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Ask HN: A better way to organize my research

Hi, My mishmash of hyperlinks, bookmarks, pdfs, research papers, blogs, newsletters, infographic, podcast, recordings, are scattered across different folders and different apps across my devices. Its hard to keep track. Anyone recommend a cross platform app that can do it? I’m very digitally disorganized right now. Offline/online/cloud. Simple. Sync. Quick. Visual.

Venkatesh10 5y ago
Rome research
techdragon 5y ago
Obsidian (https://obsidian.md https://obsidian.md) is the only tool I e found that didn’t try and force me into a specific paradigm and let me develop an organisation for my disparate collections of notes and material much like you describe. It’s own paid upgrade feature/service offers a cross platform sync that handles a couple of gigs of basically any type of document and is encrypted client side. At a price I’ve found perfectly acceptable for the excellent quality of service and as a way to support the ongoing development of what is otherwise a free program. It also works offline and does opportunistic sync so well I bought a PineNote e-Ink tablet primarily because I knew my note workflow wouldn’t be crippled by the device not having cellular data for immediately synchronising changes. Mac, android, iOS, desktop Linux, x86, arm, windows everywhere I’ve needed it I can get my documents. I definitely recommend at least giving it a try and exploring the plug-in ecosystem to see if you can find a good set of workflows for your various documents and research. A few of the plugins are quite powerful and offer various visual management functionality like tag and link graphs, navigation features and other functionality. I don’t see myself being pulled away from it at this point and all I’m looking for is ways to better integrate other platforms with Obsidian because it definitely works for me.
lurker137 5y ago
Zotero is specifically built for this
cc101 5y ago
You might find Epiphany Workflow for the Mac interesting. It's on the Apple Mac Ap store.

Venkatesh10 5y ago

Rome research

techdragon 5y ago

Obsidian (https://obsidian.md https://obsidian.md) is the only tool I e found that didn’t try and force me into a specific paradigm and let me develop an organisation for my disparate collections of notes and material much like you describe. It’s own paid upgrade feature/service offers a cross platform sync that handles a couple of gigs of basically any type of document and is encrypted client side. At a price I’ve found perfectly acceptable for the excellent quality of service and as a way to support the ongoing development of what is otherwise a free program. It also works offline and does opportunistic sync so well I bought a PineNote e-Ink tablet primarily because I knew my note workflow wouldn’t be crippled by the device not having cellular data for immediately synchronising changes. Mac, android, iOS, desktop Linux, x86, arm, windows everywhere I’ve needed it I can get my documents. I definitely recommend at least giving it a try and exploring the plug-in ecosystem to see if you can find a good set of workflows for your various documents and research. A few of the plugins are quite powerful and offer various visual management functionality like tag and link graphs, navigation features and other functionality. I don’t see myself being pulled away from it at this point and all I’m looking for is ways to better integrate other platforms with Obsidian because it definitely works for me.

lurker137 5y ago

Zotero is specifically built for this

cc101 5y ago

You might find Epiphany Workflow for the Mac interesting. It's on the Apple Mac Ap store.