Yet Another Review/Rate My Startup Request (luminotes.com)
Web browser support for the web-based product itself is fairly restricted. So no Safari, and no Opera. Yet.
I realize the product is a little general-purpose, and that makes a unique selling proposition more difficult to craft. I also realize that you kind folks on HN are not the target market.
I'm trying to build a sustainable business, so I'm not interested in tips for attracting investors/buyers.
If you must say a comment along the lines of, "I don't see how this is any different than all the other wiki / notebook / word processor software out there," then please at least read some of the tour or try the demo first. If it's still not clear, then obviously I need to improve my explanation of the product.
So, what do you think? My main goal at this point is to improve traffic and build a larger customer base. I have a handful of paying customers now, but not nearly "enough". Part of the problem might be that convincing consumers (rather than businesses) to pay a recurring fee is a tough sell.
Anyway, thanks in advance.
41 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadWeb browser support for the web-based product itself is fairly restricted. So no Safari, and no Opera. Yet.
I realize the product is a little general-purpose, and that makes a unique selling proposition more difficult to craft. I also realize that you kind folks on HN are not the target market.
Tags are in the works.
I'm trying to build a sustainable business, so I'm not interested in tips for attracting investors/buyers.
If you must post a comment along the lines of, "I don't see how this is any different than all the other wiki / notebook / word processor software out there," then please at least read some of the tour or try the demo first. If it's still not clear, then obviously I need to improve my explanation of the product.
So, what do you think? My main goal at this point is to improve traffic and build a larger customer base. I have a handful of paying customers now, but not nearly "enough". Part of the problem might be that convincing consumers (rather than businesses) to pay a recurring fee is a tough sell.
Anyway, thanks in advance.
Are you going to open the code? I'm sure you've used tons of other people's work: come on, contribute some back!
I'd love to run it on my laptop: since the software is truly personal, without any sharing/collaboration benefits, why would I want to keep it in the "cloud", which often is unavailable?
So... where is the code? I saw "download" feature, but it gives me HTML, not the software.
The link to this page is at the bottom of the front page. It used to be more prominent, but I found people got confused about whether they had to download the software in order to just make a wiki.
You can browse the Mercurial repository online as well.
And as for your question about keeping the software in the "cloud".. The software actually does have some sharing/collaboration features. (Whether they're useful for your specific needs is another matter.)
I'd like to make a desktop version of Luminotes at some point, but I have no concrete plans for it now.
I think the biggest hurdle in a Luminotes desktop port such as this would be replacing PostgreSQL with something like sqlite.
Another option would be to throw out the existing server entirely for the desktop version and use something like Google Gears.
This way you won't drive people away w/o them at least trying your product to see if its for them
Also, by the way, my conversion rate to free accounts is around 26% according to Analytics. (This is not for AdWords clicks.) I think a bigger concern for me is my conversion rate (or lack thereof) for free accounts to paid accounts.
Thanks again.
My first thoughts for a use case would be for a company to keep training docs. In which case, I would make the fact that it costs money more prominent.
It's a product of a korean company called OpenMaru.
Do you have one too many '%' in your document.write(...google analytics) code? It throws a visible '%' at the very bottom of your page.
Interestingly, in Python, "%%%s" % "foo" != "%%foo"
I should point out that while your concern may be legitimate, you can download your entire wiki as HTML whenever you want. So if for whatever reason you don't like the service at some point, there's no lock-in.
If there's another download format that would make you feel more comfortable, please do let me know.
But this isn't really relevant to the discussion..
My main criticism is that there should be an explicit "save" button or link for notes. Perhaps it could be similar to the gmail "save draft" button, in that autosaves would disable or "gray out" the save button (nothing more to save). I think not having a specific Save button will confuse "average" users who have been trained to "Save Often!"
Other than that, I think it would also be good to be able to hide or "minimize" the vertical menu on the left (+,link,<paperclip>...) because I actually find it quite distracting. I feel like it breaks the flow from menu item to note- maybe moving it to the right might be good as another option.
Overall, quick to set up and easy to use- so those are winners! Nice work :)
You can hide all the crap on the left (except the toolbar) by clicking the "nothing but notes" link on the right side of the page. Maybe I should make that clearer. And maybe I should have it hide the toolbar as well. Is there anything I could do to the toolbar to make it less distracting?
Done. :)
Note that you can view the wiki pages without JavaScript. You only need JavaScript to edit them.
I guess I should add similar tags to the other pages as well.
UPDATE: Added <noscript> to main wiki page.
See http://luminotes.com/notebooks/74uqe3cecagabucmrvwls33b4?not...
The question then is what to call the product if not a personal wiki.
Very rarely I want to take multi-line notes, in these cases I use Google Docs, since I use all the G apps anyways.
Where does your stuff fit in? The ability to link to other entries seems pretty useless, or at least rarely useful.
After trying out the demo, it's better than G Docs because the interface is simpler. G Docs opens docs in new tabs/windows which is pretty annoying for smaller docs. If you add some kind of check-off bullet point capability to your lists (e.g. gray them out), then I could ditch tadalist and G docs and unite my stuff here. That would make sense.
You call it a "personal wiki" which seems like marketing speak for nothing, since the idea of a wiki is that everybody can edit it, but if it's personal, then it's really just a specialized HTML editor (?). Maybe you should just call it a "Notebook that just works".
UI bug report: when I click an entry on the left side, you flash it (in yellow) and then you scroll to it. But if it takes long to scroll there then the flash in unseen by the user. Scrolling then flashing may work better.
So I see that as where Luminotes fits in. It's really a notebook of interlinked notes, which you can't really do with Google Docs or Tadalist. You can do it with a full-fledged wiki like Mediawiki, but for many people that's overkill, and besides doesn't come with the nice UI.
As for bullet point check-off capability, you can quite easily use the strikethrough for that purpose. I know several people who use that for crossing things off lists as they're completed. It's perhaps not as convenient as a single checkbox, but it does work.
"Personal wiki" isn't marketing speak, as I'm going for the "interlinked collection of notes/pages" aspect of the word "wiki" rather than the collaboration sense of the word. But I think it's becoming increasingly clear that regardless of all that, "personal wiki" isn't a great way to describe the product.
Thanks for the UI bug report. I think I should be able to make the scroll and flash work serially rather than in parallel.