Show HN: Hiro – Fast and responsive notetaking meets semantic search | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Hiro – Fast and responsive notetaking meets semantic search

alpha.hiroapp.com

160 pointssushimako83 comments

This is incredible and ignore the haters.

My advice: fine-tune this for different verticals. I'd really love to use a tool like this for taking notes for law school classes. Wire up the search engine with cool parsers (e.g. a legal citation parser[1]) or something that pulls the decision[2] of a case from Wikipedia just by writing the case name.

[1] https://github.com/unitedstates/citation

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Elec...

Thanks! That's exactly the thinking behind the potentially upcoming pro version, once we'd see that there's basic interest.

Awesome. Happy to give my $0.02 on any number of potential verticals. My is email is my HN name at Google's mail.

Likewise, this would be great for academic writing, bringing up related journal articles of subjects you're writing about.

I see a whole slew of vertical integration opening up here:

* export to LaTex

* export to an electronic academic paper format that supports bibliography (paper writing meets 'blogging')

* creation of an academic journal platform that is entirely electronic. License it out to universities and other academic bodies.

* gather those university/body-specific channels into a user platform where users can subscribe to channels and topics.

* integrate the peer review process through solid user authentication. Think reddit-like voting system, but taking credentials into consideration. There are basically three levels: Standard user, User with credentials in the field endorsed by at least one academic body, User that has been chosen as a peer reviewer by the academic body for that specific paper.

* Enable annotations that can be filtered using these levels.

* have iPad, Android Tablet and Kindle reader apps where users can subscribe

Imagine how fearsome this would be to established journals once it gets traction through some universities. Imagine how much more universities could engage their students in the academic process right from the get go.

I quite like the notes aspect. Good job!

The search feature is a total miss for me however. What problem is it solving? I already have Google, I don't need subpar search built into my notes app.

And searching automatically on highlighted text seems particularly confusing. I quite often highlight text while writing, not intending to make searches in the sidebar. It also took me too long to realize search results were being appended at the end of the list, not at the top.

The search text is also confusing. "All loaded, keep going." Say what now?

On the business model, $9 a month seems too steep as compared to the value prop of, say, Netflix. But I'm a cheap curmudgeon, so you should probably raise prices for all I know!

Thanks for the feedback, @ search bit of reasoning:

"Making lists, remembering good ideas or writing drafts mostly includes a lot of research. So you normally sit there with a ton of tabs open, copy and paste things etc. What if those tabs, that are normally lost, can be pinned right next to your notes? Or you can look up and replace a word with a synonym with a single click."

In short (especially with the Chrome plugin) it's saving (re)search next to your note instead of tabs that vanish.

9 bucks: Thought about it rather binary, either you'd pay nothing (you can a lot with the free plan) or you see a ton value/don't care that much.

+1 on the cryptic buddy'ing status responses.

(Slightly OT)

You do not have Google. Google has Google, and currently allows you to use it, with certain conditions, caveats, and fine print.

Some people might not like the uncertainty and/or the tradeoffs required. Please do not act as if everyone should accept them as a fact of life.

Besides, it makes more sense for an application to implement its own search, since the application has both the domain knowledge and direct access to all its own data.

I like it as a proof of concept. I don't like it as a product.

In general, and with notes especially, focus is important. You are essentially doing the opposite by bombarding the writer with distractions as they write.

I'm afraid your search would have to get shockingly smart for it to provide any real value to the writing process. Then again, I am only 1 potential customer and perhaps I'm just not your demographic so good luck!

You can switch off the searchbar with small brackets in the top right corner, which also adapts the layout a bit. On mobiles its hidden as default.

"Then again, I am only 1 potential customer and perhaps I'm just not your demographic so good luck!"

I agree, and I don't think it's just that we're no in target demographic. Being bombarded with the search links is simply a bad way for just about anyone to write. Writing requires focus and discipline. Clicking on search links that pop up in your writing tool is almost certain to be counter-productive.

I understand the search link frame can be turned off. Not sure what in the product is supposed to be especially useful other than that. As others have said, it does appear to be slick. I'm just not sure how that helps when basic premise is misdirected. Maybe makes things worse; seduces someone into wasting time with counter-productive tool. God knows there've been plenty of nice-looking but counterproductive software tools in the past and will be more in the future. People at beginning say "Looks cool!" and then scrap it after trying to actually use it.

First thoughts from Chrome on Mac. Questions are stream-of-conscious rather than requiring real answers.

Looks sharp. Why is it offering me Wikipedia links in the right column? OK, at least I can make it go away.

Whoa, why does the page keep moving right-and-left every time I'm about to type. Oh, it's when I mouse over the left column. I tend to move the mouse cursor out of the way of my text area when I'm typing, and if I stow it to the left it triggers the slide-over as it passes over the left column.

Figure out that the 3-stacked-horizontal lines can close the slider. Click again to re-open --- that makes sense. But if I click to close, then move the mouse cursor off the page to the left it reopens. Repeat a few times, give up, leave it open.

Start typing. Nothing happens. Scan the screen for a typing cursor. Can't find one. Tab? Nope. Type again, don't see anything changing. OK, I guess they want me to click somewhere. Another couple dizzying screen slides, and I can type.

Ok, let's change the silly title I put in to start with. Up-arrow, up-arrow, nothing is happening. There seems to be no way to get there from here. Tab, shift-tab? Nope. Guess I've got to click. But I really appreciated that both Tab and Return took be back to the text from the title.

Type a bit, looks clean. But not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I'll try creating a new 'note'. For the first time, open the slider on the left intentionally. Click 'new note'. Eeeeek! I'm greated with a giant multi-colored blocker in the middle of the screen. And it's wobbling a few pixels back and forth at about 2 Hz, making me nauseous.

Escape doesn't work. Back button doesn't work. Must get out of here. Click to close.

Maybe there is something I can read on the home page that would explain this better. Wait, the back button still doesn't work? Wait, they've broken reload as well? Maybe the unlabeled button on the bottom left. No --- that brings the wiggling nausea back! Fingers reflexively close the whole window with Ctrl-W.

Take deep breaths, write quick first impressions on HN.

I like the simplicity of the overall look. Design is very clean. But I wish things would't keep happening when I move the mouse, and didn't feel like I was able to test any of the features before being forced to sign up.

Nate, thanks a lot for the really great feedback.

Will definitely add very brief timeout on the sidebar and investigate where the Mac/Chrome wobbling is coming from, and also add more autofocus/keyboard shortcut functions.

I've been looking for the perfect note taking application for a while and here are the things I'd really like that nobody else seems to have in one place (I understand that these things likely do not coincide with your goals but I thought I'd put them out there anyway on the offchance you implement them :) ):

- Strong (technical) security so that the server is a knowledge free environment (no staff, governments whatever can read my notes). Ideally through client-side encryption (perhaps the search would grab some tokens and send them to the server for processing, rather than having the plaintext document on the server). Perhaps the encryption should be optional and encrypted notes wouldn't be sent at all? As a non-American, I _really_ don't like being forced to put my data on American servers where I essentially have no rights. The alternative to this is having a way to specify that the note should remain offline (in localstorage or somesuch) and never touch the server.

- Ability to take the app offline and have it work mostly the same (without search of course)/

- Web clipping (see the Evernote web clipper) with image rehosting

- Markdown support

- Desktop client

- Client side plugins (these make the rest of the above much easier), ideally written in something like JS or Python.

- Full-featured API

I really just want something where I can feel like I'm in control. When I use most services it feels like I'm surrendering something (security, convenience, privacy, ownership of my data).

Pandoc support would also be fantastic... this would be ideal for taking notes in comp sci/math courses!

I suggest that you add a typing-notation which means, 'search this'. Perhaps, "[supreme court smith maryland]". Then, when the close-bracket triggers the search, one of the 'pin' options on the results will offer single-click replacement of the "[*]" with a persistent association to that sticky sidebar-result.

If different users can plug in different search-backends, many hypertext-writing domains could be accelerated, including Wikipedia, legal, blogging, etc. Maybe even you could have an image-suggesting mode for finding quick (and perhaps liberally-licensed) supporting images?

(I'd add Pinboard/archiving-support as well... so everything pinned gets snapshot against link rot.)

Your links/refs column is also a bit reminiscent of https://gingkoapp.com/ – your two projects can probably draw inspiration from each other.

Good luck!

Thanks, is also about picking something up again we tried 8 years ago ( http://techcrunch.com/2006/09/14/systemone-wikis-with-semant... ), just starting simple this time.

I take almost all of my notes in an outline style, which means lots of bullet points.

So far, I haven't been able to find a note-taking program that does bullet-outlines better than Word, and that's a shame.

Could not agree more!

I use Evernote, but even there often the bullet points get out of sync and you have to manually realign everything. Evernote is fantastic, but there are certain things I don't understand why it lacks (LaTeX support and superscript/subscript would be another).

Yup, I used Evernote for a year and got pretty frustrated. Bullet points would work 99% of the time, but something, usually a copy 'n' paste, would mess them up and I'd have to spend 15 minutes getting everything back to normal. Maddening.

Evernote doesn't offer LaTeX support, but does support superscript/subscript.

In the Evernote Mac app, simply go to Format > Style > Superscript or Subscript.

There are even keyboard shortcuts: ctrl cmd + for superscript ctrl cmd - for subscript

So sub/sup is offered in the Mac version, and on the web, but NOT on the Windows client. Isn't that crazy!! It's like they're trolling given the CMS can clearly deal with the idea of sub/sup

Workflowy was designed with bullet points in mind. It's primarily a webapp though; no native desktop application but they recently came out with mobile apps.

I've tried it and I really like it! However, I don't have internet while in class, so the online requirement is a bit of a dealbreaker.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Workflowy. However I don't know of which mobile apps you speak. Nothing on their website/blog about this.

I was also confused, but Google turns up the following:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/workflowy/id551139514?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.karelklima....

The Android app looks like an embedded web application. The iOS client looks the same.

Disclaimer: I haven't used either mobile application yet, so I don't know what the experiences are actually like. I use Workflowy from the desktop in a browser.

Have you considered swapping out Word for OneNote? Granted, it won't break your dependence on Microsoft, but I've found that OneNote is superior in how it handles images, and it's SkyDrive integration is better than Word's so synchronizing your notes across computers is a lot easier. I've also found that OneNote does outlining better than Word.

Try workflowy.com.[1] It's a minimalistic bullet-point, hypertext note taking service; I think it has potential, and quite good usability.

I predict of of these lots services that are popping out everywhere will eventually achieve just the right features/simplicity balance, becoming a killer app through network effects a la Facebook and wiping out all the competition. Evernote is close, but not quite there.

[1]http://workflowy.com

WORKFLOWY IS AWESOME

so simple, so smooth... gets me tingly

Have you tried Dave Winer's Fargo? http://fargo.io

Evernote does a really decent job with bullets.

Ctrl-M moves in a bullet level. Ctrl-Shift-M moves back.

Have you tried OneNote. It kicks ass in doing bullet lists and todos. easy reordering, checkboxes and flags, pretty cool.

Yet another notetaking app, What about sync across devices; security/encryption; lock-in? Only ten notes in the free plan. What does this offer over notational velocity or Simplenote? This semantic research thing will have to be shit hot to justify even nine clams a month. What even is the archive, ffs? Haven't seen any searches. Is Disconnect or adblock+ killing them? [Update: searches appearing after about 10 mins] At first sight - and how many apps ever get a second? - this is laughably misjudged. And now I've noticed it doesn't zoom text reliably in the latest Firefox, trimming the top or bottom line. To expect to charge for this right now seems a bit bloody cheeky. And in use: http://oi40.tinypic.com/8xn3sy.jpg

This is a cool idea and the execution is slick too, but I'd like to know more about anonymity and privacy of both content and search results.

I'm talking about both the privacy of cloud notes, and of the explicit searches when terms are selected with the mouse for a narrow search.

People often take notes about things that are private or personal, and this is explicitly creating a historical association between your thoughts and (public) web searches on those thoughts.

You normally think of notes as a self-contained thing (even if the container is in the cloud), while this is broadcasting your note terms to third parties as you compose them.

I can't find a privacy policy link. So I'd like to know more.

Great line of thinking and very valid arguments, and also the reason we didn't think of any ad supported model.

Currently we encrypt the notes and store them within appengine, while the search results are saved/cached as plaintext. No formal privacy policy atm, but we don't give your notes and neither does one of the third parties (GA as the content comes after GA, intercom and sentry).

I like the idea, but in my brief test drive (before I ran out of searches) I didn't find much value in the discovered links on the right.

Some samples which illustrate the value of the semantic search would be helpful. The screenshot shows a virtually empty note with links on the right. What amount and type of content is best suited to the semantic search?

The semantic search part is pretty limited atm, because we have to build (more or less guess) entities that form a good Yahoo BOSS query. Thinking about adding more data sources, whhere we can do basic but full vector space magic. Signing up gives you 100 more searches, and you can also select words/sentences/paragraphs to limit the search while playing.

Although this is really pretty, I'm not sure I get the concept.

Is this a web-based version of Notational Velocity with a sidebar that does a websearch on certain elements of what I'm writing?

Draftin.com already serves me well as a web-based note-taking thingy, plus great collaboration tools.

I guess here's the question: what's the use case for the sidebar?

Draftin, iA etc are good when you know what you want to write, but we kept 'quickdump' textfiles on our desktops and the occasional mail to ourselves.

The thinking is really in the details, fast in terms of as few clicks and taps as possible. Having to click 3 times to open the last google doc or similar just to paste in an idea or copy something over didn't cut it for us.

This is really cool. The app is beautiful to look at. I find the search useful, particularly being able to pin results to the document. Highlighting a word and getting a list of synonyms is great, too.

This fills a niche similar to Microsoft OneNote's, but with the complexity scaled down admirably. Great job.

I don't get it. It seems like a very basic version of evernote posting everything that I write somewhere else. I am not comfortable with my text going to other unknown places.

I don't know why people are hating the search links on the right. It's a neat idea. There were many times in school when I had to write a simple paper where something like Wikipedia sources were acceptable. If it was something I knew about before hand, I would write a good chunk from memory and then back check it against Wikipedia and other sources online. This might have been a great tool for that initial run.

Does anyone know of an open-source/forkable alternative that comes close to matching the functionality here? Not necessarily the searching piece, just the note management and content editing screens. I've seen a number of them fly by on HN over the past several months, but didn't capture any of the links.

I built something like this before: http://spiktra.com

some feedback (most of it minor):

- the text cursor seems oddly tall to me...

- shift-tab should dedent, not indent

- the searching google thing.. is weird. I don't get it.

- not having bullets is =(

- not having indents maintained on newlines is =(

( notes are often hierarchical)

- doesn't work offline (can keep typing, but nothing saved). check out localstorage and appcache.

Thanks! Some browsers render the cursor according to line height. Will ad shift-tab, the rest would need a proper line based editor, kept it simple for the first round of feedback. Same unfortunately goes for offline access, where conflicts are the challenge.

Interesting, I was thinking the semantic search was actually somehow searching your content and interrelating it and finding patterns. This is pretty cool too, but imagine a notebook that found the common themes among your own notes. That would be pretty cool!

Quick little nitpick thing, but how do you scroll within the document? I was messing around putting a ton of newlines, but I wasn't sure how to get back to the top of the document without using my keyboard arrow keys.

Beautiful UI by the way. Nice job!

Thanks! And sorry: Which OS/Browser were you using?

Firefox 24.0 on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5

Can I not share my FB friend list? Otherwise I'd like to extensively try it out

Sry for the default FB scope, just sign up via mail & password.

Have you considered Mozilla Persona instead of passwords? demo: http://123done.org docs: http://developer.mozilla.org/persona

Yes! We have persona support in a feature-branch, it just didn't get merged/integrated, yet.

I like it but wouldn't pay for it. The search sidebar is appealing with the pin-it icons. Search results were pretty good if a bit generic. Doesn't seem to be very semantic but still a nice toy.

(1) who owns this content?

(2) can this be exported?

(3) is this publically searchable?

(4) how is this better than org-mode?

- You - Yes (see small cloud icon next to title once you sign up) - No - In the clouds (syncs incl mobile) & less structured

The only thing missing is : https://github.com/daviferreira/medium-editor

Good job, well done!

You could use a filter for "adult" content. The top result for the (non-pornographic) film list I pasted in was something about "Milf Porn Movies".

Not the biggest fans of text safe search (too many false positives), but please excuse if anything was insulting.

You could create plugins for existing editors like Vim, Emacs or Sublime Text 2. This way the users would feel home but with the semantic search service helping them.

Good idea!

Nitpick: The Read More section on the right seems a bit of a misfit for a product that seems to take away distraction. I found it irrelevant and distracting.

Markdown support would be awesome, great interface. Although, the hover to show the sidebar would be better handled with a click event in my opinion.

I used this in my android, and a big broken part was the lack of ability to use the back button. Whenever I pressed it, went back to HN.

Hm, is the case on all platforms, nothing is lost though. Which behavior would you expect?

In my case, what bothered me was when I accidentally opened up the various side bars. Usually on Android, I'd just hit the universal back button to go back to where I was (text input, not the menu screen). Since pretty much everything works this way, it's reflex. So it was odd when I hit the back button and returned to HN.

Since it's a text editor, users will be click back a lot. And god forbid they accidently defocus the text area when they press back...

Maybe move the cursor back to the text area.

It's amazing. I currently use AIWriter and it's not available on web.

Hiro meets all my expectations. Great work. Thanks!

Thanks!

Try out OneNote. Great keyboard shortcuts and way more functional.

Does not work offline! No choice for me.

Where is the search function? A good notetaking app should have awesome note search.

Wanted to wait for this, currently most usertests show that people use it for not many, but long documents (ctrl+f works for them in this case). As soon as the note/user count goes up, we'll think about adding this.

good idea in theory, but the search is "ridiculously" slow. Not to mention the fact that it doesn't work after the first search. Also, you're using the term "semantic" wrong.

HN effect, search should be < 500msec normally. It is indeed semantic (POS tagger & chunker), but as mentioned atm this only tries to build Yahoo BOSS queries, which can't OR and rank, thus the bit lame results.

POS tagger & chunker has nothing to do with search being semantic. Here's the definition of semantic search: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_search

As I said, i think it's a good idea. I just think you should do some due diligence when using buzz words like "ridiculously fast" or "semantic search". A lot of people are allergic to buzzwords

After meandering through the Euro SemWeb ecosystem in 2005 i took the idiosyncratic liberty to include everything that uses semantics (eg POS) in that bracket. But definitely get the point, ridiculously was the next choice after "here's your weekly writer app".

This rocks reminds me of NVAlt for mac which I use for note taking locally.

Is it just me or is the site down?

love it!

I prefer the phrase: "It's Always Free".

The home page sounds kind of pretentious, so much so that I'm not even sure I want to try it.

I said this without thinking. I'm sorry.

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