[HN Gopher] Show HN: I combined spaced repetition with emails so...
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Show HN: I combined spaced repetition with emails so you can
remember anything
Hey HN, I am a student shipping apps in my free time. This is my
4th for the year! Non-fic books and podcasts have been part of my
life for years now but I always struggled with remembering what
I've read or listened to. I wanted it to stick even after years.
My notes list grew large but I never really revisited them. That's
why I created GinkgoNotes. You can enter notes you want to recall
and leave it to the app to create a personalised (based on spaced
repetition) email schedule. That means you'll get your notes
emailed to you a couple of times exactly when you should read them
again (based on Ebbinghaus's Forgetting Curve) so it's certain that
you'll remember them. I hope this will be helpful as it was for
me. Would love some feedback! Iskren
Author : iskrataa
Score : 83 points
Date : 2024-12-04 13:50 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ginkgonotes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ginkgonotes.com)
| bturtel wrote:
| This is very cool. Reminds me of Quantum Country
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30467585) but for
| everything else in life.
| gravity2060 wrote:
| This is so cool and something I've wanted for a long time, but it
| isn't quite right yet (for what I personally want in an app like
| this.)
|
| I am your target market, and I'd buy the lifetime /annual sub in
| a second if it had these features:
|
| I want control of the SR sequence or, I want to know what SR algo
| you are using and know it is best practice model. The landing
| page says 4 sends, but that isn't true SR.
|
| The next thing, I'd want to see all of my "cards" or information
| pieces when I am logged in, so I can see and edit and delete and
| keep the database clean with a total view of content. The next
| thing I'd need (maybe you have this?) is for the email to
| effectively be a flash card, where the email content is the front
| and a link the email takes me to the "back" of the card so I
| can't use cloze delete and other techniques. The last thing is
| bulk upload of content via a csv so I can bulk import mochi /anki
| / llm generated content.
|
| I wish you luck with this and would (selfishly) encourage you to
| not ship so many different things, and instead encourage you to
| pick one and make it best in class for niche users like me who
| would spend and spend on premium solutions, but won't spend on
| superficial implementations.
| iskrataa wrote:
| Can't thank you enough for the feedback. These are all great
| ideas which I'll look into.
|
| I was wondering what is your experience with Anki? Are there
| reasons you are looking into alternatives or do you just like
| the idea of getting stuff by email? Thanks again!
| TripleChecker wrote:
| Neat idea! I might consider pushing a free trial more since this
| feels like the type of product someone could begin to rely on and
| then be more likely to upgrade. A few positive testimonials
| wouldn't hurt.
|
| A couple minor link fixes on your homepage, see here:
| https://triplechecker.com/s/230357/ginkgonotes.com.
|
| 1) Blog on footer is broken link 2) Affiliates on footer doesn't
| take you anywhere
| iskrataa wrote:
| Yes, I agree with both statements. Although I'm just starting
| and don't have any testimonials yet, I was thinking of sending
| an email to users requesting testimonials in exchange for the
| premium plan.
|
| Just fixed the footer, nice catch! Shipping fast comes with
| some faulty copy pastes I guess...
| TripleChecker wrote:
| That could work. Happy to help!
| iknownthing wrote:
| Wish this existed when I was in school
| wrboyce wrote:
| Very interesting concept! I was about to dive right in when a
| voice in my head reminded me that my inbox discipline is terrible
| and I don't need even more automated emails that will serve only
| to increase my unread count (which currently stands at 16878 in
| my Personal inbox).
|
| Have you considered expanding this to notify via other mediums
| such as iMessage (if possible, this would be my preference) or
| the presumably easier WhatsApp/Telegram (the Telegram Bot API is
| pretty great, I'd imagine would be very easy)?
|
| I'd also echo the free trial sentiment expressed elsewhere in the
| comments, take the mythical drug dealer approach and get 'em
| hooked on freebies!
| iskrataa wrote:
| Yes, that's definitely a major drawback for people who are not
| so active via email (or got their inboxes spammed by marketing
| haha).
|
| Will explore some options with the messaging apps, thank you!
| Do you think at this point it's not easier to open a specific
| app for that or there's a reason you prefer it to be via a
| messaging app?
| andai wrote:
| Getting messaged is different from opening Anki, which I
| often avoid for months at a time. I imagine I'd be much more
| likely to respond to a notification just because of how
| strong of a habit that is.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This is an interesting approach. Congrats on shipping!
|
| I worry that it won't be effective. Systems like Supermemo and
| Anki work because of:
|
| 1) Spaced repetition (showing you the thing at the right time).
|
| 2) Retrieval practice (having your brain practice retrieving the
| thing you're about to forget).
|
| 3) Feedback and automation (using your self-rating to schedule
| the next review).
|
| You are doing #1 and #3.
|
| But you totally skip #2, because you show all the info in the
| email. So, unlike Anki, Supermemo or Quantum Country (which
| someone mentioned in another comment), there's no front/back or
| cloze deletion, and no retrieval practice happening.
|
| Perhaps putting the question in the email subject and the answer
| in the email body would work?
| iskrataa wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| I agree, and this is something I thought about a lot during the
| design process. In my experience, just looking at the note (#1
| in your example) helps a lot more than no repetitions (which is
| obvious of course), but it's still a huge improvement compared
| to my previous flow.
|
| As for repetition, I was thinking of replying to the email with
| what you think is the answer and letting an LLM decide if you
| remember correctly. Is that something that sounds effective to
| you?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I was thinking of replying to the email with what you think
| is the answer and letting an LLM decide if you remember
| correctly. Is that something that sounds effective to you?
|
| The nice thing about your tool is the simplicity and low-
| friction due to using email. For retrieval, replies might
| work, but I wonder whether the people who are willing to do
| that work are the same people who would just install Anki
| instead.
| passwordreset wrote:
| Email seems like a no-go here. It would feel like spam. If
| you wanted a something more conversational, I'd consider
| doing this over text messages.
| 85392_school wrote:
| You can practice retrieving something without entering and
| checking it.
| a3w wrote:
| For Pete sake, don't use an LLM.
|
| Just use CSS to hide/show the answers, or a little bit of
| JavaScript for just that. Or scrolling, if it is text only.
| Or links to the answer an http server.
| david_allison wrote:
| More information on #2 (colloquially known as 'active recall'):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_effect
| moojacob wrote:
| I really like how you can create a note from the landing page. 1)
| it helped me understand how the app worked better than any
| screenshots or videos while 2) nudging me to sign up.
| pugworthy wrote:
| It seems you've made a digital mnemometer!
| guluarte wrote:
| I'm a big fan of SuperMemo16, if you could add incremental
| reading that would be great.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| I have 3 email in-boxes. One ancient rarely used since the early
| 2000, my personal daily email and my work email. Between then
| there are some 100k unread emails.
|
| I am not the target audience for this service.
| Cotterzz wrote:
| Interesting. I couldn't see myself using a tool like this for
| bulk remembering of things. And I don't think it would be
| practical for that. But for specifically important things like
| certain words my brain like to forget from time to time, numbers
| I need to remember or a very important hospital appointment, this
| could be very useful.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Email is the only thing I have conditioned myself to reliably
| check so this system probably has the best shot for me. Nice job,
| will try it out. Ive been meaning to make a real attempt at
| learning Japanese.
| wowsoleet wrote:
| The idea is good but:
|
| 1) Paid model, $10 for an email on timer? Copilot, Spotify and
| Windsurf charge the same. Won't pay on principle THIS amount of
| money for a service which is done self-hosted in 30 minutes with
| ChatGPT, neither will a normie buy paid calendar, no offense. $1
| is realistic, still you're gonna be profitable and much more
| scalable imo. Trial period of 2 weeks is mandatory
|
| 2) I almost never read mails, plus email notifications are
| inconsistent if you're not inside an ecosystem, e.g.
| Apple/Google. For me it is not a reliable way of communication
| slwvx wrote:
| Could be a good feature for AnkiWeb.net
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| I made the exact same thing except with notifications instead of
| email.
|
| I called my app "Mnemonist".
|
| My last as just hasn't gotten around to shipping it yet...
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| With the number of cards I have in Anki, something like this is
| going to fill up my inbox. Recent Anki versions ship a much more
| advanced algorithm called FSRS which performs much better (fewer
| reviews for the same recall). If you haven't tried it in some
| time, I recommend taking another look. Also, many note taking
| programs have ways to export to anki, which is probably more
| pleasant than adding notes directly.
| tsekiguchi wrote:
| Readwise also has this feature. I get a daily email with a random
| assortment of highlights that have been pulled in from multiple
| sources (Reader, Notion, Kindle, etc.)
|
| The product benefit in their case is that it's kind of like
| Zapier, but for notes.
|
| https://readwise.io/
| andai wrote:
| The comments here remind me of the HN comments when Dropbox
| launched!
| andai wrote:
| Cool idea! What were your other 3 projects this year?
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