5 ms·

So you essentially Web2.0 a TODO text file, making s/CRLF/<arbitrary new record type>/ and let some other people view it, maybe ... add timestamping or version

So you essentially Web2.0 a TODO text file, making s/CRLF/<arbitrary new record type>/ and let some other people view it, maybe ... add timestamping or version control or some other cruft, maybe a couple of mobile platform specific interfaces and/or an API (whole thing <1 weekend coding, add 2 weeks for UI/UX) ... somehow con fools in to using it, then someone gives you 50 million USD. This is why the US economy is going down the drain. Unbelievable.

sahillavingia 15y ago
Are you serious? Please try and replicate Evernote in 3 weeks.
- avstraliitski 15y ago
  Firstly, you originally posted this article so I can see that you are biased against cynical dismissal of the company. (I tend to feel that in openness you should have declared that in refuting my skeptical take on Evernote, but now I've done it for you.) Secondly, it seems from your background that you are 18 and your self-identity is closely linked to programming 'apps' and the whole money-for-dotbubbleapp2.0 thang. I am happy for your (apparent?) success thus far, as you yourself spin it. However, I would suggest that you consider that perhaps you do not have enough perspective yet to understand that this whole thing is just a game... a very stupid game... and ultimately not necessarily producing anything at all that is meaningful or useful to humanity, the economy, the country, or your dog: despite big scary amounts of money being thrown around. In answer to your question: I am serious. It appears to me that it is not untrue to say that nothing Evernote has done has actually been new or unique. All they've done is drawn a cloud around some stuff that existed before (I can hear the squeak of the whiteboard marker right now...), put some marketing dollars down and made some sexed-up UI's for a few device types. That's it. Then got a bunch of money. Of course, they probably wasted a lot more money doing it less efficiently ... and used a lot of stupid Silly-valley oldboy networks to get the cash ... and burned a lot of time. And maybe actually did produce something new along the way. But basically... nothing new. Skepticism is king. TL;DR? That's sad because I can't them recommend that you try The Art of UNIX Programming or any tome on code generation. But I hope you do. Also, take a tip and don't aim for fame "One day I hope you won't need to look me up to find out who I am" (puh-lease!) ... we were all 18 once.
  - sahillavingia 15y ago
    I will give you $20,000 if you can create a viable competitor to Evernote in 3 weeks. PS: there are some things called aspirations. I'm sorry I'm not jaded enough yet.
    - avstraliitski 15y ago
      sigh "Measure twice, cut once" - you mistake wisdom for being jaded. You will learn. Also, another tip: flippant remarks like that about money are both arrogant and self-defeating. (Hint: if you had a real specification and allowed a third party arbitrator to be appointed, had proper legals prepared and THEN made an offer, well, it'd be an offer. You will learn these things in time.) Good luck on your journey :)
kyro 15y ago
Then spend 2 weekends coding and make something better.
- avstraliitski 15y ago
  Why would you replicate something that already exists? That's what Evernote has done, with very minimal spin. It's pretty close to empty marketing crud. A superior solution would be any version control client and regular files. I'm not intimately familiar with Evernote but I'd wager that there are at least ten major features of good version control systems that Evernote doesn't have. Features like decentralisation, transparency, open source, mature security model, mature fork and merge model, commit hooks, etc. Failing that, even rsync would be a good solution for a single user. I'm sure it's probably more on-wire efficient than whatever system Evernote use.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    If you are correct (not saying you are) then someone could build a wrapper around those on Android and iPhone and make a killing.
    - avstraliitski 15y ago
      "CVS should be enough for everyone" ;)
      - stcredzero 15y ago
        Or ask: what sucks about trying to use Dropbox on your mobile?
adamtmca 15y ago
They are profitable and hiring people. How could they possibly be bad for the economy?
- avstraliitski 15y ago
  In reality, economics is not about money. If you produce resources or services of value, then the future is rosier because others will trade with you in exchange for access to those resources or services. If you make some piece of software junk that's dismally easy to copy and do so based on speculative capital, particularly when it provides arguably zero unique value, then what you've done is wasted everyone's time... including that of your own workforce. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote#Similar_products_and_services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote#Similar_products_and_s... Unfortunately, this sort of thing is rife in the US. Back to reality: I cannot conceive of China suddenly sending squillions of RMB to the US because someone figured out how to Web2.0 a TODO text file. Hence, skepticism on real economic value.
  - Hisoka 15y ago
    You do have a good point. I mean, deep deep deep down, Evernote is just a glorified Notepad. Most of their users are free, and I can't imagine them being a $100 mil company selling glorified Notepads for just $5/month when they aren't that popular in the entreprise market.
    - veidr 15y ago
      That's like saying "Dropbox is just a glorified folder." It's true enough, but that doesn't mean that your underlying premise is valid.
Hisoka 15y ago
In the end, most web apps are just glorified CRUD interfaces. But glorified CRUD interfaces are still valuable businesses
- avstraliitski 15y ago
  I agree. However, In my worldview, due to life being short one should eventually learn to think past value as presently defined by the US market, because the cracks in that particular form of economic rationalism have grown far too great to hide. J. Krishnamurti: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
codedivine 15y ago
Have you ever tried using evernote? It is much more than text files and some of it is quite sophisticated, such as automatic approximate OCR of images. The UI/UX/API/mobile and desktop apps/backends, all of which you dispatch off without thinking, are all non-trivial to get right. The fact that evernote doesn't have too much competition right now should tell you something.
- avstraliitski 15y ago
  I am going to have to stop replying to these comments soon because they're not well thought out. But here's another response. More than text files? Yes, there's some binary file support too. "Ooh" OCR is not hard. They probably just use http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ The fact that they don't have 'competition' proves nothing. Maybe nobody wants their 'product' because it's not useful. As others have commented even here, who've actually tried to "get it" multiple times, it's really not useful for a lot of people - they just don't see the point. Maybe the lack of people copying their "product" is because it's just marketing fluff around a solution to a problem that doesn't exist (really, very much, for most people, apparently).
veidr 15y ago
If you think you could create full-featured native apps for five different platforms plus the web UI and a synchronzing backend that can support millions of users in three weeks, I have a hunch you are overestimating your abilities.

sahillavingia 15y ago

Are you serious? Please try and replicate Evernote in 3 weeks.

avstraliitski 15y ago
Firstly, you originally posted this article so I can see that you are biased against cynical dismissal of the company. (I tend to feel that in openness you should have declared that in refuting my skeptical take on Evernote, but now I've done it for you.) Secondly, it seems from your background that you are 18 and your self-identity is closely linked to programming 'apps' and the whole money-for-dotbubbleapp2.0 thang. I am happy for your (apparent?) success thus far, as you yourself spin it. However, I would suggest that you consider that perhaps you do not have enough perspective yet to understand that this whole thing is just a game... a very stupid game... and ultimately not necessarily producing anything at all that is meaningful or useful to humanity, the economy, the country, or your dog: despite big scary amounts of money being thrown around. In answer to your question: I am serious. It appears to me that it is not untrue to say that nothing Evernote has done has actually been new or unique. All they've done is drawn a cloud around some stuff that existed before (I can hear the squeak of the whiteboard marker right now...), put some marketing dollars down and made some sexed-up UI's for a few device types. That's it. Then got a bunch of money. Of course, they probably wasted a lot more money doing it less efficiently ... and used a lot of stupid Silly-valley oldboy networks to get the cash ... and burned a lot of time. And maybe actually did produce something new along the way. But basically... nothing new. Skepticism is king. TL;DR? That's sad because I can't them recommend that you try The Art of UNIX Programming or any tome on code generation. But I hope you do. Also, take a tip and don't aim for fame "One day I hope you won't need to look me up to find out who I am" (puh-lease!) ... we were all 18 once.
- sahillavingia 15y ago
  I will give you $20,000 if you can create a viable competitor to Evernote in 3 weeks. PS: there are some things called aspirations. I'm sorry I'm not jaded enough yet.
  - avstraliitski 15y ago
    sigh "Measure twice, cut once" - you mistake wisdom for being jaded. You will learn. Also, another tip: flippant remarks like that about money are both arrogant and self-defeating. (Hint: if you had a real specification and allowed a third party arbitrator to be appointed, had proper legals prepared and THEN made an offer, well, it'd be an offer. You will learn these things in time.) Good luck on your journey :)

kyro 15y ago

Then spend 2 weekends coding and make something better.

avstraliitski 15y ago
Why would you replicate something that already exists? That's what Evernote has done, with very minimal spin. It's pretty close to empty marketing crud. A superior solution would be any version control client and regular files. I'm not intimately familiar with Evernote but I'd wager that there are at least ten major features of good version control systems that Evernote doesn't have. Features like decentralisation, transparency, open source, mature security model, mature fork and merge model, commit hooks, etc. Failing that, even rsync would be a good solution for a single user. I'm sure it's probably more on-wire efficient than whatever system Evernote use.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  If you are correct (not saying you are) then someone could build a wrapper around those on Android and iPhone and make a killing.
  - avstraliitski 15y ago
    "CVS should be enough for everyone" ;)
    - stcredzero 15y ago
      Or ask: what sucks about trying to use Dropbox on your mobile?

adamtmca 15y ago

They are profitable and hiring people. How could they possibly be bad for the economy?

avstraliitski 15y ago
In reality, economics is not about money. If you produce resources or services of value, then the future is rosier because others will trade with you in exchange for access to those resources or services. If you make some piece of software junk that's dismally easy to copy and do so based on speculative capital, particularly when it provides arguably zero unique value, then what you've done is wasted everyone's time... including that of your own workforce. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote#Similar_products_and_services http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evernote#Similar_products_and_s... Unfortunately, this sort of thing is rife in the US. Back to reality: I cannot conceive of China suddenly sending squillions of RMB to the US because someone figured out how to Web2.0 a TODO text file. Hence, skepticism on real economic value.
- Hisoka 15y ago
  You do have a good point. I mean, deep deep deep down, Evernote is just a glorified Notepad. Most of their users are free, and I can't imagine them being a $100 mil company selling glorified Notepads for just $5/month when they aren't that popular in the entreprise market.
  - veidr 15y ago
    That's like saying "Dropbox is just a glorified folder." It's true enough, but that doesn't mean that your underlying premise is valid.

Hisoka 15y ago

In the end, most web apps are just glorified CRUD interfaces. But glorified CRUD interfaces are still valuable businesses

avstraliitski 15y ago
I agree. However, In my worldview, due to life being short one should eventually learn to think past value as presently defined by the US market, because the cracks in that particular form of economic rationalism have grown far too great to hide. J. Krishnamurti: "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

codedivine 15y ago

Have you ever tried using evernote? It is much more than text files and some of it is quite sophisticated, such as automatic approximate OCR of images. The UI/UX/API/mobile and desktop apps/backends, all of which you dispatch off without thinking, are all non-trivial to get right. The fact that evernote doesn't have too much competition right now should tell you something.

avstraliitski 15y ago
I am going to have to stop replying to these comments soon because they're not well thought out. But here's another response. More than text files? Yes, there's some binary file support too. "Ooh" OCR is not hard. They probably just use http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ http://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ The fact that they don't have 'competition' proves nothing. Maybe nobody wants their 'product' because it's not useful. As others have commented even here, who've actually tried to "get it" multiple times, it's really not useful for a lot of people - they just don't see the point. Maybe the lack of people copying their "product" is because it's just marketing fluff around a solution to a problem that doesn't exist (really, very much, for most people, apparently).

veidr 15y ago

If you think you could create full-featured native apps for five different platforms plus the web UI and a synchronzing backend that can support millions of users in three weeks, I have a hunch you are overestimating your abilities.