Journal 2.0: Mental Space for What Matters | Hacker News Reader

Journal 2.0: Mental Space for What Matters

blog.usejournal.com

130 pointssamiur120440 comments

I downloaded and installed, but then I saw it forces me to sign up using gmail or apple only. This led me to start reading the privacy policy... you basically collect every webpage I visit, ip, how many times/time of day, etc... and sell it to advertisers.

I don't like advertisers manipulating me through their psychological research into my habits. It's unethical.

If this software were offered in a way that respected my privacy, I would honestly try it. But for this reason I tend to stick to open source software. It may be much less functional and require more manual work, but it gives me peace of mind.

Wish you the best... just not my cup of tea.

I went through a multi-step process of trying to access Journal on my phone: being redirected to desktop, checking my inbox for an invite email, going to journal.com, having to download a desktop app, signing in, and then...after all that, I am informed that Journal is invitation only. I'd suggest maybe informing users earlier in this process that the app is invitation-only.

That's definitely a bug. Sorry for that experience! If you're on the desktop app, please hit create account before trying to sign in. That message is leftover from when we were an invite only product, and only shows up if you try to sign in without signing up. Sorry once again, and we'll have that fixed immediately!

Thanks for the quick reply. Works now!

I really want to see pricing, early on and massively obvious in the UI. I need to know if this is Oss or free, or if I'm gunna get hooked on something I can't afford...

Great point, definitely need to add the pricing to our website! And no, we're not an open source app. In terms of pricing, we have a Free tier and a $10/month "Journal Plus" tier. Currently the differences between Free vs. Journal Plus are: 1. number of app integrations (2 vs. unlimited) 2. amount of data synchronized from those apps (last 14 days vs. years) 3. file size upload limit (10MB vs. unlimited)

One commitment I can make is that we'll never monetize off of your data or by dumping algorithmic ads on you. So, to do that, we're creating a subscription scheme that allows us to provide some powerful but expensive features, but also provide a very useful free tier.

What's the takeout process like?

I love having an external brain, but "lock-in" and "external brain" are mutually exclusive in my book.

Honestly, we're so early we don't have a take out process yet. But we definitely want to support that when people ask, and it also means that since we don't have a process yet, the first few people get to tell us how they want things exported and we'll make it work :).

Nothing against Journal in particular, but I'd happily bet a lot of money that it's going to be a subscription. 10$/month, or 100$/year, or something like that.

You should growing ARR to investors, they give you money, you grow the company, hire people, etc etc etc

Problem with note-taking: I mostly use notes. If I weren't too lazy I'd use vim or something like that.

I hate that everything is supposed to be a startup business with recurring revenue.

nicely working !!! to get start your new startup!!!!

https://devu.in/devops-certification-training-in-bangalore/

Usually my first and only questions when looking at trying a new note-taking app - have you implemented client-side encryption? How are my notes secured?

Nope, we haven't. Part of that is we are trying to help you save content from many places and be able to provide great search for you as well, which means we need to be able to index the content server side. We do encrypt the content server side, making the content inaccessible to anyone at Journal without explicitly accessing the decryption keys, for which we have an audit trail. Also makes it harder for someone to access your content if for some reason we got hacked.

You don’t need to make it server side, but it certainly is easier. But client side is totally doable. You can compress word embeddings and search them with great accuracy.

Do you have a link to something that describes this technique in more detail?

Look up tf-idf. We used this technique to build a similar product (now open sourced[0]) to Journal actually, building off an improved version of tf-idf called CoSaL[1].

Orbit is actually an insanely ambitious take on this problem space. The CoSaL algorithm is in there, it even runs using a forked version of Spotify’s C optimized algorithm.

[0] https://github.com/motion/orbit

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.08493

We actually do use this technique in our search (nearest neighbors on document embeddings). Collaboration is a big part of what we want to do as well, so client side encryption gets even hairier. It might be doable, but I think the effort to get that to work properly may not be the best use of time for a small company trying to build a valuable product first :).

Sure, that is clear, just wanted to clarify for any future ambitious hackers it’s not a technical limitation.

Totally! Thanks for sharing and we'll keep it in mind for the future.

I'm not sure how foolproof the encryption is if I can know every word you have typed in each note. Sure I can't make sense of the full structure but I'll know exactly what you've written about, so I'm not sure that's any more effective.

The way I see it, if you want your notes to be encrypted while also cloud synced and searchable, there are only two options I can think of:

1. Store your notes in an encrypted file (sqlite) on the cloud and sync the entire file locally every time you login (and push updates somehow). Roam does this but wirhout encryption and it sucks so bad (opening the site takes tens of seconds if not more) because of that.

2. The product promises to store everything encrypted; data is instantly written to an encrypted personal sqlite db on the cloud (you alone have the decryption key, it's not saved in the server). Much more seamless experience.

Im _also_ trying to create my own notes app, because I'm convinced I can create an app that can support a thousand users for the same cloud cost as a single roam research subscription. Current immediate plan is not to encrypt the notes, but my eventual plan is to try 2. If there are any other workflows that don't degrade user experience that can still encrypt everything client side, I'm interested to know more!

> The product promises to store everything encrypted; data is instantly written to an encrypted personal sqlite db on the cloud (you alone have the decryption key, it's not saved in the server)

It's not really clear where does the encryption/decryption happen in this scenario (client/server).

Any way, in my app (https://github.com/zadam/trilium), I encrypt on the client (not the whole database, on a per-note basis), sync with the server already encrypted data when internet is available (fine granularity so small and fast sync) and search happens completely on the client (which has full offline database and decryption key).

As a self hosted app encryption protects against a bit different threats so encryption is done only on request for particular notes (since it implies annoying "enter password").

A password signup option would be appreciated. While the social logins are convenient and I often use them, I prefer to use passwords for services that I'd also like to use at work because I intentionally avoid signing into my personal Google account on my work computer. A username/password login option provides a nice way to share a service without spilling my personal Google account onto work equipment.

I understand the emphasis on getting users to sign up, but I wanted to read more to see where this might fit into my workflow.

- Does it support markdown?

- Can I export my notes?

- Are there any to-do list features?

- How do I put math into it?

Currently, you can't, but great suggestion! My background is in Machine Learning and I'd love to have that myself. What would be your preferred way to get math notation into notes? What do you think about a LaTeX formula inserter like http://mathquill.com/

My personal favorite math-input-system is Mathematica, which has sane keyboard shortcuts and WYSIWYG typesetting.

https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/menuitem/Typesett...

https://reference.wolfram.com/language/guide/SpecialCharacte...

Hey, great questions: - We do support markdown as you're typing (they're turned into the appropriate element as you type). Currently, pasting markdown has some bugs, but we definitely intend to fix those soon. - Right now, you export a single note as a PDF. I figure you're asking, "can I export all my notes and take them with me". The answer to that is currently no, but we fully intend to support that. And if you need that in the meantime, we'll definitely do a one-time export for you. - Yes, you can create checkboxes in markdown, and we also have simple checklists ala Google Keep as objects. However, we don't have complex todo features such as due dates, assignees, dependencies, etc.

Thank you for following up. I like the product. The UX is very nice and the workflow adds alot of value for me.

Definitely going to test it out.

2 things

1. On windows, your app is getting caught by SmartScreen. I imagine this will fix itself, but fyi.

2. How do I report bugs?

Thanks, very nice to hear =). Looking forward to your feedback!

1. Thanks for letting us know! I'll definitely look into that to see if we can submit to Microsoft. 2. On the bottom right of the app, there's a support button that opens a menu. Click Share Feedback and send us a message there. Thanks!

Is there a way to export the whole kit and kaboodle as a set of markdown files?

Yeah that should actually be the easiest to do for us.

I would definitely second export (and somehow import) from markdown

If you guys implement that, I’d certainly be in. That’s my only hurdle for dropping a few bucks to try something new.

This is really cool. I like the idea of "spaces" per project. Any thoughts on how to integrate hand written/ios pen written notes into the workflow?

Why do you ask for my mail during sign-up and then continue to only offer oauth with google or apple.

I'd really like this answered as well. I'd like to try this, but that prompt has put me off.

... [crickets]

Welp, gonna delete your app now. Shame I didn't get to try it.

Just a follow up:

1) Don't think you miss much, don't see how it's supposed to provide me a better "mental space" as lets say a notion note.

2) I guess the only thing you're missing is daily at least one email from them...

Any import tool from major notes app?

We currently integrate with Evernote making your Evernote notes searchable and viewable from Journal, but we intend to make that a converter into Journal very soon.

Are there other tools you'd like us to support import from?

IThoughts would be great.

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