Comment by chime | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chime | Hacker News Reader

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I made these for personal use and have been working on them for about a year. I always feel like my apps are incomplete but I think they are functional in their current form. I appreciate any feedback/criticism.

E2V: I use this to get calls when one of my servers go down and whenever my PayPal account is hit. It's a little difficult to setup for regular users (email filters aren't commonly used) but it is pretty reliable. It uses Twilio and Cloudmailin.net. I just created an HN coupon for 5 additional calls: https://zetabee.com/e2v/?coupon=hackernews

Text: I use this constantly to note down and plan everything. E.g. here's how I note down random ideas: https://zetabee.com/text/share?n=1058338736&h=MU54djV5VF...

CashFlow: This app enabled me to plan my departure from my old job without going into a financial crisis. It has a slight learning curve but once you get used to it, you can plan your finances very easily. I run hypothetical scenarios with my wife all the time - can we afford a house worth X in October? Should she switch to part time and get a 2nd contract? How much can we spend on a vacation and when?

I really like your text implementation. I've done something similar at http://www.mindwallet.com . I've added a social layer on top. You can post directly to facebook/twitter and keep the posts in context. People can reply in line by adding sub items to your lists. I'm trying to put an api together that lets users create all kinds of apps. I think there is a opportunity for this kind of interface. Maybe we should put our heads together.

Here's my 'how to use page': http://www.mindwallet.com/?ItemKey=787541c7-0860-41ea-a21a-2...

You obviously have a much better eye for design than I do.

Here is an example of how I used some of the social features to live-blog/document the SxSW startup bus stuff:

http://www.mindwallet.com/?ItemKey=787541c7-0860-41ea-a21a-2...

Here is where you can see all the public nodes that are going through the stream(so far it is just me):

http://www.mindwallet.com/home/public

Let me know what you think!

The text implementation is quite nice. I wish I had seen it before I did this, https://github.com/boyter/BATF

One issue I had with it though is I am unable to cut/copy paste multiple rows inside it using standard keyboard shortcuts, but other then that very impressed.

EDIT - For the cashflow, I dont suppose you can add the option to not use pie charts? I find them so deceptive when looking at figures.

For multiple rows, press Control+Shift+C, V, X. Since I allowed for autosizing textareas which can store multi-line data, I didn't want to override the normal Control+C/V. shortcuts.

No dice, since I have Clip-X installed and bound to that shortcut. Glad to hear you have that functonality in there though. It would have been a dealbreaker for me otherwise.

I will have a go at using it as a replacement for my BATF for a while and see how it goes. Thanks for releasing this!

I just realized you could do Control+Alt+Shift+C/V because of how I implemented the keyboard events. I know it's quite annoying to press 4 keys at once but at least it would work.

I've used a text-file myself for years but finally made this last year because I wanted features like access from any PC, sharing, and collapsing that didn't get reset all the time.

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + X worked for me on a Macbook Pro/Snow Leopard/Chrome

I'm not a big fan of pie-charts myself but I think I got just lazy and made those. I'll add an option for regular bar charts.

Cheers. Thats the only reason I could see myself not using it and its a minor one at that!

Text is amazing. A very cool idea, useful, clean, efficient.

I'd like to propose that you add another key to use for expanding sections, as ` is not readily available on some European keyboards (I have a Slovenian keyboard). Maybe Shift/Ctrl+Arrows, or try hooking some F* key that is not in use currently (e.g. F2).

Ctrl+ zooms in browsers so wouldn't work. How about Control+Shift+Space? I can add that as another alternative.

That should be fine and will be very useful.

I just added Control+/ as the alternative to the ` key. Hope that helps.

First of all, thanks for the quick response.

Unfortunately, it doesn't really help. I access '/' by pressing Shift+7. How about '+'? That's right next to Backspace and doesn't need any special key.

The cash flow app's Balance chart doesn't scale well, the numbers on the axis get cut off when adjusting for money in your account.

Same for income vs expense, using the demo on Firefox for mac.

Otherwise these are awesome, great job!

Fixed in FF. Still working on a fix for IE.

Been a fan of Text for a while now, although I'm not sure I prefer the new styling over the old bulletext one :)

I spent a lot of time making sure the new one is better than the old design. It's got more room, closely resembles an empty notepad/text-editor, and keeps the toolbar on-screen even when you scroll far down. I couldn't do that with the old one because of how the html/css was setup. I took my sweet time polishing the UI to be as clean and simple as possible.

On reflection I just think the toolbar is a bit ugly. And the old colour scheme was more interesting.

Love the Text implementation. Great work!

Hey chirag, congratulations. Great apps. EMail2voice is a great idea. ATB.

I agree, E2V is a great idea. If you can find a way to simplify the setup, I have about 6 friends who would want to use it.

Could you pick the most popular email app (Gmail? Yahoo?) and find a way to simplify the setup for just that app? Or build a plugin or browser extension to make it super simply to setup? I'm thinking a little phone icon on each row in gmail, you click on it and a box pops up and says "Hey, want to get a call when you receive emails like this?" They click Yes and boom it's setup.

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