On average we’ve been putting out new Clibu Notes releases twice a week for the past few months. These typically include a mix of new and updated capabilities along with bug fixes. See the Release Notes for full details.
As we get more people using Clibu Notes, more issues come to the surface. I’m pleased to say the turn around time to resolve a problem and release an update is typically just a couple of days.
We also proactively monitor for issues and often times the user isn’t even aware that something may not have quite worked as expected.
I’ve recently been asked whether this monitoring includes any access to users content and the answer is absolutely not. We get details of whereabouts in the code an error occurred, what may have caused it, the email address of the user and the type of device, operating system and browser being used.
We’ve also been improving and optimizing the user experience across devices. The way we use applications on Smartphones, Tablets and Desktop PCs differ considerably and we need to adapt applications to meet the needs and work within the constraints of each device.
Delivering a good user experience on Smartphones with their small screens and virtual keyboard is the most challenging and I feel we are doing a pretty well. That said we are continually looking at ways to make Clibu Notes easier to use.
To that end we’ve recently added the optional blank like toolbar:
When you have a physical keyboard it is easy to tap / to open the Slash commands menu. This is not the case with the virtual keyboard on a Smartphone, where you may need two or more taps to use / and another tap or two to return to the normal keyboard.
This is where the blank line toolbar comes to the fore, providing similar functionality as the Slash menu, without having to perform keyboard gymnastics. The blank line toolbar is enabled by default on Smartphones and can be enabled or disabled on the Settings menu.
On the topic of Smartphones we’ve worked hard at improving the usability of Clibu Notes on Apple’s iOS. Until Apply implements viewport updates when the virtual keyboard opens & closes we remain hamstrung. This has been on Apple’s list for well over a year now and hopefully we’ll see it sooner than later.
As an aside Clibu Notes works wonderfully well on Chrome on Android and also installed as a PWA. See the Clibu Notes Help for “Installation” details and “Share from other applications”.
That’s if for this post.
– Have a great week, Neville – Author of Clibu Notes
Recently a Clibu Notes user had an issue which unfortunately caused Clibu Notes to crash. At that time we hadn’t got around to making Clibu Notes crash resistant. This quickly resulted in user emails telling me the server was down, which I was also aware of through our monitoring tools.
This brings me to the point of this post and that is no matter what happens with the Clibu Notes server (and in future your own hosted Clibu Notes server) life goes on pretty much as normal due to Clibu Notes ability to run with full functionality without an Internet connection.
Knowing that you still have full access to all of your notes and can edit them, create new notes, rearrange the tree etc. is wonderfully liberating. In the scenario above, as soon as the server was up and running again all changes were updated across all devices. Even edits of the same notes on different devices merge and are once more unified.
Online only applications
When applications only run on a remote server all work grinds to a halt when you lose your Internet connection or the server goes down for whatever reason.
Offline applications
On the other hand applications that run only locally will of course keep running, but these typically don’t have the ability to seamlessly merge changes or enable concurrent editing of content on multiple devices or by multiple users.
Clibu Notes – the best of both online and offline
It is clear to me that if you want the peace of mind knowing your content is always available, can always be updated and added to across all of your devices, regardless of whether you are connected to the Internet or not then applications with the level off offline support Clibu Notes has are a must.
You can check how applications you maybe using compare with Clibu Notes offline functionality with the following:
Works without Internet
Collaborative Editing
Devices update in realtime
*Awareness
Offline Only
Yes
No
No
No
Offline + Sync
Yes
No (1)
No (2)
No
Online
No
No (3)
Maybe
Maybe
Clibu Notes
Yes
Yes (4)
Yes (5)
Yes
* Awareness shows you other users/devices who are online, where they are editing and what changes they have made.
1) Edits on different devices will typically overwrite each other, losing content. 2) Synchronizing changes for offline apps is unlikely to be fine grained and and make take some time. 3) Unlikely to support real collaborative editing of the same content at the same time. Similar issue to (1). 4) The same note can be edited by any user on any device and all changes will eventually coalesce to the same content. This is regardless of whether a user is online or not. 5) When online, otherwise as soon as they go online.
Eventually consistent content
In order to update all changes from all users whether they were made offline or online, we need code the appears to work like magic. This includes edits to exactly the same content on different devices.
We get this magic from CRDT’s or Conflict-free Replicated Data Types. Discussing CRDT’s here is well beyond the scope of the article, however I can highly recommend a series of articles by Jake Lazaroff, starting with An Interactive Intro to CRDTs.
Conclusion
If you want to be able to access all of your notes, add new notes and edit notes on your Smartphone, Tablet or Desktop PC wherever you are, whether you have an Internet connection or not, then Clibu Notes is the solution you need.
PS. Clibu Notes is now Crash resilient. This means that if there is a serious issue which takes the server down it will automatically restart.
PPS. Clibu Notes V0.72.030 has just been released, and continues our steady stream of new releases. See the Release Notes in the Help for details.
I’ve been asked to provide some information on how I use Clibu Notes on a day to day basis. Hopefully this article will help you get some ideas to fit into your note taking workflow, whether you are using Clibu Notes or a similar Knowledge Management application.
I use Clibu Notes for several purposes.
Research
Research is one important area. When I invest time in researching an area of particular interest, I want to ensure that what I’ve found is retained and readily accessible. The last thing I want is to have to do the same painstaking research all over again.
This might be about recommended places to visit for a future trip, detailed information I need to keep for specific development work on software projects such as Clibu Notes. Or information to help improve my Golf game or Fitness and maintaining a happy and healthy life.
Find it once, keep it forever and access it anywhere. You get the idea.
Research
Project Tracking
Next is tracking the work I’m doing. What new features am I considering, how useful are they to the broader community, how much will they cost to implement, can they be justified and what priority are they given.
When a new feature is in development I also track it’s progress, and ensure Help and other documentation is written for it.
Then there is a need to track bugs, usability and other issues.
I also track and keep notes on work around the house and things that need to be done.
Project Tacking
Planning
We like to travel, especially overseas and these trips take considerable planning. This something I do with my wife, so we share and collaborate on the various tasks. It is a combination of research and detailed checklists.
These tend to be intense periods of work which happen infrequently and are very important to us.
Planning
Experiences
When we’ve been to a nice restaurant, drank a bottle of wine we particularly like, visited an unusual and interesting place, we keep notes so we can remember to enjoy these again at some point.
Notes of places we’ve taken for trip planning will find their way here for the ones that stand out. Often times the memories you bring back home are as important as the original visit.
Trees and Work Spaces
In the examples above I’ve shown how I organize my notes using Clibu’s Notes Tree. However not everyone wants to organize their notes in a hierarchy and Clibu Notes in no way forces you to. You can even hide the tree, so you never see it.
For those of you who prefer a flat structure I recommend having a set of top level tree items to organize your notes into collections. This will enable you create (Work) Spaces for each collection.
Spaces enable you to segment the tree and focus on a single branch of notes.
When a space is selected the tree and notes list/grid only shows notes in that that space. Search and Filters are restricted to notes in the space. You can still open linked notes, which are outside the current space.
Nitty Gritty
In order to produce notes that function well for me I make heavy use of backlinks, which enable me to navigate between related notes. Note icons and colors to visually locate notes. Search and less so Filters to drill down to specific sets of notes. I use the My Order view along with drag and drop to arrange the tree just how I want it. And Date views to see notes in a timeline. Spaces to segment the tree into actionable work areas.
A Note with Links, Backlinks & Collapsed blocks
When editing I use a mix of markdown and toolbar functionality for text formatting. Task lists, well for tasks. Drag and drop to reorder lists, block select & move to reorder blocks, details for collapsible blocks and text highlighting. I typically have two note editors open.
I’ll Archive notes that I want to keep, but that are no longer of interest in the context of my current day to day work.
Smartphones & Tablets
On my phone and tablets Clibu Notes is installed as a Progressive Web App (PWA) and added to the home screen. A single tap then opens it. When I’m primarily consuming content, I’ll tap the Editable icon on the bottom bar to prevent any accidental changes.
Using Clibu Notes to take short notes on my phone is very convenient. I’ll typically flesh them out when I’m back on a device with a physical keyboard.
Knowing that Clibu Notes automagically synchronizes changes down to the character level, across all devices is and I’ll repeat magically liberating. Along with the ability to work offline, which is a must in todays mobile world.
Note on Smartphone + Search
To finish up
There are no hard and fast rules about how you use a PKM app like Clibu Notes. Different people have very different ideas about what works best for them and ways of accomplishing that.
You need to sit down and work through your requirements and then see if you can find an application that meets those criteria, or at least comes close.
Think about how you want to structure and organize your notes, but don’t stress over it. Your PKM of choice should make it easy to restructure and reorganize your notes, as the need arises and as you and it grow together.
Unfortunately a common trait is to spend too much time and effort organizing notes. Think more about note retrieval – how can I quickly locate a specific note or set of notes and the notes that are related to them. What tools does my PKM provide to assist in fast and accurate note retrieval.
There are plenty of Youtube videos on organizing notes. Some are focused on specific applications and others more generic or focusing on a methodology.
Tiago Forte is quite prolific in this area. This is a new video on his PARA method. A methodology called the Zettelkasten method has received quite a bit of attention the last few years.
The ways that people are using PKM’s is exploding in much the same way that PKM applications are.
I hope you’ve gleamed something useful from this article. Please do leave a comment below and follow us on Twitter (now X)
And if you haven’t signed up to use Clibu Notes yet, please do give it a try. We’d love to get your feedback.
I’m pleased and excited to let everyone know that we have launched the Clibu Notes Preview release.
Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) applications have really taken off and blossomed over the past few years to the point where you have a plethora of choices, so why Clibu Notes.
Clibu Notes is the third generation and evolution of PKM software that we have developed, each one building on and refining what came before it. We can actually go back further, but that is another story.
With Clibu Notes we’ve strived to present a simple, effective and attractive application. We see these as its core strengths. Content seamlessly updates across all devices in real time and feels quite magical. This gives you a freedom you’ve unlikely ever had before. And if you don’t have an Internet connection everything just works. Content magically synchronizes and merges once you are back on line. Multiple people can even edit the same notes either on or offline and all changes will be magically resolved.
Clibu Notes goes beyond PKM, meeting the needs of Teams with full concurrent editing of the same notes at the same time.
Simple to use doesn’t mean sacrificing capabilities. Clibu Notes delivers a rich and more than capable set of PKM features and we’re not done yet.
Clibu Notes works across all of your devices, Smartphones, Tablets and Desktop PC’s. It works in the Browser and can be installed as a native application. Updates happen automatically.
For more information and to sign up for early access see the new clibu.com website.
