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Like you, I probably have about a thousand different ideas and streams of thought during the course of a day. Unlike you, I don't write any of them down.

I do this because there is no way I'd get anything done if I didn't. I don't mind forgetting some key insight, because if it was important or relevant enough, it'll translate into sometime I will write down when the time is right. If not, it's probably something that I shouldn't bother wasting my time with. (That's not to suggest it isn't valuable).

You only have so many hours in the day to work on so many things. People like us need to ignore our own brain 80% of the time to be productive. It's a curse really.

We treat notes as a stream and you categorize notes using hashcodes.

We have an iPhone and Android client so you can easily include pictures in your notes.

We aren't live yet, but will be in a few weeks. =)

If you want me to contact you when we are live sign up below,

https://3banana.com/doLogon.action?s=hn

</blatant self promotion :P>

We are building something even simpler, a personal syslog synced across phone/web/command line.

Fundamentally we view notes as a stream like a log file or Twitter.

You will have one place to easily and quickly dump everything, then be able to grep out the relevant information, and then late bind the decision on what to do with that information.

I can't say enough good about this program. i use it everywhere (mac, web, macbook, iphone). it's certainly not perfect (auto indent?, the ability to copy check boxes) but it is certainly good. I use a moleskine too, but for searching and loading up data, and keeping task lists, with pictures! Evernote has made me very happy.

this question was asked awhile back on HN and that is how I found out about. I've tried various things in the past, but evernote has worked great for me. evernote.com.

Evernote is to my memos what dropbox is to my work in progress files.

For task lists, I tried a bunch of things at one point, and only one that stuck was Taskpaper (http://hogbaysoftware.com/products/taskpaper). It's so simple that I actually use it. I've been using it for about a year now on a sustained basis. It has simple emacs keybindings, like other OS X text editors, so that's nice for me too.

For ideas best expressed by complicated freehand drawings, I use pen and paper. I always carry an unruled (no lines) notebook for this purpose.

For a while I was using a small drawing tablet and Curio (http://www.zengobi.com/products/curio/) for drawings, but it didn't stick. The GUI was a little too slow, and plugging in the tablet was too much of an extra step. A tablet Mac would solve this. (Yeah, yeah I could get a PC, but I'd rather avoid it if I can.)

When I take notes at a meeting or a talk, I use TextEdit (again, w/ simple emacs keybindings), and depend on spotlight to help me relocate things. I prepend all filenames with the date in <2 digit year><2 digit month><2 digit day> format, so by default things sort by date across filesystems etc. This is surprisingly useful.

On the go? Moleskine

We are live, you can check us out at the link below:

http://www.ubernote.com

Started with the lovely and simple Notepad textfiles, but after a bit they are too simple and too hard to maintain, thus not good.

Then I used Google Notebook for a long time, was easy to add stuff, but not so easy to find it later. Plus it's still too simple for my liking, can't categorize ideas too well.

I switched recently to Evernote, which seems to be an improvement over Google Notebook, but for some reason I still don't feel comfortable with it. The fact that I can type offline and sync with different computers or read my ideas online is really welcome and handy, though.

Everytime I fall back to my paper notebook, which is also too simple and not search friendly, but I like handwriting and for some strange reason, ideas flow much better than when I write rather than type them. The real only grudge I have with it is that there is no backspace key and no "insert a new line in the middle of the text" either :(

We don't know which native applications will emerge as ones that combine these unique capabilities and new behaviors into true breakout services, but here are some categories that we find interesting along with some of the challenges that they face:

* Location-based social networking, such as Loopt, Brightkite and foursquare. The big question in this category is whether these new networks will gain enough scale that they can compete effectively with the mobile offerings of existing social networks, or if the mobile networks differentiation in value proposition will be insufficient to overcome the current gap in scale.

Three levels, but only BOSS Custom has real potential for a highly differentiated service offering.




There are three levels to the BOSS program, according to SearchEngineWatch:





• self-service API


• BOSS University for academics


• BOSS Custom, designed for companies with their own ranking and/or presentation methodologies. Or alternative, companies with proprietary data that can help as an additional signal that factors into relevancy.





I’ll go over all the aspects of the BOSS program below, and then come back to BOSS Custom as evidence that Yahoo! just might Use The Force. But the basic features looks like a free version of Google Custom Search Engine.

Me.dium is the example highlighted by Yahoo! Silicon Alley Insider points out that Me.dium is adding social signals to Yahoo! ranking and calling it “Social Search” which ironically is “using a name Yahoo! has already attached to a failed product.” VentureBeat has a more positive spin on the Me.dium demo application, although Dan Kaplan concludes:

The question that hangs over Yahoo, BOSS, and Me.dium is whether or not any search player will really be able to change user behavior and get people to consistently use something other than Google; the results would probably have to be a noticeable leap forward, and even then, it would be hard to break Googling habits.

Dan is absolutely right, and BOSS will have to go a lot further to deliver a true “leap forward.”

Integrating query suggestions (Search Assist technology)

Query parsing services is one of the most interesting aspects of BOSS Custom. Search Assist is very well done already, and if it could be integrated with our custom, industry-specific ontology.

Huanjin: In general, I think this is a very important event for all search startups. It opens new opportunities. Google has pushed search relevance to the limit that the current approach can achieve. To significantly improve the search relevance, we have to take drastically different approaches, i.e., not solely by keyword matching, not solely by statistical signals, and not treating every user the same. My take on the direction of search technology is

(1) Meaning based (semantic and/or syntactic).

(2) Context aware. The same word means different things in different contexts.

(3) Must be able to treat different users differently

(4) Opinion based.

(5) Leverage human knowledge base

Most niche search engines lack a traffic strategy that envisions coexisting with Google and Yahoo! Getting search traffic from existing engines needs to be a component of their business vision, as it is with Uptake.

Beyond that, discoverability has been the biggest issue for the alternative search engines. ASE’s underestimate the brand loyalty that Google has earned that goes beyond the real advantage in search quality. If Yahoo! could play a role in that discoverability, through Search Monkey and other programs, that could be an advantage to the alts AND also to Yahoo!

This is a two step process. Open up search through BOSS Custom to allow innovation to bloom. Then harness that innovation back into differentiating Yahoo! as a search and discovery platform that leverages this innovation to be different from Google. Yahoo! funnels traffic to BOSS alts, but then consumers use Yahoo! and build brand preference to Yahoo! and its rag-tag Rebel Alliance fleet!

• Open an indoor bicycle parking lot in lower Manhattan, where people can keep their bikes safe and dry. For bonus points, offer gold memberships with showers and fresh towels.


• Make a power strip with a built-in Ethernet hub that clips onto the back of a desk. That way when you bring a laptop into work or need to charge your cell phone, you can plug it in without crawling on the floor. Hotels catering to business travelers have something like this, but it's always custom-wired by electricians.


• Be the Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) of high-end office furniture. Reduce the lead times on nice cubicles and partitions from 12 weeks to two.





All three of these ideas came from needing something and failing to find it in the marketplace. I don't have time to do any of them, so, like I said, if you could, that'd be great. 'K. Thanks!

As for what this all means, I'm still trying to figure that out. I abandoned seven long-held principles about business and software engineering, and nothing terrible happened. Have I been too cautious in the past? Perhaps I was willing to be a little reckless because this was just a side project for me and not my main business. The experience is certainly a useful reminder that it's OK to throw caution to the wind when you're building something completely new and have no idea where it's going to take you.

For his part, Jeff says he didn't want our new venture to feel "like work" -- that if Stack Overflow wasn't fun to do, he didn't want to be doing it. If I had tried to make him play by my rules, I don't think the project would have come together, at least not as well as it has.

The truth is, the three guys who coded Stack Overflow are great programmers. They're smart, and they get things done. And in the end, that's what really matters. Entrepreneurship boils down to the simple fact that a team of really smart people who can get things done are going to get smart, useful things done. Need proof? No problem: Check out stackoverflow.com.