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Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

ghostnoteapp.com

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Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#151

Post by alexchantastic »

ThomPete wrote: post #129
diff_sky wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same issue. I also see a small cog icon in the menu bar whenever I do something like switch apps or chrome tabs. I guess it's an indicator of ghostnote activity, but its sometimes to the left of the ghostnote menu icon, sometimes right and sometimes a couple of app menu icons over... Of more concern is that after installing I noticed moving finder windows around as sluggish and sometimes just the system cu…

hi diff_sky That does sound weird. Do you mind sending me a mail (info at ghostnoteapp dot com) so we can figure out whats going on. We are working on the cog wheel issue we just haven't been able to reproduce the bug on our screens so any look at the beast would help.

I also see the cog and am noticing the lag. I just sent you an email detailing my observations as well as a video of the issue.

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#152

Post by michaelwilson »

ThomPete wrote: post #133
michaelwilson wrote: post #119

It's great so far. But...I, out of curiosity, flipped on the "Ghost Mode" switch. Now, clicking on the ghost doesn't do anything. What is Ghost Mode? How do I get out of it?

It's one of those "seems like such a good idea" things we probably just should have dropped until we had a better solution. The idea is that the ghostnote app visually stays out of the way by going semi-transparent when your mouse isn't over it. So I am guess it's just so low on transparency that you can't see it :) Got to Preferences and turn it off then you should be able to see the window. But yeah not the most us…

Ohhhhh, OK. The problem was, the prefs were ALSO transparent/invisible, so I couldn't see them.

The note finally appeared in front of something with enough contrast that I could nab it and turn it off. Thanks!

"Ghost mode": Make me invisible :-)

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#153

Post by ThomPete »

alexchantastic wrote: post #151
ThomPete wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hi diff_sky That does sound weird. Do you mind sending me a mail (info at ghostnoteapp dot com) so we can figure out whats going on. We are working on the cog wheel issue we just haven't been able to reproduce the bug on our screens so any look at the beast would help.

I also see the cog and am noticing the lag. I just sent you an email detailing my observations as well as a video of the issue.

Great.

It seems to be an issue with SIMBL which is installed with a lot of addware and older safari plugins. We are looking into the issues and getting back to each person with a solution.

For what it's worth its not related to our code.

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#154

Post by juliob »

ThomPete wrote: post #5

Hi everyone I could write a whole book about this project and what i had to go through to get it out but finally I think its there. Ghostnote allow you to add notes to almost anything on your mac. Files, folders, applications, websites and even documents open inside applications (ex a photoshop document). I made it because I am not good at structuring and often just need notes for specific context but soon realized t…

Thanks for this app; I've been wanting exactly this for years: I need to multi-task and I often forget what I was doing, so I need a TODO attached to specific windows.

Before you start adding big features such as Applescript, I recommend that you address basic problems and missing features (that you might have unearthed with an extended beta program). Please go check out the reviews at the App Store.

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#155

Post by ThomPete »

juliob wrote: post #154
ThomPete wrote: post #5

Hi everyone I could write a whole book about this project and what i had to go through to get it out but finally I think its there. Ghostnote allow you to add notes to almost anything on your mac. Files, folders, applications, websites and even documents open inside applications (ex a photoshop document). I made it because I am not good at structuring and often just need notes for specific context but soon realized t…

Thanks for this app; I've been wanting exactly this for years: I need to multi-task and I often forget what I was doing, so I need a TODO attached to specific windows. Before you start adding big features such as Applescript, I recommend that you address basic problems and missing features (that you might have unearthed with an extended beta program). Please go check out the reviews at the App Store.

Thank you very much for your kind words.

We have three priorities

Bug fixing

Applescript

Dropbox Team Access

In that order. So don't worry we aren't going to drop or turn this into bloatware :)

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#156

Post by LiweiZ »

ThomPete wrote: post #72
ryanSrich wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a designer learning iOS to build an app I designed, why didn't you develop the app yourself? Do you feel like the time lost learning OSX development would have offset the potential earnings of the app? My impression when shopping around for a developer was that to get something like ghostnote built you'd have to spend around $50k+. This ultimately led me to just trying to build the app myself, but I'm finding that…

I have been circling around this contextual idea for several years now and in fact this is just a small part of what I ultimately want to build. It sounds simple but it's much harder than one would expect. I hired several developers most couldn't get it done and I had even talked to several developers about doing it as a split deal. Its one thing to build an app that does what the framework is build for, but we are d…

I ended up by learning and building myself. Just have to keep my burning rate really low. I've been working on my project for around two years now. Hope this time I can satisfied with what I'm building and actually put it onto app store. Thanks for your story.

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#157

Post by jkestner »

ThomPete wrote: post #148
jkestner wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where exactly would you be storing the note? Curious as to how durable/invisible it would be to the user.

In the assets themselves

Sorry to be dense - I'm curious about the implementation. Can you give more detail? Is this in the extended attributes or file comments? Because I understand if the file moves to a non-HFS+ file system, you can lose those.

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#158

Post by navanit »

ThomPete wrote: post #53
xbryanx wrote: post #51

This looks fantastic. I watched through the video and looked on the feature page, but couldn't figure out two key things: - Is there a way to do a text search on all your notes? - Are your notes saved in any sort of exportable format?

Hi bryan and thank you very much for your kind words. To answer your quesitons. - not for now - not really they are archived objects Now this will change in future updates so if you are on the fence just sign up for the newsletter to be notified. Alternatively buy the app and send us a mail then we can add you to the beta-tester list so you get access to some of these things as soon as they are deployed for the betal…

> - not really they are archived objects

This is a deal-breaker for me. I don't want to risk putting years of effort into this and then have the app break when Apple decides to deprecate APIs in their next OS release.

Having said that, you should be charging much more.

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#159

Post by WesleyJohnson »

I had a contextual note idea a while back that turned into a Chrome Extension. It had a lot of quirks and never really worked how I wanted it to, so I eventually stopped working on it.

Ghostnote takes that idea and puts it on steroids. I really like the concept and am going to check out the app. Kudos on shipping!

Re: Show HN: Ghostnote – Contextual notes and todo app

#160

Post by andrewflnr »

samwillis wrote: post #91
graeme wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For example, right now, moving a file breaks its relationship with a note, and an open file's notes aren't associated with the file's finder icon. That's interesting. Is there a workaround or quick way to transfer notes? I often rearrange files.

They could be associated with a hash of the file rather than its path?

Then it would change every time you changed the file. And if you try just (text match)||(path match) then you have issues with copied files. AFAIK the only reliable way to do this is to get notified when the file is moved or copied.
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