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This is a really great idea. I take a lot of notes on my desktop but they tend to end up in a stash of markdown files somewhere. Being able to contextually link my thoughts to what I was doing at the time is going to be a boon to productivity.
Looks like something I'd use every day if executed properly.

Some things that I think would make this an awesome app:

1) IFTTT integration would be sweet. "If i get an e-mail about something, remind me to do it by putting it in my contextual note for an application"

2) iCloud integration would be sweeter. Unified notes for applications that exist in "desktop form" and "mobile form".

3) A "view all notes" option to be able to browse sans-context

4) The ability to clip media into a note easily

Definitely +1 on the "view all notes" options. Knowing full well that Ghostnote was intended for people like me that don't necessarily use structure for note-taking and need the context, I don't want to find my self in a position of not being able to find an important note because I'm not looking at that file/URL at that moment.
I was lucky enough to be a beta tester for this and it's really neat. You don't even think about it, but there is this massive cognitive overhead we all go through trying to sync up some notes that are "over there" where "there" is Evernote, a Google Doc, or a text file and toggling back and forth.

I don't use it for everything (no grocery lists) - but for lots of the computer based tasks I do it is perfect.

Hi everyone

I could write a whole book about this project and what i had to go through to get it out but finally I think its there.

Ghostnote allow you to add notes to almost anything on your mac. Files, folders, applications, websites and even documents open inside applications (ex a photoshop document).

I made it because I am not good at structuring and often just need notes for specific context but soon realized that this approach actually has quite a lot of potential.

Next update will have support for applescript so you can customize context.

Let me know if you have any kind of feedback. Everything is appreciated.

This is a really great idea, was there anything specific to OS X that allowed you to get the contextual information you need, or do you think you'll be able to port it to other operating systems in the future?
No doubt OSX is a little easier. I have been looking into windows and have some solutions for it but OSX just have some easy ways to fetch the context.

It was not without issues because of the sandbox so we were also rejected once (for unknown reasons still) but found another way to do it.

We literally is building a whitelist with app ids and how to speak with each of the different apps. However we have only explored a tiny fraction of whats possible.

In the next update users will be able to script things themselves. But we are looking at Windows.

It looks pretty awesome! I think it could be even better if you allowed notes to be attached to a particular web element.

Also, imagine the possibilities if you could attach categories. Say you have someone new joining a team, you could essentially give them access to a category and they could see all the notes. It would be like Slack channels except you have the context built in :D

Yeah we are looking at that too.

In theory with the next update where you can customize your scripts you could write it yourself. We of course hope people will and will share stuff we don't get around doing.

But lots of little things are on our list.

With regards to the categories. Great idea!

We are working on a solution where you can share notes via ex. dropbox. So i add some notes to a folder or a file and you can read those notes. Dropbox deals with the syncing.

I like this. I may try it out in spite of having too many note-taking strategies already (and this wouldn't replace everything else). Please do share your story - it's good marketing and it makes people feel better about paying (a measly) $5 when they understand what and who is behind it. Given the value and the ongoing work you'll be doing to add support for different contexts, I think you could raise the price to $10.

Are you using the extended attributes to store notes in each file? If so, that'd make it easier to pass the notes along to other people. I could easily see this being useful across art departments.

You probably have this on your to-do list, but you could use the new capability to badge icons in the Finder so I know there's a ghostnote attached.

Wow some really great ideas there.

We will be using the ability to store notes in files and folders. This will be especially helpful if you use ex. dropbox. that way you can share notes and dropbox takes care of the syncing.

It would be great to have the note kept in sync with the comments section on a file/folder when you Get Info on it so it's easily passed along to others. But i'm not sure if that supports formatting/bullets, etc.

Currently if a file is moved around, does it keep the note? Can you add a note to any URL, or only ones you've bookmarked?

Very slick looking and great idea, i'll be buying

Where exactly would you be storing the note? Curious as to how durable/invisible it would be to the user.
In the assets themselves
Sorry to be dense - I'm curious about the implementation. Can you give more detail? Is this in the extended attributes or file comments? Because I understand if the file moves to a non-HFS+ file system, you can lose those.
I tried searching, but couldn't find a definitive answer: are resource forks still a problem when transferring files to non-os X systems? If I understood what I found correctly, dropbox handles resource forks (presumably just copying hidden _-metadata-files when using the app for os x) -- and apparently smb/cifs support resource forks (but I don't know how eg samba3/4 would store them on an ext4/zfs-backed file system).

It's one of those great little features that really lose out to the least-common-denominator effect... I'd kinda hoped that Apple just found a way to push/force apps to use fileformats that included metadata (but that would of course create other problems, like no more plain text files)...

Does anyone know of an up-to-date article that details the current state of resource forks and cross-platform issues (or lack thereof)?

Yeah so one idea we are hoping to push with Ghostnote is to use it to store notes for sharing.

So if you are using ex. Dropbox ghostnote will detect that and and the notes to the actual asset itself. That way others can see those notes and dropbox handles the syncing issues.

You could even send attach files to emails and send them with notes embedded if you wanted. We are looking at some of these things and I am thinking with a little bit of luck this might be a good way to promote it.

I'm sorry if I'm a bit dense, but I'm not sure what you mean by "it" above. Do you mean resource forks?

And how does that work if the email/filesync stops by a Linux/Windows machine or two on the way? Is there a "bundled" file-format that would allow something like a PSD to survive an email round-trip between eg. a designer running OS X, and a developer running Linux (err... in the case of a PSD, maybe windows -- even if Gimp's handling of PSDs are much better than it used to be :-)?

Thankfully it's been a while since I had to deal with "mac"[1] files so I'm not updated on the current state of affairs.

[1] Actually problems I've had had little to do with Apple per-se, more Adobe's lol-lets-throw-this-undocmented-binary-serialized-stuff-in-a-box-and-call-it-a-day hobby fileformat PSD -- that they apparently don't even understand how works themselves -- leading to some hair-pulling when going mac-windows-linux-mac etc.

Is there a shortcut key to create a new note or open a note (if one exists for the current document)?
Thanks for this app; I've been wanting exactly this for years: I need to multi-task and I often forget what I was doing, so I need a TODO attached to specific windows.

Before you start adding big features such as Applescript, I recommend that you address basic problems and missing features (that you might have unearthed with an extended beta program). Please go check out the reviews at the App Store.

Thank you very much for your kind words.

We have three priorities

Bug fixing

Applescript

Dropbox Team Access

In that order. So don't worry we aren't going to drop or turn this into bloatware :)

My concern is not that that it could become bloatware. My concern is that it suffers from basic usability issues but you're prioritizing things that I won't ever use.
I hear you and I promise you they wont be affecting the usability at all :)

Applescript is something you can use to do but wont have any affect on the usability.

Dropbox support also wont have any affect on the interface.

Our primary priority will always be bugs and user experience first, features second.

This looks really clever and great.

I was confused at the end of the video, though. Why did the iTunes note come up when you switched back to the Ghostnote website?

i think i might have mistakenly clicked on itunes outside the view.I will make a better video soon, had a 2 year old hanging on me while i did it :)
Not a big deal - again this looks great overall and I really like the concept. I will probably end up buying this.
Fantastic.

Once you have let me know and I will put you on the beta list so you can get to play around with some of the cool new stuff we are implementing.

I love this. I wasn't aware of how much context I have with each note, but now that I watched the video it is immediately obvious.
I think it would be useful if the ghost in the menu bar changes color if there's actually a note attached to the document/folder. So that you wouldn't have to constantly check if you actually wrote down notes for it
Agree it in the list of things to do.
And for files/folders, maybe have the icon change to reflect that there's a note attached (in the same way Dropbox modifies icons).

I think it's a great tool but I worry I would just forget where I had attached my note: to the root folder for a project, to one of the many project files etc

Good points. We are def looking into some of these scenarios.
I was just looking for something like this the other day...
How to save context with any note/todo app/list:

Just append a "#context"

Unfortunately, this doesn't work if the you forget you applied the context.
Yeah but thats actually the kind of work I want to get away from. I just want the machine create the proper context for me :)
Your logo looks similar to Ghostly's http://www.theghostlystore.com/
It also looks similar to a goodly proportion of the results of a Google image search for "cute ghost"... which I think is inevitably what happens when you use a generically recognisable device like that.
All of them are variations of Pacman's ghost.
This looks really neat right now I use NVAlt hotkey'd to Cntr+1 to hide/show and that get's synced to Simplenote which I use on my iPhone. I have a "temp" note where I store short-lived snippets, urls, etc and I normally just do something like:

#Reason I have this saved

Saved data....

....

....

I'd be interested in trying this out though to see how it compares. The one thing I really like about my setup is everything is synced to my mobile phone but I rarely need my "temp" note on mobile so not having mobile access to notes left with this app might not be that bad.

I know i keep repeating this but in our next update we get support for customizing applescript. Perhaps you can do something there.

The main idea though is to treat these notes a little more like real post-it-notes. I.e. forgettable things that truly live in the context and you only have to worry about in that context.

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Also a humble request.

I literally went through 3 developers and too much money until I was so luck to find @jimmyhoughjr.

Jimmys primary expertise is iOS but I convinced him to help me out on this project for the money I could afford.

Jimmy could use some freelance work as he has been out of work for while now (and live in the mid-west).

So if you need an extra hand on som iOS work don't hesitate to connect with him. He is a really nice guy and he is one of the main reasons Ghostnote even is anything today.

Congratulations! May I ask how did you reach out to developers and how long did the project take. I assume you designed it? Thanks! :-)
I tried odesk, elance etc. the whole sherade and they all ended up not delivering.

I still hang out on IRC and through the #macdev channel via one of the moderators i was put in contact with Jimmy.

Just goes to show, few things beat personal recommendations.

But please if you have any work please help out Jimmy he is a really good developer just caught in a shitty situation.

As a designer learning iOS to build an app I designed, why didn't you develop the app yourself? Do you feel like the time lost learning OSX development would have offset the potential earnings of the app?

My impression when shopping around for a developer was that to get something like ghostnote built you'd have to spend around $50k+. This ultimately led me to just trying to build the app myself, but I'm finding that while I can achieve basic functionality with iOS, anything complex is far more time consuming (custom UIs, animations, integration 20 + apis).

I have been circling around this contextual idea for several years now and in fact this is just a small part of what I ultimately want to build.

It sounds simple but it's much harder than one would expect. I hired several developers most couldn't get it done and I had even talked to several developers about doing it as a split deal.

Its one thing to build an app that does what the framework is build for, but we are doing stuff that are kind breaking some fairly new grounds. On top of that having to deal with MASS and the Sandbox was a frustrating experience.

I do know how to program just not well enough to even remotely begin to solve some of the things you have to solve to make this work.

My best advice is make sure you have a pretty well polished idea, final (kind a) design and an interesting problem.

I managed to build this because we basically focused on the major challenge for Jimmy and not a lot of nice-to have stuff but ultimately not important to begin with.

Time learning programming is never wasted but it's just a different level we are talking about for this app.

> I do know how to program just not well enough to even remotely begin to solve some of the things you have to solve to make this work.

Yeah I'm in the same boat. The app I'm building has some really complex interactions that involve building a "mini" language within the app. For example:

` <send me an email> <if I get a tweet from @whatever> <else> <compile all mentions into one email> `

^ It's something like IFTT meets the simplicity of a markup language. So the user would actually be able to define these workflows much like writing simple jquery.

There's more to it than that but as you can see it extends far beyond basic iOS application building.

I ended up by learning and building myself. Just have to keep my burning rate really low. I've been working on my project for around two years now. Hope this time I can satisfied with what I'm building and actually put it onto app store. Thanks for your story.
Currently I am also spending time learn iOS to build an app. And its a long arduous task, specially if someone has never coded ever. Personally, last I wrote a piece of code was 3+ years ago, while in school.

I haven't specifically shopped for a developer cause forget $50k, I can't even spend $5k. So I guess sometimes, its not really about offsetting your potential earnings, than it is about whether you could afford one at all.

Still it will be interesting if ThomPete ever publishes his earning report of sorts :)

PS: Just wondering any specific course/book you are referring for iOS?

I think if you have an interesting problem it's easier to get a developer on board than if you have something thats a lot of work but tedious to do.

Also I always offer 50/50 split after I have recouped my investment. This is to pay for upgrading the app (an there will be many updates after launch believe me).

If the app is interesting then they might be a little more willing to invest their time too.

A query, how did you decide on the price point for your app? There must be some kind of break-even calculation or something?
I learned the hard way it's better to start low and the raise prices than to start high and then have to lower them.

You wanna give the early adopters a better deal than the later ones.

I knew this app was unique (I frankly have never seen anything close to it) and i knew it was adding value because I use it all the time myself and it has some potential so I could go way higher and still make the same if not more.

But I decided to start at this price because i didn't know what kind of bugs would surface once many people started using it. That way people don't feel like they are overpaying even when they find bugs and I am kind of giving them a discount to provide me with valuable information.

I think that is fair to everyone.

I'm working through this course - http://bitfountain.io/courses/complete-ios8

It's really comprehensive but absolutely massive. If you have a demanding full time job it could easily take you a year to get through the full course.

> I haven't specifically shopped for a developer cause forget $50k, I can't even spend $5k.

The problem isn't really the initial dollar amount, it's spending what you think you can make back on the application in a reasonable amount of time (6 months). If you can't make $50k on an app then why spend the money to have it made?

On the other hand if you can spend 3-4 hours per week learning how to build the app then what you make back is really whatever you value your time at minus the upside of learning a new skill.

The problem is that it takes years of experience using these tools and programming in order to make anything complex. I'm learning that the hard way.

> The problem isn't really the initial dollar amount, it's spending what you think you can make back on the application in a reasonable amount of time (6 months). If you can't make $50k on an app then why spend the money to have it made?

I guess that is where one needs to a fair bit of market analysis. One could argue that ghostnote might or might have a potential for $50k but who knows? Add the fact that some gurus say paid apps are dead while you can find numerous paid ones working fine, it is just confusing.

Then there is decision on pricing the app. I was reading up on some devs who put out their income figures. One might be inclined to think Dash for iOS at $10 might be a hard sell but it has done really good. On comparing to another app priced at $3.99 with same number of downloads, the returns have been much higher.

So the issue doesn't stop with whether I can make it back. But also, how do I make it back. I am too learning it the hard way :)

> I'm working through this course - http://bitfountain.io/courses/complete-ios8

My first impression after scrolling through the page is - It is too detailed. Maybe for complete beginners in programming.

I have started with free Udemy course - https://www.udacity.com/course/ud585

Following it up with the free Stanford classes. Currently need to start with the 3rd lecture.

Is there any way to contact @jimmyhoughjr other than via Twitter? Thanks!
yeah send him a mail jimmyhoughjr at me dot com
I know you probably don't want to publish his email here, but since his website doesn't seem to work, it makes it hard to contact him without twitter (which a lot of non dev guys) don't have.

May I ask, ballpark figure, how much was this project, or how much he charges per hour? I may have some projects in the future for him.

pm me my contact info is in the profile
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Also if anyone knows a good windows developer who might be interested in joining uss please don't hesitate to put them in contact with me.

We want this to be cross platform.

It's slow to open the note. I click on the ghost, and it doesn't open right away. It's not long, but noticeable, and distracting. Also, there is no click feedback. This wouldn't be a problem if the note opened right away, but with no visible feedback, it feels like clicking does nothing.
Hi Jason lotito sorry to hear you are having issues. Shouldn't be slow at all.

If you want to we can see whats going on. Just write us a mail on info at ghostnoteapp.com and we will look into it.

Sure, no worries. I took a video showing the issue, and I'll send it off to you.
I have the same issue. I also see a small cog icon in the menu bar whenever I do something like switch apps or chrome tabs. I guess it's an indicator of ghostnote activity, but its sometimes to the left of the ghostnote menu icon, sometimes right and sometimes a couple of app menu icons over...

Of more concern is that after installing I noticed moving finder windows around as sluggish and sometimes just the system cursor in general. If I quit the app, that goes away.

Those issue are making it unusable for me.

I also see this cog in the top whenever I click.
hi diff_sky

That does sound weird. Do you mind sending me a mail (info at ghostnoteapp dot com) so we can figure out whats going on.

We are working on the cog wheel issue we just haven't been able to reproduce the bug on our screens so any look at the beast would help.

I also see the cog and am noticing the lag. I just sent you an email detailing my observations as well as a video of the issue.
Great.

It seems to be an issue with SIMBL which is installed with a lot of addware and older safari plugins. We are looking into the issues and getting back to each person with a solution.

For what it's worth its not related to our code.

i saw it randomly a couple of days ago on #macdev. looks interesting. a couple of questions though. is there a "all notes" place? what happens to the note if you delete the file to which it is attached?
There isn't an all notes place for now.

It's the #1 request but the catch is from people before they have tried it.

We are still on the fence but will probable end up adding it (and normal context-less note taking) but it's going to change the app quite dramatically so for now no.

However next update we add the ability to customize via applescript and there you could in theory just make it add the notes to ex. evernote everytime you add somehting.

no dont add a contextless note mode. im just thinking that i will forget where i had notes..
Holy crap. Looked at the site and thought, "hey, pretty cool. I don't know what I would use it for, though."

And then I watched the video and have been coming up with use cases non-stop. Starting with adding vim key-bindings I'm trying to learn to iTerm. Bye-bye yellow-stickies all over my monitor!

Fantastic. Please don't hesitate to share your other use cases.

What I have found is that once you get your head around it's contextual you realize that this is how everything should work.

If you end up buying it send me a note and I will add you to the betal list so you can get acces to the new version with applescript support.

I thought it should be integrated in the OS, applications would set the context through the API. Software like this reads the context and manages the notes. That's to say I had a good impression, and I hope to see it on Windows one of these days.
Sorry to be slightly off topic but we could imagine the browser adapting to the context, too. There'd be a dropdown menu to select for example "Photoshop context", then it changes tabs according to the open project, and remembers them between sessions.
Question, though. What if your notes are too context specific. So, for example, the note would bind to the specific file you are viewing in vim, whereas the contents of the note would be helpful for any file opened in vim?
From the video it looks like you can have a note specific to a terminal window open to vim.
But how do you specify at what level the note should bind?

Sometimes, you'd want it at the file-level, sometimes at the vim-level, and sometimes at the terminal-level, I suppose.

One solution would be to have a hierarchy of contexts displayed in the note app. (Like breadcrumbs in file explorer). User could switch between context levels manually.
I would love to see a software like this that would help me take notes from Google Books and reference back the book and page number. Then it would be able to give me my notes sorted by time, tags or book.
We actually tried to get it to work with ibook and kindle but no dice :)

Google Books doesn't seem to have any url differentiator between different pages so it might be hard unless we find some other way to detect different page numbers.

Wow, this looks amazing. Shame I'm stuck with Windows for now.
we are hoping to come out for windows too. Sign up to our newsletter we will discuss it there.
Suggestions:

* View all notes and navigate to file or folder on click (or something). It should be easy to use a note to find the file.

* Backup to Dropbox (for example) and offline backup and restore.

* Attach multiple notes to a single file or folder.

* Categories or tag-based search.

Really great idea. Reminds me of Ember app by Realmac, except this is for the whole filesystem. A very useful addition would be ability to add tags and sort files/notes by tags.
The note should open upon clicking on something with a note (as an option, as I can see this annoying some users), or do some sort of indication on the icon that there is a note. I will forget to use it properly as it is, but I can see it having tremendous value otherwise.
this is pure garbage it installed malware on my computer.
Looks great,

Is it possible for it to save the content as Markdown in a path of my choosing?

I like having my note data in plain text.

not for now, but next update might have a solution for that.
I was expecting a Trial version to try out, whether it fits my workflow, but its not there.

Please consider adding a trial version.

I know and I understand.

I wish Apple allowed you to do that but for now they don't.

I have talked to paddle.net and binpress.com about making it available through their services. You can sign up to the newsletter if you want to be notified about things like that.

Thanks.

I always bought Mac software from Paddle, as it supports trial versions.

Worth mention, very surprising that Apple doesn't allow Trial versions.

It's the price of coffee; come on.
This looks fantastic.

I watched through the video and looked on the feature page, but couldn't figure out two key things:

- Is there a way to do a text search on all your notes?

- Are your notes saved in any sort of exportable format?

> Are your notes saved in any sort of exportable format?

This is a critical feature, and one many note and todo apps forget. Silos of information is A Bad Thing [TM]

Being able to gather notes distributed among objects into a single text file makes this app easily twice as useful (on top of an already great idea).