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Show HN: A tool for your learning, like Anki and Notion in one
- SunghoYahng 5y agoHey Hackers, The main concepts of this app are 1. Take notes in a tree structure. 2. Test immediately without wasting time and effort to create flashcards separately. 3. Review with the optimal learning cycle calculated by the SR algorithm. This is probably the question you are most curious about. “What is the difference with other competitors?” The long and nerdy answer: https://learnobit.postach.io/post/to-everyone-who-showed-a-passionate-interest-in-note-garden https://learnobit.postach.io/post/to-everyone-who-showed-a-p...
- snvzz 5y agoHacker roleplayer here. My most immediate questions are: 1. Where is the source code? 2. What is the license?
- opan 5y agoI had the same questions. Skimming the other comments, it sounds like it's proprietary. It boggles my mind that people think they have an alternative to anki when it's not free software.
- yanis_t 5y agoI'm working on a similar tool, while probably not that fancy[0]. Question - what is SR algorithm are you using? [0] https://rekowl.com/ https://rekowl.com/
- illuminated 5y agoSpaced Repetition: https://ncase.me/remember/ https://ncase.me/remember/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mf_kevintruong 5y agoGreat to see a lot of people jump into the field There are alot of note app over three, but not much app to help people on learn/maintain knowledge.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoYes. However, the mainstream of knowledge management tools will be the Note Garden.
- pps 5y agoMochi, Remnote, recently Logseq, plus Obsidian and Roam with community plugins. Also Notion with Leitner algo hacked into database. All of these are note-taking apps and have flashcards. I would say it's not that bad :)
- spidersouris 5y agoI've yet to try it, but this looks incredibly impressive compared to the other spaced repetition apps on the market, especially UI and features-wise. I also find it a great idea to merge notes and spaced repetition, a la RemNote. Out of curiosity, what spaced repetition algorithm is the app using? Did you create your own or did you use a pre-existing one?
- kouteiheika 5y agoThey're using SM2 just like everyone else: > And if you've always been interested in SR programs, you'd probably want to ask what algorithm Note Garden uses, which is embarrassing to say, but it's an improved version of the old SM2 algorithm. Source: https://learnobit.postach.io/post/to-everyone-who-showed-a-passionate-interest-in-note-garden https://learnobit.postach.io/post/to-everyone-who-showed-a-p...
- SunghoYahng 5y agoThere is a part about SM algorithm in the link I posted (https://learnobit.postach.io/post/to-everyone-who-showed-a-passionate-interest-in-note-garden https://learnobit.postach.io/post/to-everyone-who-showed-a-p...). To recap, I'm currently using the traditional SM2. But there are ambitious plans to appoint new and innovative algorithms.
- Buttons840 5y agoI hate creating notes on the computer. I wish e-ink devices would implement some good spaced repetition to their hand written notes apps. When I do use the computer for notes it's hard to beat Anki or org-drill.
- SunghoYahng 5y ago"It's better to do this by hand than on a computer" was a common saying before software was sufficiently advanced. That word has always changed. And now is the time. The moment when the utility of doing digitally exceeds the utility of doing it manually.
- OJFord 5y agoIt was never a utility problem, digital always beat physical in almost all regards there ('flicking through' notwithstanding). It's an input problem: some (many?) people just prefer to write. (And maybe output? I didn't realise at first, but now seems more likely GP is referring to e-paper devices being easier on the eyes.)
- strogonoff 5y agoIt’s not only that some people “just prefer to write”, there is published research[0] showing that writing things down by hand performs better in context of learning. [0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01810/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0181... / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24714990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24714990
- SunghoYahng 5y agoThe reason handwriting is helpful for learning is that handwriting naturally induces structuring of content. And in Note Garden, the content is naturally structured while taking notes.
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- eminemence 5y agoI downloaded it and installed it, but could not try as it requires a signup with email! 1. The feature set on paper is impressive, but there should be a way of trying out the limited features in offline mode, without requiring a mandatory sign-up. So consider adding a demo mode both in the downloaded and web version. 2. Is there a way to host data locally? 3. The Privacy policy & Terms of service take forever to load. The loading times need some serious tweaking.
- SunghoYahng 5y ago1. Originally, there was the function for trying it out without sign-up, but that function was removed. Our marketers didn't want that feature. I'm sorry. 2. It can't be. But you can use the app offline or by exporting & importing local data. 3. I'm sorry. I have nothing else to say but to reload. It's fine on our side.
- foerbert 5y agoWell, throw me in the bucket of people who've been lost by that decision. Sounds potentially interesting, but I'm by no means invested enough already to go through the whole account creation thing just to try it.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoAfter reading your comments, Our marketers just decided to add the function to use the app as a guest again. So now you can use the app without signing up. Isn't it good?
- zulln 5y agoHow? I see nothing on the frontpage about that, when I click on Web Version there is only login options?
- SunghoYahng 5y ago
- mronetwo 5y agoIs there a way to export and import the cards/notes with a reasonable format? (markdown or such)
- SunghoYahng 5y agoAs of now, there is the function to import / export from the app itself and the function to export to Anki (actually, these are not working now since the app was completely changed, it needs to be fixed). Anyway we will implement more import/export functions in the future and the ones you mentioned will be included.
- usrme 5y agoTo those interested in a more modern-looking Anki (minus the Notion as in the OP): I do suggest having a look at Mochi (https://mochi.cards/ https://mochi.cards/). As someone new to spaced repetition (https://ncase.me/remember/ https://ncase.me/remember/) it's been absolutely amazing and I can't praise their support highly enough for being so responsive! It's one of the better subscriptions I've opted for.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoAs I understand, Mochi is one of so many "Pretty Anki"s. Maybe it's better than Anki because it's Prettier. But, of course, compared to Note Garden, it's sloppy. It is very outdated in that you have to create cards one by one. The cards that are made even after doing the labor are just messed up cards that are not connected to each other.
- Apfel 5y agoThis is a pretty unpleasant response. Your app very strongly fits my interests but your replies have put a bad taste in my mouth.
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- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SecurityLagoon 5y agoI think this is just an ESL tone misunderstanding. The content of their post is completely fair and highlights why looking pretty doesn't automatically make it a good product. Nothing about it came off as intentionally trying to be offensive to me.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoI'm sorry if my expressions sounded unpleasant. I had no intention of doing that. It may have sounded that way because I am not sensitive to expressions in English. But I wanted to emphasize that if Mochi made Anki better, our app is a complete upward compatibility with it. Sorry to be rude once again. I also have a strong love for this app, so I think I was being harsh.
- masteranza 5y agoIf you’d prefer to keep your learning notes in computable notebook like Mathematica then you may try my little side project: https://github.com/masteranza/ScienceNotebooks https://github.com/masteranza/ScienceNotebooks
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JihyeonHeo 5y agoThanks for sharing your great work! I think your project will be helpful, as we also want our learners to be able to learn without any hesitation. I'll take it seriously!
- anigbrowl 5y agoI went from 'well it's OK' to 'I quite like this' to 'it's great!' in about 10 minutes. Creating a new web account loads the tutorial page, but it's a little confusing at first how to add a node. Also, there are quite a few spelling and grammar errors on that page which will make an unfair negative impression. If you clean those up you will get more conversions. Examples: It's my job to keep your complicated brain neat and tidy and remember **things** for a long time! Here's how you can **create** a neat Note Garden. 2. Structure what you have learned and put **it** in order. I even take care of your knowledge so that you won't forget **it** for the rest of your life! (The road to being a great gardener** was **not easy, but we did it!) Note also in the last example how the bold markdown surrounds the whitespace. I highlighted this manually (and carelessly) but clicking on a word also selects trailing spaces. You should probably strip the whitespace. On the landing page 'Write Smartly' is correct English, but people rarely use the word this way - although it is technically correct it feels weird, and you don't want to create that feeling on a landing page. 'Write Smart' would be better. Also, you wrote 'Law students - People who study for a long time that should not be forgotten'. I suggest 'Law students - People who need to study and retain knowledge for a long time.' These are small language errors, but they would be very quickly noticed by your target audience. Finally, the desktop sign-in with Google seems not to work - it opens a blank window and then closes again. Maybe it is just from server load right now. Anyway I like it a lot and will consider using it regularly. I am more of a pencil-and-paper note person but this is one of the nicest digital notebooks I've found.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoThank you. Corrected the parts you pointed out!! As for the part where desktop google sign-in does not work, regarding your description, it seems that the part that executes the app protocol using a browser does not seem to work.... I'm sorry. Let me see why not.
- tempo1234 5y agoYou're great at giving feedback.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
- siva7 5y agoI have no idea what your app does besides flashcards because your landing page doesn't give much information
- SunghoYahng 5y agoMaybe this explanation is helpful: There is an old, tried-and-tested learning algorithm called SR (Spaced Repetition) (The algorithm used to determine when to show cards in flashcard programs) The problem is that SR is a tool that only fits 1:1 structures, and this structure does not match the structure of knowledge What fits this structure is as simple as country–capital pairs or word–meaning pairs, but not general subjects Now, LearnObit has a solution for that! The first step is to make a good note-taking tool that mimics the tree structure for the purpose of organizing knowledge The second step is to connect that note-taking tool with SR Then SR can be easily used for learning information that has tree structures as well as 1:1 pairs And since the tree structure is the structure of general subjects, SR can be used for general subjects unlike in the past Now SR is the normal way, not just for a few enthusiasts on the fringes
- d4rkp4ttern 5y agoThank you for this explanation. I am one of those who see the comments first before going to the actual app :) One thing stood out to me in your explanation — you say “tree structure” is a natural way to organize knowledge. Why is that the case? I generally use one of the modern “tools of thought” (first Roam and now mem.ai) and in these tools, you just dump notes and add tags and and links among notes, so you have a general graph structure (from the links) overlayed with tags.
- u40as7 5y agoInteresting project! Wondering if it’s open source ? Also I’d be interested to know a little more about the translation from notes to testing. To me it seems when I’ve used Anki that it takes great care and time to make a well formed question. A poorly formed question has a massive detriment in knowledge recall. Just wondering how you’ve managed to bridge that dilemma to automate the process. Very interested in contributing, I’m a programmer, clinical educator and love spaced repetition.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoSorry, this is a commercial project, not open source. In fact, if this fails, we will starve. Anyway, it is the core of this app that automatically connects the naturally written note-taking into a form that can use Spaced Repetition. It's hard to explain in more detail, but I hope you enjoy the experience of being able to use Spaced Repetition for the content by simply taking notes in outliner form. Anyway, thanks for the compliment.
- nudpiedo 5y agoMake it Anki compatible importable so you can easily import customers
- SunghoYahng 5y agoSure
- wizzwizz4 5y ago“Commercial” is not incompatible with “open source”. If you have a policy of “release last year's version under AGPLv3” (and then buy indefinite proprietary licenses for the best community patches off their authors), we'll all benefit from open source without you having competitors leeching off your work. In fact, some companies can do it with no time delay, like https://plausible.io https://plausible.io – but, of course, it depends on your business model and your field.
- SecurityLagoon 5y ago
- wodenokoto 5y agoThe interface looks really polished and professional.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoWell, Thanks.
- tifadg1 5y agoI hate to be a downer, but I found the following using anki - so basically anything with SM2 algorithm, no matter the UI - as a learning tool for my tech notes: 1) it doesn't scale. You'll be overwhelmed with repetitions once you're in the high hundreds, and you will be if using Q/A style questions. And what's your daily strategy once it hits thousands? 2) I've converted all my notes from libreoffice writer to anki using python and various formatting tricks, and while the import outcome was perfect, most of the notes are useless - too ambigious/too broad/WIP - you'll never remember those well. 3) premade cards are mostly useless for long term - say you want to remember linux stuffs - you can find cards with thousands of items, but to what point - there's only so much time in a day and you want to learn something different than the author did - you def won't spend a year reviewing them. I myself am confident this problem can be solved with supermemo and creating tailored q/a from my notes and thinking hard what I actually want to remember long term.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoWhat you say is pointless, because Note Garden was created to solve those problems.
- tifadg1 5y agoQuite a rude response as these are just observations from someone who invested a lot of time into this niche.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoSorry for leaving a rude reply. I had no intention of being rude. But you're talking about Anki, not Note Garden, and the shortcomings of Anki you mentioned are what we've been trying to overcome so far.
- medntech 5y agoThey have quite a few other rude, dismissive responses on this thread. Turned me away from their product.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Reflecticon 5y agoWill it stay for free like anki or will you move over to a paid plan? I love anki because it's free and every time I've used a new software, which was better, to learn new things, I had to pay eventually.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoThere will probably be a paid plan eventually, but there will still be a free plan, and I guarantee it will at least be better than Anki.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- chriskanan 5y agoHave you thought about a strategy for when someone starts having many cards to review? I used Anki daily throughout my PhD to never forget a ton of machine learning and math. I used it for about 7 years daily (PhD + postdoc + 1.5 years) and I had around 20,000 cards. I just had to review them every day and I basically seemed like a fountain of knowledge. But a year into my professorship, I just didn't have time to do all of them daily and this compounded to disencentivize me as the number of cards to review piled up into the thousands. I still have Anki installed but I haven't used it much since 2016. One of the best things about Anki is it is free. I wouldn't want to subscribe with a recurring payments, and I like having a non-web app to ensure I could use it indefinitely even if the product dies.
- jmnicolas 5y ago> as the number of cards to review piled up into the thousands. As far I remember there was a feature to address this in SuperMemo.
- orzig 5y agoBecause I apparently watch youtube videos about anki plugins, I recently heard about Load Balancer (https://www.britvsjapan.com/top-20-anki-add-ons/#load https://www.britvsjapan.com/top-20-anki-add-ons/#load) to solve this exact problem. Hopefully this helps you continue to be a fountain of knowledge. Good luck! Out of curiosity, have you found yourself getting rusty on the information that had seemed long-term locked-in when you were a regular user?
- chriskanan 5y agoIt depends. The stuff I used often, I don't forget. Having to teach forces me to regularly recall a lot of things. However, there are a lot of things I don't use regularly.
- SunghoYahng 5y ago1. Regarding the problem of having to review a lot of cards, this is actually somewhat inevitable. Still, Note Garden made several attempts to alleviate this problem as much as possible. For example, you can choose which range to learn very flexibly on demand exploiting a tree structure. In addition to this, we plan to make the content that the user already know not appear in the learning course as much as possible by connecting each other's difficulty measurement between the notes. 2. Regarding the issue of when the product dies, we are also considering making it open source to minimize the harm to learners when the Note Garden can no longer be maintained. And we have already been developing Note Garden for over 3 years. It won't die right away
- auslegung 5y agoNitpick: I think "Study different" should be "Study differently". Here's why in case you care. Different is an adjective, which describes a noun. Differently is an adverb, which describes a verb. The sentence "study different" has an implicit subject "you", so it could be written "you study different". This makes it more obvious that "different" is trying to describe the verb "study", not the noun "you".
- knubie 5y agoI think it’s a nod to Apple’s “Think different.“
- SunghoYahng 5y agothat's a hundred percent correct understanding! lol
- douglaswlance 5y agoCould it work with a [[Roam Style]] linked markdown repository?
- SunghoYahng 5y agoYes
- TeMPOraL 5y agoOff-topic: I was wondering how the author managed to get the "web.app" domain, but it turns out it's owned by Google (Firebase). Because of course it is.
- laforge 5y agoRead the posts replies from OP and immediately lost interest…
- rito_ 5y agoThis looks good. If you support exporting to md or txt in a structured manner, and when you choose to monetize, a one-time payment option, I will easily pay 10-20$.
- SecurityLagoon 5y agoGave this a shot in guest mode. It sounds promising in theory and I agree that linking the Q/A cards to more detailed notes and tree structure is useful but in implementation it felt very clunky and I did not gel with the UI at all. The most immediate issue was that identifying how to actually markdown the notes into a usable question and answer format wasn't clear from the brief description in the intro document. The tool REALLY needs a tutorial. After I worked that out though the "learn" tab just felt like any other SR flashcard app and it didn't present the notes in any useful way to make it better than a well curated Anki deck. I've never really tried anything except Anki, Memrise and now this app but it's just hard to recommend this over Anki, as a widely accepted and open source standard. I found this frustrating to use.
- JihyeonHeo 5y agoAs you said, I think we should prepare the tutorial more kindly. Of course, it would have been great if it had been fully prepared, but we thought that the first thing to do was to release it in the best condition in terms of functionality. And from now on, we will update our usage examples and tutorials to be more specific. I am looking forward to showing more potential in the future.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoThe reason the app's learning course doesn't look so much different from traditional SR programs is probably because your notes don't have a rich structure yet. As your notes get richer, you'll see their structures reflected in the learning course.
- pps 5y agoI can't use letters from Polish alphabet: ó, ą, ę, etc. Doesn't look like for example option/alt+o doing something, but I can't type "ó" anyway. Chrome on MacOS
- lijogdfljk 5y agoThis is cool! Anki + Notion is exactly a thing i'm in the early stages of working on! Any plans for an extensive plugin system? A big thing i desired was the ability to build Notion-like blocks/etc as userland plugins. I really enjoyed how some apps (Obsidian/etc) had great plugin support.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoAlthough not yet, user created plug-in function will be added.
- mrock 5y agoThis looks great. It seems like there are issues with sign up. There is no sign-up link on the home page. I found it via guest mode --> sign up. After clicking sign up,... there is no form. I'm using firefox. HTH!
- SunghoYahng 5y agoYou can sign up by just trying signing in your new id and password
- rodolphoarruda 5y agoI'm still dreaming with a service which would allow me to build short online courses with a Google Primer look&feel; the course catalog and the course itself. I believe that for some specific types of audiences, that learning experience is unbeatable.
- throwaway98981 5y ago"Click the '+Add a New File' button to create a new file." Call me stupid, but I can't find the '+Add a New File' button. Where is it? If I click "Files" on the sidebar, I only see a 'Let's Start!' card. I signed up as a guest.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoI'm sorry. That button was supposed to be there, but it wasn't implemented... (yet) Anyway you can add new files by clicking the + button on the top page.
- throwaway98981 5y agoCan't find it. This is what I'm looking at: https://i.imgur.com/QRbuClR.png https://i.imgur.com/QRbuClR.png. Anyway, I can tell you put a lot of work into the app, nice job.
- SunghoYahng 5y agoSorry for confusion. Click the 'My Notes' and find the big '+' Button
- throwaway98981 5y agoOh ok, I didn't realize that was a clickable link. Thanks.
- AH4oFVbPT4f8 5y agoFor what it's worth, I had the same issue. The Add a New File button was not obvious enough for me to find.
- ultra_nick 5y agoHow does it structure the flash cards into a knowledge tree? Is it like Roam plus Anki?
- pps 5y agoIn case you're looking for Roam+Anki, Remnote.io is exactly this.
- harperlee 5y agoDoes someone have a way to use any of these apps solely with voice, so I can use it while driving? I’ve looked into anki plugins but did not find anything complete (that is, you can reply with voice), and I can’t be the first to desire this…
- smrk007 5y agoYes, here's my set for Spanish Vocab: https://myvoicecards.com/set?id=2703f284-754e-4fe8-ad6c-92f6cc2d7fcb https://myvoicecards.com/set?id=2703f284-754e-4fe8-ad6c-92f6... Still very rough, but I'm accepting feature requests and suggestions! Email in bio.
- david_allison 5y agoOne of the AnkiDroid maintainers here. This is entirely my personal opinion and not representative of a general consensus. I am strongly opposed to this for ethical reasons. Distracting drivers will kill people. This functionality would also increase the risk of death for non-users of the software.
- harperlee 5y agoDrivers distracted by talk is already a thing through radio, phone and physical company. A purely voice-driven anki should not entail more risk than a conference call.
- david_allison 5y agoI'm also ethically opposed to phone conversations whilst driving, for the same reasons as above.
- harperlee 5y agoThat makes sense and I respect your opinion, but I don’t share the concern. My country, Spain, has reached just 29 deaths per million inhabitants and year due to road accidents by focusing on the big risk factors, such as dui, speeding, lack of seatbelt use, overall disregard for traffic rules, texting and handling phones, bad infrastructure status, etc. and I don’t think talking while driving is a big part of the remaining risk factors that contribute to deaths. That last part is just my opinion though; I’m just saying the problem is serious but imo lies elsewhere.
- raidicy 5y agoI dislike subs. Any plans for one-time-purchase with offline support?
- JihyeonHeo 5y agoWe are also thinking about life-long options. thanks.
- qq99 5y agoI was really confused for a little while, because everything was in Korean. It seems that if you enable JS for `notegarden.web.app`, then the content in English. Maybe consider looking at the Accept-Language header for a default in this case
- sjosund 5y agoMinor, but annoying thing: On Mac the Option-key is hi-jacked so that it's not possible to jump one word when editing text. Instead, one gets sent to the previous page. This breaks the normal flow of editing and slows it down unnecessary.
- rayraegah 5y ago“Click +Add a New File button to create a new file” There is no Add a New File button. I only see the Let’s start page. There’s no way to create a new file and no menu other than the sidebar. The only way to create a page is by not following the instructions and through some jiggery-pokery with the mouse on the help page. Am I missing something or just the application malfunctioning?