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Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

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Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#161
post #39

For me, Notion replaced Evernote and I haven't looked back. Three features that have been particularly useful for personal productivity are 1) explicit support for Kanban board-ing tasks and similar to-do management 2) collapsible blocks 3) substantially smoother linking to, or embedding, notes within notes Notion is just as sleek as Evernote for small independent notes, but these two features allow Notion to scale m…

Evernote's killer feature for me is the automatic OCR on images, included in the search. Any way to rig that in Notion?

Not that I know of, and probably an area that Notion won't catch up in for a long time, if ever.

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#162
I've tried Notion (I've tried most PIMs since 2003) but it didn't fit my brain / what I wanted to do with it. Not enough structure yet too constraining.

The closest I've found is Workflowy, but it's just that bit too basic.

I store all web clippings in Evernote and hope to find what I want one day.

I bookmark heavily into an online service, and wish my tag vocabulary was better constrained (but full text search helps).

And finally I mind map on paper; none of the digital ones have quite cut it.

One day there will be a PIM to rule them all. One day.

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#163

Hmm, I cannot seem to create an account without sharing my Google contacts; which I see no need to do and it's needless friction. I get into a loop of clicking checkbox "I don't want to share my Google contacts", then being rerouted back to login page and requested approval to share my contacts. Pricing wise, I wish these types of apps didn't have such a steep escalation as soon as I want to share. $4 for individual,…

> wanting to share this with my wife is four times as expensive as just using it myself, with limited to no appreciable improvement.

I would hardly say "no appreciable improvement". IMHO it's appropriate to price products based on the value derived, not the effort to implement each incremental "feature". And the ability to share is the most human feature. We are social creatures. To share and collaborate and be relational is to be human :)

So the price jump feels fair to me. We can get near full-knowledge of the product at a reduced price point, but to be human with the tool, we get hit with the real cost :)

EDIT: I also don't like the actual pricing structure, but that's only because I would rather participate in co-operative systems, and dislike capitalist ones. The above comment is my putting myself in their shoes :)

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been contemplating making a similar thing for years now. Nothing I have used really has gotten me all the way. Is it going to be open source?

I haven't figured out. My current plan is to open source the layer that allows users to access their own raw data, to ensure portability. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to maintain the project if it doesn't bring in revenue.

I've been looking for a Personal Knowledge Manager for a while (and been thinking about creating one). Feel free to message me if you're considering open sourcing or releasing it.

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#165
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason nobody really does this: there's just no money in it. Nylas mail is a good example of this: it offered the ability to self-run it and pay them for the license, but nobody really did. I wonder what they would need to charge to make it feasible? $1000 a year? It makes me pretty sad, but it's just such a distraction for a company of Notion's size and stage.

On-prem enterprise software does make money. You still charge money for it either way. A few examples: Github Enterpise, JIRA, etc. And notion doesn't need to see their users data to charge money for a service. They could engineer it to be E2E encrypted for the group and not have the ability to see their customers data even with a subpoena.

Enterprise is the key word here. Much more companies care about having control over their infrastructure. As for Notion, I guess even on Hacker News only a small share of users would care enough.

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#166

I've tried Notion (I've tried most PIMs since 2003) but it didn't fit my brain / what I wanted to do with it. Not enough structure yet too constraining. The closest I've found is Workflowy, but it's just that bit too basic. I store all web clippings in Evernote and hope to find what I want one day. I bookmark heavily into an online service, and wish my tag vocabulary was better constrained (but full text search helps…

This appears to be aimed at the small / medium organization. I think individuals should probably just stick with Emacs / Workflowy depending on whether they're already using Emacs or not.

Personally I think individuals need to just accommodate to shifting every now and again to new tools as they become available.

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#167
Notion is great in features, but it is just so slow and I find the editor hard to work with. Text doesn't flow nicely and it is clumsy to navigate between blocks. Some blocks are editable, some are stuck, etc. It is pretty hard. The speed gets me the most though. Maybe the website is actually better than the electron app, I always use the electron app.

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#168

There is something about Notion that makes it feel very well-made and coherent. It’s one of the few apps I use with this inherent feeling of quality (off the top of my head Sublime Text/Merge, Beyond Compare, Things fall into this category of intangible greatness). Every interaction is delightful, and the app scales really well from basic note-taking to decently complex databases with grouping, filters, relations, te…

The "quality" feeling of sublime app for me is majorly undermined by the constant nagging popups to pay for it. so many other services I happily pay for and somehow sublime has made me not want to pay for their services.

If you'd happily pay for it without the popups, why didn't you pay for it the first time the popup appeared? Would've saved you a lot of annoyance, no?

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#169
Been a paid user for a while. I love all the UI elements, markdown support, cross-platform compatibility etc. I have used Evernote, Simple Note and Boostnote previously.

Some problems however:

Desktop app takes a while to load. I understand it's electron, but so are Slack and VSCode. I am ready to keep it open on Mac. But on pressing Cmd+W, it closes the app, though not quit. Re-opening from that state is still slow. No other electron apps do that.

Offline experience on mobile isn't good. When I am in subway and want to jot down something quickly, it searches for internet for a while before allowing me to do anything

Re: Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

#170

Notion looks great, and I've been hoping to migrate it. There are two big problems. One is the migration path from Evernote. If you look at all the current notetaking apps, none of them seem to have capitalized on the fact that there are lots of unhappy Evernote users out there who would kill for a smooth, painless migration path. Instead, these apps ask you to export your Evernote notes as HTML, something which Ever…

I am 100% with you here. The fact that I can't 1-click migrate keeps them from getting my money
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