Noteship for Mac

Maker

Makers, hunters, notetakers, Your favorite notes app, if it were to disappear tomorrow, would you know where it kept your notes? In the cloud, in some database, the bottom left drawer of your desk? I spent the last 2 years building a notes app that focuses on data-longevity. What does that mean? I, as the user, want to know exactly where my notes are stored (offline, as simple files and folders that I can see and control in Finder). In 20 years from now, I still want to be able to access my knowledge base no matter if apps are still a thing by then (notes can be opened with a browser; those have been around for more than 25 years so let’s hope we’re covered on that front). BUT I do not want to have to miss features that I’ve come to rely on: links between notes, rich text editing with images, tags, and full text search. Since everything is based on simple files and folders, I added a way to include other files/documents/PDFs right inside a notebook. If you are planning a trip, you can keep hotel and car reservation PDFs right along with your notes. This started out as a side project, but it turns out that being able to see a preview of other documents inside the app is pretty handy! Taking notes is one thing, but making sense of them another. Two features I added to extract knowledge from your notes are “one page summaries” and a spreadsheet view. A one page summary combines sections from multiple notes on a single page. For example, let’s say you keep monthly project review notes, each with a section “Lessons Learned”. A one page summary for “Lessons Learned” would show all these sections from multiple notes on a single page. I’m also a fan of life-long learning so expect to see more features in that area in the future. As every maker knows, getting a product ready and out the door takes a huge effort. The last 5% never seem to come to an end. I am so very happy to finally have everything lined up and ready! I’m looking forward to hear what you think! Greetings from Germany, Rico

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3yr ago

asyraf

Focus Dude

@rico_g Hey Rico, really love your product !!! You say that it takes you two years to build this software, salute you man. Don't mind if you share your two years journey on one blog post :P

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3yr ago

Rico

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@asyr0f Will do! I just checked the logs. The first commit was Tuesday, December 11, 2018. That makes it 3 years. Wow, time flies. A few mores stats, if you're interested: 59.824 lines of Swift code (it's a native Mac app), 667 unit tests. Work in progress, but coming this year is a block based editor written in Typescript: 7.997 lines of Typescript, 9.722 lines HTML, and 1.884 lines of CSS.

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3yr ago

Billy Kwok

@rico_g Wow I love the idea of exposing data as files in standardized formats! I could easily imagine it being used as a CMS frontend for static sites. It would be interesting to have a Gatsby/Next.js plugin that parses these files and builds them into a website. Have you thought about marketing such use case too?

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3yr ago

Rico

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@billykwokhk The thought has crossed my mind, but while this would certainly possible, I'd like to focus more on the knowledge management/learning aspect of keeping notes. What I do want to add is turning the "note index file" that is kept in each folder into an HTML file with a list of links to each note file in that folder. Currently if you were to open a note with a browser (Firefox works without having to rename the notes to .html), links to other notes work, i.e. Firefox will open the linked note. The note index file contains the list of notes in the order that the user decided. If that were a static HTML file with links, you'd have a fully standalone notebook of static HTML files that you could navigate with a browser locally. Perfect for peace of mind when it comes to data longevity.

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3yr ago

Martin Gajdos

I was able to test Noteship beta (or Life Notes as it was called previously). I am delighted by the idea and the maker's approach to Data Longeivity This app is good... - .. for people who like to save files locally and who are not keen to give their precious notes into the hand of an external providers - ... for people who think notion.so or evernote are cool apps, but prefer not to pay life-long subscription fees for simple note taking - ... for people who think that HTML is the future of content I can recommend all the other apps from Rico, such as Kartenheld! He produces tools for life-long learners and the next generation of knowledge workers. Only drawback in my opinion is the custom file format. All in all, a valuable app which I will use in future. Thanks Rico

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3yr ago

Rico

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@martin_gajdos Thanks for your review! Over the coming months I will add options to export notes in other formats for even more data longevity. The advantage of saving as HTML is that technically you would not even need to export your data, since you can view it in a browser. If you have app that you would like to import from, let me know too!

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3yr ago

Stowe Boyd

Would be good to be able to import markdown, like from Typora

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3yr ago

Rico

Noteship for Mac

Maker

@stowe_boyd Basic Markdown import is available via the menu File > Import > Markdown File or Folder. If you run into any problems with importing from Typora, let me know (I have not tested their Markdown flavor, but will take a look).

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3yr ago

Noteship for Mac

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