The graphical style is very cute :) I wish the internet was more like this (geocities like)
BTW more websites should propose embedded music...
edit DAMN THIS WEBSITE IT GETTING IT RIGHT!!
we live in an absurd world where we have so many websites where people create or categorize content, and yet we can't live what other people live.. Most social networks are now tragically private by default (youtube playlists, etc) and we can't observe the feed of other users, not even super-users, only our shitty algo biased one.
Yet here I can easily browse user contents and this is just much more useful than anything I could have came up myself, we users of the interweb are so deprived of authentic user content, I discovered in a few minutes of user's content browsing unique concepts, such as a mapping of the musical taste of someone, and so many other relatable, under-represented and heartwarming content!
The world might not realize it, but this is what everyone needs.
Thanks! I've been working hard on it. I got real tired of hearing how the web is lost, or how you can't have build a real business on the web, unless you sell data and/or have VC, and wanting to build the web app we deserve :)
That's a really cool space btw, found some gems in there
Thank you, that give me hope, this is very meaningful work :)
very minor critic: the scrolling performance is not perfect on some boards (note that my 4K screen doewsn't help..)
BTW your app just made me discover the movie "everything everywhere all at once" (yeah I must be living under a rock..) and I'm very hyped given the critics!
are you seeing scroll performance on boards with lots of cards/connections? Or on all boards? I develop Kinopio on a 6k screen so I'd also agree that there's future optimizations I need to do
I've installed android application and it showed around $2-3 per month for subscription. But I'm pretty sure it should be different in another country or for web.
I use concepts on an ipad pro for drawing and i bought the subscription for a few dollars.
I prefer it over other drawing apps for ipad because it's vector based.
It has a slick interface and has a "rightsized" feature-set, not too many, not too few. Just enough to be productive without overwhelming you with options.
Makes sense. At least in these early days I didn't want to rely on that as a crutch because Kinopio is designed to also work on mobile/touch devices which don't have hover
Can you let me know more so I can repro? When you navigate from one kinopio page (called a space) to another, the back and forward buttons are supposed to do the right thing
When I first visited, I clicked on an arrow that was on a card with the blue creature. I was taken to a kind of shop, that had a picture of plants at the bottom. From there there is no back navigation. This happened twice. But now when I visit the link in your submission, I’m taken directly to the shop, so I can’t reproduce the problem.
Firefox 100.0.2 on Windows 10. Clicking the arrow directs me to https://kinopio.club/u9XxpuIzz2_LvQUAayl65 but going back (or refreshing) doesn't change the page content
browsers natively don't handle huge amounts of nodes as well as native or canvas implementations (which have other downsides). There's def more optimization I can do here though
Yep, we unfortunately have the same problem at OrgPad. Canvas doesn't help that much, probably going to skip extensive canvas rewrites and will use WebGL instead.
I created one note, deleted it, scrolled to the bottom, and tried to create another.
From then on, everything was broken. Taps didn't create cards, scrolling became janky, sometimes I'd see the pink circle of a tap from something I did 10 seconds previous, and in the wrong place.
The was repeatable when I exited the site and came back in.
Intellij has (had?) a lifetime license.
My POV is that having to pay monthly forever is a psychological burden. Your pricing seems reasonable to me but psychologicaly, some users could pay for a lifetime license and not for monthly one.
Also you could propose a discount for the first year (a common practice)
Specifically, for a note-taking app, a subscription model is discouraging. I don't want access to the history of my thoughts tied to a recurring payment. On the other hand, if I stopped paying for IntelliJ, I can open my code with any variety of free or paid IDEs (ignoring the fact that I can use a 12-month old version of IntelliJ indefinitely).
That makes sense. If you use a tool you would expect that you will keep what you produce with the tool. Keep paying for using the tool, but keep the work-products for yourself.
Similar concept though different execution - customization + organization in a way that doesn’t feel like a productivity tool which is what I think Kinopio is aiming towards. Definitely an inspiration for me!
ya somewhere along the way 'productivity' became 'enterprise', a depressing association to tools that are ideally supposed to help you build a better and funner life
The design is really cool, but the tool is useless (to me) if I can't use it offline and store the data on my own hardware. For some reason everyone in this space is building cloud tools!
localStorage is in a file, on your computer ;) For Firefox/Linux, it's in webappsstore.sqlite (guessing the same file exists for Windows/macOS too but can't verify, and Chrome probably have something similar).
Less fun: many "offline-capable" web apps that leverages PWA APIs/localStorage usually often allow you to download/upload a JSON representation of your data. I think I remember a graph drawing tool that allow you to do just that, but can't find a link to it right now.
It's a hidden, opaque file. As far as I can tell, my browser doesn't tell me what its path is on my file system. That path and the file format could change with a browser update. Again, localStorage is nice, but this whole setup isn't comparable to a .pdf or whatever that I can have on my desktop.
It wouldn't have been draw.io / https://app.diagrams.net/, would it? I use that tool frequently, and loved that feature at a company where data couldn't be stored on external servers
in the case of Kinopio, you can also export your data to a JSON file. But I think the OP may be referring to something like obsidian where each document corresponds is an individual markdown file which is always up to date
Working on a project in a similar space and the vast majority of people I have spoken to have said they don't care if it is in the cloud and find managing files on their devices to be a huge hassle. I think the Hacker News audience is a bit out of touch with the ways most people use their tools and devices.
Your user and spaces data lives entirely on your own computer, in your browser localStorage. Because it is not sent to a server, you can't share your spaces or access your spaces from another device.
If you clear your browser's cache and delete your cookies you will be removing your kinopio data.
To keep your data safe, share and collaborate, and edit your spaces from all your devices sign up for an account at any time.
With an Account
Your user and spaces data lives on both your own computer and on the kinopio servers.
You can safely clear your browser cache and cookies without losing any data.
"
Hey! Congrats on the launch.
Love the emerging thought and products around spatial web apps.
Building the company in adjacent space – www.spatial.chat
let's chat one day. feel free to dm in twi: @kidrulit
In Japanese it means mushroom, not sure what else (the nintendo character toad is called kinopio-kun in japan). But really I just randomly stumbled on it years ago and it sounded unique and interesting to me
The Greek word is "κοινοποιώ". It derives from "koino", which means public, and "poio" which means acting/doing something. So it literally means making something public. Sounds like a hell of a match for what your product does.
Congrats on the launch! I'm also a fan of glitch so congrats on that good job too.
Just out of curiosity have been reading the engineering part and came across with below for not using websockets, confused because debounce and throttle is mainly used to avoid many updates over sockets so it's very well known problem for reactive programming
> You might be wondering, why don’t you just update the database with websockets instead of relatively slow API requests?
> The problem with saving data with websockets is that they’re too fast. Authenticating that many messages per second and writing them to disk would be really inefficient. E.g. If you’re moving a card from position x: 20 to x: 420, Kinopio will use websockets to broadcast many updates during the move: moving card x to 21, moving card x to 24, moving card x to 28… potentially hundreds of messages.
That's a good point, and I should look into that (it's been a while since I touched that part of the codebase). Off-hand my guess is that the other reason I handle api requests separately is because I can group multiple actions into a single request more easily, which isn't something I need to do with websocket streaming
Organic farming def has a lot of problems, but what the ideal that it conveys to normal people shopping in a grocery store (that the food is better for you, no pesticides etc., made by ppl not factories) is the spirit I'm trying to channel – I'm not making a literal/perfect 1:1 comparison
Hey congrats on the launch! The site looks amazing, i've been digging into everything. There's a lot more going on than what seems at first glance and it's super fun to peek around and discover :D - can you share a little more details about the backend and how you manage to keep all these in sync, seems to be a lot of work there as well and it'd be interesting to learn more about your tools/process. It's very rare to see creative projects like these that go beyond a simple PoC and actually have plenty of effort and development behind them, so many kudos also for that, it's very hard to manage both creativity and sticking to a plan (i'd be interested in learning how you manage that as well :) Is this app part of the solution? Thanks and keep it up!
Congrats, love the design - doesn't feel like typical flat/material/lowestdenominator style that is absurdly popular. Feels like the old web we all miss.
This is so cool. I love the aesthetic and UX. The only thing is, I really wish I could self-host this. This seems like just the kind of thing I'd use for personal journaling brainstorms, and I'd really love to be able to just have that kind of data locally or self-hosted in my own location of choice.
Yeah, I understand. I'd be happy to pay a higher one-time fee for the software, or still do it on a monthly charge basis (I understand there'd be enforcement difficulties with that though).
When I saw "Kinopio", I thought it's about Toad character (my favorite) in Super Mario universe. :) But I'm still pleasantly surprised to see a site that looks very unique.
I wonder if the word "Kinopio" means something other than Toad in Japanese (maybe someone here who knows Japanese can answer?)
Straight from Wikipedia: Kinopio, which is a mixture of the word for mushroom (“kinoko”) and the Japanese version of Pinocchio (“pinokio”). Those blend to be something along the lines of “A Real Mushroom Boy.”
Woah. I love Kinopio! I've used a lot of different tools that are similar but something about the artstyle and the way it works is just so fun. Huge thumbs up.
Hmmm, I see how the painting action lets you select multiple connections ... maybe Alt-drag to get a more traditional selection box that makes it easier to select a bunch of cards?
2D canvas is by far the most natural way to brainstorm.
I've been using the Vienna beta (https://vienna.earth) but am interested to see how this compares. So far I like Vienna for visual stuff - but going to try this for mind mapping.
kinopio isn't traditional mind mapping, think of it as just writing stuff down wherever until it makes sense. Hopefully we can agree that clear writing comes from clear thinking.
Never been a huge fan of mind mapping. You have to kind of force the information into a certain structure, whereas with a paper/canvas, you can just put everything down without connecting stuff with lines.
I'm also not a huge fan of traditional mind mapping (which uses a single tree and everything has to be connected). With Kinopio if you want to put everything down where you want it without connecting stuff with lines you can totally do that :)
Looks very compelling, I'm curious as to whether it covers all the bases.
At my day job the sales-side folks Zoom with customers all day to discuss financial API integrations. Every potential customer is different. They draw out everything in Whimsical, https://whimsical.com/, which has a very bare-bones aesthetic. It seems to work, they got to US$10M ARR in short order.
I believe that Kinopio does most or all of what whimsical can do, but with a very different (less rigid and less structured) approach. Happy to answer any specific Qs as they come up
This is a very promising tool - I can see many uses for it. My one fear nowadays is that this data could be valuable to the likes of Google etc for training ML models. Hope you can keep this away from the crawlers.
143 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] threadedit DAMN THIS WEBSITE IT GETTING IT RIGHT!! we live in an absurd world where we have so many websites where people create or categorize content, and yet we can't live what other people live.. Most social networks are now tragically private by default (youtube playlists, etc) and we can't observe the feed of other users, not even super-users, only our shitty algo biased one. Yet here I can easily browse user contents and this is just much more useful than anything I could have came up myself, we users of the interweb are so deprived of authentic user content, I discovered in a few minutes of user's content browsing unique concepts, such as a mapping of the musical taste of someone, and so many other relatable, under-represented and heartwarming content!
The world might not realize it, but this is what everyone needs.
[0] https://kinopio.club/my-music-taste-4Z-ImVfoQ46poNtyLJSrQ
That's a really cool space btw, found some gems in there
BTW your app just made me discover the movie "everything everywhere all at once" (yeah I must be living under a rock..) and I'm very hyped given the critics!
EVERYTHING is connected in a way.
Kinopio has a little more... personality, but I use an infinite canvas app called Concepts when brainstorming for work or play.
https://concepts.app/
https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html
From then on, everything was broken. Taps didn't create cards, scrolling became janky, sometimes I'd see the pink circle of a tap from something I did 10 seconds previous, and in the wrong place.
The was repeatable when I exited the site and came back in.
Android Pixel 6 Firefox 100.2.0
Ya Android is the only platform that currently has this bug (and a couple others). It's hard to diagnose, but I'm working on it. Sorry about that!
Also you could propose a discount for the first year (a common practice)
Sounds like a good idea, I haven't really seen this myself though, could you point me to some examples?
That is meant just as a data point for you, not to diminish your work (which is awesome).
Shameless plug on an app I’m working on: Bleep (https://www.bleep.is)
Similar concept though different execution - customization + organization in a way that doesn’t feel like a productivity tool which is what I think Kinopio is aiming towards. Definitely an inspiration for me!
Less fun: many "offline-capable" web apps that leverages PWA APIs/localStorage usually often allow you to download/upload a JSON representation of your data. I think I remember a graph drawing tool that allow you to do just that, but can't find a link to it right now.
note: probably works best in chromium browsers
" Without an Account
Your user and spaces data lives entirely on your own computer, in your browser localStorage. Because it is not sent to a server, you can't share your spaces or access your spaces from another device.
If you clear your browser's cache and delete your cookies you will be removing your kinopio data.
To keep your data safe, share and collaborate, and edit your spaces from all your devices sign up for an account at any time.
With an Account
Your user and spaces data lives on both your own computer and on the kinopio servers.
You can safely clear your browser cache and cookies without losing any data. "
If you're curious about me or about the process of designing/creating, these blog posts might be helpful:
- https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html
- https://pketh.org/designing-for-thinking.html
- https://pketh.org/the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
kinoko (mushroom) +
Pinocchio
Just out of curiosity have been reading the engineering part and came across with below for not using websockets, confused because debounce and throttle is mainly used to avoid many updates over sockets so it's very well known problem for reactive programming
( https://pketh.org/how-kinopio-is-made.html )
> You might be wondering, why don’t you just update the database with websockets instead of relatively slow API requests?
> The problem with saving data with websockets is that they’re too fast. Authenticating that many messages per second and writing them to disk would be really inefficient. E.g. If you’re moving a card from position x: 20 to x: 420, Kinopio will use websockets to broadcast many updates during the move: moving card x to 21, moving card x to 24, moving card x to 28… potentially hundreds of messages.
https://supabase.com/blog/2022/04/01/supabase-realtime-with-...
other CRDT/WS implementations/threads https://github.com/yjs/yjs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22039950 https://syncedstore.org/docs/sync-providers/
https://pketh.org/the-first-four-years-of-glitch.html
I would rethink your metaphor about organic software[0].
[0]: https://pketh.org/organic-software
https://pketh.org/how-i-build.html
let me know if you have other Qs
I wonder if the word "Kinopio" means something other than Toad in Japanese (maybe someone here who knows Japanese can answer?)
Sometimes that's how I feel about myself
Is there a way to select multiple cards at once?
https://help.kinopio.club/posts/selecting-and-bulk-actions/
I've been using the Vienna beta (https://vienna.earth) but am interested to see how this compares. So far I like Vienna for visual stuff - but going to try this for mind mapping.
At my day job the sales-side folks Zoom with customers all day to discuss financial API integrations. Every potential customer is different. They draw out everything in Whimsical, https://whimsical.com/, which has a very bare-bones aesthetic. It seems to work, they got to US$10M ARR in short order.
https://help.kinopio.club/posts/privacy-options/