REQUEST: Graphs view

[Rafael B 25]

Evernote has, as far as I can remember, had the ability to efficiently handle links, both external and between notes. I believe it's time to take the next step: incorporate graph visualization, inspired by the capabilities found in tools like Obsidian. I think this addition can further enhance the experience of organizing and understanding connections between notes, making us more aware of the true meaning behind many of our annotations.

 

Graph visualization, for those unfamiliar, allows users to graphically visualize (see the illustrations below) the relationships between their notes. This would facilitate understanding interconnections and the overall structure of the data. Additionally, it would be incredible if Evernote could automatically recognize links to specific websites and specific YouTube channels as points on the graph to enable a more holistic understanding of how information is interconnected, especially when it comes to relevant external sources. I can imagine the numerous discoveries that could be made about ourselves with this feature...

 

The ability to customize the appearance of graphs, highlight different types of connections, and even add specific labels to points on the graph would be a valuable addition.

 

 

I believe these improvements would not only make Evernote more powerful in terms of visual organization but also distinguish it as a unique tool for those who want to explore and understand their information in more dynamic ways. In the end, it would be a giant leap in building a second brain.

 

In what ways would this feature be useful to you?

 

[PinkElephant 8,710]

The last 2 external applications that did exactly this with the data of an account failed.

I am in general very much for visualization. But in this case I think: Try, try again - this time spending subscribers money ?

[Jon/t 1,614]

I don't understand the graph thing at all apart from being able to show off pretty graphs on social media.

No one has been able to give me a "what real world problem does this solve" answer for a note taking / productivity app.

But then maybe the apps that built this did it for marketing, they look pretty and will drive attention.

[Rafael B 25]

11 horas atrás, Jon/t disse:

what real world problem does this solve

It is a simple mathematical concept with implications that are as complex as they are useful. In short, just know that they mirror how our head works (or should work). Let's use your example, who knows little about the subject. In your head, the little ball that represents “graph theory” is stray and alone, without strong connections to anything. From the moment you look into the subject and understand its deep relationship with mathematics, how it can be useful and the practical applications that solve problems in your world, what was a stray ball becomes something with deep roots in your knowledge. In other words, it is a way of visualizing whether your knowledge is interconnected to form a larger structure greater than the sum of its parts. There is a lot to say about it, but all it takes is an internet search to find out more. 

I hear people who don't know Evernote saying, “That notes app you use is just marketing! You should be more objective and use Apple Notes, which does everything it does.”
 

 

[Jon/t 1,614]

I understand the theory but still can't see what real world problems it solves in a note/project app.

I would imagine the vast majority of folk tag/file/organise their notes so the relationships are there. Others may use backlinks or other ways to connect their notes.

Knowledge Graphs can certainly help companies like Google or huge global prjects where there are millions of disconnected items of information and finding relationships is important but this scale doesn't happen in a note app.

I can't think of an actual real world situation where a graph would help in a note taking/productivity app, apart from looking cool.

[PinkElephant 8,710]

As I already said, there were 2 3rd party solutions in the past that created these graphs, both dynamically. You could for example choose a tag, see all related notes, the pick another and see how the relation graph changed.

Very nice - but I found that after toying with it a little I put it aside. I never found any useful application for myself.

Obviously the same happened to others. Both offers vanished - one was removed from the internet, the domain was for sale when I last checked. The other brought a hard bug to my Mac. The dev couldn’t be reached, the website was off.

This means: Both offers of a graphical interface failed in their attempt to market the tools. If nobody paid for them, why should now EN revive it with their subscribers money ?

[Rafael B 25]

1 hora atrás, Jon/t disse:

but this scale doesn't happen in a note app

If you see it that way, you could replace Evernote with Apple Notes, since you make such basic use of it. On the other hand, in the real world with real people, where research is done and knowledge is stored in the application, features like Graphos View make a lot of sense. It's no wonder books like How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens are so popular. In short, for those who only use the basics it won't make sense. 

In fact, for these people, Evernote shouldn't even be an option to consider, as there are others that are cheaper (or even free).

[PinkElephant 8,710]

... and still, nobody paid for the graph generating solutions that were available.

Find the mistake.

[Jon/t 1,614]

Sorry but I still don't see what real world problem is being solved here in a note taking/productivity app. I know many academics and Phd students who use Evernote for research and use notebooks, tags, backlinks and even their own ways of relating notes to each other. I still can't see how a graph feature helps a note taking app, the scale is too small.

Now if Evernote was a giant global repository that multiple universities and scientists piled millions of items of data into then yes, a graph feature would be useful, but Evernote is pretty much a personal/small team note/productivity app.

Can't use Apple Notes as I have PCs. I've not read the book either but it has 3000 reviews on Amazon so must be pretty good I would imagine.

[Rafael B 25]

36 minutos atrás, PinkElephant disse:

and still, nobody paid for the graph generating solutions that were available.

The reason is the same as why people didn't buy Microsoft's tablets in the early 2000s. The product was bad. There is no argument in your statement, I'm sorry.

[Rafael B 25]

33 minutos atrás, Jon/t disse:

I still can't see how a graph feature helps a note taking app, the scale is too small

Search YouTube for “Evernote”. Then search for Grafs View on Obsidian. Compare numbers based on recent videos (last 3 years). What are users searching and interested in most? The world goes far beyond your bubble.

 

More information:

 

https://developassion.gumroad.com/l/PersonalKnowledgeManagementLibrary

[Jon/t 1,614]

You see this conversation always ends the same.

Whenever I ask for real world examples on what problem the graph would solve for Evernote, after a few times of asking I usually get told that I don't understand it or my usage is so basic that I should not bother because I'm too simple.

Instead of insulting I would love to know what problem it solves for a note taking/productivity app.

BTW video views (approx 30 seconds viewed) are no measure of a feature being useful... maybe most folk just think they look pretty, which is fine and why they watch the videos. I prefer to get stuff done.

[Rafael B 25]

6 horas atrás, Jon/t disse:

Instead of insulting I would love to know what problem it solves for a note taking/productivity app.

 

Forgive me if I seemed to offend. My mother tongue is not English, and maybe my way of writing sounds very strange to you. That was not my intention.

 

6 horas atrás, Jon/t disse:

Whenever I ask for real world examples on what problem the graph would solve for Evernote, after a few times of asking I usually get told that I don't understand it or my usage is so basic that I should not bother because I'm too simple.

 

Regarding real-world examples, I have already given several, but here I will give the principal to me:

 

The Zettelkästen Technique

 

Consists of small pieces of information stored on paper slips or cards that can be interconnected through subject headings or other metadata such as numbers and tags. It has often been used as a system for note-taking and personal knowledge management in research, study, and writing. In the 1980s, the card file became a metaphor in the interface of some hypertextual personal knowledge base software applications like NoteCards. In the 1990s, such software inspired the creation of wikis. One well-known user of this method was the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998), who built a Zettelkasten of around 90,000 index cards for his research, crediting it for facilitating his prolific writing (including about 50 books and 550 articles).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten

 

 

By representing each small piece of information as a node in a graph, graphs would provide a clear visualization of the interconnections between Zettelkasten elements, significantly enhancing the ability to understand and explore conceptual relationships among different notes, going beyond the metaphor of physical or digital cards.

 

The efficiency would be even more apparent in the graphs' ability to facilitate the discovery of new connections and patterns. While the Zettelkasten technique itself emphasizes the importance of discovering ideas over time, visual representation in graphs would provide a dynamic tool to explore and visualize these discoveries. This would make the process of building and expanding the Zettelkasten more agile, intuitive, and targeted.

 

Researchers, when viewing their graphs, can easily detect areas where cohesion or content depth is less evident, making it easy to identify points that require clarification or expansion.

 

In other words, it would be possible to identify what is fundamental and what is accessory amid this whirlwind of information in which we live today. If someone cannot see the clarity in this resource, the only reason is that they are not engaged in research or are delving into a difficult-to-understand and analyze subject.

 

The analysis of the depth of the content produced becomes more evident, allowing us to quickly perceive the quality of what we are producing and our major influences. Moreover, points that require clarification or expansion become easily identifiable, as well as those that need to be discarded.

 

In summary, the introduction of graphs into the Zettelkasten application would revolutionize the system's efficiency, offering a dynamic visual representation of interconnections between notes and enabling a more intuitive exploration of accumulated knowledge. This integration would enhance the already recognized advantages of the Zettelkasten technique, creating an even more efficient knowledge management environment adaptable to the demands of research, study, and writing.

 

6 horas atrás, Jon/t disse:

BTW video views (approx 30 seconds viewed) are no measure of a feature being useful... maybe most folk just think they look pretty, which is fine and why they watch the videos. I prefer to get stuff done.

 

The number of videos, texts, and courses produced by different content creators and writers, the number of views, the number of comments, and even the existence of training programs that teach users how to deal with graphs constitute a set of reliable metrics to gauge people's interest in the subject. The count of views is indeed one of these metrics, and to say otherwise is completely out of the question. You just need to open your eyes to realize it.

 

P.S.: Zettelkasten is the central theme of the book "How To Take Smartnotes, One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers" by Sönke Ahrens.

 

[PinkElephant 8,710]

Oh, hello again, Chat GPT.

We have no fun with postings of this type here, and I will positively not read it at all.

My lifetime is too dear for me to waste it into reading what a bloodless machine may spit out.

[Rafael B 25]

I spent about an hour, while waiting for a patient to arrive at my office, writing a text based on my notes from the book How to Take Smart Notes and Wikipedia, seasoned with my own experience and particular vision on the topic. If an unsuspecting person thinks that everything was based on ChatGPT, that says more about that person than about the content I produced. Being completely sure that a text found on the web was produced by AI is only possible in two ways: 1) if your knowledge on the topic is so comprehensive (level 4, 5 or 6 of Bloom's taxonomy) or if you know nothing about the subject. I don't even need to tell you which one I think you fit into in relation to A.I. and others.
 

'Your level of excitement about AI is inversely proportional to your understanding of AI. The less you understand, the more excited you'll be.'
 Fábio Akita

A brazilian genius of programming. 

[PinkElephant 8,710]

The German writer J.W.v. Goethe once wrote a letter to a friend, opening with the words: „My dear friend, excuse me for writing this long letter, but I didn’t have the time to write a short one.“

Writing is like EN: It’s not perfect when you can’t add anymore - it’s perfect when you can’t take away without reducing functionality.

I don’t enjoy reading your posts because they don’t make a point, so I skip reading them. Beside learning some communication skills, I just learned that educating your patients to punctuality would be a way to reduce inflationary forum posts.

[Rafael B 25]

I want to propose a mental exercise about what you would respond to someone presenting the idea of Evernote to you in the mid-2008.

 

Stepan Pachikov: "I am developing an app with the central idea of providing a platform for organizing and storing personal information based on notes, allowing users to easily capture, organize, and access notes and various content across different devices."

 

"Humanity will always have to deal with outdated and technologically shortsighted individuals like you, but rest assured of one thing: everyone notices a shortsighted person walking down the street, especially when they're without glasses."

____________

2 horas atrás, PinkElephant disse:

The German writer J.W.v. Goethe once wrote a letter to a friend, opening with the words: „My dear friend, excuse me for writing this long letter, but I didn’t have the time to write a short one.“

 

Out-of-context quotations are typical of those who only superficially know them. Goethe, one of my favorite writers since school, wrote extensively throughout his life. His autobiography 'Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life' and his Magnum Opus 'Faust' are not known for conciseness. A good idea should take as much time as necessary to be expressed, especially when the goal is didacticism and future-proof documentation, and that's why I write them.

 

By writing here, my goal is not for you to read and agree, because I know you won't. I am doing this to convince some that such features are important and demonstrate how they would enhance the workflow of those who actually use Evernote, while also recording my vision for the future of the app. For this, I write a text based on a Spiral Writing formula (look it up later 😉), thus delving into each idea as the text progresses, even though I have already given a glimpse before – hence the spiral. This way, the reader can grasp the central idea in the first paragraph, but it becomes more argumentative as the text unfolds. That's why you already feel capable of arguing against these ideas without reading everything, as you are a victim of cognitive illusion. It's designed for this (search on google about engagement). If you continued reading attentively, you would see that your arguments are weak. Moreover, such a style allows me to quickly check if a comment came from someone who didn't even finish reading.

 

Notice, these posts will remain here on the Forum for years (perhaps decades), and when these features are implemented – and many of them will be, as otherwise, the company will go bankrupt due to lack of paying users – I will be very pleased to show that my eyes were on the right track, far from the comfort of spending the whole day in a forum defending the delay and stagnation of a company with a history as beautiful as Evernote. The future will come, and with it, new features – whether we want them or not.

 

Regarding 'educating patients to arrive on time,' I cannot choose when they will get sick, as today I was in the urgency and emergency department. Once again, you demonstrate being at level 0 of Bloom's Taxonomy in yet another area.

[Rafael B 25]

Below I include a very well-known video. Bill Gates explains the origins of Microsoft and tries to convince Dave to get a computer. (Air Date 11/27/1995).

You'll be like this poor man soon enough. 

Citar

“What the hell is [the internet] exactly?” Letterman asks Gates.

“A place where people can publish information. They can have their own homepage, companies are there, the latest information,” Gates says.

“It’s wild what’s going on.”

Letterman wasn’t sold.

“I heard you could watch a live baseball game on the internet and I was like, does radio ring a bell?” Letterman says.

Gates said unlike with radio, the internet would allow users to watch a baseball game whenever they wanted instead of live.

″[Do] tape recorders ring a bell?” Letterman asks.

Gates, who dropped out of Harvard at the age of 19 to start Microsoft in 1975, also told Letterman “you can find other people who have the same usual interests as you do,” by searching the web.

In addition to working to make computers a useful tool for connecting and for education, Gates predicted the advent of artificial intelligence; he told Letterman there might be a way to make computers think on their own.

At the time, however, Gates was not sure how that would work.

“That turns out to be a very tough problem,” Gates says. “In fact, there has been almost no progress made on it, so no one knows what that will happen. Some people think it will never happen.”

Gates called the idea of an intelligent computer a very “scary thought.” (Twenty-four years later, Gates still has a similar view: In March, Gates called A.I. both “promising and dangerous.”)

So what were Letterman’s final thoughts on the web? “It’s too bad there is no money in [computers and the internet],” he told his billionaire guest.

Avaliable on: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/08/how-bill-gates-described-the-internet-to-david-letterman-in-1995.html

 

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,710]

You still rely on your verbal inflation and at the same time miss to make a point.

Are you in a profession where the word count is paid for ? I once had contact with some of these PowerPoint junkies that were mistakenly taken for being business consultants. You could view their presentations at 60fps, because they had plenty of slides, but in the end you asked yourself what was their message. Same with your weird presentation of ideas and content.

I take the Goethe-example (yes, it was bait): You talk very confidently about how you know this man, his works, and your wife (greetings) and all of it. But you don't comment on why it takes less time to write a long letter instead of a short one - which was quite obviously why I picked this quotation watching at the word count of your average posting here. So first you didn't impress me at all, and second you still have to answer that one (if you want to mildly surprise me).

Have some relaxed minutes (or hours) thinking it over.

[Rafael B 25]

My friend, I'll be brief now because I'm addressing only you. Even a person with a modest academic background is capable of understanding this elementary sentence that recognizes and values the effort that concise and rich writing demands. What you failed to grasp is that, between the lines, I implied that this sentence could never be from Goethe, as it indeed is not — considering his enormous works and texts as lengthy as they are delightful to read. Goethe never wrote that sentence. It's surprising that you have difficulty understanding something so simple.

1 hora atrás, Rafael B disse:

His autobiography 'Truth and Poetry: From My Own Life' and his Magnum Opus 'Faust' are not known for conciseness.

Now, I address the other readers regarding one of the sentences previously written by our technologically myopic friend. See:

3 horas atrás, PinkElephant disse:

Writing is like EN: It’s not perfect when you can’t add anymore - it’s perfect when you can’t take away without reducing functionality.

Nothing could be more false in this life. There are contexts where we need minimalism  and there are contexts where we need redundancy. Software falls into the latter group. And that is its beauty. This user lacks a lot of knowledge, so for years his main activity has been defending Evernote's stagnation on this forum. After all, if the software doesn't evolve, it remains limited like our friend. Maybe he doesn't want anything to get better, so as not to attract excited new users to this forum.

The goal is not to minimize, but to make the interface easy to use and understand.

I took a total of 15 minutes to write this. And I found it to be a lot. It's unhealthy to unravel the cognitive limitations of others.

----

When I go on vacation, I'm going to sit down to develop a plan to capture all the posts from our friend Pink Elephant and compile an article with all his 'contributions,' prediction errors, diagnostic errors, reasoning errors, and the like. I'm thinking of hiring a small team for 2-3 days to help me, as there is a lot of material to collect and interpret, given that he tends to spend the entire day typing nonsense with his fingers here on this forum. It will be memorable. I won't restrict myself to him alone, of course, but rather, I'll review everyone contributing to hindering the evolution of Evernote. Who knows, maybe I'll pay someone to produce a well-crafted video, with professional voice narration, that makes this material go viral among people interested in Evernote. This would be doubly useful, as I'll bring visibility to the forum and my ideas, as well as promote Evernote to those who are not yet familiar.

I'll spend a few dollars on this, but it will be worth it. I'm focused on doing what I can to help Evernote reach its potential.

[b3njooo 3]

This feature would be awesome. I really like the concept of obsidian to get a visual graph/mindmap representation, although the implementation is not so pretty. This feature done right could be so powerfull. Evernote has everything needed... Internal note links, Tags, Notebooks. Just go for it!

[PinkElephant 8,710]

Did you read the thread at all before posting ?

If not, you can now do what you missed.

(Hint: 2 solutions that offered graph view tried, both failed. Why should EN implement something that didn't draw enough support both times when it was tried ?)

[b3njooo 3]

Certainly, I understand your perspective, though I don't share the same view. I firmly believe that Evernote should venture into this domain. If I'm interpreting Rafael's thoughts correctly, he, along with many others (myself included), envisions that the future of note-taking lies in visual representations and organizational structures such as graphs, trees, mind maps, and the like. Maybe also including AI in getting better insights and link related topics etc. There are already several impressive applications on the market. Granted, none have reached perfection, but the trajectory seems clear to me. The available external solutions are not an option to me since the price tag is exceeding the evernote abo and i definitely do not want to give away all my notes to another third (maybe untrusted) party. I can imagine that this might have contributed to the failure of these apps. Would i be willing to pay extra for this feature in Evernote? YES, definitely. To me this discussion strongly remembers me to the innovators dilemma. Nobody needed a touchscreen on their phones. If you would have asked people if they need one they would have said no. Are you using one on your phone?

[PinkElephant 8,710]

DID you read the thread ?

There have been at least 2 attempts by 3rd party vendors to add a graphical component to EN. Both failed. It is not that nobody ever tried.

[michael-gerloff 3]

Rafael, great to see that even in Evernote forums there are rude real world people <sarcasm off>. I was just looking for an older software that could be used for visual exploration of my Evernote data, when I found your request that I support. I have often used the Bubble Browser to discover new topics in my EN notes – that couldn't be done with the standard view. And there is still the download site at Evernote (https://appcenter.evernote.com/app/bubble-browser/mac/index.html). Unfortunately the software isn't updated anymore – I wish EN would support this. And yes, I like the Zettelkasten approach, too.

P.S. Never trust people who quote Goethe.

[PinkElephant 8,710]

Maybe read that page again to which you posted the link - this time include the fine print at the bottom …

[michael-gerloff 3]

Maybe read my simple post again – this time try to understand it ...

[PinkElephant 8,710]

Maybe read the posts above yours. Then try to piece it together why the idea got burned, long ago.

[Rafael B 25]

"The Pink Elephant strikes again!”

Some of my suggestions (coincidentally or not) were implemented by Bending Spoons, much to the dismay of "this being" driven by delay. I'll talk more about it soon.

[michael-gerloff 3]

8 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Maybe read the posts above yours. Then try to piece it together why the idea got burned, long ago.

Maybe I just ignore rude show-offs and know-it-alls 🤔
💡 <block>

[michael-gerloff 3]

7 hours ago, Rafael B said:

Some of my suggestions (coincidentally or not) were implemented by Bending Spoons

Interesting, I'm looking forward to reading more.
And if anyone from Bending Spoon is reading the forum: I appreciate BS's work, and I understand that no company will be able to fulfil all user requests (especially not immediately 😃)

[cfwells 1]

I like the idea of being able to see a visual graph.  I understand Jon/t's question about the practical use.  What I would get from this feature is to be able to look at the connections and perhaps be surprised that something I thought would be very connected is, in fact isolated.  It might spur me to make more connections for it.

I imagine it might give me some insight into what is important to me - and I could reflect on that.

I think it would be a very nice thing to have, even though I admit - I wouldn't spend a large amount of time using it.