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I've been working on this product (with some unrelated consulting on the side) for nearly a year. Just to head off some obvious comments, here are a few things
by witten 18y ago
I've been working on this product (with some unrelated consulting on the side) for nearly a year. Just to head off some obvious comments, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Web browser support for the web-based product itself is fairly restricted. So no Safari, and no Opera. Yet.
I realize the product is a little general-purpose, and that makes a unique selling proposition more difficult to craft. I also realize that you kind folks on HN are not the target market.
Tags are in the works.
I'm trying to build a sustainable business, so I'm not interested in tips for attracting investors/buyers.
If you must post a comment along the lines of, "I don't see how this is any different than all the other wiki / notebook / word processor software out there," then please at least read some of the tour or try the demo first. If it's still not clear, then obviously I need to improve my explanation of the product.
So, what do you think? My main goal at this point is to improve traffic and build a larger customer base. I have a handful of paying customers now, but not nearly "enough". Part of the problem might be that convincing consumers (rather than businesses) to pay a recurring fee is a tough sell.
Anyway, thanks in advance.
- tx 18y agoI've been looking for something like this for a while: currently I use Tomboy on Linux but the UI is too basic. I love your attention to detail: Ctrl+B makes my selection bold - fantastic. Are you going to open the code? I'm sure you've used tons of other people's work: come on, contribute some back! I'd love to run it on my laptop: since the software is truly personal, without any sharing/collaboration benefits, why would I want to keep it in the "cloud", which often is unavailable? So... where is the code? I saw "download" feature, but it gives me HTML, not the software.
- witten 18y agoThe download page has the whole codebase in its entirety, GPL licensed: http://luminotes.com/download http://luminotes.com/download The link to this page is at the bottom of the front page. It used to be more prominent, but I found people got confused about whether they had to download the software in order to just make a wiki. You can browse the Mercurial repository online as well. And as for your question about keeping the software in the "cloud".. The software actually does have some sharing/collaboration features. (Whether they're useful for your specific needs is another matter.) I'd like to make a desktop version of Luminotes at some point, but I have no concrete plans for it now.
- tx 18y agoHUGE thanks! BTW, I've been experimenting with web-based software running on a desktop with XUL/WebKit-based clients that run their own in-process HTTP server (I've used CherryPy) and I like this approach: HTML-based UIs are way easier to create than typical UI widgets.
- witten 18y agoI'm using CherryPy, and I'd be very interested in hearing more about this. Feel free to send me an email. I think the biggest hurdle in a Luminotes desktop port such as this would be replacing PostgreSQL with something like sqlite. Another option would be to throw out the existing server entirely for the desktop version and use something like Google Gears.
- witten 18y agoUpdate: There's now a downloadable/desktop version of Luminotes for both Linux and Windows.