6 ms·

Show HN: Writt – Make and publish notes from Telegram

77 points by jajoosam 8y ago

hidiegomariani 8y ago
but I cannot edit the text?
- jajoosam 8y ago
  Editing with a web interface is in the pipeline, for now you can rewrite by using the $ sign. /help for details.
fiatjaf 8y ago
You don't even have a domain and are already charging $19 for "unlimited" notes? I like the app, it's not a bad idea, but the business model is not great. Just storing notes isn't a great feature, there are thousands of note-taking apps out there. On Telegram itself you can just send messages to yourself and they will be stored, editable and deletable.
- jajoosam 8y ago
  Hmmm... What would you recommend instead?
  - ReverseCold 8y ago
    FOSS with donations. I'm not sure if people would want to pay to use this, but if it looked nice and was FOSS then people would probably donate.
    - lifencoder 8y ago
      agree because paying 19$ for this product is not worthy. as telegram already provides telegra.ph which is free of cost. FOSS with donations is a perfect monetisation strategy.
      - always_good 8y ago
        > FOSS with donations is a perfect monetisation strategy. Only if your monetization goal is less than a few bucks per month. That's some serious Shit HN Says. Thanks for the chuckle.
        ReverseCold 8y ago
        > Only if your monetization goal is less than a few bucks per month. It's a service that exists solely through a platform that already provides a competing service for free. A few bucks per month is as good as it's going to get.
justvidyadhar 8y ago
I like how this works. Need to use more extensively to understand cons.
m52go 8y ago
Interesting. Tried it on some very simple example text and it seems well-executed. I'm intrigued by the concept of chatting to write. I wonder if the medium can stimulate thoughts in a way a traditional text editor can't. Great work, and good luck!
- jajoosam 8y ago
  Thank you Indeed, notes in the form of multiple texts and chatting could make things more interesting.
  - m52go 8y ago
    Reminds me of Tap by Wattpad. That could be a great market for you. https://taptaptap.co https://taptaptap.co
monkeydust 8y ago
Nice. Do I need it though that's the question....
nbabitskiy 8y ago
Telegram has a similar service called telegra.ph - free of charge. It doesn't support written markdown, but has a built-in WYSIWYG editor. And your credit card form is accessible over http.
- jajoosam 8y ago
  Writt is different from telegra.ph because you cannot write posts to telegraph from telegram, you have to use the web interface, which makes Writt's use cases very different, even though some of them might coincide
kashyapc 8y ago
This sounds potentially useful. I mostly used (for more than a year) Telegram for ad-hoc interactions at technical conferences. (E.g. EuroPython 2016 & some groups I interact with at FOSDEM 2018 used it, so I "had" to use it.). And right now, it's sitting dormant since February. [Slightly off-topic & potentially opening a barrel of worms ahead; and this has been discussed to death here.] Now ... I have been using (also for well over a year) the Signal Messenger. Given Signal's funding model, their crypto protocol (which was peer-reviewed & got robust positive feedback -- corroborated through its adoption by WhatsApp & Facebook Messenger) and their (almost) zero metadata collection, I found it's better to invest my energies in Signal. So, FWIW, I have been trying to "converge" on Signal and slowly persuading (without forcing, of course) friends to use it; I've had good success so far. A lot of my colleagues & a decent chunk of people I collaborate with in the open source community already use Signal. So that's not a problem there. This is all just to make an attempt at maintaining sanity with the Chat Tool proliferation. Wonder how others are handling it.
- interfixus 8y ago
  My exact same route and experience, although I heartily detest Signal's phone number required misfeature and the agressively forced contact sharing.
  - kashyapc 8y ago
    Yes, you raise a difficult point about the phone number required feature. And you're at least the second person I hear (legitimately) complain about it; the other was from a technical friend, during an in-person conversation. I realize that requiring phone number compromises the anonymity aspect (despite Signal's unparalleled privacy, given the alternatives). But I was giving (and still do) Signal the benefit of doubt and assume they're also going to implement username / password scheme – not sure if it's a good idea or not.
aphextron 8y ago
Isn't Telegram compromised by the Russian government..?
- ommunist 8y ago
  Quite the contrary, the Russian government is obsessed with Telegram. Ruasian Ministry of Foreign affairs even employs Telegram chats from their website.
- jajoosam 8y ago
  No, they have refused to provide the encryption keys to Russian security agencies.
Operyl 8y ago
You’re offering a product for 19/yr, but will this product exist for that long? Lack of privacy policy, hosted on glitch, and you’re constantly throwing things up on there. Things noticed: SSL is not enforced, therefore your payment page is being served plaintext. Telegram already has this service embedded for free. You’re using a free host, with no custom domain, what if they decide to disappear next month without notice?
- jajoosam 8y ago
  Yes, it will. Just enforced SSL - And if the free embedded service you're talking about is telegra.ph, that is different than writt because you can't write and publish within telegram, you have to use a web interface. Glitch is made by FogCreek, the guys who co-founded Stack Overflow, and have built Trello and other stuff - so pretty sure they're reliable https://glitch.com/faq#trust https://glitch.com/faq#trust
  - Operyl 8y ago
    That doesn't change my view on this. You're paying Glitch _nothing_, yet are asking for 19/yr for this product. At the very least, a few users converting can get you a quality VM from Linode or Digital Ocean. Who's currently doing backups? You? Or Glitch.
    - jajoosam 8y ago
      That's right, I'd definitely get a DO droplet if a few users converted, but haven't even had one conversion yet.
    - anildash 8y ago
      Glitch wants apps like this to succeed, so will work with him to make sure everything stays running. And Glitch apps are just totally standard Node apps, so worst case he can run it anywhere else. Anything can happen, and there are no guarantees, but I wouldn’t worry about the choice of platforms as a risk. Source: I’m the CEO of Fog Creek, which makes Glitch, and we’re excited about apps like this one!
hestefisk 8y ago
Why is telegram suddenly so popular? AFAIK it doesn’t provide proper decentralised cryptography and yet everyone in the crypto coin community is up in arms about it.

77 points by jajoosam 8y ago

hidiegomariani 8y ago

but I cannot edit the text?

jajoosam 8y ago
Editing with a web interface is in the pipeline, for now you can rewrite by using the $ sign. /help for details.

fiatjaf 8y ago

You don't even have a domain and are already charging $19 for "unlimited" notes? I like the app, it's not a bad idea, but the business model is not great. Just storing notes isn't a great feature, there are thousands of note-taking apps out there. On Telegram itself you can just send messages to yourself and they will be stored, editable and deletable.

jajoosam 8y ago
Hmmm... What would you recommend instead?
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  FOSS with donations. I'm not sure if people would want to pay to use this, but if it looked nice and was FOSS then people would probably donate.
  - lifencoder 8y ago
    agree because paying 19$ for this product is not worthy. as telegram already provides telegra.ph which is free of cost. FOSS with donations is a perfect monetisation strategy.
    - always_good 8y ago
      > FOSS with donations is a perfect monetisation strategy. Only if your monetization goal is less than a few bucks per month. That's some serious Shit HN Says. Thanks for the chuckle.
      - ReverseCold 8y ago
        > Only if your monetization goal is less than a few bucks per month. It's a service that exists solely through a platform that already provides a competing service for free. A few bucks per month is as good as it's going to get.

justvidyadhar 8y ago

I like how this works. Need to use more extensively to understand cons.

m52go 8y ago

Interesting. Tried it on some very simple example text and it seems well-executed. I'm intrigued by the concept of chatting to write. I wonder if the medium can stimulate thoughts in a way a traditional text editor can't. Great work, and good luck!

jajoosam 8y ago
Thank you Indeed, notes in the form of multiple texts and chatting could make things more interesting.
- m52go 8y ago
  Reminds me of Tap by Wattpad. That could be a great market for you. https://taptaptap.co https://taptaptap.co

monkeydust 8y ago

Nice. Do I need it though that's the question....

nbabitskiy 8y ago

Telegram has a similar service called telegra.ph - free of charge. It doesn't support written markdown, but has a built-in WYSIWYG editor. And your credit card form is accessible over http.

jajoosam 8y ago
Writt is different from telegra.ph because you cannot write posts to telegraph from telegram, you have to use the web interface, which makes Writt's use cases very different, even though some of them might coincide

kashyapc 8y ago

This sounds potentially useful. I mostly used (for more than a year) Telegram for ad-hoc interactions at technical conferences. (E.g. EuroPython 2016 & some groups I interact with at FOSDEM 2018 used it, so I "had" to use it.). And right now, it's sitting dormant since February. [Slightly off-topic & potentially opening a barrel of worms ahead; and this has been discussed to death here.] Now ... I have been using (also for well over a year) the Signal Messenger. Given Signal's funding model, their crypto protocol (which was peer-reviewed & got robust positive feedback -- corroborated through its adoption by WhatsApp & Facebook Messenger) and their (almost) zero metadata collection, I found it's better to invest my energies in Signal. So, FWIW, I have been trying to "converge" on Signal and slowly persuading (without forcing, of course) friends to use it; I've had good success so far. A lot of my colleagues & a decent chunk of people I collaborate with in the open source community already use Signal. So that's not a problem there. This is all just to make an attempt at maintaining sanity with the Chat Tool proliferation. Wonder how others are handling it.

interfixus 8y ago
My exact same route and experience, although I heartily detest Signal's phone number required misfeature and the agressively forced contact sharing.
- kashyapc 8y ago
  Yes, you raise a difficult point about the phone number required feature. And you're at least the second person I hear (legitimately) complain about it; the other was from a technical friend, during an in-person conversation. I realize that requiring phone number compromises the anonymity aspect (despite Signal's unparalleled privacy, given the alternatives). But I was giving (and still do) Signal the benefit of doubt and assume they're also going to implement username / password scheme – not sure if it's a good idea or not.

aphextron 8y ago

Isn't Telegram compromised by the Russian government..?

ommunist 8y ago
Quite the contrary, the Russian government is obsessed with Telegram. Ruasian Ministry of Foreign affairs even employs Telegram chats from their website.
jajoosam 8y ago
No, they have refused to provide the encryption keys to Russian security agencies.

Operyl 8y ago

You’re offering a product for 19/yr, but will this product exist for that long? Lack of privacy policy, hosted on glitch, and you’re constantly throwing things up on there. Things noticed: SSL is not enforced, therefore your payment page is being served plaintext. Telegram already has this service embedded for free. You’re using a free host, with no custom domain, what if they decide to disappear next month without notice?

jajoosam 8y ago
Yes, it will. Just enforced SSL - And if the free embedded service you're talking about is telegra.ph, that is different than writt because you can't write and publish within telegram, you have to use a web interface. Glitch is made by FogCreek, the guys who co-founded Stack Overflow, and have built Trello and other stuff - so pretty sure they're reliable https://glitch.com/faq#trust https://glitch.com/faq#trust
- Operyl 8y ago
  That doesn't change my view on this. You're paying Glitch _nothing_, yet are asking for 19/yr for this product. At the very least, a few users converting can get you a quality VM from Linode or Digital Ocean. Who's currently doing backups? You? Or Glitch.
  - jajoosam 8y ago
    That's right, I'd definitely get a DO droplet if a few users converted, but haven't even had one conversion yet.
  - anildash 8y ago
    Glitch wants apps like this to succeed, so will work with him to make sure everything stays running. And Glitch apps are just totally standard Node apps, so worst case he can run it anywhere else. Anything can happen, and there are no guarantees, but I wouldn’t worry about the choice of platforms as a risk. Source: I’m the CEO of Fog Creek, which makes Glitch, and we’re excited about apps like this one!

hestefisk 8y ago

Why is telegram suddenly so popular? AFAIK it doesn’t provide proper decentralised cryptography and yet everyone in the crypto coin community is up in arms about it.