why does anyone use any web service anyway?

“does anybody really know what time it is? does anybody really care?” – chicago

that you pretty much won’t use metanotes without it?

this makes since b/c you don’t twitter much either.

how do we get Matt to use it more ? ? :)

up to you

how do we get users to use it more?

at some point, we will get the techcrunch bump. we’ll be written up in techcrunch. this might happen sooner or later, but it’s a strategic milestone. we reach our milestones – heck we get trophies sometimes !!

but we don’t want users logging in and not using METANOTES.

for instance, it would appear that you’re not really using it yourself… which is GOOD because maybe we can figure out what it would have taken to drag you in further.

this account exhibits the behavior of most of our new users. so we need to figure out psychologically what would have gotten you to dive right in.

rob’s an old stanford friend in silicon valley.

he nabs me on facebook chat every so often

Rob:

when will you have a metanote app for facebook?

Srini:

excellent question

so we actually have a DUAL product, similar to the way you could say “News Feed” is a “different product” from Facebook in toto

metanotes is in alpha. we are working on a beta. it’ll take a few weeks; maybe as many as ten; to get to beta.

Rob:

cool

Srini

but the SMALLER app – our “news feed” – is called The Time Log.

i’m working on this (it isn’t finished yet): http://the-time-log.com

basically the time log is pure embeddable widget, and this will be our first facebook app.

Rob

i was just think that Dr. Who might call it “the log of time”

Srini

it’s going to be ready for beta by next weekend.

remember Choose Your Own Adventure Books?

the first one was “the cave of time”

Rob

and I see you are doing plumbing ads on the site ;);)

Srini

hahaha that was my experiment with adbrite

i know their founder so i wanted to give it a shot, sort of tacky tho :):)

we want google ads relating to smartphones as the time log is in my opinion the most useful smartphone thing ever

Rob

yup.. but was kind of funny.. I’m quite sick of ads these days.. they need to present me with a great deal of value for me to give them attention

Srini

like, it replaces whatever onboard “notebook” or “memopad” handily – it’s got: 1) it’s online 2) tagging 3) direct msging 4) twitterlike fun

Rob

cool

you can also get silly and have a utility that will export the content in Microsoft office (any app) format ;);)

that would be easy and funny at least to me

Srini

at least google we can tune to show smartphone-related ads; we think millions are going to buy palms & blackberries and there really is no good way to take notes on them outside the onboard note apps (which must be synced etc)

Rob

of course.. here I am banging away on my Mac with not a MS app in sight ;);)

Srini

oh definitely – the Google Docs API is in the spec already and it turns out MSoffice has an API now too.

Rob

I agree.. I can take notes on my Iphone.. but it is awkward and time consuming.. its autoword corrector is ok. but many times chooses the wrong words

Srini

this is part of a “whole product” strategy to unseat Word as the best way to go all the way from quick jotting to raw idea through brainstorm, composition, collaboration, sequencing, and editing and then export it into a doc good to go for your professor.

Rob

and it does not allow useful meta-data manipulation.

have you considered getting the Iphone SDK and porting the app to the Iphone too?

Srini

right. taking notes on the smartphone = gorgeous concept. no proper software. and tagging = DUH.

that is a great idea Rob ! (iphone sdk)

Rob

of course you will have to code in objective C ;);)

Srini

the idea is that METANOTES is a big wide sprawling space. use a whole computer for that. but TIME LOG is optimized for the quick entry thing that is going on at conferences with twitter (google the word “backchannel” to see discussion).

objective C ! sounds like a rapper

Rob

the great thing about apps that take advantage of “cloud computing” (aka SAAS) is that apps can be super light.. storage at Amazon.. etc…

Srini

to continue: twitter is fundamentally a PUBLISHING tool; it was created by the same guy that did Blogger. that’s great and all! but for every one thing i might “publish” – even to my friends – there are like 100 things i just want to WRITE DOWN.

Rob

exactly.. like taking a note in the supermarket

Srini

yeah we only serve text ! all images and video & widgets are embeds of various flavors

Rob

or often I get book suggestions from friends while at the coffee ship

Srini

right – not even like it’s dirty private thoughts, they are just NOT RELEVANT to anyone else.

Rob

or reminders

Srini

sometimes it’s halfbaked schemes, or notes on a book, or whatever. why would you ever tweet those ?

the STEREOTYPE of the twitter user is one who is on it all the time going “i’m at starbucks getting cappucino”. this is incredibly rare in real life.

Rob

today I’ve got a zillion apps that don’t talk well together.. its driving me nuts.. I want one apps that does it all.. one app to rule them all and with the ontology bind them!

Srini

however – if that note is PRIVATE, then i can even see the use of that – especially if it’s datestamped, and (scope creep but someday) it let the user actually enter in how much they pay and see that deduct from a running balance for instance.

our dream for time log is ONE PROMPT TO RULE THEM ALL.

Rob

I like that

Srini

you’ll be able to do a google search, a tweet, an amazon search…. all from one freaking PROMPT, with a tag prompt afterwards

and don’t even get me started on how we are going to decimate email

time log is so much more efficient for small teams it isn’t even funny

Rob

this is how the borg got started ;);)

Srini

it works like those old nextel walkie-talkie ads (especially when we eventually get the whole text-msg-notifications thing going)

our coder is also working on a project for recording audio into an embeddable player; so you can also leave AUDIO notes directly through the system (you can speak into your PC or call a number)

Srini

so anyway: our brand mission is to get ppl to take more notes. i am amazed to report that this brand mission is somewhat unique in the world of business today.

Rob

that is cool.. also transcription would be cool too.. voice to writing.. and maybe the writing to voice.. if one is driving and needs a note

Srini

platforms for notetaking exist, but i really doubt anyone is quite as OBSESSED as we are

have you played with Jott ? they do that, you can call a number and they transcribe it on the fly

Rob

yes.. like in startrek where everyone keeps a log

Srini

and they are ALL about the API too

you can already call Jott from your cell phone and have what you verbalize translated and posted to Twitter and several other services too

we will do a deal :):)

startrek logs: ABSOLUTELY.

Rob

cool.. Anne has a thing where when you leave voice mail on her phone it turns it to text and emails her

Srini

also like in Twin Peaks when the lead guy calls “diane” all the time.

anne = classic innovator/earlyadopter

Rob

maybe you can do a co-marketing deal with Paramount for startrek ;);).. do a product placement in the next trek movie

Srini

if it works for anne, you can productize it and cross the chasm!

did you know i live right across the street from paramount ?

their parking garage is right across the street

Rob

or applications for ship and airplane logs for crew.. or even military logs (the military does lots of reporiting.. it would help offices write their after action reports if they could take live notes

Srini

yes. like Google, an infinity of uses.

the company that rules this value proposition could become fabulously wealthy. :):) bridges to enterprise usage build themselves if students start using it en masse as well.

Rob

yes. you may also want to do a program with soldiers in iraq and other places.. cause when their tours are up they will go work for someone

Srini

and we have a hook in with IBM out in raleigh as well – a VP has taken interest in us and our lawyer thinks we might be able to hammer out a partnership with Lotus Notes (who also have an API).

Rob

excellent.. you had mentioned the potential deal with lotus

Srini

great idea on iraq. in fact: one of my good friends is just back from iraq and i am going to get him on board as a community person as soon as i am able (he def needs a job)

we’ve been invited to join the IBM partner program. i have procrastinated; thanks for reminding me

Rob

also if you need inroads with CIA and NSA.. I can get you a hookup

Srini

word word

Srini

everyone knows there is a futuristic interface out there somewhere. multitouch panels are going to be all over the walls of tomorrow’s home. if you have read fahrenheit 451, that is the bradbury future – interactive walls all over the house (although hope we don’t go and burn books)

I wasn’t sure if you note in my inbox was in reply to a specific note I left somewhere so I thought I would gather some of my thoughts, some of which left in beppu’s inbox, here for you. I apologize if I’m reiterating anything that has already been thought of.

Relationships between notes.

If someone is leaving me a note in my inbox that is a reply to a note somewhere else, the originating note should be referenced. Other ideas in this same vein of thought are Comments and Simple Links/References. My initial thoughts on actual implementation is give each note a unique url. For example this note could be http://www.metanotes.com/sonicsrini/inbox#id=20080317222659;rel=link;

I could probably keep running with this but I’ll stop here for now.

Implement OpenID

It’s good. You should.

I want an API

I plan on using this site a lot in the future and see many possibilities and I’m sure others do too. At the very least I’d like to have a quick and easy way to post a note using a desktop or mobile app.

Widgets

I know this is currently achievable by just posting the html for a simple widget, but this is insecure. I would probably limit note input to textile, or even allow a choice between textile and other simple markup languages, and implement a widget system of some sort. Being that this site seems social in nature (the ability to, dare I say, “friend” someone is something I would like to see as well) I was thinking that becoming an Open Social container would be an obvious choice.

Content Pushing

Ability to push note content into specific sections or content areas of other social sites. ie. My Profile Space “Music” note content being pushed into Facebook/Myspace Music content area. Other thoughts are to push notes to Twitter/Pownce.

I love the site and hope to see great things in the future.

- Jesse

The problem is how Twitter was built. Without rewriting the entire application with scalability in mind I don’t know if they can increase the performance and reliability of the service. That many updates and connections from so many different sources is just too much for a small company to handle. When Kevin Rose posts to 20,000+ people it creates a tremendous amount of updating and with even more and more people joining and posting each day it is getting worse.

We have a real time chat application called Signalfire that in not unlike Twitter that can suffer from the same issues within so many simultaneous connections. I was at a talk where DHH had mentioned that if you plan to develop something that takes off in this fashion your going to take a hit on performance. It is not just rails, the database or the host but the structure of the application itself. It is just resource intensive and you must have understood that when you built it. Unless of course you never thought it would go anywhere which I think is the case here.

hi matt – do you have some ideas on how to spark usage of the circles? or to get users talking to one another?

the way i see it you are in charge of USAGE.... the system is ready to use if not yet optimized. there is product to be built but we still need to solve the psychological puzzles of how do we get people to use it NOW.

you were sort of against the circles concept earlier

what did you have in mind for sparking usage?

a few more like this dude & we could change the world !!!

hope we can get him an API sometime.

do you know anything about documenting an API ? that could be an excellent project for you, John says it is super basic but we should take it from there and turn it into a thing of beauty (watch out leah culver!)

not enough project definition

in other words, i have so many things i have to do. but they are ill-defined as projects, if at all. an assignment paradigm would really help this.

not enough focused-attention time