[HN Gopher] Show HN: A tool to help you remember shit you are in...
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Show HN: A tool to help you remember shit you are interested in
I've been working on Recall for a while now, it had some initial
traction in the beginning which has since died down now. I am
facing the inevitable question of whether to continue with the
project. I just put out a new release and it would be helpful to
get advice from the community on what they think of the idea and my
implementation.
Author : paulrchds
Score : 143 points
Date : 2022-11-01 19:11 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.recall-app.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.recall-app.com)
| jrussino wrote:
| I'm certainly in the target audience for this. Nice work!
|
| Here's a feature request: make it easy for me to import/dump
| stuff from the other methods that I've tried to use to store
| things I'm interested in. For example: HN favorites, Reddit saved
| posts, Firefox bookmarks, Instapaper bookmarks, ios notes
| paulrchds wrote:
| Awesome, let me know if you would do a user interview?
|
| Thanks for the feature request. I have import browser bookmarks
| in my backlog. I think I can prioritise it higher. If you share
| your email I can mail you when its ready.
| happytiger wrote:
| I love the concept but I'd be reticent to invest so much in a
| platform that has the possibilities that if it hits it's likely
| to go away from acquisition and if it doesn't is likely to go
| away from lack of financial incentive.
|
| We're storing some valuable stuff here. I wouldn't want to put
| the kind of time I put into research and then find one day it's
| gone (like Reader, Delicious, etc.)
|
| What are the plans in those instances?
| paulrchds wrote:
| I have and FAQ point that addresses this here. Quoting from the
| site:
|
| What happens if Recall disappears one day?
|
| It is understandable that there is some hesitation to invest
| your time into adding your information to a new application and
| the obvious fear that it may just disappear one day. I want to
| reassure you that we are fully committed to Recall for the long
| term. But in the unlikely and unfortunate case that Recall
| doesn't work out we will ensure that there is more than enough
| time for users to export their data so that it can be moved to
| another application. We would also open-source the project to
| allow users to host Recall themselves.
| paulrchds wrote:
| If it were easy to export your data to markdown or sync with
| other apps, would that ease your concerns?
| Sakos wrote:
| Other concerned potential user here. Absolutely, yes.
| Particularly exporting markdown.
| Operyl wrote:
| The ability to schedule backups of my data, perhaps emailed
| or something I can hit periodically myself (API?) would make
| me hop on and pay now. Until then, I can't justify even
| investing time to try right now.
| ankaAr wrote:
| Nice stuff.
|
| I want a browser extension to "send to recall"
|
| It could save me to have 100 tabs saved by groups of interest...
| paulrchds wrote:
| Its on the roadmap :) https://www.recall.wiki/roadmap
| aliqot wrote:
| As someone who lives and dies based on written notes, thank you.
| Sincerely.
| heavytea21475 wrote:
| This seems really well built. It's fast and responsive. It looks
| nice. But I just don't understand what I would use it for.
|
| It seems like the idea is to build a database of people, movies,
| Wikipedia articles and such and then be able to find them via
| search/links. But I'm not at all sold on why I need this in my
| life.
|
| Is there a way to make the value clearer? Am I just not in the
| target audience? Who is going to see this and say "TAKE MY MONEY"
| and why?
|
| I'm thinking of products that were instant sign-ups for me...
|
| Spotify: For one price, listen to all the music on Earth whenever
| you want. TAKE MY MONEY!
|
| Gmail: Fast email with 2 GB storage. This was such an instant
| sign-up they had to make an invite system to slow people getting
| access.
|
| Maybe could add something like Lichess: Chess training and games,
| with modern UX, offered open source as a public good. I mean, if
| you're at all interested in chess, that's an instant sign-up,
| right?
|
| Trying to say, this idea of presenting a clear value isn't
| limited to big players like Spotify and Gmail, but can also be
| done by smaller companies if the value presented is really clear.
|
| What should someone see that makes them instantly recognize they
| need this in their life, because that's what I'm totally missing
| here.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| <<This seems really well built. It's fast and responsive. It
| looks nice.
|
| I second that. It was really the first time in a while where I
| did not have to wait just to see the landing page. It is a
| little sad that is not considered normal, but here we are.
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Perhaps it's your vantage point. I just saw this on mobile, and
| if it does what I think it does, I can't wait to try it out. At
| least for me personally I think this may be exactly what I need
| for knowledge (interest) management.
| paulrchds wrote:
| It's definitely not for everyone. The idea is that you can
| track things you are interested over your life, when you add
| new content that is related to something you have added in the
| past, it creates a link automatically resurfacing the old
| content. It basically build a knowledge graph of all your
| interests. Thanks for your feedback.
| heavytea21475 wrote:
| Is this supposed to be limited to things like people, movies,
| shows, etc.? It seemed that way based on what search box
| would accept. I couldn't even add a book via search. And
| there was mention of articles / blogs... but there's no way
| to import something like that from what I could tell, so it
| would be all manual entry which seems to defeat the purpose.
| JustinVx wrote:
| > But I just don't understand what I would use it for.
|
| Isn't that clearly stated in the name of the post: It "helps
| you remember shit you are interested in."
|
| Personally I run into interesting things all the time, and it
| seems great to be able to have a place to store them so I don't
| forget about them. That's clear value to me. I'm honestly a bit
| puzzled how you don't see value.
|
| For me, I would need an app in order to start using this
| though. Otherwise it's just to much of a hassle to add stuff
| (which means I wouldn't do it).
| paulrchds wrote:
| It's a PWA at the moment so it works quite well on mobile.
| But proper mobile versions will come in the future.
| untech wrote:
| Can you perhaps sell this as an automated/smart Obsidian?
| Personal knowledge bases are all the rage now, see a recent
| discussion of Obsidian 1.0.
| paulrchds wrote:
| For sometime I was actually considering making recall a plugin
| for Obsidian.
| evolve2k wrote:
| I'm using obsidian and Zotero as an academic workflow for my
| PhD.
|
| There is a huge market for knowledge tools for students and
| academics, and universities, libraries and high schools often
| buy these tools in bulk to be a student resource.
|
| I gather all my academic articles in Zotero and can cite them
| into my papers from Zotero > Obsidian > Pandoc Cite
|
| I think your tool could be a great way to help me gather all
| the media around my research.
|
| If you could tie into a citation workflow, into pandoc, you'd
| be on a big winner.
|
| Look into how academics might want to go from your tool >
| obsidian > pandoc > word to generated cited references from
| your tool.
|
| https://citeproc-js.readthedocs.io/en/latest/csl-
| json/markup...
| evolve2k wrote:
| Actually better yet, take an immersive design approach,
| look into enrolling into a short degree by research, and as
| the uni resources you up on 'how to do academic research',
| polish your tool and pitch it to students and academics
| from the inside.
|
| I didn't know this before but if you have an undergrad, you
| can add a one year honours in research even at a different
| institution or a two year masters by research.
|
| We'll that's how it works in Australia anyways.
| turds wrote:
| Turds to remember.
| acuozzo wrote:
| First off, I'd like to state that this is excellent work you've
| done.
|
| With that being said, I see two issues:
|
| 1. The branding is unrelatable. I don't need help remembering the
| things I'm interested in. Most people don't, I reckon. However,
| I'd bet that most people have trouble organizing data related to
| their interests. This right here is the heart of your product:
| Bookmarks++. Bookmarks on anabolic/androgenic steroids.
|
| 2. "Media" as the default selection immediately makes me feel
| like this is another Letterboxd. I know it's not. I know it's
| nothing like Letterboxd at all, but that's the feeling it gives
| me.
|
| So, yeah... the first feeling I got looking at the homepage was:
| "Recall? Movie Posters? Is this Anki meets Letterboxd?"
|
| I know that this isn't your intention, but as we both know: the
| first five seconds are crucial. It's so easy to click away.
|
| Good luck! I hope this helps and I hope you succeed.
| paulrchds wrote:
| 1. Thanks for pointing this out. I have been playing around
| with different versions of the copy. I have been struggling to
| get something concise that explains the idea.
|
| 2. I went with media as the main image as I thought it would be
| the most relatable. I guess I could put the everything section
| first.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| E2EE is my bare minimum nowadays for things like that.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| All I want to know is, does it use Semantic Web? This is like the
| perfect application for a semantic knowledge base.
| (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q54837
| https://guides.library.ucla.edu/semantic-web/wikidata)
| paulrchds wrote:
| yeah, wikidata is one of the sources used. The browser
| extension I am working on will parse the semantic markup from
| the page too.
| p2hari wrote:
| Could not find an email on the profile. I have a potential idea
| which maybe we can discuss. Would help you to answer some of the
| questions/concerns mentioned in the comments.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| his email is on the bottom left corner of the home page
| paulrchds wrote:
| paul@recall.wiki
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Not using Recall Graph built on Arrango DB by chance, are you?
| https://github.com/RecallGraph
| paulrchds wrote:
| Nope, but that looks cool.
| HellsMaddy wrote:
| This is super cool. I just tried it out by looking into a few
| health/medical topics. So far, I've only tried the "internal"
| experience of "create note with search", "expanding" and clicking
| on links - I haven't tried saving links from my normal web
| browsing. It's a nice alternative to using Wikipedia for quickly
| researching a topic, the benefit being that it gives me bullet
| points so I'm not overloaded with information.
|
| I don't see myself replacing my Obsidian notes with this any time
| soon, but it could serve the niche of the first pass of research
| - a quick way to collect information, where afterwards I'd
| consolidate my findings into more permanent notes in Obsidian.
|
| What would make this really useful is more data sources. As far
| as I can tell, Recall's "create note with search" only uses
| Wikipedia right now. It would be awesome to be able to compile
| information from multiple sources into one note. For example, I
| was just looking into anemia. It would be cool if, in addition to
| Wikipedia, I could pull in some information from WebMD, Mayo
| Clinic, or Harvard Health, too. A more fine-grained way to pick
| and choose what information I want to add would also be useful.
|
| Nice project, I'll keep an eye on it! Also, good job with the
| mobile UX, it's pretty good!
| Breefield wrote:
| I'd like a feature that reminds me of a particular piece of
| information at a logarithmic cadence so I can commit it to memory
| better by being reminded a few times within a few weeks/months,
| but then a nudge 6 months down the line, etc.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| unit2044 wrote:
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| If data is stored locally, why would FAQs state that once it
| becomes non-Freemium, they won't lock you out of your notes.
| Shouldn't that be a given?
| blueyes wrote:
| Really interesting. For me, this solves some of the data ingest
| and manual update problem of creating a "second mind".
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| It's cool that it's offline-first, but make an offline-only
| version and I'll use it. Or a "bring your own DB" version. I'd
| even pay a one-time fee for it.
|
| I'm not giving my data to some random small startup.
| mikesabat wrote:
| My take on this idea (take it or leave it) was a bookmark app for
| real life. Use cases: Pass a cool looking restaurant, bookmark
| it. Hear about a movie, book or new series, bookmark it. Concert
| or event coming to town, bookmark it.
|
| Functionality to build on top of the core concept Reminders,
| obviously Tools to plan & schedule with friends
|
| Business model: Sell ads or coupons to the bookmarked locations.
| Unfortunately this model sucks pre-scale, but it could be started
| locally if that helps.
|
| The idea could definitely be gamified, if people still do that
| and if the planning with friends feature works there is a viral
| aspect to the idea.
| paulrchds wrote:
| Thanks for sharing, its a useful idea for me to think about.
| torial wrote:
| One thought is if you could work on marketing / targeted theme
| for people with memory issues (like from age, or illness). So
| perhaps explore if you can sell it as a tool to assist those with
| medical needs for it.
| skipants wrote:
| This looks cool. As someone who just keeps this info as tabs in
| their phone browser that I may stumble upon randomly in the
| future it really speaks to me.
|
| One issue I have with data dumps like this is keeping them from
| getting bloated. Say I use this a lot and have gathered 10,000
| entries over two years -- how can I be sure that 1 entry I want
| to recall isn't lost in the sea of the other 9,999?
| paulrchds wrote:
| Thats where the bi-directional links come in. When you add
| something new that is somehow related to something you have
| added in the past, recall will automatically create a link for
| you helping you resurface old knowledge when it is most
| relevant.
| bluedemon wrote:
| This kind of reminds me of Collections that is in MS Edge.
| civilized wrote:
| Beyond the tool itself, I like what this tool encourages:
| deliberate, conscious control of how we recall and explore our
| interests. Not some algorithm hoovering up whatever our lizard
| brains drove us to do at any given moment and offering us more of
| that so we spend as much time on the app as possible. Just a
| faithful servant helping us remember what we want to learn and do
| and be.
|
| Put another way: Twitter wants you to spend as much time on
| Twitter as possible. If Twitter can interest you in fake
| controversies where people get mad about stuff that isn't true or
| makes no sense, Twitter will happily do that. But you're not
| gonna put "dig into more fake Twitter controversies" in your
| recall app. It's there to remind you of what you _truly_ want,
| not just the things you can be tempted into wasting your life on.
|
| I'd rather pay for an app that's going to make me better than get
| a free app that's going to make me worse.
| spking wrote:
| I've been using mymind.com (paid), but I like the automatic
| linking/resurfacing feature of this app.
| paulrchds wrote:
| Yeah I think the automatic bi-directional linking is the
| biggest value add at the moment.
| tkk23 wrote:
| That's a beautiful branding. The UX seems to be very intuitive. I
| would love to try it without registration. Since you store the
| data in the browser, have you considered offering a fully offline
| version that doesn't need registration for users to get hooked? I
| would like to postpone syncing until the data becomes valuable.
|
| To me, it would also be important that the data is stored in an
| encrypted form on the server and that the key remains in the
| browser and has to be stored by me.
|
| Personally, I would like to have the option to discover people
| who work on similar notes, think travel app [1] for mental
| journeys. It would also be nice to have some social features like
| voting on links or sharing notes or sets of notes so that others
| can annotate them. Bonus points if those social features use an
| open protocol so that users from other note taking apps can join.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33344734
| paulrchds wrote:
| I have been planning on allowing users to start using the tool
| without signing up and the data would just stay in the browser.
|
| Unfortunately I would have to redo my syncing if the content on
| the server was encrypted which I don't plan to do anytime soon.
|
| The social idea is great.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| text files in a directory in git. You dont need much more!
| rongopo wrote:
| Surely people find I useful, as many useful things get lost.
|
| To me, when something gets lost I accept it gladly, because IMHO
| the thermodynamics of my effort vs my available time make it
| irrelevant.
| all2 wrote:
| From the roadmap:
|
| > Mobile apps in the Play and App stores.
|
| > News subscriptions - this feature will allow you to subscribe
| to news events relating to a note helping you stay informed on
| things you are interested in.
|
| > Add more built-in data sources.
|
| > Improved categorization.
|
| > Spaced repetition.
|
| > News/article feed based on user interests.
|
| Charge 5 bucks a month for those features and see if people bite.
| That's a lot of stuff that most apps don't have. Especially the
| subscriptions and the spaced repetition functionalities.
|
| If people pay for your work, then you've got all the signal you
| need to keep going.
| paulrchds wrote:
| Yeah you are right. Charging is the best way to tell if your
| product is really providing value to users. I have been putting
| it off always wanting to add more features first.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The best products have one feature that people go crazy for
| and tell all their friends about. Find that feature, make it
| great, charge for it.
| all2 wrote:
| The topical subscription is pretty cool. I'm sure I could
| hack together some kludge (like Google News filters or
| something), but if this app's implementation is easy, I'd
| pay for that.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This seems like a great idea.
| billbrown wrote:
| I have a need for this and basically use Pinboard and Notational
| Velocity to satisfy it. For me to switch to your product, which
| looks nice and well conceived by the way, I would have to see the
| time investment and value as worthwhile.
|
| Maybe it's having been burned too often by services that I pay
| for but still fail, but I'd only make the effort if it was
| independent of your continued operation as a business. If it were
| all local to my computer or phone and relied on a cloud storage
| service like iCloud or Dropbox, then I'd give it a whirl.
|
| Sorry, but that's a possible hurdle you're facing if my
| hesitation is common.
| paulrchds wrote:
| If you could export all your data to markdown files would that
| ease your hesitation?
| billbrown wrote:
| I appreciate any kind of export into plaintext, yes.
| paxys wrote:
| This is cool, but my browser already has a bookmarks manager
| which does pretty much the same thing. I'm not going to sign up
| for a new service for that functionality.
| ohbleek wrote:
| This could solve a problem I've been stuck on for a long time. I
| read so many interesting things and I make useful connections
| between topics and concepts, but I don't revisit it later and
| forget much of what I have learned. I've experimented with
| journaling about all of the things I've learned and read in a day
| but it ends up being a chore. Maybe this would prove useful to
| help me literally "recall" what I've learned.
| paulrchds wrote:
| Hope it can solve your problem. Please send me feedback on your
| experience.
| keithah wrote:
| This seems very similar to Sofa which I've been using for years:
| https://www.sofahq.com
| paulrchds wrote:
| Ah this sofa looks cool. Hadn't seen it before. Recall is
| similar but for all your content, not just media.
| causality0 wrote:
| Thought about pivoting slightly to the left and adding a "content
| alert" feature? I could keep track of my interests in a hundred
| different ways, but what I can't do is _keep up_ with them
| without being inundated with irrelevant information. For example,
| I want an alert when the bands I like release a new album. Not
| when they go on tour, not when they have a guest drummer, not any
| of the hundreds of bullshit "fan engagement" emails or social
| media alerts. Just content. Same for authors, directors, artists,
| etc. You build _that_ system and I 'd pay a subscription to use
| it.
| paulrchds wrote:
| Yeah, this was a feature I am working on. It shows it on the
| site. Have a look by "Stay informed - Subscribe to news about
| the specific things that interest you always keeping you in the
| know."
| causality0 wrote:
| It sounds like that's not filtering out the non-content,
| though. If I just wanted news about my interests I'd use a
| Google alert.
| zython wrote:
| I'll save this for later.
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