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Comment by NilsIRL | Hacker News Reader

Similarly to many here, I can't get the website to work, but I'll still ask a question:

How is this different than Quizlet and Anki? (Obviously with Anki sharing isn't as straightforward but is possible (there's even a website hosting Anki flashcard sets))

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We are live again finally. Sorry for the hiccup.

In Barbra the main difference is that you can take notes and have your flashcards in one place. I noticed I often had to transfer my class notes from Evernote and copy them into Anki. That was a huge hassle.

Another point is that in Barbra sharing flashcards and notes is the default. You invite people, set goals together, and then collaborate on everything. I noticed we always sent photos of notes on Whatsapp to others before tests, and that was a hassle as well. So we built thinking of these 2 things.

This sounds great! That always bugged me about Anki. I knew it could be done so much more conveniently.

I would suggest redoing the intro video, with better acoustics, less "umm" and "so anyway...". The site and product look really polished so it kinda sticks out.

Aw thanks. Hope Barbra can give you that convenience.

We are recording a new video right now. That one we just made for our YC application.

Anki supports creating cards from LaTeX notes via an add-on[0], and for importing from a plaintext-based format there is a command-line tool[1]. After that, one can use Anki’s accompanying shared decks feature to make a deck available to others[2].

Admittedly, all of those options aren’t entirely hassle-free or discoverable.

[0] https://tentativeconvert.github.io/LaTeX-Note-Importer-for-A...

[1] https://metacpan.org/pod/Anki::Import

[2] https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/

Exactly. It takes 100 add-ons to get this to work. We just wanted to make it so that I can highlight a text and say "create a flashcard" and then it is all done.

We also offer more tests options as you can do Memrise-like multiple choice test or an Anki-like card-flip test.

Is that something that you find useful? :) I know some passion are avid Anki-ers so I would love to get your take on it.

I value integration flexibility and want to control or at least know exactly the spaced repetition algorithm I am using. Additionally, I believe a hosted service without trustworthy end-to-end encryption is a no-go for personal knowledge management. So far I’ll stick with org-drill and Anki, it works for me (not using any add-ons).

There is also my new toy project, apy [0]. It allows, among other things, to add and modify cards from cli.

[0]: https://github.com/lervag/apy

apy looks awesome—thanks for sharing!

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