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Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

desklamp.io

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Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#11

Post by pj747 »

killjoywashere wrote: post #8

Hi, I was taking notes in Notability on a PDF of a manuscript I’m reviewing for a journal just before taking this break on Hacker News and finding this. I would really like this to have a freedrawing pencil interface like Notability does. I do agree that organized marginalia would be very helpful. I have struggled to find one app to rule them all this regard.

Noted! Do you think the app would work well as is on the iPad if we added free drawing with the pencil in the notebook? We’ve designed the entire interface with a laptop in mind. Very curious how iPad users feel about everything.

Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#13

Post by mkl »

pj747 wrote: post #11
killjoywashere wrote: post #8

Hi, I was taking notes in Notability on a PDF of a manuscript I’m reviewing for a journal just before taking this break on Hacker News and finding this. I would really like this to have a freedrawing pencil interface like Notability does. I do agree that organized marginalia would be very helpful. I have struggled to find one app to rule them all this regard.

Noted! Do you think the app would work well as is on the iPad if we added free drawing with the pencil in the notebook? We’ve designed the entire interface with a laptop in mind. Very curious how iPad users feel about everything.

I don't have an iPad but I do a lot of free-drawing PDF annotation on Android with Squid. For maths it's way easier than typing Latex. Personally I wouldn't consider this kind of app unless it had free drawing as a primary tool. Even if you're focused on laptops, many laptops have pen input, especially those used by students. Many of my students use OneNote to annotate lecture slides with a pen; even though OneNote is pretty limited, there aren't many good competitors on Windows.

Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#14

Post by pkd »

Congratulations! The only suggestion I have is about the logo: if you rotate it clockwise 90 degrees, then the lamp head also looks like a "D", instead of an "A" as it does currently. I immediately felt it would be better suited to the product name (with some tweaks, of course).

Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#15

Post by FastMonkey »

This looks extremely cool. I'm doing a masters right now and would definitely use it!

My one question though would be how are the notes stored? Is it possible to download them as latex or a markdown file or something? If I have to keep up a membership to return to them that would be unfortunate.

Cool project though, there's definitely a need for something more fluidly interactive in the university notetaking space. Best of luck!

Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#16

Post by lamfm95 »

I hope it would support fully-standalone mode for enterprise environment.

Lots of folks and I at my ML team found it hard to use these kinds of tooling without compromising the intranet. We have to have a permit to bring our laptop inside, otherwise stick to a proxy server.

Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#18

Post by Brajeshwar »

flakiness wrote: post #17

The "store" site [1] lists JEE, NEET and CUET as the "competitive exams" category. Can anyone explain what these are? I haven't heard about these before. [1] https://store.desklamp.io/

These are standard test programs in India to get into various institutes.

JEE[1] is an engineering entrance assessment conducted for admission to various engineering colleges in India.

For students who want to study the general stream of physics, Chemistry, and Biology would go through the NEET[2]. This is for the Medical Colleges in India.

For everything else -- colleges, undergraduate, graduate, and other courses after 12th, students will go through the CUET[3]. This is the latest introduction to circumventing colleges and universities doing the test on their own.

I should add why these tests are crucial to students and parents alike in India. These decide the fate of most students and their careers.

I have a friend who collected and organized the questions for just JEE, and that's it. He charges a very minimal fee, and he is a Crore-ian (roughly $1M = ₹8 Crore) and leads a happy lifestyle. I'm no longer in regular touch with him and have no idea if he grew big or moved on or is sipping Mai Tai in Tahiti.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Entrance_Examination

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Eligibility_cum_Entra...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_University_Entrance_Tes...

Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#19

Post by muti »

anigbrowl wrote: post #5

Looks very nice and I installed the desktop version, but needing to sign up before even trying it out led me to uninstall immediately. It's free for a while I'd rather you set up free and paid tiers now, in which case I could make pricing decisions (because I do pay for things I like). I don't like the idea of getting used to something and then becoming a price taker because I have a lot of data stored already, so I…

Second this, I wanted to poke around and check out the UI for something that looked interesting and useful, I remember looking for something like this back when I was studying and wanted to take notes in PDFs.

So I hit the `open in browser` button, but left as soon as I was prompted to create an account.

Re: Show HN: Desklamp – convenient and collaborative notemaking on PDFs

#20

Post by Brajeshwar »

This is superb. The team sounds a lot more entrepreneurial than just being students. This is the perfect nurturing of entrepreneurs while still in college. Lots of people talk about it, but remarkably few execute on that idealogy.

Here are my exciting observations.

- I see you guys have been working on it for over a year, which shows perseverance.

- Most co-founders have professional LinkedIn Professionals -- very un-student but rather business-like.

- You already have one of the co-founders nurtured by Antler.

I feel you are thinking of exiting to one of the big EdTechs in India or becoming one. Best of luck to all of you.

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