" whiteboard)? Lastly - branding: Rather than saying "start whiteboarding" - how about "start thoughtwriting". The name is good; use it as your brand for this product, and keep it all consistent.
- dela3499 9y agoIt's a bit like a rubber-duck debugger. You open it up, describe your problem, think about things for a while. You might even pretend to interview yourself, say. The things you write will be messy, and probably not worth keeping. So, this is a space where you can write those things with the expectation that you'll throw away what you wrote, except for the few things that matter. I don't know how common this form of writing is. Many people describe writing as a process of clarifying ideas, but I think they usually mean writing for an audience, as with a blog. Real persistence (not just localstorage) is something I might add, perhaps as a paid feature. The whiteboarding analogy isn't quite right, since the tool isn't for drawing (and no drawing features are currently planned). It's the whiteboarding workflow that I'm intending to copy (mess around, get some good ideas, then erase the board). Good idea on branding. I think I'll try it out!
- snogglethorpe 9y agoI tend to use Google Keep (https://keep.google.com/ https://keep.google.com/) for this sort of thing, which is similarly pretty lightweight and doesn't impose much structure on anything, but is also permanently backed up and synced between all platforms, with nice mobile apps, and a simple URL you can just type for the web. It also has some extra support for lists, which is handy for many of the sorts of things that it gets used for, and can handle images to some extent too. [The one thing I wish it did was some sort of background version control, so when I accidentally delete something important I can get it back...]
- masukomi 9y agoinitial response: huh... interesting, BUT I don't really ever do the thing you seem to be using it for. I take lots of temporary notes, but i don't figure ideas out in text then blow them away very often. On the occasions when i do do something like that I rely on Markdown formatting a lot to help break the idea down into sections and emphasize things (tools like Byword and FoldingText which will bold the headers, make italics italic, etc.)
- dabei 9y agoOften the process of solving a problem is often more insightful than the conclusion. Just taking notes of the final solution may not be sufficient in helping us to solve similar problems in the future.
- zubairq 9y agolove it!
- raleighm 9y agoWell done, including the prompts. I'm reminded of Eno's Oblique Strategies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
- dela3499 9y agoThanks for the link. Any favorite prompts that help you think?
- raleighm 9y ago"Discover the recipes you're using and abandon them" from Oblique Strategies is a good one. For significant personal decisions, I sometimes reflect: "If my kids faced this decision/situation, what mental framework would I be proud of them using?" This question is so effective, it's embarrassing. Edit: "almost embarrassing" --> "embarrassing"
- c54 9y agoThis is cool, thanks for the link.
- codemati 9y agoThis is a great idea. Helpful for those who don't know where to start.
- dela3499 9y agoYeah, I often think about how Elon Musk was once asked about innovation, and he said, 'Just try. Seriously... did you try yesterday? Did you try today?' It'd be great to help people just try to make some progress.
- kkotak 9y agoI use Gmail drafts. Very effective, always there, searchable, formattable, attach docs, etc.
- pritianka 9y agoI do as well. But I end up still needing a white board to map out all the various dependencies etc in my project. Thoughtwriter doesn't seem to have the option to write freeform (not line by line) but if they add that, this could be super useful.
- dela3499 9y agoFor freeform stuff (usually website mockups), I'll usually just grab a piece of paper or use Inkscape. Inkscape is probably a decent tool for thinking (at least if you're already familiar with it), since you can zoom in and out on an infinite canvas, draw and type things, etc.
- senko 9y agoShameless plug: try https://awwapp.com/ https://awwapp.com/, it's a free-form whiteboard (as in drawing) webapp that lets you do exactly that (+ real-time sharing).
- dela3499 9y agoThanks for sharing. Perhaps it's better to make the free version have more (all?) the features, and then charge for having more than one drawing. It's a bit hard to commit to paying for a service before I've been able to use it successfully. A pro account is required to move items around, for instance, which makes it difficult to see what it would be like to use the full version of the tool.
- pritianka 9y agoI do as well. But I end up still needing a white board to map out all the various dependencies etc in my project. Thoughtwriter doesn't seem to have the option to write freeform (not line by line) but if they add that, this could be super useful.
- andrewalan 9y agoI am Andrew Alan a hacker who has built a very good reputation and undeniably one of the best hackers you can come across.i have got access to hack into any account and also get to generate passwords for accounts like Facebook,Instagram,Twitter,gmail,yahoo mail,whats-app,we-chat,etc..I also have logins for bank like BOA,welsfargo,chase,credit union,capital one, and many other different banks for transfers and credit card top ups,Retrieving hacked social media accounts,clearing criminal records,increase credit scores,CC hack,hacking computer systems,Website hack,Catch hacker scammers,Phishing emails, that's to mention a few.You can contact me on. ICQ ..........711574456 Email ....andrewalanhacks@gmail.com Text +13238351741
- bdcravens 9y agoI have the following bookmarked: data:text/html, <html contenteditable> Lets you open a tab, type some notes, and close the tab when you're done.
- dela3499 9y agoHa! That's an admirably simple solution. Not quite a full replacement, but it gets you surprisingly far. :)
- exodust 9y agoWhat? You're kidding me, why didn't I know about this! I like it a lot. I just added a Stylish custom style so I have it looking exactly how I want. I also like how it's an HTML page, so copying an image from anywhere and paste right in there works great. Does it properly as an HTML image tag with src to image source. I'm guessing an additional greasemonkey script could save it to cloud with one click, or publish it somewhere.
- ourarash 9y agoI had the same reaction when I saw this! There are many great styles here: https://coderwall.com/p/lhsrcq/one-line-browser-notepad https://coderwall.com/p/lhsrcq/one-line-browser-notepad
- Procrastes 9y agoI really dig the prompts. That's a useful feature by itself. edit: and the timer!
- SubiculumCode 9y agoSlack Integration. Maybe I'm just kidding. I don't know. But seriously: The best feature imo are the ready writing prompts. Seems like a good way to remind oneself of various ways to think around a problem. Like it very much.
- dela3499 9y agoHa! I'll keep Slack in mind. Let me know if you come across any prompts you'd like to add.
- smnplk 9y agoVitalik, shouldn't you be working on ethereum ?
- dabei 9y agoNice work! I have struggled with the same problem after creating several thousands of notes in Evernote. I took a different approach though, somewhat following the process described here: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/12/11/evernote-and-the-brain-designing-creativity-workflows/ https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/12/11/evernote-and-the-b...
- ourarash 9y agoI really loved the suggestions (or questions?) that it offers on the top. It helps to structure your thinking and how you approach a problem. They are useful even if you use any other note taking tool. I tend to doodle a lot while I'm thinking, often on a small piece of paper or literally back of an envelope, so this can be the digital form of that process, but adding a doodling feature would be great too!
- gyrfghg3 9y agolearn English
- ivcha 9y agoanother web-based JS-heavy solution... thanks, but no thanks...