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Comment by kobble | Hacker News Reader

The model is very similar to other popular apps, like YouTube or Spotify. Instead of organizing songs or videos into channels, you organize tracks.

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>The model is very similar to other popular apps, like YouTube or Spotify. Instead of organizing songs or videos into channels, you organize tracks.

Spotify has Playlists and Songs. Both are domain-related concepts (the domain being music).

YouTube has Videos, Playlists, and Channels, again all domain-related concepts, referring to historical domain terminology (Channel as in "your private TV channel", where you create content for others to view).

So both services use terms apt to their use.

Channels and Tracks are not concepts/terms related to note taking. Thus, the analogy to YouTube's and Spotify's use of their own terms is broken.

People don't seem to like your names, and perhaps the names do need more work, but I wanted to commend you for trying. Whenever I see something named "Group" I cringe a little, because it is so abstract and meaning-free. It is barely better than names like "Thing" and "Entity". So I appreciate your attempt to be more concrete and creative!

This is such an important point. I'm living with a generic "group" feature in a SaaS app and it's a nightmare. It's been used by numerous clients for totally different things. These are the weeds that will choke your garden.

...or they will be the very thing that frees up your users to use them in creative ways without feeling hemmed in to a particular mindset.

We have the concept of 'tags' in our app, which are used by our users to delineate anything from company departments, social groups, locations, age bands etc. - basically anything they see fit. It saves us creating a mess of drop downs to try and cater for all edge cases, and they feel the freedom to think of them however they like.

I'm one of the devs on Kobble. There was debate about the names - it's not easy. 'channel' seems good, it's used by Slack also, and one of our channels is similar. 'track' however, is another story. It's really a tree or folder structure.

But these terms make some amount of intuitive sense on YouTube or Spotify. I don't have to know anything about YouTube or Spotify other than they deal with video clips and music to have a decent idea what a 'track', 'video', 'channel', 'playlist' might mean. These terms don't translate that well to 'notes', though.

Kobble can be used for much more than just notes. You organize 'tracks', which are more like projects. Tracks can contain notes, but also more meaningful content. Anything you can create with markdown (plus links, etc.)

If they are just like projects, then call them projects. You're using music and video names for paper analog components. You're spending a lot of time defending the naming here. I'd recommend taking notes, and changing the naming. Also, add some mechanism where I can just hit a + button or something, and can start adding a note right away. I don't want to have to immediately organize all notes into a draconian structure. I just need to quickly record something for later use. I feel that should be a primary function of a notes app. Pretty is secondary to function, and the functionality of this is complex and obscure.

In the (desktop) editor [quiver] that I use, all new note go into a notebook called "Inbox". I can start writing immediately and later move it a more appropriate notebook.

[quiver]: http://happenapps.com/#quiver

Also, check out http://standardnotes.org/

Fair enough. Naming is hard. Even 'project' has connotations.

So, uh, why are you introducing it as a notes app?

You've got a good start to something; take two steps back, consume and digest the feedback you're getting, then use it to better your approach.

Good point. There is only so much you can say in one line on HN. Marketing is tough. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Trying to do many things is a classic early mistake. Instead of being a great app for one thing you become a mediocre app for lots of things.

First make a notes app that people love. This will be harder than you think. Once you've done that and have enthusiastic users it will be much easier to move into other areas.

>First make a notes app that people love. This will be harder than you think. Once you've done that and have enthusiastic users it will be much easier to move into other areas.

Hasn't this been the Evernote Recipe For Disaster?

When your users tell you otherwise, maybe it's not prudent to insist on terminology choice?

Fair enough. Didn't mean to come across as insisting. There was much debate about the term track. Project is closer, but has problems also. Cheers.

Yeah, don't want to come of as bullish. Just that I agree with the general sentiment on this comments, that this terminology probably overcomplicates things for no reason.

Better to slightly misuse/expand an existing know term like projects or notebooks to cover more than it does now, than to invent a new term that covers all the meanings that apply, but whose meaning is initially unfamiliar to people.

bullish?

bullish adjective 1. aggressively confident and self-assertive.

E.g. "my way is da best, you should do WHAT I SAY"

Not... really.

That's one of the definitions for the bullish lemma from the Oxford Dictionary.

Along with "Of or pertaining to papal bulls".

Which is also a valid use case.

Though the one I listed is the first lemma.

We appreciate all the comments. We'll think about this.

I like the app, but the terminology is confusing. For me and a lot of other people, a track is the lowest level of a music app. People think of it as an atomic unit. Making it a project will confuse most people as no one thinks of it as a project or folder. I assumed a track was a note. If it is a project, a. more appropriate name would be album or collection.

Also, it's inconsistent. Youtube organizes channels because it is a video app and people coming from tv immediately understand. Spotify uses tracks because it is a music app and the term track has been synonomous with song since probably the first record player.

Its a good try, but just mashing up two concepts into one causes confusion

YouTube users do not organize videos into channels. Channels are delivery mechanisms. Users organize them with Playlists, which is intuitive for the content.

Fair enough. We merged the channel/playlist concept.

..but, but, it doesn't really apply to the expectations of a note app. You're a light text editor that cloud saves to Github; why are you trying to push a new vernacular that doesn't logically apply here?

I don't manage projects with a notes app. I don't create tracks with a notes app. I don't create channels with a notes app. I don't create playlists with a notes app.

It's pretty and functional; play to your strengths instead of trying to create new brand vernacular.

We are honing our marketing message. Kobble is much more than just a notes app. It's also a content sharing platform. That's why some of the names were chosen. I think 'track' is causing the most confusion. It's basically a tree or folder structure.

how about "notebook"?

folders and pages would have been better.

model it after something in the real world before you appropriate words from another paradigm

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