471–480 of 578 posts
Congrats! Been following Obsidian here and there and I'm finally giving it a spin. Side Note: If you folks would like a portable version for Windows (non-installable version that can run from a cloud folder, portable drive, etc), let me know. PortableApps.com has a few Electron-based apps now.
If I use obsidian to take personal work notes, do I need a commercial license? Right now I use a giant append-only markdown file but I'm curious about the linking.
My understanding is yes, and honestly, this was my biggest sticking point with Obsidian. I'm happy to pay for software. I pay for Dynalist pro (same team for anyone who didn't know), but the separate commercial license on top of paying for sync just felt like a lot. Especially with commercial use being defined so broadly. Fourteen days to trial just isn't enough to see whether it would be worth the cost to use for my…
I kind of agree that having to pay it on top of the sync fees feels off, but you could just as well sync with onedrive.
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My issue is that it feels like none of these tools do anything significantly new, and are all so obsessed with wonky features like node-graph views and backlinks that are only useful to a niche audience of obsessive note-takers who in many cases seem to care more about playing with their notes than actually using or sharing them. That's why I'm working on creating https://visible.page because I want a tool that isn't…
I'm sorry but markdown and backlinks are boring That is the intention. I don't want excitement with my note-taking, I want plain, boring, open-standards that will survive the test of time. Chances are high that your startup will: 1) Fail 2) Get acquired and gets shut down 3) Aggressively monetize leading to poor UI/UX (i.e. Evernote) The whole advantage of Obsidian is that it relies on an open format, and makes it ea…
I think notes should use a database so it can effectively obfuscate data like the spatial relationships between objects in a note. An open specification and utilizing an open source database would be better. Plain text objects could still be used and easily exported, but you gain so much over simply plain text. Portability is important but it's not as important as having tools that meaningfully improve how you perform the task you're trying to accomplish.
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A friend and I used Notion to plan an overseas trip. We had a table of potential places to visit (with cost, how long it might take, etc.). I was disappointed to find out that Notion had no way to render those locations on a map. I'm also frustrated by the typical notes apps inability to store data in a way that it's convenient to retrieve. One example: I'd like to be able to just tag some string (think a UUID or oth…
Are there _any_ ways to uniformly put a geolocation in a Markdown/note/txt file? Seems like there should be a general answer for this, as sometimes I'd like to put a geolocation and notes in a file, and some uniform way to parse this later, whatever the tool.
[0]: https://github.com/esm7/obsidian-map-view
[1]: https://github.com/valentine195/obsidian-leaflet-plugin
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I'm sorry but markdown and backlinks are boring That is the intention. I don't want excitement with my note-taking, I want plain, boring, open-standards that will survive the test of time. Chances are high that your startup will: 1) Fail 2) Get acquired and gets shut down 3) Aggressively monetize leading to poor UI/UX (i.e. Evernote) The whole advantage of Obsidian is that it relies on an open format, and makes it ea…
I personally want something that allows me to work with things spatially, to draw things, to dump a bunch of images into it, and move things around in at least a two dimensional space. I want to be able to embed maps, images, audio files, music, draw connections between them, move them around. This cannot be accomplished in plain text. I think notes should use a database so it can effectively obfuscate data like the…
I'm sorry but until you've experienced a startup shutting down the product that you built your whole knowledge repo around, you won't really understand the need for portability.
I could care less about the shiny features, because I know that in 10 years this product will be defunct, while markdown will still exist.
I installed Obsidian and did some initial testing, but two things completely threw me off: 1) Basic synchronization is a paid feature and you cannot (or at least could not) set up a private synchronization server. 2) Synchronization depends on the cloud. I simply cannot trust all important information of my life going to an unspecified location in the cloud for synchronization, even if it promises end-to-end encrypti…
Any reason not to put the Obsidian folder in git, and sync via push/pull?
It's both a pre-configured knowledge base (with a structure, plugins, templates, etc) and a detailed user guide with theory and practical how-to guides.
It's not free but might be a good investment if you want to spare time when diving in.
Can I store the data on my local windows machine on a google drive i.e in a folder that is synced to Google drive. I ask because there was one other note taking app that couldn't cope with the semantics of Google drive's write activity (been a while and i've forgotten which one) and consequently I lost data
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I personally want something that allows me to work with things spatially, to draw things, to dump a bunch of images into it, and move things around in at least a two dimensional space. I want to be able to embed maps, images, audio files, music, draw connections between them, move them around. This cannot be accomplished in plain text. I think notes should use a database so it can effectively obfuscate data like the…
Portability is important but it's not as important as having tools that meaningfully improve how you perform the task you're trying to accomplish. I'm sorry but until you've experienced a startup shutting down the product that you built your whole knowledge repo around, you won't really understand the need for portability. I could care less about the shiny features, because I know that in 10 years this product will b…
It is not hard to understand why portability is important and I do not need to lose anything to empathize with people that have. I think it is important but it doesn't matter how important it is if the tool you're using to secure portability is insufficient for the task you're trying to accomplish. That is backwards thinking.
> I could care less about the shiny features, because I know that in 10 years this product will be defunct, while markdown will still exist.
I'm not speaking in favor for this person's startup, I'm speaking in favor for better tools for note taking, thinking, brainstorming, and managing knowledge. Plain text is not good enough, in my opinion. This is coming from someone who uses plain text for all those things because there isn't an existing adequate alternative. If plain text is genuinely suitable for your needs, that's great. I just really doubt that anyone that uses plain text can genuinely say that they aren't held back by the limitations of the format at least in some way.
Obsidian is a tool like no other: a "second brain" that you have complete ownership over. Being able to link together knowledge or concepts across contexts is a superpower. A recent example: the AlphaTensor paper comes out with a new approach to optimizing matrix multiplication algorithms: as I jot down some thoughts, can I seamlessly refresh my memory on every paper or talk or offhand ML finding I've come across on…