4 ms·

We’ve working on an approach to tackle this problem. We saw that the burden of having to create a data structure - along with the need to attach it to a visuali

by fsainz 12y ago

We’ve working on an approach to tackle this problem. We saw that the burden of having to create a data structure - along with the need to attach it to a visualization - makes people post what they can as hacky html lists, if they get so far. We wanted to show people that they were in fact able to create structured contents, even if it was in a limited way, and we choose the analogy of file and folders since most people know how to organize them. But structuring and gathering data is half of the problem, you need to translate that data into friendly views and same sort of browsing experience, so we developed same conventions to turn the structure into a small website/embed. We thought of developing an open way to store and share this data, and let people copy, follow, contribute to these chunks of content. Build a friendly web dashboard that exposes every item with simple views, and which let other developers consume them in any other ways they want. The problem is that we don’t really know who wants this. We thought that it would be appealing for web agencies as a way to quickly add structured contents to websites, but we were wrong. Some people suggested us to develop a full CMS, but we wanted to work on the problem of sharing and opening up a library of contents, not to be an alternative to Wordpress. We honestly don’t know what to do next. If you want to talk further about it, my email if fsainz/gmail.

fiatjaf 12y ago
If you're talking about https://www.pagebox.es https://www.pagebox.es I see it as a good competitor to Trello (I always thought of using Trello's API to build a simple idea-tree note-taking app, but their trees have depth limits, yours don't, so I could use yours), but, at the same time, I don't know if your site will be up and online for a long time, so I'm not sure if it is secure to put all my data there.
- fsainz 12y ago
  We've never compared ourselves to Trello, it makes me think that we could make the nestable lists more explicit and promote this note-taking use. As for how long we will last, it's always hard to say, but we won't take down the server, and in any case be assured that before that I'll help everyone to take every byte safely elsewhere, via zip, sql dump, csv, spreadsheet, plain html + css, written in clay tablets.. I mean, I'll be your export module, If you need me to programmatically push it to other service with an API I'll do it, trapping the contents of someone else makes me feel terrible.
  - fiatjaf 12y ago
    Now I'm thinking you could explore more the multi-useness of it. First, you expose an API for accessing the nestable lists from the browser (and other clients, but I like the browser), then various apps can be built on top of it, and they all could be accessed from the main site, such as: - note taking - server logs - manual logs of events (I've seen these in use in lots of small business where some employee must log what happened in its turn) - personal journal - mixpanel-like thing - analytics of any kind - computer-generated logs of anything that doesn't need a full-fledgeded database and system of its own (I'm thinking specifically of the logs of people who used their password to open a dor we have in our building, that communicates via serial port with a server that stores that info, but very ineffienciently) - (I'll keep thinking about it)
fiatjaf 12y ago
I wouldn't know what to do with Pageboxes also (as I still don't know of what exactly I am talking about in the main comment in this thread), but my use cases for the general idea were two: - Online communities. For example, groups of students of some area, groups of pregnant women, groups of people who like tiny houses, groups of people who do geocaching, people who like to save dogs in the streets and give them to adoption, people who like to shoot at birds, people who work with something specific. All these groups probably have groups of email, or Facebook groups, (probably more than one group, maybe various localized groups) where they chat and share interesting links, data and information. Then this data is lost, it isn't searchable by the people who know it exists (specially if they are inside an Excel spreadsheet that was emailed to all the groups' participants), it isn't knowable for people who joined the community later. This people will never know (or will know too later) that that interesting data was there, just behind a pile of emails and posts. There are a lot of examples of data that could be indexed (yes, I'm talking about database indexes) in interesting ways, but I will give none now, and lots of data that could just be organized in an easy way (categories, although I don't like this very much) and made searchable. For this problem, Trello is a good option, but it is limited, it is centralized, it requires an "owner" of the Trello board to authorize other people, it cannot develop in an organic way, with few people starting to use, then other people joining, and people who don't wanna join never joining. It also cannot index data, just categorize and archive. - Myself. I don't want a blog, but I have interesting data stored in my computer and my brain I wanna handle to the public over the internet, to whoever be interest in it. I have articles I can't find anywhere else anymore, I have spreadsheet data that should be presented as spreadsheets, I have articles I typed from old magazines, I have videos I don't remember how I got, I also have impressions of books, commentaries about lots of non-mainstream topics, and mainstream topics also, mainly atemporal things, that don't fit well in a blog. I could make a static web page and put all this there, but it seems too difficult for such a low value it will have. I also don't wanna do it because I wanna keep thinking about how would a non-programmer do it. I can't help thinking every people in my situation would: (i) do nothing; or (ii) make a blog, post everything there for two month and abandon the blog. I don't like abandoned blogs. Pageboxes could do something for this, but I don't know how exactly.
- rhythmvs 12y ago
fiatjaf 12y ago
Look at this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656442 For a moment, I thought it had been posted as a response for your comment, because it fits well here.

by fsainz 12y ago

fiatjaf 12y ago

If you're talking about https://www.pagebox.es https://www.pagebox.es I see it as a good competitor to Trello (I always thought of using Trello's API to build a simple idea-tree note-taking app, but their trees have depth limits, yours don't, so I could use yours), but, at the same time, I don't know if your site will be up and online for a long time, so I'm not sure if it is secure to put all my data there.

fsainz 12y ago
We've never compared ourselves to Trello, it makes me think that we could make the nestable lists more explicit and promote this note-taking use. As for how long we will last, it's always hard to say, but we won't take down the server, and in any case be assured that before that I'll help everyone to take every byte safely elsewhere, via zip, sql dump, csv, spreadsheet, plain html + css, written in clay tablets.. I mean, I'll be your export module, If you need me to programmatically push it to other service with an API I'll do it, trapping the contents of someone else makes me feel terrible.
- fiatjaf 12y ago
  Now I'm thinking you could explore more the multi-useness of it. First, you expose an API for accessing the nestable lists from the browser (and other clients, but I like the browser), then various apps can be built on top of it, and they all could be accessed from the main site, such as: - note taking - server logs - manual logs of events (I've seen these in use in lots of small business where some employee must log what happened in its turn) - personal journal - mixpanel-like thing - analytics of any kind - computer-generated logs of anything that doesn't need a full-fledgeded database and system of its own (I'm thinking specifically of the logs of people who used their password to open a dor we have in our building, that communicates via serial port with a server that stores that info, but very ineffienciently) - (I'll keep thinking about it)

fiatjaf 12y ago

I wouldn't know what to do with Pageboxes also (as I still don't know of what exactly I am talking about in the main comment in this thread), but my use cases for the general idea were two: - Online communities. For example, groups of students of some area, groups of pregnant women, groups of people who like tiny houses, groups of people who do geocaching, people who like to save dogs in the streets and give them to adoption, people who like to shoot at birds, people who work with something specific. All these groups probably have groups of email, or Facebook groups, (probably more than one group, maybe various localized groups) where they chat and share interesting links, data and information. Then this data is lost, it isn't searchable by the people who know it exists (specially if they are inside an Excel spreadsheet that was emailed to all the groups' participants), it isn't knowable for people who joined the community later. This people will never know (or will know too later) that that interesting data was there, just behind a pile of emails and posts. There are a lot of examples of data that could be indexed (yes, I'm talking about database indexes) in interesting ways, but I will give none now, and lots of data that could just be organized in an easy way (categories, although I don't like this very much) and made searchable. For this problem, Trello is a good option, but it is limited, it is centralized, it requires an "owner" of the Trello board to authorize other people, it cannot develop in an organic way, with few people starting to use, then other people joining, and people who don't wanna join never joining. It also cannot index data, just categorize and archive. - Myself. I don't want a blog, but I have interesting data stored in my computer and my brain I wanna handle to the public over the internet, to whoever be interest in it. I have articles I can't find anywhere else anymore, I have spreadsheet data that should be presented as spreadsheets, I have articles I typed from old magazines, I have videos I don't remember how I got, I also have impressions of books, commentaries about lots of non-mainstream topics, and mainstream topics also, mainly atemporal things, that don't fit well in a blog. I could make a static web page and put all this there, but it seems too difficult for such a low value it will have. I also don't wanna do it because I wanna keep thinking about how would a non-programmer do it. I can't help thinking every people in my situation would: (i) do nothing; or (ii) make a blog, post everything there for two month and abandon the blog. I don't like abandoned blogs. Pageboxes could do something for this, but I don't know how exactly.

rhythmvs 12y ago

fiatjaf 12y ago

Look at this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656442 For a moment, I thought it had been posted as a response for your comment, because it fits well here.