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Show HN: Thoughtwriter – a digital whiteboard for your thoughts

thoughtwriter.org

99 pointsdela349958 comments

I have the following bookmarked:

    data:text/html, <html contenteditable>

Lets you open a tab, type some notes, and close the tab when you're done.

Ha! That's an admirably simple solution. Not quite a full replacement, but it gets you surprisingly far. :)

What? You're kidding me, why didn't I know about this!

I like it a lot. I just added a Stylish custom style so I have it looking exactly how I want.

I also like how it's an HTML page, so copying an image from anywhere and paste right in there works great. Does it properly as an HTML image tag with src to image source.

I'm guessing an additional greasemonkey script could save it to cloud with one click, or publish it somewhere.

I had the same reaction when I saw this! There are many great styles here:

https://coderwall.com/p/lhsrcq/one-line-browser-notepad

Howdy, I'm Carlos. I made Thoughtwriter to avoid losing all my best ideas in long notes (I have 2000 notes in Evernote, many of which are more than a thousand words long.) I've been using Thoughtwriter for the past year in various forms, and figured I'd finally polish and share it.

I don't use Evernote anymore, and now often write thousands of words a day, solve various problems, and keep just 5-10 keywords to remember the solutions. Rather than being buried piles of text, my best ideas are now stored in a short list I can review in seconds.

I'd love to get feedback on how to improve Thoughtwriter, and see if anyone else has experimented with a workflow like this.

can you make the dark/light theme setting persistent

Definitely! It's started to annoy me too. I should be able to fix it tomorrow.

Is the stuff in the dashboard(e.g "5w+h") supposed to be writing prompts?

If so, rather neat. Have you considered making them modifiable?

Yep, they're writing prompts, and they could be made modifiable. I figured I'd just try to make a good set of fixed prompts to start off. Do you have some ideas on how you'd use the prompts if you could modify them?

Well, I'd make them more specific to the task I'm trying to solve. For instance, if I had to write what was the results of some paper and what is it's contribution to my field in 1000 characters or less, I'd make that my writing prompt.

Other than that, if I'm not trying to actually tackle something important I'd probably try to use them in goofy ways, such as writing ones with "are you done yet?" or "memento mori".

That, or use them as post-it notes.

Thanks for sharing specific use cases. A couple notes:

1. I use this for thinking, not really for writing publicly. I actually made a variant of this tool for writing short blog posts. Here's the prototype - https://carlosd.org/tersewriter/

2. One idea is to make custom prompts, but another is to have a set of fixed, community-curated prompts. So, I could have memento mori in there if lots of people found it useful.

3. I hadn't thought of using the prompts as post-it notes, but that's an interesting idea.

Cool you have tersewriter! I have to really get my act together on blogging and I think this might help.

Have you thought about the potential of your suite of products? Thoughtwriter, Tersewriter, the app you use to save things? I would probably polish them up and not charge anything for initial usage. If people want multiple whiteboards, or want to save their Tersewriter blog posts, you could charge for that.

With tersewriter, I'm excited by the idea of creating a platform between Twitter and Medium. It'd have a 300 word minimum and a 450-word maximum. That way, every post is substantial, but focused on just one idea. My main motivation is to create a tool that gets me thinking and writing every day. I figure the word limit makes posting less overwhelming, as with Twitter.

Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about how to monetize the different apps. Together? Separate? What to offer for free, and what to offer as a paid premium. One idea (crazy?) is to charge per day of use, almost like AWS. You'd get 10 days of free use (of use, not just calendar days), and then pay 10-50 cents per day of use. That'd make it nearly impossible to spend a dime on the suite unless it really created a lot of value for you.

I love the Twitter <> Medium idea so much! Only thing I'd want to point out is that some of the best content on Medium is deep, long form articles that really get into the meat of a subject. So you might want to think about that 450-word max.

Re your monetization idea, it seems very interesting but my hunch would be that you should study usage patterns to determine pricing. For eg, off the top of my head, I think that I might use the app(s) actively only a few days a month when I am writing a blog post but it might be super valuable. With the 10 days free policy, I might churn out at least 3 posts before needing to pay.

It's also important to set pricing in a way that it roots the user, even more, deeper into your app. An idea for that could be an affordable yearly license.

Just spouting ideas here :-)

For the blogging app, the goal is really to encourage daily thinking and writing, not necessarily to create the best source of deep content.

I do think many long articles should actually be short articles, though. You can say a lot in 450 words.

Per-day pricing seems less attractive to me now. I'm starting to think apps should be pay-for-value, not per-per-use. So, I agree that a yearly or monthly licence/subscription might be better.

You could also charge for team collaboration on the white board or editors helping out on tersewriter. Sorry to go on and on about the suite of products when you just asked about Thoughtwriter, but I think there's potential here.

Ha! I'm totally on board, so you're welcome to share all the thoughts you want about any of the tools. I'd originally developed them all as one app, then split them apart. (There are 6 and counting! Mockups are all on Twitter - https://twitter.com/dela3499.)

I don't collaborate much, so I'd be curious to hear what kinds of collaborative workflows you'd like to see.

So many marketing pros have to collaborate with a lot of people for technical blog posts. Often, you brainstorm with people, come up with a topic and outline, write a draft, go back and forth on actual text, and then finally publish. Google docs with its version control and commenting does a pretty decent job but it doesn't make it easier to write better. Things can also languish in random docs and after a point the number of comments and iterations gets overwhelming.

Thanks for sharing. Are thoughtwriter or tersewriter useful in that workflow?

Looks great. If I understand correctly, it persists to LocalStorage? Is there a way to create additional whiteboards? You say you previously had 2,000 notes on Evernote - how have you managed to compress this to 5,000 characters and still leave yourself with enough scratch space to flesh out new ideas before compressing them?

Thanks. Yep, it persists to LocalStorage. It's just one whiteboard for now. I had multiple before, which meant I didn't have to clear them as often, but it actually gets harder to clear them the longer you wait. (I'd forget what was important to keep, and what could be thrown away.)

I have 2000 notes in Evernote, but I've just left them there and mostly ignored them. It would take tens of hours to review them all. The whiteboard is just for thinking about new ideas. When I'm done, I clear it. To be even more explicit:

1. Whiteboard is empty

2. I write for 20 minutes

3. I review to see what's worth saving, and try to compress it into just 4-5 words.

4. Save 4-5 words in a personal list (I have another custom-made app for this.)

5. Delete all the text on the whiteboard (CTRL + A then backspace)

(then repeat)

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification. The point I was missing was number 4 -- I thought you were leaving the summaries on the whiteboard.

What you have so far is really cool. But I want your second app to be a part of this.

After my note is written, help me compress it to the 4-5 word title, set categories, save and store, and I would definitely pay $5 a month for it.

The best part for me is the prompts. A special new "prompt of the week" would be very cool.

100% agree. I would want the second app as well to save the results of my brainstorming. Is it available anywhere or do you recommend anything if you aren't releasing your own?

I'll be releasing it in a day or two. :)

Thanks! Glad you like it.

That app is my next priority, and it should be released in a day or two. I'm pretty excited about it, actually. It's a list that can have 100 items max, so you never get overwhelmed by the things you save. I've added way too much to every other app I've used (Gtasks, Trello, Workflowy, Asana), so this one is designed to make that impossible.

I hadn't thought to include some direction on how to compress notes, but that's the hard part! Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm glad you like the prompts. I could totally do a special prompt of the week! Cool idea.

These prompts can vary significantly based on the field you are working on. You should consider a way to customize these prompts that are more relevant to your field.

Overall- very cool concept. Realized this while using it- I have a forcing function of taking only the useful parts of my thoughts forward. That is handy for someone like me that has brain-spills all the time :)

I was surprised people found the prompts so useful, so I'm focusing more on that next. I think I'll create a dedicated site with a wide variety of prompts next. Should be fun!

I'm only barely groking what this is for; probably because I don't really take a lot of notes during the day. Maybe I should do this more often.

I like how it is persistent via localstorage - but what if I want to access my notes both on my desktop, and on my phone? Obviously localstorage won't work well for that purpose. But it would be nice if there were a way to be able to have this digital whiteboard be persistent across devices (phone, desktop, tablet, etc).

Also (and this is probably on your list) - can we get a way to draw on the whiteboard? Perhaps also some way to scale and move on the whiteboard (so in effect it becomes an "infinite" whiteboard)?

Lastly - branding: Rather than saying "start whiteboarding" - how about "start thoughtwriting". The name is good; use it as your brand for this product, and keep it all consistent.

It's a bit like a rubber-duck debugger. You open it up, describe your problem, think about things for a while. You might even pretend to interview yourself, say.

The things you write will be messy, and probably not worth keeping. So, this is a space where you can write those things with the expectation that you'll throw away what you wrote, except for the few things that matter.

I don't know how common this form of writing is. Many people describe writing as a process of clarifying ideas, but I think they usually mean writing for an audience, as with a blog.

Real persistence (not just localstorage) is something I might add, perhaps as a paid feature.

The whiteboarding analogy isn't quite right, since the tool isn't for drawing (and no drawing features are currently planned). It's the whiteboarding workflow that I'm intending to copy (mess around, get some good ideas, then erase the board).

Good idea on branding. I think I'll try it out!

I tend to use Google Keep (https://keep.google.com/) for this sort of thing, which is similarly pretty lightweight and doesn't impose much structure on anything, but is also permanently backed up and synced between all platforms, with nice mobile apps, and a simple URL you can just type for the web.

It also has some extra support for lists, which is handy for many of the sorts of things that it gets used for, and can handle images to some extent too.

[The one thing I wish it did was some sort of background version control, so when I accidentally delete something important I can get it back...]

initial response: huh... interesting, BUT I don't really ever do the thing you seem to be using it for. I take lots of temporary notes, but i don't figure ideas out in text then blow them away very often. On the occasions when i do do something like that I rely on Markdown formatting a lot to help break the idea down into sections and emphasize things (tools like Byword and FoldingText which will bold the headers, make italics italic, etc.)

Often the process of solving a problem is often more insightful than the conclusion. Just taking notes of the final solution may not be sufficient in helping us to solve similar problems in the future.

Well done, including the prompts. I'm reminded of Eno's Oblique Strategies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

Thanks for the link. Any favorite prompts that help you think?

"Discover the recipes you're using and abandon them" from Oblique Strategies is a good one.

For significant personal decisions, I sometimes reflect: "If my kids faced this decision/situation, what mental framework would I be proud of them using?" This question is so effective, it's embarrassing.

Edit: "almost embarrassing" --> "embarrassing"

This is cool, thanks for the link.

Nice work! I have struggled with the same problem after creating several thousands of notes in Evernote. I took a different approach though, somewhat following the process described here: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/12/11/evernote-and-the-b...

I really loved the suggestions (or questions?) that it offers on the top. It helps to structure your thinking and how you approach a problem. They are useful even if you use any other note taking tool.

I tend to doodle a lot while I'm thinking, often on a small piece of paper or literally back of an envelope, so this can be the digital form of that process, but adding a doodling feature would be great too!

I use Gmail drafts. Very effective, always there, searchable, formattable, attach docs, etc.

I do as well. But I end up still needing a white board to map out all the various dependencies etc in my project. Thoughtwriter doesn't seem to have the option to write freeform (not line by line) but if they add that, this could be super useful.

For freeform stuff (usually website mockups), I'll usually just grab a piece of paper or use Inkscape.

Inkscape is probably a decent tool for thinking (at least if you're already familiar with it), since you can zoom in and out on an infinite canvas, draw and type things, etc.

Shameless plug: try https://awwapp.com/, it's a free-form whiteboard (as in drawing) webapp that lets you do exactly that (+ real-time sharing).

Thanks for sharing. Perhaps it's better to make the free version have more (all?) the features, and then charge for having more than one drawing. It's a bit hard to commit to paying for a service before I've been able to use it successfully. A pro account is required to move items around, for instance, which makes it difficult to see what it would be like to use the full version of the tool.

Do you use it for thinking, or for more polished work? When I write, I'm just brainstorming usually, and it's pretty messy.(e.g. "What do I want to do today? Hmm. I'm not sure. What are the three issues on my mind? ...")

Slack Integration. Maybe I'm just kidding. I don't know.

But seriously: The best feature imo are the ready writing prompts. Seems like a good way to remind oneself of various ways to think around a problem. Like it very much.

Ha! I'll keep Slack in mind. Let me know if you come across any prompts you'd like to add.

I really dig the prompts. That's a useful feature by itself.

edit: and the timer!

I don't think it's a whiteboard per se. But it's definitely better than a whiteboard in the sense that it forces you to generate useful thoughts.

True enough. It was the best metaphor I could come up with. Maybe scratchpaper? (But you throw away scratchpaper. In this app, you erase everything when you're done, which is more like a whiteboard.)

Vitalik, shouldn't you be working on ethereum ?

This is a great idea. Helpful for those who don't know where to start.

Yeah, I often think about how Elon Musk was once asked about innovation, and he said, 'Just try. Seriously... did you try yesterday? Did you try today?' It'd be great to help people just try to make some progress.

Sounds like classic survivorship bias.

Trying is necessary but not sufficient. Many don't try, though, so I think it's a simple, useful recommendation.

another web-based JS-heavy solution... thanks, but no thanks...

learn English

love it!

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