I have been using memex for a few years at this point. It was the “full text search” and the effective bookmark replacement “auto save” on all site visits that won me over to using it in the first place.
i stopped using memex entirely for quite some time however, because memex honestly felt like a sort of blackhole … you drop all this amazingly effortlessly collected info in, and it just kinda disappears … it fails (failed, its getting somewhat better) at implementing functional and efficient USES of the things it stores.
“Groups” are “meh” to me. its one approach and has some value. but its not gonna make the tool super useful by itself, and as far as RECALLING input, its most of what we have available. other than that its , hey here’s a list of everything you’ve done in this or that category.
While i was NOT using memex, i was busy chasing down everyother possible tool for research use – Obsidian, notion, zotero, raindrops, evernote, etc etc ettc … ALL of them. Even Databyss (which is pretty cool) …
HERE IS MY THOUGHTS:
you folks can’t do everything. I get that.
what you CAN do is be a GREAT “meta layer” for peoples browser \ file related research. I suggest
1 - adding google drive support as a storage option, as it gives people more autonomy over data storage \ organisation (this isn’t my biggest suggestion, but it was my least related to others so i put it first)
2 – MAIN IDEA – consider Memex as a sort of OVER layer for doing research \ web organisation … i currently use Vivaldi browser … there are a LOT of things it does REALLY well – you can take notes in the side panel (its not that full featured though) … you can tile panels, you can tile tabs, you can save sessions … thats all great.
I see MEMEX being able to try to come in around that application sphere and help the user by providing them a LAUNCHPAD for organisation AND research (recall) … so it saves all the sites you visit (it should ALSO allow you some better autonomy over the hierarchy of how it’s stored – bookmarks that get imported currently get named after the entire string of folders and subfolders which is a bit ridiculous, unreadable, and unhelpful)
What i would like to see is a multi-desktop\workspace environment that involves increasing the functionality around “session saving” – you all currently have the ability to save every open tab – but only to a space – and admittedly have NO ability to recall all those tabs open at once … get to a place, either internally \ natively, or via a recommended\suggested “partnership” with another app \ tool – get to a place where i can save all the tabs i had open today … i can then make some decisions over how those items are organised – it should also have some really basic and missing features like “select all” , select all containing or titled xxx, delete all, move all, etc …
alongside getting the UX for databasing and organisation improved,
get a way for users to recall this info in intelligent ways.
i was pretty bummed to see TAGS go bye bye, because, sure they COULD be viewed as redundant, but they also could have had some great uses …
say i visit 20 sites, and i had 10 of them tagged “follow up tomorrow”
in my happy world i could go to the memex sidebar or to the dashboard and "open all pages\items tagged “follow up tomorrow” … this would put 10 pages in my browser and somewhere – in my happyworld there is an internal DESKTOP\WORKSPACE layering system - and i could have one of those that now has the 10 notes that had the “follow up tomorrow” tag in them, and also a small litttle widget box containing the URL links for the 10 sites those notes were each added to – UX is SO important, so LITTLE things like a check box for “show duplicate URLs” or “suppress duplicate URLs” would be really helpfull … you have ten notes and ten pages, are 3 notes all on one page? do i want to see a list containing 1 page three times? maybe i do maybe i dont. LET ME decide.
start working on these kinds of functionalities.
i know its SORT of vague – or rather, these suggestions are “drop in the bucket” suggestions, none of them earth shattering on their own …
but you all have to get to a place where you are offering MULTIPLE dimensions of functionality to the end user.
Right now you seem to be ever focused on increasing the app integrations for IMPORTING MORE AND MORE DATA.
but really you should be focussing on more and more WAYS TO USE \ VIEW that data.
if OBSIDIAN had better web functionality, particularly annotation and note taking IN BROWSER, and would save all page visits like you guys do, i would just use obisidian. Go spend some time messing around with it. Look at the graph relations feature. backlinks.
Then go look at Databyss … its not great but it does allow user INTERACTION WITH THEIR DATA in some VERY helpful and somewhat novel ways.
ya’ll have a sidebar and a dashboard.
the dashboard is almost useless atm. there is very little higher functionality to it.
The SIDEBAR has AMAZING potential, but it also has a LOT of competition.
Getting Memex to a place where it is at LEAST something like a BETTER ZOTERO – a data\research\html\url cataloguer\library – one that doesn’t force an organisational structure on you, and one that maybe lets you pick WHERE your data is stored, would be awesome. i don’t however have a gripe with you all hosting everything on your own database (i believe its a local instance anyhow), but it would be SO NICE to have MUCH MORE access to that database … either a File Browser (like windows) or a page like google drive, but something other than just a big list and “groups” …
So you become a sidebar overlay notation \ note tool, a zotero (or calibre) like reserach and resource library \ organisation tool and also hopefully something like Obsidian … according to ChatGPT the couchDB? (i know it looks like you all may be developing your own tool, Storex?) but according to ChatGPT if you WERE using CouchDB then you COULD implement a GraphDB functionality via some plugin\extension … being able to visualize your data, and also see the backlinks, and create full page notes (themselves with their own well organised \ user organisable structure) would be great.
I know thats a HUGE mouthful. but i am SUPER ENTHUSIASTIC AND HOPEFUL about this app. it has SO much potential.
The guys over at Databyss are really friendly and want to improve their app so genuinely. i don’t know if there is a way for the both of ya’ll to help eachother out or integrate, but it COULD be a route. Otherwise, just busting ass and getting some roadmap for adding other fetures to memex so that it makes GOOD USE of the data it takes in … the notes and annotations \ highlights are AEWSOME. storing all visited pages is AWESOME.
now, having better access to that information (see Promensia) and having a better “desktop” \ workspace for WORKING ON that saved data is CRUCIAL.
and PLEASE… please please please … KEEP IT ALL IN THE BROWSER.
Do NOT do what obsidian did on that front. I also like that it is NOT yet like Notion in the sense of “everything is ‘stuck’ in notion” … notion could be amazing, but its got SO much internal to it, it sorta feels like they stole your stuff. keeping memex as a tool for organising what it already does, giving users the ability to create external files \ htmls using \ pasting \ appending \ *referencing all of the notes \ highlights\ stored pages \ pdfs it already stores and doing that in way where it feels all “right at your fingertips” (or eyes) is what is needed.
replace a boring page of “groups” with a more dynamic and user definable \ shapeable desktop (dashboard doesnt really convey what i think is an appropriate message for what teh app should be doing) … it should be another raindrop.io … it should be something like a overlay version of notion\obsidian\databyss with zotero\callibre like organisational abilities.
i’m gonna stop here, but i’m happy to continue spitting up more word vomit if someone on the team wants some sort of clarification or restatemetns.
i’m here anytime. saving documents on ancient kingdoms until kindgom comes.
cheers
