4 ms·

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don'

AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. The last thing I want is yet another place I have to look for my files, and I sure don't want to have to keep things in sync with a repo that holds the rest of my files. I'm also concerned with the ability of this thing to scale. There doesn't appear to be any system for grouping items other than tagging. Maybe tagging works for others, but it's not something I trust (if I have hundreds of items and missed a tag, the item is lost). Definitely don't want this to be a negative comment. It's more "you're 95% of the way to an outstanding product, but I think the last 5% might be an obstacle to adoption."

zild3d 8y ago
Agreed, "Personal knowledge" needs to also include personal knowledge like self-generated notes, journals, and such
sixtram 8y ago
I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product. At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release. At the same time I agree with his idea that a knowledge base + spaced repetition is a good combination, however outputting spaced repetition into a 3rd party app is not a good idea. I see that burtonator is trying to push this product here every time a relevant discussion pops up, I don't have an issue with that. But I do think that this product is a long way from being useful for me in a daily setting. Right now it's nothing more than an electron wrapper around pdf.js and knowing how far I read a pdf.
- llamaz 8y ago
  I started out with polarized, but then I moved onto just putting all my pdfs in a folder and highlighting them in adobe reader.
  - sjy 8y ago
    Dang. That’s what I’m doing too and I’m somewhat happy with it. But it does bother me that it only works with PDFs, and there’s no easy way to decouple the annotations from the content, so I was hoping that Polar might be significantly better.
- burtonator 8y ago
  > I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product. I couldn't parse that. Is this good or bad? > At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release. If you can point these out we can fix them. I'm still working on fit and finish in some places and rapidly iterating. I'm pushing 1/2 builds a week now based on user feedback so if something is broken let me know and I'll fix it :)
  - hawaiianbrah 8y ago
    Far far from 95% to be an outstanding product, to me, implies it is a bad thing.
- burtonator 8y ago
  > Right now it's nothing more than an electron wrapper around pdf.js and knowing how far I read a pdf. Except for cloud sync, and annotations, and flashcards, and sync to anki, and pagemarks, and archived documents, and flagging, and tagging, and stats on your reading, and a dedicated annotations view, and the ability to export your annotations, and the ability to capture entire web pages for offline use and annotations. But other than that it's exactly like pdf.js :)
burtonator 8y ago
> AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Key point of order. We don't actually convert the websites to PDF. We cache the pages offline so you have the original in your archive. This is massively cool and I need to do a better job of making it clear that this isn't just conversion to PDF. > Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. You mean specific limitations to Polar? > I'm also concerned with the ability of this thing to scale. There doesn't appear to be any system for grouping items other than tagging. Maybe tagging works for others, but it's not something I trust (if I have hundreds of items and missed a tag, the item is lost). Some users want to have more of a hierarchical folder view and we might implement that. But I don't get your point about a missing tag. > Definitely don't want this to be a negative comment. It's more "you're 95% of the way to an outstanding product, but I think the last 5% might be an obstacle to adoption." Well one thing is that I think the Hacker News crowd is very very very picky in terms of features and functionality vs the normal user base. The features I've seen from HN just aren't going to be necessary for all users. I'm fine adding them if they fit into the roadmap but some just won't be implemented. One issue is the ability to use other cloud providers which has been brought up a number of times (which is why I wrote this post). That's a massively complex feature and while that would be cool in some sense it would just be far far far too expensive to implement. I think the remaining 5% is doable but we will see.. One valid criticism is that PDF is the only format. We're working on markdown and ePub too...
- eslaught 8y ago
  > But I don't get your point about a missing tag. At least in my experience, interfaces that use tags (Gmail, Google Docs prior to the Drive upgrade) end up being a massive global heap that make it impossible to find anything. Tags help but only marginally, and only when I'm very selective about applying them. When a tag becomes too big it, it's just the soup problem all over again. In my experience with Gmail/Docs I usually find things via search, or not at all (and unfortunately more often than not the latter). You could argue the same problem occurs in hierarchical folders. But I think one major takeaway I've had is that defaults matter: hierarchical folders normalize a usage where you categorize everything. Therefore, I can find utility bills for an apartment I moved out of some years ago, with about four clicks through my folder tree. As another example, a while back I was asked for my daughter's birth certificate when checking in for a flight. No problem, five clicks and I've got it on my phone. In my experience this is hopeless in a tagging system unless search is very good or the tags are hierarchical and very granular, and at least so far I've never been able to develop the discipline to do this.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
I looked a Polar also, and although it looks good it doesn’t handle all digital assets. With strong reservations I switched over to using a $12/month G Suite account because it offers a uniform ‘cloud search’ to find and access all of my digital artifacts. After doing this transition I am happy enough having uniform access to everything, but Google has also fallen down flat on a few things: not letting my GSuite email account be a family member for the large number of purchases I have made over the years with my gmail account; the Google iOS app is really not functional with my G Suite account (no calendar interop, and other limitations). So, they are close to providing a very good $12/month service, but not quite there yet. For Polar: expand the service to allow email with custom domain, cloud file storage, etc., and unified search, then they will have a dynamite product.

zild3d 8y ago

Agreed, "Personal knowledge" needs to also include personal knowledge like self-generated notes, journals, and such

sixtram 8y ago

I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product. At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release. At the same time I agree with his idea that a knowledge base + spaced repetition is a good combination, however outputting spaced repetition into a 3rd party app is not a good idea. I see that burtonator is trying to push this product here every time a relevant discussion pops up, I don't have an issue with that. But I do think that this product is a long way from being useful for me in a daily setting. Right now it's nothing more than an electron wrapper around pdf.js and knowing how far I read a pdf.

llamaz 8y ago
I started out with polarized, but then I moved onto just putting all my pdfs in a folder and highlighting them in adobe reader.
- sjy 8y ago
  Dang. That’s what I’m doing too and I’m somewhat happy with it. But it does bother me that it only works with PDFs, and there’s no easy way to decouple the annotations from the content, so I was hoping that Polar might be significantly better.
burtonator 8y ago
> I've also downloaded this software and my impression is that it is far far from 95% to be an outstanding product. I couldn't parse that. Is this good or bad? > At least I bumped into small ui bugs the author should catched himself before a release. If you can point these out we can fix them. I'm still working on fit and finish in some places and rapidly iterating. I'm pushing 1/2 builds a week now based on user feedback so if something is broken let me know and I'll fix it :)
- hawaiianbrah 8y ago
  Far far from 95% to be an outstanding product, to me, implies it is a bad thing.
burtonator 8y ago
> Right now it's nothing more than an electron wrapper around pdf.js and knowing how far I read a pdf. Except for cloud sync, and annotations, and flashcards, and sync to anki, and pagemarks, and archived documents, and flagging, and tagging, and stats on your reading, and a dedicated annotations view, and the ability to export your annotations, and the ability to capture entire web pages for offline use and annotations. But other than that it's exactly like pdf.js :)

burtonator 8y ago

> AFAICT, this is for PDF files on your computer and websites converted to PDF. There's no option to add, say, markdown files or locally stored email files. Key point of order. We don't actually convert the websites to PDF. We cache the pages offline so you have the original in your archive. This is massively cool and I need to do a better job of making it clear that this isn't just conversion to PDF. > Don't get me wrong, I've tried it out and it's awesome. I'm just not seeing how it's going to take off as a knowledge repository with its limitations. You mean specific limitations to Polar? > I'm also concerned with the ability of this thing to scale. There doesn't appear to be any system for grouping items other than tagging. Maybe tagging works for others, but it's not something I trust (if I have hundreds of items and missed a tag, the item is lost). Some users want to have more of a hierarchical folder view and we might implement that. But I don't get your point about a missing tag. > Definitely don't want this to be a negative comment. It's more "you're 95% of the way to an outstanding product, but I think the last 5% might be an obstacle to adoption." Well one thing is that I think the Hacker News crowd is very very very picky in terms of features and functionality vs the normal user base. The features I've seen from HN just aren't going to be necessary for all users. I'm fine adding them if they fit into the roadmap but some just won't be implemented. One issue is the ability to use other cloud providers which has been brought up a number of times (which is why I wrote this post). That's a massively complex feature and while that would be cool in some sense it would just be far far far too expensive to implement. I think the remaining 5% is doable but we will see.. One valid criticism is that PDF is the only format. We're working on markdown and ePub too...

eslaught 8y ago
> But I don't get your point about a missing tag. At least in my experience, interfaces that use tags (Gmail, Google Docs prior to the Drive upgrade) end up being a massive global heap that make it impossible to find anything. Tags help but only marginally, and only when I'm very selective about applying them. When a tag becomes too big it, it's just the soup problem all over again. In my experience with Gmail/Docs I usually find things via search, or not at all (and unfortunately more often than not the latter). You could argue the same problem occurs in hierarchical folders. But I think one major takeaway I've had is that defaults matter: hierarchical folders normalize a usage where you categorize everything. Therefore, I can find utility bills for an apartment I moved out of some years ago, with about four clicks through my folder tree. As another example, a while back I was asked for my daughter's birth certificate when checking in for a flight. No problem, five clicks and I've got it on my phone. In my experience this is hopeless in a tagging system unless search is very good or the tags are hierarchical and very granular, and at least so far I've never been able to develop the discipline to do this.

mark_l_watson 8y ago

I looked a Polar also, and although it looks good it doesn’t handle all digital assets. With strong reservations I switched over to using a $12/month G Suite account because it offers a uniform ‘cloud search’ to find and access all of my digital artifacts. After doing this transition I am happy enough having uniform access to everything, but Google has also fallen down flat on a few things: not letting my GSuite email account be a family member for the large number of purchases I have made over the years with my gmail account; the Google iOS app is really not functional with my G Suite account (no calendar interop, and other limitations). So, they are close to providing a very good $12/month service, but not quite there yet. For Polar: expand the service to allow email with custom domain, cloud file storage, etc., and unified search, then they will have a dynamite product.