options for notes

[ruebenramirez]

I want to make a shift in how I take notes.

I've been using evernote for a while. I've read some better ways to use it (use tags instead of folders, etc.)

There are a ton of things that I love about evernote:

• quick tasks
• syncing across all of my devices - mobile access
• OCR on pictures
• notes as event reminders

problems with evernote:

• I don't control my data. It's not running on my own hardware. The surface area for large shared pools of customer data scares the hell out of me. The cloud is not hack proof.
• not open source
• how private are private notes?

So what will it take to build an open source evernote alternative?

• I could go the way of files
• version control those files in git
• write custom jobs to OCR images and populate a database with found terms
• leverage elasticsearch to find notes
• tag system in a custom file header? (means that every note would have to adhere to a template format)
• how to associate multiple documents with a given note?
• [ ] It sounds like we need a web application with a web UI and an API.
• could be easy enough to write in flask or RoR

[ruebenramirez]

driving motivation:

• linux support sucks
• the new beta web interface is a joke
• want a vim interface to taking notes
• want to take notes in markdown
• want to be able to run analytics on my notes
• want more security around my notes (isolation on my own storage, etc.)
• don't want to store my notes locally (should be able to store everything in the cloud without having to pull all files down)

[ruebenramirez]

at $45 /yr, Evernote only costs $3.75 /mo

[ruebenramirez]

if I don't have local access to the files, how could I use vim as my primary editor?

[ruebenramirez]

maybe I just want to add more functionality on top of evernote.

• extract notes from evernote to index them into elasticsearch
• insert vim written notes into evernote via the geeknote - wire this up into my .dotfiles and push into evernote
• start storing private info into a completely separate system - like owncloud?

[ruebenramirez]

https://code.google.com/p/crypto-js/