[juvoni]

Roam Research https://roamresearch.com/

A tool for networked thought that has been an effective "Second Brain" for me.

I'm writing way more than ever through daily notes and the bi-directly linking of notes enables me to build smarter connections between notes and structure my thoughts in a way that helps me take more action and build stronger ideas over time.

[Eugeleo]

I’d recommend you to check out Obsidian [1] from the makers of Dynalist. It’s also a tool made mainly for Zettelkasten, but it is offline and local by default. It’s not an outliner like Roam, but rather a free-form text editor.

I feel that Obsidian’s values align more closely with the values of a general HN reader. For example, the files (Zettels?) are plain markdown files, so the portability is much higher than what is the case with Roam (which is online only, and your data is somewhere in a database in a proprietary format).

Another example would be the support for plugins, which are first-class citizens (although the API is yet undocumented) — many of the core features are implemented as plugins and can be turned off.

And there’s a Discord channel where you can discuss with the devs, which are very responsive — so much so that I’m surprised they can rollout new features so quickly (at least one feature update per week, from my limited experience with Obsidian).

(Not affiliated in any way, just a happy user)

[1]: https://obsidian.md/

[gnramires]

I've had good experiences with personal Wikis before, but have fallen back to plain notes. I think notetaking by itself is immensely powerful and underappreciated in general (wish I had started earlier), and all that's necessary is building a habit out of it. Maybe this can give it a little extra spice (hopefully not as cumbersome as a full blown personal website).

[Eugeleo]

I can recommend this video [1] from the author of How to Take Smart Notes. The whole Zettelkasten is a great idea, and he explained it succinctly in that talk. He also compares the status quo methods of note taking with the Zettelkasten, which for me was very eye-opening

[1]: https://vimeo.com/275530205

[devericx]

Notational Velocity [0] seems to be something very similar, if not the exact same, except it's a macOS app and not a web app.

[0] http://notational.net

[thadk]

thanks! Longtime user of nvAlt and I never noticed that.

[eppsilon]

FYI: the nvAlt developer is working on a new version: https://brettterpstra.com/2019/04/10/codename-nvultra/

[typon]

How's this different from hypertext? (I genuinely don't know)

[Eugeleo]

Not sure about the specific features of hypertext, but in general: bi-directional linking, block references (Roam is an outliner like Dynalist or Workflowy), block transclusion, graph view of your page network...

Of course, you could throw a bunch of scripts together to approximate these features — but you don’t have to, since Roam (and Obsidian and others) exists.

[iameoghan]

Good shout - that's been on my watch list for a while now. Thanks for the reminder!

[sidhanthp]

The hype on Twitter can get a bit annoying - but Roam is seriously awesome.

[MiroF]

This is just tiddlywiki, no?

[Eugeleo]

Considering that Tiddlywiki has around 4 plugins that are supposed to make it more like Roam, I’d say that probably Roam isn’t just like TiddlyWiki.

Now, I’m not a TW user, but I think things like block references, outliner features, and bi-directional linking aren’t there by default.