amolsarva

We make a better more collaborative app that centers on really simple notes as the core thing. You can jot some Knotes but you can also share them natively like slack and put lots of content from other services into them. Knotable.com

Feedback welcome. Still beta

But the Chrome extension is 1.0 and doing really well!

Knotable.com/chrome/note

This is pretty fun and interesting. there is something great about the up/down mechanic on many leading sites. I wonder if there is a way to distill down just that mechanic -- Qu is close!

Fair enough. Can't really sync without some kind of log in. But I guess you want to just use it in offline mode...?

We've been tinkering with a big powerful shared notepad platform for a while. This is our first piece that's really ready and nice.

Simple, stylish new tab screen that lets you type notes from the place where your ADD strikes worst: in the browser

- from the makers, Knotable

Hey! Very true. Give a shout and say hello over at Knotable.com or to me a at knote dot com

I guess it matters equally though that the "four that seemed to register as important to him" were all hand-crafted

The guy is a legend to learn from over and and over

He namechecks this great older post on PR and conferences and how to launch: http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2011/09/15.html

Worth a re-look for every startup founder

The shortest possible version is: launch is important

Drugs 'train your brain' and we have many techniques for training our brains now that seem to actually work -- now under names like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and meditation and brain games. This stuff used to go under names like hypnosis or mindreading.

It's amazingly underused and it's great to see modernizing approaches to the "command line" to the brain.

That's a bummer. These guys are among the really innovative and thoughtful folks working on making email stuff work better.

I guess it takes skills @dannyrohit

I have tried to replace the set on an ipod touch in the past. Didn't succeed. Screwed up taking the face/body assembly apart.

Agree about caution

Not sure those folks are quacks

But this is indeed a very promising field with powerful technology

- co-founder with five other neuroscientists of this company --> HaloNeuro.com --> drop us a line and get involved in our clinical trials if you are interested in this topic around SF or NY

If this happens my respect for apple falls

This is big VCs and big scientists getting involved what you have previously only heard about in DIY forums...

This is real.

It is why airplanes are such great places to concentrate and work.

Also lower light and fewer people "induce the zone" better too.

Never let them fly business class

Part of the job is keeping the wrong people out. That's how to keep them out. Http://a.sarva.co explains why

@Kima testimonial -- these guys took a look at my recent venture very fast, very authoritative, read the docs and sent the money, and have been completely hands-off. Kima is not a startup school for "teach me" founders. It is a the model of a quick-decisions seed fund. In my case they followed a co-investor who they knew well. "He's in? We're in. Done." People say this but I rarely see it.

As for what else they add -- I'll find out next week in Paris at their summit next to Le Web. I suspect the 100s of CEOs they have backed and big european network will be things I value. They are relevant for the company I'm building.

I think the Kima pitch has a lot in common with the PG worldview -- founders want fast decisions, money, network. Maybe they want a school or maybe they can run a school; founders vary.

I've thought this for a while also - the big messaging apps like Whatsapp and Line and Kakao and WeChat are SO BIG and growing so fast already.

More reason to think they might "beat" Facebook is that a) many are already owned by Internet giants, i.e., have tons of resources to drive growth. WeChat is owned by Tencent/QQ and Line by South Korea's Naver. And b) they are Asia-centric where Facebook is weaker. Maybe these "international" players end up beating Facebook on its home turf.

Perhaps a bit naive of me, but can't ANY email sender just include html/css of this type in their spam or regular mail to me?

Can't any email sender spoof the sender identity in various ways, e.g., from name, signature, and sure this picture badge thing?

I have seen the ISS. In New York city! Flying past the tops of buildings. http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

What I liked most about this article is the first-person account of what it feels like to have startup ideas. It's so exciting! Your friends love them! It's super fun!

I guess ideas for movies and creative stuff are similar.

And for those who follow startup culture we all know there is a massive gulf between those who try to actually do stuff and those who just tinker forever. This guy in the article is the sad "I never tried" type.

As a guy who has built a bunch of big startups myself (a.sarva.co) I meet these guys all the time and feel bad when I do. The only advice is DO IT!!!

It's a whole other ball of wax once you meet those guys who DO start -- it's not just DO IT DO IT till it works (repetition). At that point you have someone who DOES stuff. So now they/we/me must work intelligently to do successful stuff.

I think folks in the comments here may be missing that distinction.

Yeah totally - I do that too. Know lots of people who do

But what do you email ABOUT that's what I meant... Like emails from Amazon are plainly not "doing email". That stuff should go somewhere else

What's your interest in email by the way? You seem to have some sophisticated views (or at least background) on the topic!

Hmm! Yeah really cool and interesting. The core concept of "handle the apps that create all the mail workflow" is definitely a promising one

Yes AOL AltoMail is interesting indeed!

I don't think it's fair to blame the users. Our software products are smarter than them. Surely we can win.

The downside is you get embarrassed when someone makes a map. That's the NRA fear. (Edit: that's WHAT the NRA fear)

Similar downside for...driver's licenses, passports, political contributions, subscriptions to magazines or any other database where it is useful to have records of who does what.

Not safe. They just don't have a registered gun. They have knives, security systems, gates, locks, police driving by.

And the ones with guns may well be easy to invade. It happened to the mom of that killer last week.

It's not a good argument but the gun fans do make it repeatedly.

The main argument, and a silly one, summarizing the outrage about the map is "now criminals can find guns to steal".

This is very silly -- there are plenty of maps to use to find banks, gun stores, gasoline, fertilizer...or rich people's homes.

I'm the founder of Peek, where we made a mobile device/app for doing email better. The main comparison at the time was Blackberry and eventually Android. We were a low cost smartphone centered on email and stuff. So with that backdrop, some comments. <pre> TRIED IT, LIKE IT

- hosted gmail account - set up easily for me

- sucked in my mail fast too

- prioritized the inbox pretty ok, but will have to try in the AM when I have more BS mail not just late night 'real' mail

- UI is a little slow I guess. You need a ? shortcut to prompt keyboard shortcuts

- I like the approach: just be an alternative UI to the gmail engine. You can coast on their infrastructure. Others are doing this too like Handle, AltoMail, others

TAKE IT FROM ME...

- Peek also got constantly dinged to "hey, support Exchange!" but we never got far with corporate users even when we bent over backwards to support them

- gmail was the vast majority of users

- outlook/hotmail is actually large and super annoying to support. you need a special partnership license with msft and we went and got one. email me if you want help/access. amol at peek dot ly

- yahoo you can use imap back door. also very large

- power users: we were a cheap, simple gadget so power users would criticize us on the one hand but then not use us since they weren't going to abandon their blackberry anyway (or android, later). In this case though, it seems Inky needs to work well for power users. So this performance stuff people are complaining about needs to be better

SUGGESTIONS

- weird that you didn't start with a mobile app

- a bit weird to create a 'desktop client' that is actually just a web app container (that's what it is right?)

- efforts like thunderbird or postbox at least "get your mail on your pc" which has a neat quality to it. Inky doesn't do that. What's the advantage of being a desktop app here?

- the overall betterness of Inky isn't apparent. The UI does resemble the "3.0" looks of a bunch of other mail apps as commenters have mentioned. There are some usability tweaks but also some steps back. I am most excited about the relevance and smart views -- this is the area nobody is doing well yet. The "algo for your email". I guess I need to use it more to see this benefit? </pre>

I'm excited to find my next mail client. I really don't like Gmail and the death of Thunderbird was sad for me. I want you guys to make something awesome!

In this book Interface Culture, Steven Johnson argues that Apple's OS X (back in 1999 or so) was as significant a cultural contribution as.... Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles

That's back when Apple made everything 3-Dish and liquid and transparent. It did indeed change a whole 5-year chunk of UI designs. Maybe it was even the first skeumorphism...it looks like water

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)