4 ms·

Advising Simperium (YC S10)

23 points by ssclafani 16y ago

pclark 16y ago
SimpleNote is the first app I install on my iPhone. It is by far the most useful app I have ever bought.
- pchristensen 16y ago
  Simplenote, Dropbox, and something that syncs with Toodledo. Those three are mandatory for me. Gives me text, files, and tasks.
- adriand 16y ago
  When you write notes with SimpleNote on your computer, do you use their program or can you use whatever text editor you want? SimpleNote sounds very cool, but I like writing stuff with vim when I'm on my computer, and I don't want to switch to some other application.
  - alanh 16y ago
    If you use Simplenote’s premium Dropbox sync feature, you can use any text editor. Otherwise your options are the Simplenote web app, Notational Velocity, DashNotes, or another app that syncs directly to Simplenote: http://simplenoteapp.com/downloads/ http://simplenoteapp.com/downloads/
swombat 16y ago
Definitely a real problem, although one that was supposed to be solved by both Google Wave and AppJet (Etherpad's supporting platform)... Thank you, Google, for screwing that one up.
- alanh 16y ago
  Etherpad sure was inspirational, useful, and frankly mind-blowing.
- js2 16y ago
  And by http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/SyncServices/SyncServices.html http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/... for OS X applications.
arrel 16y ago
I've had to build sync systems in the past for RoR + iPhone and was amazed that there was no industry standard approach to sync. Even syncing contacts on my iPhone still goes haywire regularly. Is it just one of those "hard problems" that's still searching for a solution, or is there a tried and true online/offline sync algorithm that works?
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago
  There are three approaches to sync, and all have their pros and cons. The complexity in sync comes from conflicts, and the three approaches vary in how they handle conflicts, with varying implications for the end user. Rule-based resolution, Locking, Merge Rule based is something like last person wins, always accept this actor's changes, or pick the variation based on some simple criteria. This is easy to implement but it causes loss of (potentially unrelated) changes that one person made. Locking (pessimistic and optimistic) tries to make the above better because it either prevents divergence or prevents changes from being lost by returning an error (refusing to commit the conflict-inducing change to one of the data stores.) Merge is the hardest of all, and it is a series of trade-offs and compromises. From diff-match-patch to three way merge to operational transformation, vector clocks and so on, there are many ways to try and handle merging that all have their own ups and downs. (google the iterating bigrams in that sentence for more info.). You ultimately need to get your own application logic in the merge process -- for instance, "we want to disallow changes to the title After the PDF has been sent" is a business rule, but then your remote client had changed the title while disconnected and somebody else sent the PDF. There is no simple algo that will handle text merging, state machine guards, and varying merge strategies. Finally, different merge strategies have different amounts of data transfer required to perform the synch negotiation.
basil 16y ago
Apple needs to make MobileMe free. Then offer their Sync Services framework (which is currently only available on the Mac) to iOS developers. Hoping this comes in iOS5.

23 points by ssclafani 16y ago

pclark 16y ago

SimpleNote is the first app I install on my iPhone. It is by far the most useful app I have ever bought.

pchristensen 16y ago
Simplenote, Dropbox, and something that syncs with Toodledo. Those three are mandatory for me. Gives me text, files, and tasks.
adriand 16y ago
When you write notes with SimpleNote on your computer, do you use their program or can you use whatever text editor you want? SimpleNote sounds very cool, but I like writing stuff with vim when I'm on my computer, and I don't want to switch to some other application.
- alanh 16y ago
  If you use Simplenote’s premium Dropbox sync feature, you can use any text editor. Otherwise your options are the Simplenote web app, Notational Velocity, DashNotes, or another app that syncs directly to Simplenote: http://simplenoteapp.com/downloads/ http://simplenoteapp.com/downloads/

swombat 16y ago

Definitely a real problem, although one that was supposed to be solved by both Google Wave and AppJet (Etherpad's supporting platform)... Thank you, Google, for screwing that one up.

alanh 16y ago
Etherpad sure was inspirational, useful, and frankly mind-blowing.
js2 16y ago
And by http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/SyncServices/SyncServices.html http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/... for OS X applications.

arrel 16y ago

I've had to build sync systems in the past for RoR + iPhone and was amazed that there was no industry standard approach to sync. Even syncing contacts on my iPhone still goes haywire regularly. Is it just one of those "hard problems" that's still searching for a solution, or is there a tried and true online/offline sync algorithm that works?

aaronblohowiak 16y ago
There are three approaches to sync, and all have their pros and cons. The complexity in sync comes from conflicts, and the three approaches vary in how they handle conflicts, with varying implications for the end user. Rule-based resolution, Locking, Merge Rule based is something like last person wins, always accept this actor's changes, or pick the variation based on some simple criteria. This is easy to implement but it causes loss of (potentially unrelated) changes that one person made. Locking (pessimistic and optimistic) tries to make the above better because it either prevents divergence or prevents changes from being lost by returning an error (refusing to commit the conflict-inducing change to one of the data stores.) Merge is the hardest of all, and it is a series of trade-offs and compromises. From diff-match-patch to three way merge to operational transformation, vector clocks and so on, there are many ways to try and handle merging that all have their own ups and downs. (google the iterating bigrams in that sentence for more info.). You ultimately need to get your own application logic in the merge process -- for instance, "we want to disallow changes to the title After the PDF has been sent" is a business rule, but then your remote client had changed the title while disconnected and somebody else sent the PDF. There is no simple algo that will handle text merging, state machine guards, and varying merge strategies. Finally, different merge strategies have different amounts of data transfer required to perform the synch negotiation.

basil 16y ago

Apple needs to make MobileMe free. Then offer their Sync Services framework (which is currently only available on the Mac) to iOS developers. Hoping this comes in iOS5.