My IOS workaround is to make notes and save files to a designated folder, then have that folder in th Curio shelf.
Not ideal, but OK
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I imported all my old (dormant) Evernote notes, all my Trello boards, a CSV export from Goodreads, etc. I use it for all my Genealogy research, shopping list, tasks, writing projects, Spanish lessons, notes, recipes, travel planning, things to read, etc.
I looked at it a few times before finally diving in and ‘getting’ it. I think the main ‘aha’ moment was when I figured out that tables are basically relational databases with some spreadsheet-type functions, and that you can link them. I still feel like I have only scratched the surface, and I keep moving things into it that I would normally use another app for.
For me, the main function for iOS is to read or find. I pretty much do zero serious typing on my phone any way, for any purpose, just because I type over 90wpm on a keyboard so finger-pecking is slow and frustrating. So Notion is often a glorified shopping app on my phone, but still nice to have access to it.
Marie Poulin has some excellent tutorial videos using Notion. Check 'em out: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpzKoBl909Y1s8hS5QpSlamyGqzmMqzDZ
I use MarginNote 3 pretty extensively for collecting journal articles and scanned books that I use for teaching and research. I don’t use much of the mindmapping and flashcard stuff, and it’s pretty easy to just stick to collecting and annotating PDFs. It also syncs with iCloud between Mac and iOS. It’s pretty easy to get things in and out of MN, but my biggest complaint is the lack of web clipper. If you want to save something from the web, you have to convert it to PDF.
I’m going to be preparing to teach a graduate seminar in music theory next semester, and MN3 is my weapon of choice.
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I know I’m late to the game here, and I hear @ismh’s concerns on the episode, but as a researcher and college administrator I have been using Evernote years thanks to a powerful capture, ability to markup and search pdfs and the notes/notebook structure. BUT I am loving the database options and varied layouts of Notion. I’m slowing incorporating more and more to that app and love it. I see it is young but for what I can do with it, I’m blown away. I’m using it for project management as well as research, and even running my small coffee roasting business with it.
Stephen, you may find another app you like better but I want to suggest looking at the relational database options in Notion for when you’re finishing things up. I am thinking each line is a different computer, including images, tags, URLS, dates, etc. and you can then change views and filter, which I would think would be incredibly powerful.
Finally, We’ve mentioned Tiago Forte a few different times in the forums but he is using Notion in some really interesting and useful ways. I want to plug his name as a potential great guest if you all decide to dig deeper into this app.
Notion To me seemed just a proof of concept, new and shiny looking for a problem to solve rather solving problems. The business model means if you stick with it the free version is soon going to be useless and and that point you are pretty much locked into their system with numerous blocks, linked content etc.
Apart from the above it is a web based system, offline access is pretty much a no-no, and that is potentially a killer. Your data should be your data, stored locally and backed up remotely, not the reverse.
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I’m experimenting with Notion. My initial view is that it’s a great tool for people who want to fiddle, but that it doesn’t really bring a lot to the party.
It’ll work well for some people, but I think it might be a fad, overtaken in a while by the next shiny new thing (Roam Research, anyone?).
The subreddit reminds me of bullet journal groups - it’s more about “Hey, look what I made” than anything else.
I’ll persist for a while but I’m also not such a fan of having all my stuff on someone else’s servers
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Thanks for the heads up on RoamResearch! 
I can live with having all my stuff on someone else’s servers. I figure that’s the future. Although it should be cached locally because even here in the 21st century sometimes I have to work disconnected.
What I don’t like is having all my stuff in a format that’s difficult or impossible to export. Because eventually I’m going to want to switch from System X to System Y.
The connections between documents, and their organizational structure, is nearly as important as the documents themselves. That’s one of the reasons I migrated off Ulysses – turns out the only way to export multiple documents within Ulysses is as a single document outside of ulysses, unless I export each document manually. That’s nuts.
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As developers add more “intelligence” and “flexibility” to knowledge management apps, this will become a greater and greater issue. I like Tinderbox, for all its learning curve and other idiosyncrasies, because it sticks to XML as a filel format. It means my data will always be accessible, even if it doesn’t look as pretty after I’ve moved it.
I do feel that some devs are trying to create the “ultimate” info repository (bot Notion and Roam fall into that category, I believe) which, as you say, creates an absolute requirement that we be able to get the information out of it as we need or want to. That really ought to be built in from the start
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Export has always been the top concern for me, and secondarily, offline/local files.
This is why DEVONthink and plain text has always been my go-to for pretty much everything. However, there are software necessities for Personal Knowledge Management that demands an exploration for features that are built on some kind of proprietary software integration. Notions export is atrocious, along with Evernote. Bear app provides a great deal of software functionality.
Currently Roam is providing much of that “add-on” experience that goes to the next level above plain text. However, Roam is only a thinking/note tool and NOT a good repository of files, etc. so for me, it is DT for files, Roam for notes/thinking. Roams export is either markdown or JSON which can provide some “futureproofness” if it goes bust. But from what I have seen - if it catches - it will be another game changer like Notions modular databases (the only feature of Notion that held me tight until I broke away).
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Giving Bear a spin. While I don’t love tagging as a way to organize things, I think I can do everything with just four:
Pros of Bear so far:
- Very solid web clipper on the Mac
- Good Markdown support
- Good export options
I disliked tags at first. But conceptually they can be considered the same as folders, but an object can “be” in more than one “folder.”
This is exactly my hang-up with them!
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Is there a way in Dynalist to have the parent automatically checked off when all children are checked (like in e.g. OmniOutliner)? I looked around but couldn’t figure out where the setting/option is, if any.
I don’t think that’s possible. However, showing checklist progress is considered as a possible feature.
In any case it is always better to ask on Dynalist forum directly. The developers are very responsive and some users can do insane stuff with Custom CSS.
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A bit late to the conversation, and I don’t use Notion strictly for any one thing and that’s what I like about it. I totally agree with Rosemary’s list of weaknesses. All of them are true and I would add the lack of a true native app on the Mac makes it a problem too.
However, I’ve not found anything quite as flexible. For instance, I can start a table as a task list, switch over to view it as boards, make “comments” to a task to update progress (not just a blob “notes” interface most traditional to-do apps have), and WITHIN the task I can create yet another table, a page, etc. And I can do that over and over again. The search is pretty fast though I don’t have too much data right now. It’s honestly not a great to do app but I use it as such because it offers me so much flexibility in project management.
I haven’t even cracked the surface, but it’s a great start. I agree with others that the iOS app is lacking, but for me it’s for simple input and viewing (though I did do some work on it while stuck at a movie theater with no computer).
I should also mention that I’m an educator so I get one of the paid tiers for free, but it doesn’t let me collaborate. I would love to use this for family organization.
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I’ve spent some time with KeepIt. While I like the organizational structure, I really want to use Markdown and have the ability to put images inline. I think KeepIt is too strict about the type of note you create. You can get fancy Markdown stuff, but you can’t have images in the same note.
For now, I think Bear wins for this and it’s very good web scraper tool on the Mac.
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@ismh Do you kind expanding on why you like markdown outside of posts you are creating for 512 Pixels (which I love btw!!)? I see so many people swear by markdown for all kinds of writing not intending to go to the web. Unless I missed your point for your data/info collection service.
I like Markdown for its ease of use in formatting text. I can do all sorts of formatting without ever leaving the keyboard, and find myself even handwriting things in Markdown like # for headers in a notebook.
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I will be interested in reading more about your experience with Bear as time goes on. I have mixed feelings about the tags organization – over the years I’ve accreted dozens of tags and my organization evolved into a bit of a mess. I suppose I need to focus on culling the tags and consolidating / creating tag groups.
Katie
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