Less than a month ago I decided to build an app for myself to solve a very specific problem:
“I want to be able to take notes on my phone, share some of them online, and publish a few on my personal blog — oh, an I also want an API!”
I built this is because no tool out there satisfied my needs:
- Notion had no native app so it's very slow to use on mobile. Plus is too general.
- Medium is a disaster for readers, they shouldn't be the ones paying to read. Native app is slow AF.
- Most note-taking apps were too complex and feature creep. I wanted speed + power with simplicity first. Just give me markdown.
- Apps are either online or offline, none tried to mix those two models seamlessly.
- Blogs are either static (I need to be on my laptop and code) or use CMS which are too general and complex.
I sense there’s a demand for an easy to use native note-taking app that can also serve as an online publishing platform. A place where you can use your domain and update your notes right from your phone.
Of course, this is just a theory, so I would love to see if you all find it useful. You can try it https://collectednotes.com
Features:
- Simplicity.
- Markdown with live preview.
- Custom Domains.
- No ads, no tracking, no modals, no vanity, no nonsense.
- No data lock-in. Export your notes from day one.
- Restful API, Your Notes in different formats.
- Native experience iPhone & iPad:
Share extension, Quick actions, FaceID, Quick Actions, Keychain, Keyboard shortcuts, Slide Over & Split View, Dark Mode.
One thing you might want to consider is having one domain for a website about collectednotes (collectednotes.com) and another for hosting user's blogs (collectednotes.blog for example) because it is currently not clear what urls are official and made by you and which are just blogs made by anyone.
Honestly, sounds like micro.blog and how I use it. Most importantly, micro.blog uses Micropub, an existing W3C standard API for blogging which is why things like Drafts, iAWriter, MarsEdit etc can all support it.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a very cool project and it looks like you’ve done a great job. I would recommend looking into Micropub support though rather than role your own API. The IndieWeb group has worked hard and built up a lot of easy to use and powerful standards around this stuff.
It would be great if there was a good way to find existing projects that achieve what we seek. Usually, the biggest names are visible, and it's hard to find alternatives that achieve specific ideas.
Interesting idea. How long is it around I wonder, it feels like it hasn't taken off yet. The bloggers there seem to perhaps come from a similar viewpoint, guardianista, I'd call it. If someone starts blogging what they might feel to be an unacceptable viewpoint, more torygraph what then, I wonder? Is it a curated timeline? Can they censor like Twitter does? What's the essential difference from a free speech point of view between this site and the existing social networks?
Very minor bug report (which I don’t mind at all): during the signup process on mobile, I clicked “premium subscription” and then pressed the back button. The form was wiped, so I had to re-enter my info.
I imagine many people might give up after that, so I just wanted to mention it.
Another minor bug: when toggling private to public on mobile, the drop down menu doesn’t go away after you press public. It also blocks the save button, so it’s not entirely clear how to save. (I eventually figured it out.)
My only hesitation is that it doesn’t feel like “my” notes. They’re my notes on your platform. And I don’t know whether your platform will die tomorrow. But I try to resist such concerns.
Is there a way to export all my data somehow? Also, some way of adding google analytics?
Ah good catch, mobile experience is very MVP, I only focused on the web for desktop use. For mobile iOS native is the way to go I went crazy on the native features :)
Hey, I'm really interested in trying your app. However I am unable to sign in via iPhone SE. The small screen means I that cannot tap to sign in with email address - I prefer this over Apple/Google login.
Otherwise so it looks great, I look forward to giving it a go.
Sorry about that, didn't test enough on smaller screens. Will be definitely fixed on the next update. In the meantime you can try the web desktop version!
Great work. UI tip: When reading on mobile browser and rotating the phone the text doesn’t expand to occupy more space like it can. I find myself doing this a lot to read code on my phone so when a site doesn’t adapt to allow me to read it without odd line breaks I usually leave the site.
I had to look around for the walkthrough video and later realized that tapping on the icon on the top left launches it. There was no indication or clue for me on mobile that the icon was a link to a video.
Cool idea, but I'm never going to keep notes in a proprietary app, even if I can export them. It's just too much of a headache, and the risk at hand is a lot more work on my part should this not be a profitable venture on your part. Notes last for years, and even decades, and the last thing I want to do is reorganize, reindex and republish old notes.
I LOVE this. Such a great and simple service.
Perfect example of excellent yet simple execution.
I’m very impressed with all the existing features and your roadmap.
Ive joined as a paying customer!
Looking forward to seeing the minor improvements, but so far very impressed with the 95% quality!
Nice work mate!
Very well executed. I think I’d be a heavy user if the focus was more on private rather than public notes.
Markdown plus an API feels like a great idea. Apps like this would be very useful for teaching the kinds of thinking used in computer science.
They encourage writing instructions for the computer in plain text and then building upwards from there. This is a much more powerful way of operating a machine than the top down with apps, in the old ICT style of learning.
Markdown is a great introduction to the concept of telling the computer what to do, rather than doing what the computer lets you do.
This is exactly what an MVP should be, excellent job. This kind of startup has serious chance to become a "lifestyle" business. Maybe not the next billion dollar unicorn, but definitely 7-figure revenue capable.
Very nice product! I'm curious, what kind of and how many servers do you have to support thousands of users already? And which language/framework? Thanks!
This is a well designed product. I really like it.
The last days I was working on my personal wiki/notetaking/knowledge management because it was bugging me, that everything needs a subscription and offered too much or not enough[1].
The biggest problem I have is finding/discovering my notes or snippets, especially if its scattered across services. For public notes it's easy, using `site:domain.com searchterm` in a search engine. For private notes/services it's harder.
Especially the discovery feature is quite important for me, to randomly find notes I forgot about (at the end, all notes are work in progress).
[1] It's based on Markdown Files in a Dropbox folder hooked into Pico Flatfile CMS, I pay for webhosting anyway and dropbox is still free. Else I would use Nextcloud to replace it. Sublime Text on desktop and Drafts o iA writer are doin g exactly what I need
oh wow, that's quite a setup you have. I found myself collecting a lot of private & public notes, and that makes it hard to find things quickly, I plan to work on that problem next. I'm thinking of a faster typeahead than the one the iOS app currently has plus some sort of categorization based on the note text (maybe using topic extraction).
Topic extraction is a very good idea (for public notes) using something like this: https://www.textrazor.com/ ?
(I knew I bookmarked this page, but couldn't find it and had to use google :D and 5 iterations of search terms to find it again - I need to improve that...)
Pretty nice, I like the simplicity. But his claim seems a bit arrogannt right?
"The simplest, and most powerful note-taking blogging platform ever made"
Doesn't seem to be sarcastic...
On another note, is it just me or is the note-taking app the new ToDo list, a system that all developers eventually build and add to their portfolios...
Congrats on the launch, and you have an outstanding MVP here. I think it is priced well, considering that I would normally run something similar on a $5/month server for file syncing.
I'm a compulsive note-taker and frequent writer, so this is something I will personally be taking advantage of. The blogging feature is interesting, but I'm actually going to experiment with using it to replace my current use of Notes on iOS/Mac and Typora.
I'm curious if your development path includes Desktop. I've been between Ulysses and Typora for years now. Neither covers the entirety of my file syncing, desire to access from a browser or cross platform needs.
I really think you're on to something here. Best of luck!
Thank you so much! I planned to ship a macOS app together with the iOS apps but can’t do everything in three weeks and two kids :)
It’s definitely something I want to myself. For now the web version works fine for the occasional long form posting.
Let me know how it goes!
I wish you had created this a couple of years ago! I wasted a lot of time then trying different note-taking apps for a personal writing project. I ended up doing it all in a text editor, as every app I tried failed in one way or another. Collected Notes would have been perfect.
I'm trying to understand what makes this app so popular, I created my own notetaking-app and did a shown HN and got like 5 upvotes yet I have plently of features this doesn't have like nested folders, search, hotkeys, code tagging, tools for creating tables/code, uploads of pdfs, images and all of this completely free. It's almost like setting a price on the service makes people want to use it more. </rant>
I think you should work on eliminating the perception of a publish step.
Everyone else is working how to best publish things and you stumbled on the solution: there is no publish.
The copy url option screen after publishing reminded me there is a publish. I think transparently use a Share option to share the url and have a share option under the notebook title.
Great concept.
The sample note is private, I did not realise this until my second session. I’d set it to public to illustrate the point above.
Readit News
“I want to be able to take notes on my phone, share some of them online, and publish a few on my personal blog — oh, an I also want an API!”
I built this is because no tool out there satisfied my needs: - Notion had no native app so it's very slow to use on mobile. Plus is too general. - Medium is a disaster for readers, they shouldn't be the ones paying to read. Native app is slow AF. - Most note-taking apps were too complex and feature creep. I wanted speed + power with simplicity first. Just give me markdown. - Apps are either online or offline, none tried to mix those two models seamlessly. - Blogs are either static (I need to be on my laptop and code) or use CMS which are too general and complex.
I sense there’s a demand for an easy to use native note-taking app that can also serve as an online publishing platform. A place where you can use your domain and update your notes right from your phone.
Of course, this is just a theory, so I would love to see if you all find it useful. You can try it https://collectednotes.com
Features:
- Simplicity. - Markdown with live preview. - Custom Domains. - No ads, no tracking, no modals, no vanity, no nonsense. - No data lock-in. Export your notes from day one. - Restful API, Your Notes in different formats. - Native experience iPhone & iPad: Share extension, Quick actions, FaceID, Quick Actions, Keychain, Keyboard shortcuts, Slide Over & Split View, Dark Mode.
Sample note: https://collectednotes.com/blog/api, Would love to hear what you all think
One thing you might want to consider is having one domain for a website about collectednotes (collectednotes.com) and another for hosting user's blogs (collectednotes.blog for example) because it is currently not clear what urls are official and made by you and which are just blogs made by anyone.
For example, https://collectednotes.com/accounts/ is genuine and made by you whilst https://collectednotes.com/account/ is a blog I just created. To me there seems a very real risk of users being mislead.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a very cool project and it looks like you’ve done a great job. I would recommend looking into Micropub support though rather than role your own API. The IndieWeb group has worked hard and built up a lot of easy to use and powerful standards around this stuff.
I imagine many people might give up after that, so I just wanted to mention it.
Another minor bug: when toggling private to public on mobile, the drop down menu doesn’t go away after you press public. It also blocks the save button, so it’s not entirely clear how to save. (I eventually figured it out.)
iPhone 8 on safari, if it helps.
This is impressive work. I was up and running in about two minutes, and I’m thinking about upgrading. https://collectednotes.com/shawwn/sample-note
My only hesitation is that it doesn’t feel like “my” notes. They’re my notes on your platform. And I don’t know whether your platform will die tomorrow. But I try to resist such concerns.
Is there a way to export all my data somehow? Also, some way of adding google analytics?
Thank you so much!
Otherwise so it looks great, I look forward to giving it a go.
Your "export from day one" sparked this thought:
Allow access to your gdrive and make a collected notes folder.
two UX: 1. anytime a post is made to collected notes, a backup copy appears in Gdrive/Dropbox/Gist/whatever....
2. Post a thing to the collected docs folder in GDrive and have it slurped and presented in CollectedNotes.MYBLOG.DATE whatever...
Your video walkthrough is good.
Can I edit my notes / blog from a desktop?
edit: ah I see from the comments it is https://www.rotato.xyz/
Markdown plus an API feels like a great idea. Apps like this would be very useful for teaching the kinds of thinking used in computer science.
They encourage writing instructions for the computer in plain text and then building upwards from there. This is a much more powerful way of operating a machine than the top down with apps, in the old ICT style of learning.
Markdown is a great introduction to the concept of telling the computer what to do, rather than doing what the computer lets you do.
Good luck with the launch and traction!
The last days I was working on my personal wiki/notetaking/knowledge management because it was bugging me, that everything needs a subscription and offered too much or not enough[1].
The biggest problem I have is finding/discovering my notes or snippets, especially if its scattered across services. For public notes it's easy, using `site:domain.com searchterm` in a search engine. For private notes/services it's harder.
Especially the discovery feature is quite important for me, to randomly find notes I forgot about (at the end, all notes are work in progress).
I tried to collect my thoughts about it here: https://marcus-obst.de/wiki/Notetaking
[1] It's based on Markdown Files in a Dropbox folder hooked into Pico Flatfile CMS, I pay for webhosting anyway and dropbox is still free. Else I would use Nextcloud to replace it. Sublime Text on desktop and Drafts o iA writer are doin g exactly what I need
(I knew I bookmarked this page, but couldn't find it and had to use google :D and 5 iterations of search terms to find it again - I need to improve that...)
"The simplest, and most powerful note-taking blogging platform ever made"
Doesn't seem to be sarcastic...
On another note, is it just me or is the note-taking app the new ToDo list, a system that all developers eventually build and add to their portfolios...
I'm a compulsive note-taker and frequent writer, so this is something I will personally be taking advantage of. The blogging feature is interesting, but I'm actually going to experiment with using it to replace my current use of Notes on iOS/Mac and Typora.
I'm curious if your development path includes Desktop. I've been between Ulysses and Typora for years now. Neither covers the entirety of my file syncing, desire to access from a browser or cross platform needs.
I really think you're on to something here. Best of luck!
Everyone else is working how to best publish things and you stumbled on the solution: there is no publish.
The copy url option screen after publishing reminded me there is a publish. I think transparently use a Share option to share the url and have a share option under the notebook title.
Great concept.
The sample note is private, I did not realise this until my second session. I’d set it to public to illustrate the point above.