Magpie – Git-backed Evernote replacement

https://magpie-notes.readthedocs.org/en/latest/#what-is-magpie

by charlesthomas • 12 years ago

101 39 12 years ago

magpie-notes.readthedocs.org

r0muald• 12 years ago

I could not find a demo. It would help a lot if there was a working demo.

charlesthomas4• 12 years ago

That's a really great idea. I'll have to work on setting that up.

edit: here is a demo: http://magpie.sknkwrks.net/

snicker• 12 years ago

I was editing the note about "farts" trying to add a list of foods that cause excessive flatulence (to test markdown support of lists, of course), but after submitting my edit, I was getting 503 errors for a short period of time.

after a few more minutes, things seem fine

edit: it seems that someone was able to remove my hard work and valuable information. Given that this is based on git, is there any way to revert or view previous versions of notes?

orthecreedence3• 12 years ago

I love Evernote, but I no longer trust my data to cloud providers.

Give https://turtl.it a shot as well. Aims to solve this very problem: Evernote with data privacy. (Disclaimer, I built it. Disclaimer2: not nearly as advanced as Evernote).

That said, Magpie looks really cool.

drivingmenuts• 12 years ago

So, the Magpie creator no longer trusts cloud providers, yet the software stores data on github. You know that record scratch sound? I think I just heard that.

Yes, I know one could configure one's own github repo and make it accessible, etc. I know that cloud storage is about as reliable as that shaky cousin who's always borrowing "a few bucks for beer, man."

It seems like everyone is attacking the wrong problem. The problem is not the client, that's just a UI/UX issue that's never going to be resolved because, hey, I hate what you like and vice-versa.

Can someone please create a more reliable back-end so we can stop saying things like "I hate cloud providers"? I hate them, too, but I'm not going to redesign the part where the problem ain't.

wtetzner• 12 years ago

It's backed by a git repo. I didn't read anywhere on there that it stores the repo on github.

charlesthomas4• 12 years ago

Magpie source is hosted on Github, because it's open source - it's public. There is no requirement that the git repo you use to store your data be on Github. The git repo for Magpie and the git repo for the data you access through Magpie are not intended to be the same.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

I think you missed the part where Magpie can put its repo anywhere, (even on your local machine). But to your point about 'fixing the problem', that problem is already addressed, but not packaged particularly well.

There are already enough 'cloud' providers to provide the necessary diversity, and there is already enough crypto to provide the necessary security. What there isn't is an adapter layer that puts those two together in a way that lets folks like the Author build their favorite UI on top of it.

One such architecture might be a git server on a machine at one's home, which uses fuse to create a replicated secure backend across S3, some VPS, Dropbox, and what ever. Giving the git server on the machine a 'file system view' while creating a replicated and encrypted block back end using a variety of cloud providers.

You could do that with a VPS in the cloud as well, but it has some exposure to infrastructure seizure or damage. By hosting it at 'home' you trade some slightly stronger legal protections for the limitations of your home internet connection.

orthecreedence3• 12 years ago

The problem is the client. With a client that does proper encryption, you could store your data on one of the huge TV screens in Times Square and have complete privacy.

A server should just be a dumb, transparent container. Whether it's Github or some custom-made "super secure" server doesn't matter. The real magic happens in the client.

zellyn• 12 years ago

It would be lovely to have this running on top of Camlistore, rather than git. A little more automatic, linkable, etc.

charlesthomas4• 12 years ago

I'm not familiar with Camlistore, I'll have to check it out. Thanks for the suggestion.

corbinpage• 12 years ago

It doesn't resolve your fear of cloud providers, but Simplenote (http://simplenote.com/) is an awesome, simple Evernote replacer. Especially is you trust the folks at Automattic!

fonnesbeck• 12 years ago

Simplenote seem to have abandoned Markdown, as it is only arbitrarily implemented in the web app. This makes it less compelling for me.

devindotcom• 12 years ago

I use simplenote religiously and the new apps are great, but it's not really a replacement for evernote.

andrewflnr• 12 years ago

What, do they finally have a real Android app?

yitchelle• 12 years ago

Simplenote looks great. Any idea how they make money? On their front page, it says "Backups, syncing, sharing — it’s all completely free."

lips• 12 years ago

It started as Simplenote, but was acquired (methinks) by Automattic (WordPress) at some point, and the underlying tech was turned into https://simperium.com

moonlighter2• 12 years ago

If you like a native app (OSX, iOS and Windows), take a look at http://www.notebooksapp.com

It's very clean, allows markdown, and the best feature is that it keeps your content as files on disk, so even if you stop using the app, you still got your content (not hidden away in a database). Plus you can easily use dropbox, rsync or whatever to sync it. It's a really great app.

pastylegs• 12 years ago

This looks great. I've been looking for an offline alternative to Evernote for a while now. Are there any other decent Mac apps I should consider?

moonlighter2• 12 years ago

I used NoteSuite before, but wasn't too happy with it. It's UI is quirky, tries too hard and gets mostly in your way. Notebooks doesn't fall into that trap. I'm not aware of others but my research into it wasn't that exhaustive, so if there are other decent OS X apps I'd love to hear about it too.

EvanAnderson• 12 years ago

Be careful with the demo! I noticed somebody creating "notes" w/ XSS (albeit just an alert) while I was playing with it.

simcop2387• 12 years ago

Definitely. I just embedded autoplaying youtube videos: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/3KANI2dpXLw?autoplay=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://magpie.sknkwrks.net/kjhkjh/hkjhkjhk

erikb• 12 years ago

I'd love some screenshots in the docs.

lsinger3• 12 years ago

I use GitHub's gollum [1] git-based markdown-supporting Wiki for pretty much this. It's easy to add a basic username / password protection. I run it on a Digital Ocean instance that had some capacity left over and have a cronjob push to a private bitbucket repo every 30 minutes for backup. I don't have to create notebooks and can use GitHub-flavored markdown (or other any syntax gollum supports).

That said, I like basic idea of extending magpie with a PDF scraper and email. Maybe it would spare some energy to fork gollum and add extension to it to make it more Evernote-like?

[1] https://github.com/gollum/gollum

general_failure• 12 years ago

Is your code for adding auth public? I would love to have the same setup

lsinger3• 12 years ago

See here for Basic Auth: http://stackoverflow.com/a/13357591/633167

lsinger3• 12 years ago

Oh, and nicely wrapped in Fluid [1] as a site-specific browser with a nice icon [2].

[1] http://fluidapp.com [2]: https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/71619/book_moleskine_notes_...

rwbt• 12 years ago

I mostly use Evernote for clipping webpages for later reference (images, pdfs etc). I still haven't found quite an easy to use replacement. Most of the evernote replacements seem to concentrate only on text/lists.

cheepin• 12 years ago

Ever tried Dragdis?

jclos• 12 years ago

Dragdis looks amazing, but do you know of any offline alternative? I don't trust anything that lives purely online anymore.

hliyan• 12 years ago

Seems "Magpie" is a common name for Git-related projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7378345

DrinkWater• 12 years ago

The paragraph "What isn’t magpie?" clearly lists why magpie is NOT an Evernote replacement, yet on the top of the page it says "Git-backed Evernote replacement".

Stop using the word 'replacement' when in actuality you mean 'clone (wip)'

joshdance• 12 years ago

Cool project, looks fun.

Just a note, any 'Evernote' replacement that uses any sort of markdown or markup language is not a true replacement, but an 'Evernote inspired' project. Most people don't want to learn markup languages. Rich text editors are the well established norm and any true Evernote replacement needs to have one.

Magpie – Git-backed Evernote replacement

Related Stories