14 ms·

Nototo – Build a unified mental map of notes

475 points by dirtyaura 7y ago

thisisastopsign 7y ago
This is pretty cool, and I want to try it! but I was expecting it to be a paid Mac native app, not a web app behind a sign-up process... If you plan to keep it web-based, I'd encourage you to create a demo portal that doesn't require a signup. But I'd love a native app with export functionality (so I can use my own backups)!
- chenxi9649 7y ago
  Hey! Thanks for the encouragement! A native app is definitely on the to-do list. The reason why we chose the browser is mainly so that we can distribute it to a broader audience. Also, I use a MacBook and my Co-founder uses windows, and we'd both like to use the app ourselves haha. I may be wrong on this, but I think the friction to download a native app is much higher than a web app. And we really want as many users, from as many demographics, as we can to test the product and guide our development. A demo portal/sandbox on our front page would be cool too! But we have some bugs/features that are much higher on our todo list. Again, thanks a lot for the feedback!
  - Meph504 7y ago
    I think the threshold for downloading a native app vs a web app is when you have to start putting your person data in the application. what you are creating is something that will be filled with peoples personal data. Many of us, are required by employers, law, or a sense of owning the data, are going to prevent people from storing the data on your server. you could look at a native app, if your rending is done client side, you could make the data files exportable, and make use of client side encryption. Think the way a lot of password managers are working. Additionally, on your demo video, I know voice over can be a pain for small devs, but have some on screen techs would really be helpful, or hell even some background music. I know I personally started checking my headphone, trying to see if they were muted.
    - chenxi9649 7y ago
      "Many of us, are required by employers, law, or a sense of owning the data" Ahh, interesting. I've never thought about this when it comes to web vs native. It is surely one of my blind spots. Thank you for pointing that out! We will definitely work towards that, however, at this moment we are quite limited by our development speed. So it is unclear how long it will be until our #1 prioritization becomes creating a native app. Also, will definitely make the demo vid better, eventually! Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate them.
      - rckoepke 7y ago
        You're doing great work. This is a fantastic product. Keep it up. Good luck keeping it running.
anigbrowl 7y ago
Seconding the native app. The concept is great and I'd like to put it to work right now but (like a few other commercial products) it's a non-starter to store my data on your servers.
raidicy 7y ago
This is slightly tangential. But, in line with visual representation of ideas to aid with memory I found that memories of things I did in VR were more like "real life memories" than anything I ever did in a 2d game. I have a few odd memories of Echo Arena where I swear I can remember feeling the cool air of the arena on my skin and smelling the cold metal walls mixed with sweat. It felt like I was "there". I wonder if some memory palace concepts could be combined with VR.
- throwthisaway2 7y ago
  This is a literal reciency bias. You did these things more reciently than the wd games. And the 2d games were more fanciful... did you play mario in 3d or was it some simulator???
- aronowb14 7y ago
  I agree, I always thought in theory it could be possible to mix memory palaces with VR. Someone did a research study on it here if you're interested. https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10055-018-0346-3.pdf https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10...
  - raidicy 7y ago
    Thank you for the link! I'm very interested in reading it.
egypturnash 7y ago
So what happens when I fill up an island and I want to capture an idea in the proper place RIGHT NOW? Especially if I've got it surrounded by other islands. Aw shit, I just lost my fragile new idea while getting distracted by landscaping. Also holy crap the body type in these notes is microscopic.
- juliend2 7y ago
  I think the app is more a solution for organizing your thoughts rather than capturing them when they come. But I agree that something should be done in that regards.
- chenxi9649 7y ago
  Great point! The idea of running out of real estate is something that we thought quite a bit about in the beginning. So, we used to have somewhat like a tag system that we thought would lower the friction required to make a note. Where you can open up a notebook anywhere and we'll put it on the correct island for you after #tag it. But it kinda defeated the purpose of this app, for people to place their notes down like how they place a lego block down. Also, it turns out, people usually don't fill up their islands to the point of collision. They have a lot of empty spaces between notes. So, it's actually a problem that we haven't encountered yet. Additionally, note blocks can be seen as their own word documents and the tiny words on top are previews. So you can also just "open up" one of these blocks and put your idea there. OR, what I do, is I have an island for random ideas like that. Write it down first, organize it later. lastly, we will add a font size option for the rooftop fonts soon, don't wanna get eye damage lawsuits haha.
  - rckoepke 7y ago
    Definitely need that font size option! ... or, better, just good dynamic autoscaling based on f(text_length, box_size, zoom_level) and maybe a font size override option for static association. Also need a drag feature for increasing island size, not just click. I would like to be able to create a large island quickly, like using a paintbrush almost. Even if I don't have notes to populate it with anytime soon. Really love all this though.
keyle 7y ago
Interesting concept. The brain does store information with visual location so that works in that way. reminds me a bit of Jurassic Park's OS :)
- p_l 7y ago
  The OS in Jurassic Park (the original movie) was plain Irix running accelerated GL X11, with a well known demo program for 3D.
  - mattrp 7y ago
    I remember we got one of those workstations at work. No one could figure out what it’s purpose should be.. someone suggested it would make a decent mmorpg server... and it was.
    - p_l 7y ago
      I recall that one of the demos included with some versions of Irix was a multiplayer fighter combat simulator, one of the first users of IP multicast :D
- racingmars 7y ago
  You're thinking of fsn, a 3D filesystem browser demo for the Irix operating system :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager)
kovek 7y ago
If we could model a room of our favorite design and store notes in drawers that would be cool. This is awesome!
danicgross 7y ago
This is very cool. Relatedly: I often run while listening to podcasts. When I do, I remember much more of the material. And when I revisit certain blocks around the neighborhood, I find myself recalling what I heard during the run. The spacial encoding of memories seems very potent and under-investigated.
- juliend2 7y ago
  It's called the Method of loci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci Another term for that is the "memory palace". BTW, I wonder if anyone here in HN used it to learn significant things using this method?
  - netsharc 7y ago
    I first learned about memory palaces in the book Hannibal, named after the character in Silence of the Lambs [0], but the description there is of a lavish imaginary palace inside your mind you can wander in. I did use this technique to try to remember some physics formulae for an exam once, in my memory palace there was a room with giant equations. This website is a bit of a let-down for me since it's just a bird's eye view, it would be cool to create a palace using a 3d game engine, with signs that point to things like physics formulae, and then some Sims or Google-Sketchup-like tool to add objects that you want to remember. [0] The relevant excerpt about Hannibal's memory palace: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannibal-lecter/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannib... , it describes a painting that he uses to remember the fictional address "3327 Tindal, Arlington VA 22308".
    - erikig 7y ago
      One cannot build a 3d world without first building a 2d map
      - netsharc 7y ago
        And one cannot have a discussion with pretentious, profound-sounding, smartass one sentence replies.
chenxi9649 7y ago
Hey! I'm actually one of the makers of Nototo. I'm quite surprised to find my own project trending on HackerNews! If anyone has questions feel free to ask me here! or at chen@nototo.app
- erikig 7y ago
  Could you share some of the most interesting and unexpected uses of Nototo that you have encountered thus far?
  - chenxi9649 7y ago
    Since we only publically launched yesterday, we haven't gotten the chance to chat with the users yet! I'll keep u posted :)
    - omani 7y ago
      so you went public yesterday. and you are surprised that your page is trending on HN? right. shame on he who thinks evil of it ;)
- mirimir 7y ago
  Is there a mechanism for local data backup?
- internet_user 7y ago
  When are you planning to release a mobile version that has import from Evernote?
- wtmt 7y ago
  The idea looks cool and useful. But I’m not a fan of hosted services for such needs. I’d very much like a (paid) mobile/desktop app that can manage everything locally and allow syncing through any of the several cloud storage services available.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Great idea, I totally get it! Your graphics are beautiful, and the layering and gridding look helpful. It reminds me of some experimental user interfaces with pie menus I designed for creating and editing memory palaces: "iLoci" on the iPhone for notes and pictures and links and web browser integration in 2008, and "MediaGraph" on Unity3D for organizing and playing music in 2012, both of which I hope will inspire you for ideas to implement (like pie menus, and kissing!) or ways to explain what you've already created. A memory map editor can not only benefit from pie menus for editing and changing properties (like simultaneously picking a font with direction, and pulling out the font size with distance, for example), but it's also a great way for users to create their own custom bi-directionally gesture navigable pie menus by dragging and dropping and "kissing" islands together against each other to create and break links (like bridges between islands). (See the gesture navigation example at the end of the MediaGraph demo, and imagine that on an iPad or phone!) I think your crisp clean abstract graphical style would go nicely with something like Simon Schneegans' designs for Gnome-Pie, Coral-Menu, and Trace-Menu: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#ed08 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#ed08 Some HN posts (updated with updated links): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982329 I wrote an iPhone app called "iLoci" [1] that was based on the Method of Loci [2], which had a gestural interface that let you construct and navigate your own networks of locations by dragging rooms around and "kissing" them together to connect and disconnect them. Another way to think of it is as a pie menu editor. Later I elaborated on the idea in a Unity prototype called MediaGraph [3], which lets you arrange your music in an editable gesture navigable map. [1] iPhone app iLoci by Don Hopkins @ Mobile Dev Camp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ddG3jWF98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ddG3jWF98 A talk about iLoci, an iPhone app and server based on the Method of Loci for constructing a Memory Palace, by Don Hopkins, presented at Mobile Dev Camp in Amsterdam. Illustrated transcript: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/iphone-app-iloci-by-don-hopkins-mobile-dev-camp-6192ca6b5dcd https://medium.com/@donhopkins/iphone-app-iloci-by-don-hopki... [2] Method of Loci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci [3] MediaGraph Music Navigation with Pie Menus Prototype developed for Will Wright's Stupid Fun Club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc This is a demo of a user interface research prototype that I developed for Will Wright at the Stupid Fun Club. It includes pie menus, an editable map of music interconnected with roads, and cellular automata. It uses one kind of nested hierarchical pie menu to build and edit another kind of geographic networked pie menu. Discussion of the pie menus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262849 Pie menus frame this kind of interaction as pop-up menus, which provide a "self revealing gestural user interface". The menu pops up and leads you through the possible selections. That feedback trains you to rehearse the gestures. Soon you begin to make the gesture without looking at the menu, then wait for the menu feedback to confirm you're doing the right thing. Finally you gain enough skill and confidence through "muscle memory" to make the gestures quickly without even looking at the screen or requiring any feedback. It's best if the menus can provide real time in-world feedback, like applying the effect of the interaction immediately as the menu is tracking. That makes it feel more like immersive "direct manipulation" than indirect "menu selection". It's important that pie menus support "reselection", which makes them much more forgiving and differentiates them from traditional blind gesture recognition, so you at any time during tracking you can change the selection to any item you desire. Pie menus completely saturate the entire possible gesture space with usable and accessible commands: there is no such thing as a syntax error, and you can always correct any gesture to select what you want, no matter how bad it started out, or cancel the menu, by moving around to the desired item or back to the center to cancel. Handwriting and gesture recognition does not have this property, and it can be quite frustrating because you can't correct or cancel mistakes, and dangerous because mistakes can be misinterpreted as the wrong command. Most gestures are syntax errors. Blind gesture recognition doesn't have a good way to prompt and train you with the possible gestures, which only cover a tiny fraction of the possible gesture space. All the rest of the space of possible gestures is wasted, and interpreted as a syntax error (or worse, misinterpreted as the wrong gesture), instead of enabling the user to correct mistakes and reselect different gestures. Even "fuzzy matching" of gestures trades off gestural precision with making it even harder to cancel or correct a gesture, without accidentally being misinterpreted as the wrong gesture. That's not the kind of an interface you would want to use in a mission critical application such as a car or airplane. Another way to reframe the gestural, self revealing and reselectable qualities of pie menus is as navigation through a map, as opposed to climbing up a hierarchical menu tree. Instead of laboriously climbing up a tree of submenus, you simply navigate around a map of "sibmenus" -- sibling menus that you can easily move back and forth between by moving in opposite directions. This demo of an iPhone app I developed called "iLoci" demonstrates the idea, enabling users to create their own memorable maps of "locations" instead of "menus", which they can edit by dragging around, that are related to each other by two-way reversible links. It exploits the "Method of Loci," an ancient memorization technique from the time before iPhones when people had to use their own brains to remember things, in order to leverage your spatial navigation memory and make it easy to learn your way around. http://vimeo.com/2419009 http://vimeo.com/2419009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci "The Method of loci (plural of Latin locus for place or location), also called the memory palace, is a mnemonic device introduced in ancient Roman and Greek rhetorical treatises (in the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero's De Oratore, and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria). In basic terms, it is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualization to organize and recall information. Many memory contest champions claim to use this technique to recall faces, digits, and lists of words. These champions’ successes have little to do with brain structure or intelligence, but more to do with their technique of using regions of their brain that have to do with spatial learning." I like the idea of moving away from hierarchal menu navigation, towards spatial map navigation. It elegantly addresses the problem of personalized user created menus, by making linking and unlinking locations as easy as dragging and dropping objects around and bumping them together to connect and disconnect them. (Compare that to the complexity of a tree or outline editor, which doesn't make the directions explicit.) And it eliminates the need to a special command to move back up in the menu hierarchy, by guaranteeing that every navigation is obviously reversible by moving in the opposite direction. I believe maps are a lot more natural and easier for people to remember than hierarchies, and the interface naturally exploits "mouse ahead" (or "swipe ahead") and is obviously self revealing. Here is another video demonstrating a prototype exploring this interface that I developed in Unity3D for Will Wright. It shows both an "iLoci" map editing interface, as well as traditional pop-up pie menus using "pull-out" distance parameters with real time in-world feedback to preview the effect of the selection (plus it also has cellular automata, at Will's request!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc
donpark 7y ago
Suggestions from an old side-project: automate land management. - Placing a note automatically creates an island around it with a recognizable landmark nearby. Add a tree after each addition. Add or enlarge a pond after each deletion. - Dragging a line between two islands/hills either merges the two or moves them closer, depending on the size of the islands/hills involved and the population of the area. Locations, distance, and scale can change but the relative direction should not.
- chenxi9649 7y ago
  Hey donpark! 1. automatically adding landmarks This is a potential solution to a problem that we think about quite often: it's easy to teach people HOW to place components, but it's hard to teach people WHERE to place components. We introduced templates to not only help people get started with their notes but also give them an example that they can follow when it comes to making memorable islands. 2. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by dragging a line. Do you mind expanding a little?
  - donpark 7y ago
    Re 1. The template is a nice 'developer' solution but I think the best is freeing users from the burden of learning unnecessary abstractions. Re 2. I mean the gesture of pressing mouse or finger down on an island/hill then drag to another island/hill then releasing to gesture that the two are related. The line I mentioned is just a feedback mechanism. You can also use an outline of the first island/hill. The ideal reaction to such a gesture is bringing the two notes/topics closer which is where my comment about changing location and/or scale of island/hill while keeping the relative direction (angle) constant. I think relative direction more sticky than the other two.
- rapnie 7y ago
  I was thinking of using an old game one was addicted to for the memory palace. I still remember a lot of the maps in Doom, which I played as a student, for instance.
  - 7y ago
plutonorm 7y ago
Take my money. I've been thinking about this for a long time, just dont have the energy. Implement this well and I think it's a kick ass idea.
Waterluvian 7y ago
Why does this have to be a cloud app? Just make a great app, sell it for download for ten bucks, and go away. Repeat this if you come up with more awesome ideas.
- chenxi9649 7y ago
  A very good question! I think given the amount of manpower we had, it was the best choice to make the browser version first. If we desperately want a desktop version, we can use Electron or some tools to convert the browser version into a desktop version. The performance may not be the greatest, but it's cheap. We can do the same for iOS and Android. This may just be me, but I feel like the app is somewhat like my kid. This may make it tough if we need to ditch the app or pivot one day, but yea...great question!
  - rckoepke 7y ago
    I will feel like my note-world is my kid if I spend a year putting notes into this. Will I lose all my notes if you shut down the app?
    - chenxi9649 7y ago
      If somehow I can't work on this any more for the rest of my life, I'd probably still just keep it running. The amount of credits we have for these hosting services is enough to keep it running for a long time. Also, it's quite unethical to just shut the app down without giving people the ability to export the notes. I can't really see myself doing that. And I don't think neither of my 2 teammates would allow that to happen.
Brave-Steak 7y ago
It looks like there’s no desktop app of any kind? The idea looks fascinating, but unfortunately it’s a complete no-go for me without a native and offline option.
cookingrobot 7y ago
Since this seems tailored for remembering content, it might be nice if you published some content in this format rather than just having it be a blank note-taking tool. For ex, let people explore a world that represents a biology textbook, or drivers-ed manual, or something else that commonly needs to be studied & memorized.
- chrisfrantz 7y ago
  Agreed, was looking for something like this. You could integrate it into the site a bit as well and display release notes or your blog.
- citruscomputing 7y ago
  I think an example or two would be nice, but much like spaced repetition, I'd guess a lot of the value comes from building the material yourself.
rosstex 7y ago
First thought: "what the flying fuck" Second thought: "wait, this actually makes perfect sense. I want it" Kudos for the great idea!
zozbot234 7y ago
Hey, it's a Unix system! I know this! ...and everything old is new again, apparently.
- rckoepke 7y ago
  I need help understanding the analogy!
  - chris_st 7y ago
    It's a quote from the first "Jurassic Park" movie; one of the characters sees a graphical representation of a directory tree, and says the, "Hey, it's a Unix system! I know this!" line.
  - sj4nz 7y ago
    Movie reference from Jurasic Park (1993). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kBRC2co7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kBRC2co7Y [perhaps a spoiler...]
OmarShehata 7y ago
Their pricing page really bothers me: > We are just three engineering students in an apartment living room, eating lentils everyday, and spending every waking moment of our lives trying to make Nototo into something that people love. > Therefore, we really can't afford to spend time and figure out the best way to take money from you. I really dislike this trend of "formulating a business plan for our business isn't important for us". It's supposed to come off as "we care so much about delivering a great product that we don't care about money" but once you remove the stigma about making money (you're a for profit business, you should be making money. It's a good thing. There's no shame in that) it just comes off lazy. Designing a pricing system and monetizing strategy is just as much a part of making a product as designing the frontend or the tech, and all that directly affects me as a user. It doesn't really inspire me to try it if I have no idea if their pricing will be something I'm ok with or if their product won't exist because they didnt think coming up with a business plan was important.
- walterbell 7y ago
  Absence of pricing != absence of business plan, e.g. note data is valuable in its own right. They publish a privacy policy.
  - mbreese 7y ago
    Mining notes for data is a terrible idea and a very quick way to guarantee that you never get any users. Pricing in this regard is a signal for stability. If you’re paying for a service, it is far more likely to stick around. And the more stable the product, the more likely is a user to actually use the app — especially for a note taking app.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    No, but an admission that they haven’t taken time to think about how to make money = absence of business plan.
- chrisfrantz 7y ago
  Agreed, especially with a note taking app. You want me to live in here? Ok, you better be around in 10 years. Charge me some money so that will be the case.
xorzarle 7y ago
Damn... Ive had this idea for the longest time
gonational 7y ago
@dang - is this some kind of marketing post that was promoted? There’s very little chance that there are this many people this excited about some note taking app where you drag your notes as trees and park benches on a windows 95 looking map UI. Also, the number of people requesting a native app for purchase and talking about pricing… Something isn’t right here.
- xrd 7y ago
  I'm not the only one who thought exactly the same thing, eh?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 7y ago
  Not as far as I can tell, but I only have my phone and can't do much with that. I'll check again when I've got my laptop. But the votes look clean and the comments I saw so far are by established users. It's not uncommon that a post like this strikes a whimsical chord. Promotional behavior is usually more mechanical and samey.
emmanueloga_ 7y ago
When I heard about "memory palaces" I thought it would be cool if there was some sort of "hashing function" from concept to 3D space, to initially accommodate the thoughts/notes of a certain kind in a certain area of that space. That way you would get closely related concepts closely together in space too. Wilmot's Warehouse also comes to mind [1] :-) 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcyPIJYOx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcyPIJYOx4
dazhbog 7y ago
Please make an offline version with a one-off fee. I would send you lots of lentils for this.
- glup 7y ago
  Agreed.
spc476 7y ago
My initial reaction was "Cute, in a 'dots I's with hearts' type of way, but not really for me." And after watching the video and reading the site, I still feel that way, but I can see where you are going with this, with spatial memory. It isn't a bad idea. But I do have a question though---I have my island with the "World Domination" plans on it. On that, I have a plateau with plans for the "Mega Death Laser". But those are related to Tesla's patents, and all his stuff is over there on the other island. Is there a way to link the Tesla patents "over there" with the Mega Death Laser plans "over here"?
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  See what I wrote about linking by "kissing" islands together in iLoci and MediaGraph in this other message and the videos I linked to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22089694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22089694
maebert 7y ago
Soooo... Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole point of taking notes on your easily searchable computer that you _don’t_ have to remember them?
seltzered_ 7y ago
Neat! Some inspiration if this ever delves into references and connections between notes beyond just spatial relations: - Older ideas based around Xanadu ZigZag (e.g. fenfire.org): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPav69eW78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPav69eW78 . - Tinderbox guide videos - An old HN comment I rediscovered that lists out many older note-taking projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401550 (notably realized connectedtext had a feature akin to roamresearch)
makach 7y ago
Finally, I can stop taking my notes in Minecraft.
- mrspeaker 7y ago
  I don't if this was totally a joke, but I use a mincraft world I made years ago as my "memory castle" - and have pretty detailed notes about making a voxel world "memory scrapbook" like Nototo!
ericsanchez 7y ago
This is cool. I agree about the pricing page. If you're going to charge, charge. I like where this is going. You are right that humans are visual. But we are more than that; we need to create more tools that complement our biological form. This is a cool step.
EternalAugust 7y ago
I've been using visuospatial techniques like the method of loci (i.e. memory palaces, but I don't call them that) to enhance my memory for about 10 years - here are a few reasons why I think this particular solution won't really improve your memory, at least compared with normal diagramming/outlining techniques. 1. How you navigate through the environment matters. A lot. Let me use an example to try to illustrate how navigation plays a role in the method of loci. You're tasked with remembering how to solve a maze you must walk through. Consider how your brain ultimately end up encoding the solution. The brain only retains information that's (likely) relevant to solving some problem it is motivated to solve, and, also noteworthy, it tries to encode this information as sparsely as possible. Thus, what you end up remembering is not the precise spatial layout of the maze. Instead, you remember a stack of instructions/decisions associated with certain visual cues that contain a very small handful (say 1 to 3) of precise identifying details framed within a very undetailed visual "gist".[0] How does this relate to the method of loci? Well, as the encoding of your memory palace matures in your brain it is precisely these pictorial memories that end up solidifying in long term memory and becoming the "loci" in which you place the items you want to remember. This entails some important things: first, to actually use a "method of loci" it is important that the environment change little. The solution here does not appear to afford that; you generate the environment, you can change the environment, etc. Well, learning is ultimately a generative activity, so this is okay. Chunking is a generative activity, and that is a highly effective memory technique. But I am going to guess that this, as a generative activity, is not significantly more effective than the generative activities of spider diagramming or outlining in a word document. Worse, if it's implemented poorly or lacks certain features it's probably worse. Second, to actually use a "method of loci" it is important that you have a clearly defined path to navigate. Again, the solution here does not afford this, as you seem to be constantly moving around wherever you like in the environment. Exploration is fine as a learning activity but if you never boil it down to a specific path (like you do in the maze example), you're not creating a true "mind palace" and getting the benefits thereof. Third, each loci must have specific and fairly apparent details that distinguish it from the others, or else your images will tend to get confused. Doesn't look like this solution offers much in the way of that with the little models you can place on the islands. I assume that will change over time. As a side note, I also once tried to use the method of loci with such a top down perspective as you see in the demo (specifically I was using the Sims 2, ah how I love that game...). I found it didn't work that well. Some years ago my experience was further validated by reading Mary Carruthers' work on the medieval idea of _ductus_, a core concept in medieval memorytechnique. Ductus doesn't have to do with a defined navigation of your body through an environment, though, but a defined navigation of your eyes through an image. To sum up point #1, this solution does not help you produce strong loci like you get with a true method of loci. The "loci" it helps you produce are, if I had to guess, not significantly more effective than the "loci" you produce in your mind when you create, view, and encode the spatial relationships in, say, a draw.io diagram. 2. The loci are not being populated with imageable contents, and the method of loci works best for imageable content. I remember reading some cog psyche studies showing this somewhere but CBA to go find them. Also, the more specific the images the more memorable. E.g. apple is worse than Macintosh is worse than "that one Macintosh apple I saw on the floor at the store last week". 3. Related to #2, converting non-imageable concepts to images is expensive and, when you don't have at least a partly preconceived "memory language" of images, this almost always offsets the advantages of using the method of loci. I think the problem with non-imageable content is probably the biggest obstacle to using the method of loci for real work (There are some exceptions to this, e.g. if you're learning Art History or Medicine) and this does nothing to solve that big problem. Again, I think this puts it in the same league as other diagramming/outlining techniques. <long tangent> The solution to this problem I found was creating a bunch of rules for creating such a "memory language". Most of these images (I call them "esographs") are compiled and a few can be made JIT when you need them. Another advantage of using these rules is that creating and using the esographs can be a mnemonic/memory exercise in of itself that can be used for real work. An example. I might use a black chicken to represent the concept of a decimal point. The connection comes from a story that I heard from watching the TV show QI[1]. The story goes that John Napier, the inventor of the decimal point, had a thieving servant. Now, to figure out which was the thief he persuaded his servants that he owned a magic black chicken that could identify thieving hands when touched. He placed this chicken in an empty room and had each servant go in and touch it. In reality, the story goes, the chicken was actually covered in soot and he identified the thief by seeing which servant had clean hands. Now you can see that this image packs a whole parable-like story (which is itself a memory techniqe), and every time I use this image it reinforces my knowledge. The trick to creating a "memory language" like this is to get into the habit of creating these images whenever possible and eventually you will build up enough images to have some sort of fluency in the language. Admittedly, this is a difficult habit to pick up. But after a while it has been paying off in my case, and can be enhanced with the method of loci. YMMV. Digging through some old notes I found a list of good "rules" for converting non-imageable concepts into imageable ones. I'm not sure if I should share them since this post is already really long. In any case, such a framework is actually more important than the method of loci since, without it, it's very difficult to use the method of loci for real work. Funnily enough, such images representing abstract concepts is also core to medieval memorytechnique and also seems to be a major underlying motivation for religious iconography. And of course you can use the iconography as readymade images for certain concepts. </long tangent> I guess the last thing I will mention is that the method of loci seems to work quite well for some people, especially when they are highly motivated and interested in content that is more imageable, but it does not seem to be all that effective for others. So YMMV. [0] Anecdotally, I have a long commute that doesn't require a lot in the way of cognitive effort to navigate. I noticed that it took a very long time for me to remember the landmarks on long stretches of road where I don't have to turn. [1] Season 3, Episode 3
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
I've often thought about wanting to build something like this, as I find something enchanting about the memory palace idea. However in my case I think it wouldn't do anything for me, I'm not a visual thinker, I think in paragraphs, I understand things that are written down, even simple diagrams of server client interaction can slow down my understanding of what something is supposed to do in my job. Perhaps that's why I find it enchanting, it seems a fantasy because my brain doesn't work that way. All that said I think my daughter's brain works completely visually, she struggles with language, her memory for abstraction is not good, but she is great with visual ideas. I guess I might start her on this, however like other people I find myself a little hesitant given that you haven't figured out a cost for the service yet.
jl6 7y ago
I’m the family archivist and it’s long been a dream of mine to build some kind of 3D virtual museum to host all the content (audio, video, photos, documents). I looked into using Blender to construct some “museum geometry” but it seems more suited to organic modelling of objects rather than environments. It feels the technology isn’t quite ready for what I want to do - scaling to tens of millions of assets. Memory palace is a good description of what I want and this app encourages me that others are doing work in the same space!
nspassov 7y ago
Looks really cool, however I would be more comfortable if this was a desktop/mobile app rather than a web app. I would like to have some sense of control over my data and prefer if it is not stored on a server somewhere.
julienreszka 7y ago
Sadly it's not mobile first
mettamage 7y ago
I just saw the intro video. I agree with the key insight (I'm a psychology graduate, I'm basing it on that knowledge). Here's some raw feedback from an n = 1. I'm being as critical as I can here, because your project can take it. Personally, I don't think this is the final answer to the problem your solving but a good step towards it. I see some UX issues. It feels like I'm looking at a Blackberry (in a pre-Blackberry era) and not an iPhone. So in conclusion: you found a key insight that everyone missed, executed well on it, but I'm missing a certain polish. I wouldn't know what this certain polish is, otherwise I'd have told you. It's simply a gut feeling (and gut feelings are terrible at picking things apart). I know it sounds a bit nitpicky, but view it this way: your one step away from world domination as far your product is concerned in my eyes. I'd say in a sense that's really positive feedback, isn't it? --- I'm going to riff on this idea in my free time: how can visual layout information help recall? I mean, one quick thought I have is: you can also make a VR app for this. Not sure if that would be the way to go (I think not), but I can imagine how it could help.
- rijoja 7y ago
  There should definitively be a VR app made from this!
aapeli 7y ago
I quite like this idea. It seems for now to be fairly simple: I think more "decorations" and higher detail on trees, or whatever, might be important. It seems that it's only 2.5D though. Have you considered making it truly 3D somehow? There's a surprisingly large amount of extra space you gain with that third dimension. Also, fun idea: what if the island evolved over time? Like every time you visit, trees grow a bit and some new trees grow next to them, so eventually you get a forest, etc. I wonder what the implications of this would be to remembering things? Would the constant change help, or no?
rijoja 7y ago
Very very cool!
j7ake 7y ago
It worked great on Safari. On Chrome the islands were not showing up.
howmayiannoyyou 7y ago
This is the repository I want to leave my kids when I'm gone, with curated content from my life experience the can explore when they feel as if they need some guidance. It's also got a ton of potential as UI for blockchain exploration, where the elevation and other topographical features are influenced by transaction characteristics.
- klondike_klive 7y ago
  That's a very cool idea. Although it also reminds me of a longform article from about ten years ago (can't remember where from) by a guy who every so often visits the Minecraft worlds he built with his daughter. She is grown up and has gone to college.
bfung 7y ago
Having played and playing a MMORPG where there are farming/fishing/shop points on a map, these types of things start to lose organization when it gets to around 70ish nodes. While a bit better than text, it's not 10x better. Along the same lines about digital habits & itunes and gmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087406 Why do I still need to sort & remember where I put my note/email/idea? Why not just search for keywords and bring all the relevant notes up? I do agree that part of the problem/key is how the user inputs their idea, but the memory tool should bring it back w/o myself remembering. Nice execution on the tool - my criticism is in challenging what the right recall mechanism should be vs. the input mechanism.
landryl 7y ago
Definitely going to give it a shot. The way I study math usually (actually not usually, because it's not very pracrical, but the most productive way I found) is by locking myself in a classroom, laying all my notes spread on different tables, and using the chalkboard as a temporary playground to redo demonstrations and exercises, and sometimes explore ideas on my own. Theorems and objects end up having a literal spacial position in the room, and I have to move around to study. It feels like being a craft man in his workshop. It's fun, really. It got me excited to study maths. But I need a room for it, and I can only get one if I come super early, before class starts, to get 3 or 4 hours of productivity. Maybe a virtual one like that can work. It's really appealing.
- vanderZwan 7y ago
  > Maybe a virtual one like that can work. That to me sounds like a key thing. This app looks neat and probably will work for some, but I think it will only fully click for me if I ever would get a VR equivalent of it where I can have a full embodied experience of walking around. It's one more reason why I really hope Dynamicland will "escape" out of its experimental lab setting
  - 0xFluegel 7y ago
    In current VR technology that's going to be hard and annoying: > Text is tough in VR. It’s hard to read, given the resolution of today’s HMDs and it’s hard to write, since you’re typically blind in a headset and it’s annoying to be tied to a keyboard at a desk when you’d rather walk and move around in VR. I tolerate these problems with RiftSketch by making the text in the editor extremely large. I can only see 20 lines of code at a time in VR whereas my physical desktop has a 4K monitor where I’m usually looking at 140 lines of code per file with several files open side-by-side. (https://uploadvr.com/riftsketch/ https://uploadvr.com/riftsketch/) And that isn't even trying to give you a pen & paper experience. (<- something I'd also like to have.)
    - vanderZwan 7y ago
      That's why I mentioned Dynamicland: it kind of inverts VR by projecting onto real-world objects. It might be a way to bypass these issues
bogoman 7y ago
Very cool idea. I have been thinking about how augmented reality might help with notes/todos and a memory palace might be it. Still unsure about how to execute this but intriguing nonetheless.
jesuslop 7y ago
Nice concept. I'm thinking in a possible nebulous improvement. A potential problem here is that it can scale with problems as hundreds of notes are added. We organize knowledge in a hierarchical way, just as we do files in folders, or places in continents, countries, states, cities, neighborhoods and streets. Maybe a tree model of exploitable nodes, and order of magnitude slider, or something to do with what Prezi does. But yes, conceptual proximity as topographical is a great metaphor.
KillerRAK 7y ago
Very interesting. There’s certainly something to this associative memory phenomenon. Case and point. I stumbled across this on accident, by listening to the radio while commuting to work in the morning. Some shows repeat themselves throughout the day. If I hear the repeat on my commute home, I can recall an amazing number of details around my morning commute at the same time in the show. It’s pretty amazing and I’m trying to find a way to exploit this outside of listening to Howard Stern on my commute to/from work. :-)
jakobmi 7y ago
Where to download it?!
dwagnerkc 7y ago
Slick. I’ll be following the project. I’ve been tracking the Munx VR [0] app which is similar, but unable to try it out without a VR headset. They just announced desktop version support so going to give that a go soon along with this Nototo app. [0] https://linguisticator.com/p/munxvr https://linguisticator.com/p/munxvr
tkainrad 7y ago
Cool idea! "Unfortunately", I have grown too accustomed to Notion's usability feautures (e.g. markdown, slash commands, organizing in databases) to switch apps again. I think it would be cool to visualize notes of other apps (Notion, Evernote, ...) with maps via APIs. Maybe even automated somehow. If you are interested in reading more about knowledge management in a software engineering context, you might like my blog post: https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-base/ https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-ba...
aiokos 7y ago
Now you too can keep notes like you're playing [Wilmot's Warehouse](http://wilmotswarehouse.com/ http://wilmotswarehouse.com/). Really reminds me of that game and how I floundered at creating a warehouse that was organized such that my spatial brain could actually remember where everything was.
masukomi 7y ago
I love the idea. My concern is that it's _so_ specialized that when the developers eventually stop working on it, or paying for the servers, I'm going to be screwed. I feel that apps like this can be incredibly useful but ultimately, if they work for you, you'll spend years shoving data into them only to have it lost the moment the site shuts down, or in the case of desktop apps, the app stops working with the latest OS upgrade. If it was open source and I could host it myself I'd _seriously_ consider using it.
- glup 7y ago
  Exactly the same thought here: I absolutely love the idea, but my first and most important criterion for a note taking app is that it doesn't have vendor lock-in. Even if the display code is proprietary, I want access to the underlying data. Also I want a version that works offline.
karthikpaga 7y ago
Very creative approach. There are flavors of abstraction of information The spatial visuals / artifacts are definitely helpful. Much more relevant and sustainable than logs of notes. It's pretty interesting that people remember much more about their own Minecraft creation than their notes/ tasks. This balanced approach is very interesting! Cause of concern: business/ pricing model.
pascoej 7y ago
I love the idea. However I tried playing with the product for a while and there's no way I can recommend any of my friends to use this in lecture. It uses 70% CPU and 10% GPU causing the fans to spin up. I've found that outlets can be rare when taking and reviewing notes so high power use is a non-starter.
Giho 7y ago
Great app. That makes me want to use minecraft as notetaking.
ospider 7y ago
Unified xxx == Yet Another xxx. See https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
JVIDEL 7y ago
Are you going to support evernote?
Jemm 7y ago
"Free at the moment" is not the way to go. I Don;t want to sign up and invest my time in a product not knowing how much it will cost when you do decide to start chat]raging. Better idea, is either day free for now but____ in the future,

475 points by dirtyaura 7y ago

This is pretty cool, and I want to try it! but I was expecting it to be a paid Mac native app, not a web app behind a sign-up process... If you plan to keep it web-based, I'd encourage you to create a demo portal that doesn't require a signup. But I'd love a native app with export functionality (so I can use my own backups)!

chenxi9649 7y ago
Hey! Thanks for the encouragement! A native app is definitely on the to-do list. The reason why we chose the browser is mainly so that we can distribute it to a broader audience. Also, I use a MacBook and my Co-founder uses windows, and we'd both like to use the app ourselves haha. I may be wrong on this, but I think the friction to download a native app is much higher than a web app. And we really want as many users, from as many demographics, as we can to test the product and guide our development. A demo portal/sandbox on our front page would be cool too! But we have some bugs/features that are much higher on our todo list. Again, thanks a lot for the feedback!
- Meph504 7y ago
  I think the threshold for downloading a native app vs a web app is when you have to start putting your person data in the application. what you are creating is something that will be filled with peoples personal data. Many of us, are required by employers, law, or a sense of owning the data, are going to prevent people from storing the data on your server. you could look at a native app, if your rending is done client side, you could make the data files exportable, and make use of client side encryption. Think the way a lot of password managers are working. Additionally, on your demo video, I know voice over can be a pain for small devs, but have some on screen techs would really be helpful, or hell even some background music. I know I personally started checking my headphone, trying to see if they were muted.
  - chenxi9649 7y ago
    "Many of us, are required by employers, law, or a sense of owning the data" Ahh, interesting. I've never thought about this when it comes to web vs native. It is surely one of my blind spots. Thank you for pointing that out! We will definitely work towards that, however, at this moment we are quite limited by our development speed. So it is unclear how long it will be until our #1 prioritization becomes creating a native app. Also, will definitely make the demo vid better, eventually! Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate them.
    - rckoepke 7y ago
      You're doing great work. This is a fantastic product. Keep it up. Good luck keeping it running.

anigbrowl 7y ago

Seconding the native app. The concept is great and I'd like to put it to work right now but (like a few other commercial products) it's a non-starter to store my data on your servers.

raidicy 7y ago

This is slightly tangential. But, in line with visual representation of ideas to aid with memory I found that memories of things I did in VR were more like "real life memories" than anything I ever did in a 2d game. I have a few odd memories of Echo Arena where I swear I can remember feeling the cool air of the arena on my skin and smelling the cold metal walls mixed with sweat. It felt like I was "there". I wonder if some memory palace concepts could be combined with VR.

throwthisaway2 7y ago
This is a literal reciency bias. You did these things more reciently than the wd games. And the 2d games were more fanciful... did you play mario in 3d or was it some simulator???
aronowb14 7y ago
I agree, I always thought in theory it could be possible to mix memory palaces with VR. Someone did a research study on it here if you're interested. https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10055-018-0346-3.pdf https://obj.umiacs.umd.edu/virtual_reality_study/10.1007-s10...
- raidicy 7y ago
  Thank you for the link! I'm very interested in reading it.

egypturnash 7y ago

So what happens when I fill up an island and I want to capture an idea in the proper place RIGHT NOW? Especially if I've got it surrounded by other islands. Aw shit, I just lost my fragile new idea while getting distracted by landscaping. Also holy crap the body type in these notes is microscopic.

juliend2 7y ago
I think the app is more a solution for organizing your thoughts rather than capturing them when they come. But I agree that something should be done in that regards.
chenxi9649 7y ago
Great point! The idea of running out of real estate is something that we thought quite a bit about in the beginning. So, we used to have somewhat like a tag system that we thought would lower the friction required to make a note. Where you can open up a notebook anywhere and we'll put it on the correct island for you after #tag it. But it kinda defeated the purpose of this app, for people to place their notes down like how they place a lego block down. Also, it turns out, people usually don't fill up their islands to the point of collision. They have a lot of empty spaces between notes. So, it's actually a problem that we haven't encountered yet. Additionally, note blocks can be seen as their own word documents and the tiny words on top are previews. So you can also just "open up" one of these blocks and put your idea there. OR, what I do, is I have an island for random ideas like that. Write it down first, organize it later. lastly, we will add a font size option for the rooftop fonts soon, don't wanna get eye damage lawsuits haha.
- rckoepke 7y ago
  Definitely need that font size option! ... or, better, just good dynamic autoscaling based on f(text_length, box_size, zoom_level) and maybe a font size override option for static association. Also need a drag feature for increasing island size, not just click. I would like to be able to create a large island quickly, like using a paintbrush almost. Even if I don't have notes to populate it with anytime soon. Really love all this though.

keyle 7y ago

Interesting concept. The brain does store information with visual location so that works in that way. reminds me a bit of Jurassic Park's OS :)

p_l 7y ago
The OS in Jurassic Park (the original movie) was plain Irix running accelerated GL X11, with a well known demo program for 3D.
- mattrp 7y ago
  I remember we got one of those workstations at work. No one could figure out what it’s purpose should be.. someone suggested it would make a decent mmorpg server... and it was.
  - p_l 7y ago
    I recall that one of the demos included with some versions of Irix was a multiplayer fighter combat simulator, one of the first users of IP multicast :D
racingmars 7y ago
You're thinking of fsn, a 3D filesystem browser demo for the Irix operating system :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager)

kovek 7y ago

If we could model a room of our favorite design and store notes in drawers that would be cool. This is awesome!

danicgross 7y ago

This is very cool. Relatedly: I often run while listening to podcasts. When I do, I remember much more of the material. And when I revisit certain blocks around the neighborhood, I find myself recalling what I heard during the run. The spacial encoding of memories seems very potent and under-investigated.

juliend2 7y ago
It's called the Method of loci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci Another term for that is the "memory palace". BTW, I wonder if anyone here in HN used it to learn significant things using this method?
- netsharc 7y ago
  I first learned about memory palaces in the book Hannibal, named after the character in Silence of the Lambs [0], but the description there is of a lavish imaginary palace inside your mind you can wander in. I did use this technique to try to remember some physics formulae for an exam once, in my memory palace there was a room with giant equations. This website is a bit of a let-down for me since it's just a bird's eye view, it would be cool to create a palace using a 3d game engine, with signs that point to things like physics formulae, and then some Sims or Google-Sketchup-like tool to add objects that you want to remember. [0] The relevant excerpt about Hannibal's memory palace: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannibal-lecter/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/hannib... , it describes a painting that he uses to remember the fictional address "3327 Tindal, Arlington VA 22308".
  - erikig 7y ago
    One cannot build a 3d world without first building a 2d map
    - netsharc 7y ago
      And one cannot have a discussion with pretentious, profound-sounding, smartass one sentence replies.

chenxi9649 7y ago

Hey! I'm actually one of the makers of Nototo. I'm quite surprised to find my own project trending on HackerNews! If anyone has questions feel free to ask me here! or at chen@nototo.app

erikig 7y ago
Could you share some of the most interesting and unexpected uses of Nototo that you have encountered thus far?
- chenxi9649 7y ago
  Since we only publically launched yesterday, we haven't gotten the chance to chat with the users yet! I'll keep u posted :)
  - omani 7y ago
    so you went public yesterday. and you are surprised that your page is trending on HN? right. shame on he who thinks evil of it ;)
mirimir 7y ago
Is there a mechanism for local data backup?
internet_user 7y ago
When are you planning to release a mobile version that has import from Evernote?
wtmt 7y ago
The idea looks cool and useful. But I’m not a fan of hosted services for such needs. I’d very much like a (paid) mobile/desktop app that can manage everything locally and allow syncing through any of the several cloud storage services available.
DonHopkins 7y ago
Great idea, I totally get it! Your graphics are beautiful, and the layering and gridding look helpful. It reminds me of some experimental user interfaces with pie menus I designed for creating and editing memory palaces: "iLoci" on the iPhone for notes and pictures and links and web browser integration in 2008, and "MediaGraph" on Unity3D for organizing and playing music in 2012, both of which I hope will inspire you for ideas to implement (like pie menus, and kissing!) or ways to explain what you've already created. A memory map editor can not only benefit from pie menus for editing and changing properties (like simultaneously picking a font with direction, and pulling out the font size with distance, for example), but it's also a great way for users to create their own custom bi-directionally gesture navigable pie menus by dragging and dropping and "kissing" islands together against each other to create and break links (like bridges between islands). (See the gesture navigation example at the end of the MediaGraph demo, and imagine that on an iPad or phone!) I think your crisp clean abstract graphical style would go nicely with something like Simon Schneegans' designs for Gnome-Pie, Coral-Menu, and Trace-Menu: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#ed08 https://medium.com/@donhopkins/pie-menus-936fed383ff1#ed08 Some HN posts (updated with updated links): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12982329 I wrote an iPhone app called "iLoci" [1] that was based on the Method of Loci [2], which had a gestural interface that let you construct and navigate your own networks of locations by dragging rooms around and "kissing" them together to connect and disconnect them. Another way to think of it is as a pie menu editor. Later I elaborated on the idea in a Unity prototype called MediaGraph [3], which lets you arrange your music in an editable gesture navigable map. [1] iPhone app iLoci by Don Hopkins @ Mobile Dev Camp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ddG3jWF98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03ddG3jWF98 A talk about iLoci, an iPhone app and server based on the Method of Loci for constructing a Memory Palace, by Don Hopkins, presented at Mobile Dev Camp in Amsterdam. Illustrated transcript: https://medium.com/@donhopkins/iphone-app-iloci-by-don-hopkins-mobile-dev-camp-6192ca6b5dcd https://medium.com/@donhopkins/iphone-app-iloci-by-don-hopki... [2] Method of Loci: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci [3] MediaGraph Music Navigation with Pie Menus Prototype developed for Will Wright's Stupid Fun Club: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc This is a demo of a user interface research prototype that I developed for Will Wright at the Stupid Fun Club. It includes pie menus, an editable map of music interconnected with roads, and cellular automata. It uses one kind of nested hierarchical pie menu to build and edit another kind of geographic networked pie menu. Discussion of the pie menus: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7262849 Pie menus frame this kind of interaction as pop-up menus, which provide a "self revealing gestural user interface". The menu pops up and leads you through the possible selections. That feedback trains you to rehearse the gestures. Soon you begin to make the gesture without looking at the menu, then wait for the menu feedback to confirm you're doing the right thing. Finally you gain enough skill and confidence through "muscle memory" to make the gestures quickly without even looking at the screen or requiring any feedback. It's best if the menus can provide real time in-world feedback, like applying the effect of the interaction immediately as the menu is tracking. That makes it feel more like immersive "direct manipulation" than indirect "menu selection". It's important that pie menus support "reselection", which makes them much more forgiving and differentiates them from traditional blind gesture recognition, so you at any time during tracking you can change the selection to any item you desire. Pie menus completely saturate the entire possible gesture space with usable and accessible commands: there is no such thing as a syntax error, and you can always correct any gesture to select what you want, no matter how bad it started out, or cancel the menu, by moving around to the desired item or back to the center to cancel. Handwriting and gesture recognition does not have this property, and it can be quite frustrating because you can't correct or cancel mistakes, and dangerous because mistakes can be misinterpreted as the wrong command. Most gestures are syntax errors. Blind gesture recognition doesn't have a good way to prompt and train you with the possible gestures, which only cover a tiny fraction of the possible gesture space. All the rest of the space of possible gestures is wasted, and interpreted as a syntax error (or worse, misinterpreted as the wrong gesture), instead of enabling the user to correct mistakes and reselect different gestures. Even "fuzzy matching" of gestures trades off gestural precision with making it even harder to cancel or correct a gesture, without accidentally being misinterpreted as the wrong gesture. That's not the kind of an interface you would want to use in a mission critical application such as a car or airplane. Another way to reframe the gestural, self revealing and reselectable qualities of pie menus is as navigation through a map, as opposed to climbing up a hierarchical menu tree. Instead of laboriously climbing up a tree of submenus, you simply navigate around a map of "sibmenus" -- sibling menus that you can easily move back and forth between by moving in opposite directions. This demo of an iPhone app I developed called "iLoci" demonstrates the idea, enabling users to create their own memorable maps of "locations" instead of "menus", which they can edit by dragging around, that are related to each other by two-way reversible links. It exploits the "Method of Loci," an ancient memorization technique from the time before iPhones when people had to use their own brains to remember things, in order to leverage your spatial navigation memory and make it easy to learn your way around. http://vimeo.com/2419009 http://vimeo.com/2419009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci "The Method of loci (plural of Latin locus for place or location), also called the memory palace, is a mnemonic device introduced in ancient Roman and Greek rhetorical treatises (in the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero's De Oratore, and Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria). In basic terms, it is a method of memory enhancement which uses visualization to organize and recall information. Many memory contest champions claim to use this technique to recall faces, digits, and lists of words. These champions’ successes have little to do with brain structure or intelligence, but more to do with their technique of using regions of their brain that have to do with spatial learning." I like the idea of moving away from hierarchal menu navigation, towards spatial map navigation. It elegantly addresses the problem of personalized user created menus, by making linking and unlinking locations as easy as dragging and dropping objects around and bumping them together to connect and disconnect them. (Compare that to the complexity of a tree or outline editor, which doesn't make the directions explicit.) And it eliminates the need to a special command to move back up in the menu hierarchy, by guaranteeing that every navigation is obviously reversible by moving in the opposite direction. I believe maps are a lot more natural and easier for people to remember than hierarchies, and the interface naturally exploits "mouse ahead" (or "swipe ahead") and is obviously self revealing. Here is another video demonstrating a prototype exploring this interface that I developed in Unity3D for Will Wright. It shows both an "iLoci" map editing interface, as well as traditional pop-up pie menus using "pull-out" distance parameters with real time in-world feedback to preview the effect of the selection (plus it also has cellular automata, at Will's request!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc

donpark 7y ago

Suggestions from an old side-project: automate land management. - Placing a note automatically creates an island around it with a recognizable landmark nearby. Add a tree after each addition. Add or enlarge a pond after each deletion. - Dragging a line between two islands/hills either merges the two or moves them closer, depending on the size of the islands/hills involved and the population of the area. Locations, distance, and scale can change but the relative direction should not.

chenxi9649 7y ago
Hey donpark! 1. automatically adding landmarks This is a potential solution to a problem that we think about quite often: it's easy to teach people HOW to place components, but it's hard to teach people WHERE to place components. We introduced templates to not only help people get started with their notes but also give them an example that they can follow when it comes to making memorable islands. 2. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by dragging a line. Do you mind expanding a little?
- donpark 7y ago
  Re 1. The template is a nice 'developer' solution but I think the best is freeing users from the burden of learning unnecessary abstractions. Re 2. I mean the gesture of pressing mouse or finger down on an island/hill then drag to another island/hill then releasing to gesture that the two are related. The line I mentioned is just a feedback mechanism. You can also use an outline of the first island/hill. The ideal reaction to such a gesture is bringing the two notes/topics closer which is where my comment about changing location and/or scale of island/hill while keeping the relative direction (angle) constant. I think relative direction more sticky than the other two.
rapnie 7y ago
I was thinking of using an old game one was addicted to for the memory palace. I still remember a lot of the maps in Doom, which I played as a student, for instance.
- 7y ago

plutonorm 7y ago

Take my money. I've been thinking about this for a long time, just dont have the energy. Implement this well and I think it's a kick ass idea.

Waterluvian 7y ago

Why does this have to be a cloud app? Just make a great app, sell it for download for ten bucks, and go away. Repeat this if you come up with more awesome ideas.

chenxi9649 7y ago
A very good question! I think given the amount of manpower we had, it was the best choice to make the browser version first. If we desperately want a desktop version, we can use Electron or some tools to convert the browser version into a desktop version. The performance may not be the greatest, but it's cheap. We can do the same for iOS and Android. This may just be me, but I feel like the app is somewhat like my kid. This may make it tough if we need to ditch the app or pivot one day, but yea...great question!
- rckoepke 7y ago
  I will feel like my note-world is my kid if I spend a year putting notes into this. Will I lose all my notes if you shut down the app?
  - chenxi9649 7y ago
    If somehow I can't work on this any more for the rest of my life, I'd probably still just keep it running. The amount of credits we have for these hosting services is enough to keep it running for a long time. Also, it's quite unethical to just shut the app down without giving people the ability to export the notes. I can't really see myself doing that. And I don't think neither of my 2 teammates would allow that to happen.

Brave-Steak 7y ago

It looks like there’s no desktop app of any kind? The idea looks fascinating, but unfortunately it’s a complete no-go for me without a native and offline option.

cookingrobot 7y ago

Since this seems tailored for remembering content, it might be nice if you published some content in this format rather than just having it be a blank note-taking tool. For ex, let people explore a world that represents a biology textbook, or drivers-ed manual, or something else that commonly needs to be studied & memorized.

chrisfrantz 7y ago
Agreed, was looking for something like this. You could integrate it into the site a bit as well and display release notes or your blog.
citruscomputing 7y ago
I think an example or two would be nice, but much like spaced repetition, I'd guess a lot of the value comes from building the material yourself.

rosstex 7y ago

First thought: "what the flying fuck" Second thought: "wait, this actually makes perfect sense. I want it" Kudos for the great idea!

zozbot234 7y ago

Hey, it's a Unix system! I know this! ...and everything old is new again, apparently.

rckoepke 7y ago
I need help understanding the analogy!
- chris_st 7y ago
  It's a quote from the first "Jurassic Park" movie; one of the characters sees a graphical representation of a directory tree, and says the, "Hey, it's a Unix system! I know this!" line.
- sj4nz 7y ago
  Movie reference from Jurasic Park (1993). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kBRC2co7Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4kBRC2co7Y [perhaps a spoiler...]

OmarShehata 7y ago

Their pricing page really bothers me: > We are just three engineering students in an apartment living room, eating lentils everyday, and spending every waking moment of our lives trying to make Nototo into something that people love. > Therefore, we really can't afford to spend time and figure out the best way to take money from you. I really dislike this trend of "formulating a business plan for our business isn't important for us". It's supposed to come off as "we care so much about delivering a great product that we don't care about money" but once you remove the stigma about making money (you're a for profit business, you should be making money. It's a good thing. There's no shame in that) it just comes off lazy. Designing a pricing system and monetizing strategy is just as much a part of making a product as designing the frontend or the tech, and all that directly affects me as a user. It doesn't really inspire me to try it if I have no idea if their pricing will be something I'm ok with or if their product won't exist because they didnt think coming up with a business plan was important.

walterbell 7y ago
Absence of pricing != absence of business plan, e.g. note data is valuable in its own right. They publish a privacy policy.
- mbreese 7y ago
  Mining notes for data is a terrible idea and a very quick way to guarantee that you never get any users. Pricing in this regard is a signal for stability. If you’re paying for a service, it is far more likely to stick around. And the more stable the product, the more likely is a user to actually use the app — especially for a note taking app.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  No, but an admission that they haven’t taken time to think about how to make money = absence of business plan.
chrisfrantz 7y ago
Agreed, especially with a note taking app. You want me to live in here? Ok, you better be around in 10 years. Charge me some money so that will be the case.

xorzarle 7y ago

Damn... Ive had this idea for the longest time

gonational 7y ago

@dang - is this some kind of marketing post that was promoted? There’s very little chance that there are this many people this excited about some note taking app where you drag your notes as trees and park benches on a windows 95 looking map UI. Also, the number of people requesting a native app for purchase and talking about pricing… Something isn’t right here.

xrd 7y ago
I'm not the only one who thought exactly the same thing, eh?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dang 7y ago
Not as far as I can tell, but I only have my phone and can't do much with that. I'll check again when I've got my laptop. But the votes look clean and the comments I saw so far are by established users. It's not uncommon that a post like this strikes a whimsical chord. Promotional behavior is usually more mechanical and samey.

emmanueloga_ 7y ago

When I heard about "memory palaces" I thought it would be cool if there was some sort of "hashing function" from concept to 3D space, to initially accommodate the thoughts/notes of a certain kind in a certain area of that space. That way you would get closely related concepts closely together in space too. Wilmot's Warehouse also comes to mind [1] :-) 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcyPIJYOx4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAcyPIJYOx4

dazhbog 7y ago

Please make an offline version with a one-off fee. I would send you lots of lentils for this.

glup 7y ago
Agreed.

spc476 7y ago

My initial reaction was "Cute, in a 'dots I's with hearts' type of way, but not really for me." And after watching the video and reading the site, I still feel that way, but I can see where you are going with this, with spatial memory. It isn't a bad idea. But I do have a question though---I have my island with the "World Domination" plans on it. On that, I have a plateau with plans for the "Mega Death Laser". But those are related to Tesla's patents, and all his stuff is over there on the other island. Is there a way to link the Tesla patents "over there" with the Mega Death Laser plans "over here"?

DonHopkins 7y ago
See what I wrote about linking by "kissing" islands together in iLoci and MediaGraph in this other message and the videos I linked to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22089694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22089694

maebert 7y ago

Soooo... Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the whole point of taking notes on your easily searchable computer that you _don’t_ have to remember them?

seltzered_ 7y ago

Neat! Some inspiration if this ever delves into references and connections between notes beyond just spatial relations: - Older ideas based around Xanadu ZigZag (e.g. fenfire.org): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPav69eW78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACPav69eW78 . - Tinderbox guide videos - An old HN comment I rediscovered that lists out many older note-taking projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4401550 (notably realized connectedtext had a feature akin to roamresearch)

makach 7y ago

Finally, I can stop taking my notes in Minecraft.

mrspeaker 7y ago
I don't if this was totally a joke, but I use a mincraft world I made years ago as my "memory castle" - and have pretty detailed notes about making a voxel world "memory scrapbook" like Nototo!

ericsanchez 7y ago

This is cool. I agree about the pricing page. If you're going to charge, charge. I like where this is going. You are right that humans are visual. But we are more than that; we need to create more tools that complement our biological form. This is a cool step.

EternalAugust 7y ago

I've been using visuospatial techniques like the method of loci (i.e. memory palaces, but I don't call them that) to enhance my memory for about 10 years - here are a few reasons why I think this particular solution won't really improve your memory, at least compared with normal diagramming/outlining techniques. 1. How you navigate through the environment matters. A lot. Let me use an example to try to illustrate how navigation plays a role in the method of loci. You're tasked with remembering how to solve a maze you must walk through. Consider how your brain ultimately end up encoding the solution. The brain only retains information that's (likely) relevant to solving some problem it is motivated to solve, and, also noteworthy, it tries to encode this information as sparsely as possible. Thus, what you end up remembering is not the precise spatial layout of the maze. Instead, you remember a stack of instructions/decisions associated with certain visual cues that contain a very small handful (say 1 to 3) of precise identifying details framed within a very undetailed visual "gist".[0] How does this relate to the method of loci? Well, as the encoding of your memory palace matures in your brain it is precisely these pictorial memories that end up solidifying in long term memory and becoming the "loci" in which you place the items you want to remember. This entails some important things: first, to actually use a "method of loci" it is important that the environment change little. The solution here does not appear to afford that; you generate the environment, you can change the environment, etc. Well, learning is ultimately a generative activity, so this is okay. Chunking is a generative activity, and that is a highly effective memory technique. But I am going to guess that this, as a generative activity, is not significantly more effective than the generative activities of spider diagramming or outlining in a word document. Worse, if it's implemented poorly or lacks certain features it's probably worse. Second, to actually use a "method of loci" it is important that you have a clearly defined path to navigate. Again, the solution here does not afford this, as you seem to be constantly moving around wherever you like in the environment. Exploration is fine as a learning activity but if you never boil it down to a specific path (like you do in the maze example), you're not creating a true "mind palace" and getting the benefits thereof. Third, each loci must have specific and fairly apparent details that distinguish it from the others, or else your images will tend to get confused. Doesn't look like this solution offers much in the way of that with the little models you can place on the islands. I assume that will change over time. As a side note, I also once tried to use the method of loci with such a top down perspective as you see in the demo (specifically I was using the Sims 2, ah how I love that game...). I found it didn't work that well. Some years ago my experience was further validated by reading Mary Carruthers' work on the medieval idea of _ductus_, a core concept in medieval memorytechnique. Ductus doesn't have to do with a defined navigation of your body through an environment, though, but a defined navigation of your eyes through an image. To sum up point #1, this solution does not help you produce strong loci like you get with a true method of loci. The "loci" it helps you produce are, if I had to guess, not significantly more effective than the "loci" you produce in your mind when you create, view, and encode the spatial relationships in, say, a draw.io diagram. 2. The loci are not being populated with imageable contents, and the method of loci works best for imageable content. I remember reading some cog psyche studies showing this somewhere but CBA to go find them. Also, the more specific the images the more memorable. E.g. apple is worse than Macintosh is worse than "that one Macintosh apple I saw on the floor at the store last week". 3. Related to #2, converting non-imageable concepts to images is expensive and, when you don't have at least a partly preconceived "memory language" of images, this almost always offsets the advantages of using the method of loci. I think the problem with non-imageable content is probably the biggest obstacle to using the method of loci for real work (There are some exceptions to this, e.g. if you're learning Art History or Medicine) and this does nothing to solve that big problem. Again, I think this puts it in the same league as other diagramming/outlining techniques. <long tangent> The solution to this problem I found was creating a bunch of rules for creating such a "memory language". Most of these images (I call them "esographs") are compiled and a few can be made JIT when you need them. Another advantage of using these rules is that creating and using the esographs can be a mnemonic/memory exercise in of itself that can be used for real work. An example. I might use a black chicken to represent the concept of a decimal point. The connection comes from a story that I heard from watching the TV show QI[1]. The story goes that John Napier, the inventor of the decimal point, had a thieving servant. Now, to figure out which was the thief he persuaded his servants that he owned a magic black chicken that could identify thieving hands when touched. He placed this chicken in an empty room and had each servant go in and touch it. In reality, the story goes, the chicken was actually covered in soot and he identified the thief by seeing which servant had clean hands. Now you can see that this image packs a whole parable-like story (which is itself a memory techniqe), and every time I use this image it reinforces my knowledge. The trick to creating a "memory language" like this is to get into the habit of creating these images whenever possible and eventually you will build up enough images to have some sort of fluency in the language. Admittedly, this is a difficult habit to pick up. But after a while it has been paying off in my case, and can be enhanced with the method of loci. YMMV. Digging through some old notes I found a list of good "rules" for converting non-imageable concepts into imageable ones. I'm not sure if I should share them since this post is already really long. In any case, such a framework is actually more important than the method of loci since, without it, it's very difficult to use the method of loci for real work. Funnily enough, such images representing abstract concepts is also core to medieval memorytechnique and also seems to be a major underlying motivation for religious iconography. And of course you can use the iconography as readymade images for certain concepts. </long tangent> I guess the last thing I will mention is that the method of loci seems to work quite well for some people, especially when they are highly motivated and interested in content that is more imageable, but it does not seem to be all that effective for others. So YMMV. [0] Anecdotally, I have a long commute that doesn't require a lot in the way of cognitive effort to navigate. I noticed that it took a very long time for me to remember the landmarks on long stretches of road where I don't have to turn. [1] Season 3, Episode 3

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

I've often thought about wanting to build something like this, as I find something enchanting about the memory palace idea. However in my case I think it wouldn't do anything for me, I'm not a visual thinker, I think in paragraphs, I understand things that are written down, even simple diagrams of server client interaction can slow down my understanding of what something is supposed to do in my job. Perhaps that's why I find it enchanting, it seems a fantasy because my brain doesn't work that way. All that said I think my daughter's brain works completely visually, she struggles with language, her memory for abstraction is not good, but she is great with visual ideas. I guess I might start her on this, however like other people I find myself a little hesitant given that you haven't figured out a cost for the service yet.

jl6 7y ago

I’m the family archivist and it’s long been a dream of mine to build some kind of 3D virtual museum to host all the content (audio, video, photos, documents). I looked into using Blender to construct some “museum geometry” but it seems more suited to organic modelling of objects rather than environments. It feels the technology isn’t quite ready for what I want to do - scaling to tens of millions of assets. Memory palace is a good description of what I want and this app encourages me that others are doing work in the same space!

nspassov 7y ago

Looks really cool, however I would be more comfortable if this was a desktop/mobile app rather than a web app. I would like to have some sense of control over my data and prefer if it is not stored on a server somewhere.

julienreszka 7y ago

Sadly it's not mobile first

mettamage 7y ago

I just saw the intro video. I agree with the key insight (I'm a psychology graduate, I'm basing it on that knowledge). Here's some raw feedback from an n = 1. I'm being as critical as I can here, because your project can take it. Personally, I don't think this is the final answer to the problem your solving but a good step towards it. I see some UX issues. It feels like I'm looking at a Blackberry (in a pre-Blackberry era) and not an iPhone. So in conclusion: you found a key insight that everyone missed, executed well on it, but I'm missing a certain polish. I wouldn't know what this certain polish is, otherwise I'd have told you. It's simply a gut feeling (and gut feelings are terrible at picking things apart). I know it sounds a bit nitpicky, but view it this way: your one step away from world domination as far your product is concerned in my eyes. I'd say in a sense that's really positive feedback, isn't it? --- I'm going to riff on this idea in my free time: how can visual layout information help recall? I mean, one quick thought I have is: you can also make a VR app for this. Not sure if that would be the way to go (I think not), but I can imagine how it could help.

rijoja 7y ago
There should definitively be a VR app made from this!

aapeli 7y ago

I quite like this idea. It seems for now to be fairly simple: I think more "decorations" and higher detail on trees, or whatever, might be important. It seems that it's only 2.5D though. Have you considered making it truly 3D somehow? There's a surprisingly large amount of extra space you gain with that third dimension. Also, fun idea: what if the island evolved over time? Like every time you visit, trees grow a bit and some new trees grow next to them, so eventually you get a forest, etc. I wonder what the implications of this would be to remembering things? Would the constant change help, or no?

rijoja 7y ago

Very very cool!

j7ake 7y ago

It worked great on Safari. On Chrome the islands were not showing up.

howmayiannoyyou 7y ago

This is the repository I want to leave my kids when I'm gone, with curated content from my life experience the can explore when they feel as if they need some guidance. It's also got a ton of potential as UI for blockchain exploration, where the elevation and other topographical features are influenced by transaction characteristics.

klondike_klive 7y ago
That's a very cool idea. Although it also reminds me of a longform article from about ten years ago (can't remember where from) by a guy who every so often visits the Minecraft worlds he built with his daughter. She is grown up and has gone to college.

bfung 7y ago

Having played and playing a MMORPG where there are farming/fishing/shop points on a map, these types of things start to lose organization when it gets to around 70ish nodes. While a bit better than text, it's not 10x better. Along the same lines about digital habits & itunes and gmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22087406 Why do I still need to sort & remember where I put my note/email/idea? Why not just search for keywords and bring all the relevant notes up? I do agree that part of the problem/key is how the user inputs their idea, but the memory tool should bring it back w/o myself remembering. Nice execution on the tool - my criticism is in challenging what the right recall mechanism should be vs. the input mechanism.

landryl 7y ago

Definitely going to give it a shot. The way I study math usually (actually not usually, because it's not very pracrical, but the most productive way I found) is by locking myself in a classroom, laying all my notes spread on different tables, and using the chalkboard as a temporary playground to redo demonstrations and exercises, and sometimes explore ideas on my own. Theorems and objects end up having a literal spacial position in the room, and I have to move around to study. It feels like being a craft man in his workshop. It's fun, really. It got me excited to study maths. But I need a room for it, and I can only get one if I come super early, before class starts, to get 3 or 4 hours of productivity. Maybe a virtual one like that can work. It's really appealing.

vanderZwan 7y ago
> Maybe a virtual one like that can work. That to me sounds like a key thing. This app looks neat and probably will work for some, but I think it will only fully click for me if I ever would get a VR equivalent of it where I can have a full embodied experience of walking around. It's one more reason why I really hope Dynamicland will "escape" out of its experimental lab setting
- 0xFluegel 7y ago
  In current VR technology that's going to be hard and annoying: > Text is tough in VR. It’s hard to read, given the resolution of today’s HMDs and it’s hard to write, since you’re typically blind in a headset and it’s annoying to be tied to a keyboard at a desk when you’d rather walk and move around in VR. I tolerate these problems with RiftSketch by making the text in the editor extremely large. I can only see 20 lines of code at a time in VR whereas my physical desktop has a 4K monitor where I’m usually looking at 140 lines of code per file with several files open side-by-side. (https://uploadvr.com/riftsketch/ https://uploadvr.com/riftsketch/) And that isn't even trying to give you a pen & paper experience. (<- something I'd also like to have.)
  - vanderZwan 7y ago
    That's why I mentioned Dynamicland: it kind of inverts VR by projecting onto real-world objects. It might be a way to bypass these issues

bogoman 7y ago

Very cool idea. I have been thinking about how augmented reality might help with notes/todos and a memory palace might be it. Still unsure about how to execute this but intriguing nonetheless.

jesuslop 7y ago

Nice concept. I'm thinking in a possible nebulous improvement. A potential problem here is that it can scale with problems as hundreds of notes are added. We organize knowledge in a hierarchical way, just as we do files in folders, or places in continents, countries, states, cities, neighborhoods and streets. Maybe a tree model of exploitable nodes, and order of magnitude slider, or something to do with what Prezi does. But yes, conceptual proximity as topographical is a great metaphor.

KillerRAK 7y ago

Very interesting. There’s certainly something to this associative memory phenomenon. Case and point. I stumbled across this on accident, by listening to the radio while commuting to work in the morning. Some shows repeat themselves throughout the day. If I hear the repeat on my commute home, I can recall an amazing number of details around my morning commute at the same time in the show. It’s pretty amazing and I’m trying to find a way to exploit this outside of listening to Howard Stern on my commute to/from work. :-)

jakobmi 7y ago

Where to download it?!

dwagnerkc 7y ago

Slick. I’ll be following the project. I’ve been tracking the Munx VR [0] app which is similar, but unable to try it out without a VR headset. They just announced desktop version support so going to give that a go soon along with this Nototo app. [0] https://linguisticator.com/p/munxvr https://linguisticator.com/p/munxvr

tkainrad 7y ago

Cool idea! "Unfortunately", I have grown too accustomed to Notion's usability feautures (e.g. markdown, slash commands, organizing in databases) to switch apps again. I think it would be cool to visualize notes of other apps (Notion, Evernote, ...) with maps via APIs. Maybe even automated somehow. If you are interested in reading more about knowledge management in a software engineering context, you might like my blog post: https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-base/ https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-ba...

aiokos 7y ago

Now you too can keep notes like you're playing [Wilmot's Warehouse](http://wilmotswarehouse.com/ http://wilmotswarehouse.com/). Really reminds me of that game and how I floundered at creating a warehouse that was organized such that my spatial brain could actually remember where everything was.

masukomi 7y ago

I love the idea. My concern is that it's _so_ specialized that when the developers eventually stop working on it, or paying for the servers, I'm going to be screwed. I feel that apps like this can be incredibly useful but ultimately, if they work for you, you'll spend years shoving data into them only to have it lost the moment the site shuts down, or in the case of desktop apps, the app stops working with the latest OS upgrade. If it was open source and I could host it myself I'd _seriously_ consider using it.

glup 7y ago
Exactly the same thought here: I absolutely love the idea, but my first and most important criterion for a note taking app is that it doesn't have vendor lock-in. Even if the display code is proprietary, I want access to the underlying data. Also I want a version that works offline.

karthikpaga 7y ago

Very creative approach. There are flavors of abstraction of information The spatial visuals / artifacts are definitely helpful. Much more relevant and sustainable than logs of notes. It's pretty interesting that people remember much more about their own Minecraft creation than their notes/ tasks. This balanced approach is very interesting! Cause of concern: business/ pricing model.

pascoej 7y ago

I love the idea. However I tried playing with the product for a while and there's no way I can recommend any of my friends to use this in lecture. It uses 70% CPU and 10% GPU causing the fans to spin up. I've found that outlets can be rare when taking and reviewing notes so high power use is a non-starter.

Giho 7y ago

Great app. That makes me want to use minecraft as notetaking.

ospider 7y ago

Unified xxx == Yet Another xxx. See https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

JVIDEL 7y ago

Are you going to support evernote?

Jemm 7y ago

"Free at the moment" is not the way to go. I Don;t want to sign up and invest my time in a product not knowing how much it will cost when you do decide to start chat]raging. Better idea, is either day free for now but____ in the future,