[HN Gopher] Kinopio
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       Kinopio
        
       Author : Crazyontap
       Score  : 179 points
       Date   : 2022-05-21 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (kinopio.club)
 (TXT) w3m dump (kinopio.club)
        
       | rnmp wrote:
       | Really glad to see apps that help you explore your thoughts
       | without feeling like productivity. This is a trend that will
       | continue growing.
       | 
       | Shameless plug on an app I'm working on: Bleep
       | (https://www.bleep.is)
       | 
       | Similar concept though different execution - customization +
       | organization in a way that doesn't feel like a productivity tool
       | which is what I think Kinopio is aiming towards. Definitely an
       | inspiration for me!
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | ya somewhere along the way 'productivity' became 'enterprise',
         | a depressing association to tools that are ideally supposed to
         | help you build a better and funner life
        
       | rambambram wrote:
       | Nice examples! I miss a tooltip with text though, when I hover an
       | icon.
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | Makes sense. At least in these early days I didn't want to rely
         | on that as a crutch because Kinopio is designed to also work on
         | mobile/touch devices which don't have hover
        
       | ptato wrote:
       | The design is really cool, but the tool is useless (to me) if I
       | can't use it offline and store the data on my own hardware. For
       | some reason everyone in this space is building cloud tools!
        
         | SemanticStrengh wrote:
         | web apps can be totally offline via localstorage and some PWA
         | APIs, it's just not widespreadely in use unfortunately
        
           | ptato wrote:
           | localStorage is nice but what I really love are files, in a
           | folder, on my computer :D
        
             | capableweb wrote:
             | localStorage is in a file, on your computer ;) For
             | Firefox/Linux, it's in webappsstore.sqlite (guessing the
             | same file exists for Windows/macOS too but can't verify,
             | and Chrome probably have something similar).
             | 
             | Less fun: many "offline-capable" web apps that leverages
             | PWA APIs/localStorage usually often allow you to
             | download/upload a JSON representation of your data. I think
             | I remember a graph drawing tool that allow you to do just
             | that, but can't find a link to it right now.
        
               | ptato wrote:
               | It's a hidden, opaque file. As far as I can tell, my
               | browser doesn't tell me what its path is on my file
               | system. That path and the file format could change with a
               | browser update. Again, localStorage is nice, but this
               | whole setup isn't comparable to a .pdf or whatever that I
               | can have on my desktop.
        
               | SemanticStrengh wrote:
               | capableweb isn't telling you how capable the web has
               | become, see https://googlechromelabs.github.io/text-
               | editor/
               | 
               | note: probably works best in chromium browsers
        
               | jlund-molfese wrote:
               | It wouldn't have been draw.io /
               | https://app.diagrams.net/, would it? I use that tool
               | frequently, and loved that feature at a company where
               | data couldn't be stored on external servers
        
       | programmertote wrote:
       | When I saw "Kinopio", I thought it's about Toad character (my
       | favorite) in Super Mario universe. :) But I'm still pleasantly
       | surprised to see a site that looks very unique.
       | 
       | I wonder if the word "Kinopio" means something other than Toad in
       | Japanese (maybe someone here who knows Japanese can answer?)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | pketh wrote:
       | Oh Hi, I'm the solo creator of Kinopio. Before this, I was the
       | designer and co-creator of Glitch. I'll go through and answer
       | things, feel free to AMA.
       | 
       | If you're curious about me or about the process of
       | designing/creating, these blog posts might be helpful:
       | 
       | - https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html
       | 
       | - https://pketh.org/designing-for-thinking.html
       | 
       | - https://pketh.org/the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
        
         | mertnesvat wrote:
         | Congrats on the launch! I'm also a fan of glitch so congrats on
         | that good job too.
         | 
         | Just out of curiosity have been reading the engineering part
         | and came across with below for not using websockets, confused
         | because debounce and throttle is mainly used to avoid many
         | updates over sockets so it's very well known problem for
         | reactive programming
         | 
         | ( https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html )
         | 
         | > You might be wondering, why don't you just update the
         | database with websockets instead of relatively slow API
         | requests?
         | 
         | > The problem with saving data with websockets is that they're
         | too fast. Authenticating that many messages per second and
         | writing them to disk would be really inefficient. E.g. If
         | you're moving a card from position x: 20 to x: 420, Kinopio
         | will use websockets to broadcast many updates during the move:
         | moving card x to 21, moving card x to 24, moving card x to
         | 28... potentially hundreds of messages.
        
           | pketh wrote:
           | That's a good point, and I should look into that (it's been a
           | while since I touched that part of the codebase). Off-hand my
           | guess is that the other reason I handle api requests
           | separately is because I can group multiple actions into a
           | single request more easily, which isn't something I need to
           | do with websocket streaming
        
         | eps wrote:
         | Glitch as in that dorky MMO game that resulted in Slack as a
         | spin-off?
        
         | zkid18 wrote:
         | Hey! Congrats on the launch. Love the emerging thought and
         | products around spatial web apps. Building the company in
         | adjacent space - www.spatial.chat let's chat one day. feel free
         | to dm in twi: @kidrulit
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | Is the name Greek?
        
           | pketh wrote:
           | In Japanese it means mushroom, not sure what else (the
           | nintendo character toad is called kinopio-kun in japan). But
           | really I just randomly stumbled on it years ago and it
           | sounded unique and interesting to me
        
             | rjh29 wrote:
             | In Japanese mushroom is kinoko. kinopio is the name for
             | Toad, probably comes from kinoko but doesn't mean anything
             | by itself :)
        
               | pketh wrote:
               | oh wow, I guess I got some bad info - thanks for clearing
               | that up for me!
        
               | debo_ wrote:
               | Bad information about mushrooms has been tripping us up
               | for millenia.
        
             | stavros wrote:
             | Ahh, ok. It means "publish/share" in Greek.
        
               | pketh wrote:
               | That's a really awesome coincidence, maybe I'll tell
               | people that that's what it means from now on :D
        
             | gryson wrote:
             | The Nintendo character Kinopio (Toad) is a play on words:
             | 
             | kinoko (mushroom) +
             | 
             | Pinocchio
        
               | m12k wrote:
               | I was just about to ask if it is pronounced like
               | Pinocchio or kino-pio, guess that clears it up, thanks.
        
       | togaen wrote:
       | It's like a 90's fever dream.
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | hopefully someplace in that there's the dream of a better
         | future
        
       | hkon wrote:
       | Looks cool. Would have been great back when I was creative.
        
         | SemanticStrengh wrote:
         | I feel the same :( but creativity is a muscle !
        
           | pketh wrote:
           | for sure, it's definitely something that gets better with
           | exercise
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | Maybe you can find your creativity again? I'm sure it never
         | truly left
        
       | leephillips wrote:
       | Cool! I got a little lost because the usual browser navigations,
       | forward and back, don't work (you "broke the back button").
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | Can you let me know more so I can repro? When you navigate from
         | one kinopio page (called a space) to another, the back and
         | forward buttons are supposed to do the right thing
        
           | leephillips wrote:
           | When I first visited, I clicked on an arrow that was on a
           | card with the blue creature. I was taken to a kind of shop,
           | that had a picture of plants at the bottom. From there there
           | is no back navigation. This happened twice. But now when I
           | visit the link in your submission, I'm taken directly to the
           | shop, so I can't reproduce the problem.
        
       | samlu wrote:
       | Nothing beats Miro. Very sweet version though
        
       | joshmarinacci wrote:
       | I love these sorts of apps, but why are they always so slow? Even
       | One Notes canvas mode was super slow.
        
         | SemanticStrengh wrote:
         | yes scrolling is not as smooth as it should
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | browsers natively don't handle huge amounts of nodes as well as
         | native or canvas implementations (which have other downsides).
         | There's def more optimization I can do here though
        
       | SamBam wrote:
       | I created one note, deleted it, scrolled to the bottom, and tried
       | to create another.
       | 
       | From then on, everything was broken. Taps didn't create cards,
       | scrolling became janky, sometimes I'd see the pink circle of a
       | tap from something I did 10 seconds previous, and in the wrong
       | place.
       | 
       | The was repeatable when I exited the site and came back in.
       | 
       | Android Pixel 6 Firefox 100.2.0
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | Hey SamBam,
         | 
         | Ya Android is the only platform that currently has this bug
         | (and a couple others). It's hard to diagnose, but I'm working
         | on it. Sorry about that!
        
           | SemanticStrengh wrote:
           | It'd be nice to have a Ionic app in the future!
        
       | bowsamic wrote:
       | It looks good but I'm probably not going to pay $8 a month to use
       | it. Seeing that price puts me off of it immediately.
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | I'm still working on the pricing, any suggestions?
        
           | SemanticStrengh wrote:
           | it'd be nice to offer a lifetime license in the future
        
             | pketh wrote:
             | I was actually considering that, the only product I know
             | that does a lifetime plan is Roam though. Do you know of
             | any others?
        
               | SemanticStrengh wrote:
               | Intellij has (had?) a lifetime license. My POV is that
               | having to pay monthly forever is a psychological burden.
               | Your pricing seems reasonable to me but psychologicaly,
               | some users could pay for a lifetime license and not for
               | monthly one.
               | 
               | Also you could propose a discount for the first year (a
               | common practice)
        
               | pketh wrote:
               | > Also you could propose a discount for the first year
               | 
               | Sounds like a good idea, I haven't really seen this
               | myself though, could you point me to some examples?
        
       | thomaspaillot wrote:
       | Shameless plug, I work on an app called Stemic
       | (https://stemic.app), a different take on the same problem than
       | Kinopio is trying to solve.
        
       | Intragalactic wrote:
       | Woah. I love Kinopio! I've used a lot of different tools that are
       | similar but something about the artstyle and the way it works is
       | just so fun. Huge thumbs up.
       | 
       | Is there a way to select multiple cards at once?
        
       | WalterGR wrote:
       | Are these graph UI elements reusable libraries, or do sites tend
       | to roll their own?
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | In this case, everything is hand made (built in Vue and not
         | much else)
         | 
         | https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html
        
       | thomaspaillot wrote:
       | Shameless plug, I work on an app called Stemic, a different take
       | on the same problem than Kinopio is trying to solve.
       | https://stemic.app
        
       | xhfloz wrote:
       | One of my favorite people and websites out there :)
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | Thanks xhfloz, I love what you're doing with mmm.page too!
        
       | drakonka wrote:
       | This is so cool. I love the aesthetic and UX. The only thing is,
       | I really wish I could self-host this. This seems like just the
       | kind of thing I'd use for personal journaling brainstorms, and
       | I'd really love to be able to just have that kind of data locally
       | or self-hosted in my own location of choice.
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | I get that, it's hard to do self-hosting with a commercial
         | product, but something I'll look into in the future for sure
        
           | drakonka wrote:
           | Yeah, I understand. I'd be happy to pay a higher one-time fee
           | for the software, or still do it on a monthly charge basis (I
           | understand there'd be enforcement difficulties with that
           | though).
        
       | spicyusername wrote:
       | Infinite canvas apps are such a great way to brainstorm.
       | 
       | Kinopio has a little more... personality, but I use an infinite
       | canvas app called Concepts when brainstorming for work or play.
       | 
       | https://concepts.app/
        
       | SemanticStrengh wrote:
       | The graphical style is very cute :) I wish the internet was more
       | like this (geocities like) BTW more websites should propose
       | embedded music...
       | 
       | edit DAMN THIS WEBSITE IT GETTING IT RIGHT!! we live in an absurd
       | world where we have so many websites where people create or
       | categorize content, and yet we can't live what other people
       | live.. Most social networks are now tragically private by default
       | (youtube playlists, etc) and we can't observe the feed of other
       | users, not even super-users, only our shitty algo biased one. Yet
       | here I can easily browse user contents and this is just much more
       | useful than anything I could have came up myself, we users of the
       | interweb are so deprived of authentic user content, I discovered
       | in a few minutes of user's content browsing unique concepts, such
       | as a mapping of the musical taste of someone, and so many other
       | relatable, under-represented and heartwarming content!
       | 
       | The world might not realize it, but this is what everyone needs.
       | 
       | [0] https://kinopio.club/my-music-taste-4Z-ImVfoQ46poNtyLJSrQ
        
         | pketh wrote:
         | Thanks! I've been working hard on it. I got real tired of
         | hearing how the web is lost, or how you can't have build a real
         | business on the web, unless you sell data and/or have VC, and
         | wanting to build the web app we deserve :)
         | 
         | That's a really cool space btw, found some gems in there
        
           | SemanticStrengh wrote:
           | Thank you, that give me hope, this is very meaningful work :)
           | very minor critic: the scrolling performance is not perfect
           | on some boards (note that my 4K screen doewsn't help..)
           | 
           | BTW your app just made me discover the movie "everything
           | everywhere all at once" (yeah I must be living under a
           | rock..) and I'm very hyped given the critics!
        
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       (page generated 2022-05-21 23:00 UTC)