[bsnnkv]

Over the years I've realized that I don't actually care for or need the "note taking" part of applications like these.

What I need is a textual data store that can be efficiently and effectively indexed, searched and (automatically) tagged, and for the ability to quickly filter streams and feeds of targeted information from that data store (with the option to share them publicly via RSS - my public feeds are in my profile for the curious).

It needs to be able to contain the 3 primary text-based sources of information I consume (with all of the table-stakes additional metadata): highlights from webpages, internet commentary, and highlights from eBooks.

Nobody seemed interested in making this so I just made it myself and I've been using it for the last 2 years very happily.

[isaacaggrey]

> Nobody seemed interested in making this so I just made it myself and I've been using it for the last 2 years very happily.

Based on your profile, I presume you're talking about https://notado.app/?

[bsnnkv]

Yes, Notado is the labour of love that I'm talking about in the parent post :)

[smeej]

I'm also very interested in this, but particularly the book part, which I couldn't find on the website linked above, unless it only works with Kindle highlights?

I have a gigantic EPUB library and have yet to find a good way to export my notes and highlights from all these books (mostly read in KOreader).

[bsnnkv]

Kindle-only right now as it's the biggest piece of the pie and what I use personally, but let me look into the KOreader highlights storage format and see if I can hook you and the other KOreader users with something.

[badtension]

Can you summarize how it works? You highlight something on kindle and it gets sent to your online db for storage?

[bsnnkv]

You make your highlights on a physical Kindle or Kindle app as usual, and then go to https://read.amazon.com, select the book that you want to import the highlights for and right click to import them.

There are other services available that will take your oauth login details for your Amazon account and spin up something like Selenium on their end to scrape all of https://read.amazon.com after logging in on your behalf, which is a bit more like what you're describing (it's not instant, but scheduled), but in my experience this sacrifices a lot of flexibility (deciding which books you want to import highlights for) and reduces the quality of the content in your data store over time. The other downside of this approach is that you need to reauthorize the service every couple of weeks or so.

[bgro]

I used to love these. When OneNote first came out, it was everything I ever wanted and more.

I think the later versions got worse. Eventually I switched PCs and it had an error syncing my notebooks. There was a mix of local and cloud copies, randomly, and it worked like 3 separate accounts on the same ID that could never combine files.

I did a sync anyway and it just deleted a bunch of notebooks randomly, and one of them became corrupted so I lost a ton of data.

I just use text files in a folder now after apple notes had an update once a few years ago that snuck in a “you consent to irreversibly delete all old notes to use the new version” in small text on the “what’s new” pop up, as if that’s not a critical thing to double confirm.

[the-printer]

The funny thing is that writing notes (I.e., typing text) is among the easiest things to achieve on a computer. Actually figuring out what to do with them is what requires some thought.

I say that to say, I’m interested in your app. I was late to things like Pinboard and Delicious so I never got into the whole “public online bookmarks” thing.

[bsnnkv]

It's a little bit different to Pinboard and Delicious; it's private by default and you can choose to share things in public feeds if you want, but instead of sharing bookmarks in the feeds, you share text highlights (ie. the things that you found interesting about the bookmarks - this is either a text highlight from an article or a comment from HN etc. on an article)

It has some surprising other uses, too. For example, after being frustrated at how difficult it is to find story and world-building refreshers (without spoilers) when going back to a multi-novel fiction series, I have started using feeds to keep spoiler-free Kindle highlights that focus on key elements of the world, story and characters to ease me back into a series (and to share with others who might be interested in the series).

[jacques-noris]

This is the same use case I have, I use Evernote notably because of the excellent web scraper. Can you share more about your software?

[bsnnkv]

I don't want to derail the comments on this post too much, but it's called Notado (another commenter has already linked it) and I have posted about it a few times on HN before (all in my submissions history).

There are quite a few high-quality discussion threads on those previous posts that are worth checking out if you're interested in learning more!

[jacques-noris]

Thanks, I’ll check it out