Simplenote web (beta) version has much improved notes export

The beta version of Simplenote’s web client will export notes as text files and will use the note title as the name of the text file. When I’d previously exported from my Simplenote library the text files names were all GUIDs. 

This is obviously much better. It means, as long as you don’t mine plaintext, you can get your data out of Simplenote in a portable and useable form.

To use the beta version of the Simplenote web client use the URL simplenote.com/new.

I’ve been using nvALT to enable data freedom for Simplenote [1], but it’s good to have a second option. (nvALT works on Mojave, but had issues with High Sierra. I’m planning to skip from Sierra to Mojave.)

PS. Recently Simplenote added plaintext note import, though needs Electron version for Mac.

- fn-

[1] It took years longer than it should have, but Automattic fixed search in the Mac client.

See also

• Progress of sorts - integrating my simplenote memory extensions with gDrive 11/2017
• Escape from Outlook Notes - export as text files, import into NvAlt or other 3/2017
• Tinderbox, Simplenote, MindNode and data freedom10/2011. "All software dies. Ask Lotus Agenda users. Or the users of, and this is far from a complete list, Ecco Professional, InfoCentral, PackRat, Sidekick, Arrange (Common Knowledge - MacOS), InfoDepot, In Control, Cross-Ties, Palm Notes, Commence, Ascend, Arcadia (OS/2!), GrandView and MORE, Inspiration, Outlook Notes, and so many, many, many more.”

Simplenote for Mac search has been fixed

Two years after Simplenote.app for Mac was released with broken search it is now fixed in version 1.2. A product I rely on is not only alive, it’s even improved.

This was a significant rewrite and there is still lots of basic work to do. Tags don’t autocomplete (I think they used to in the prior release and they do on iOS). You still can’t apply tag changes to a group of notes. There’s no export of notes as text files from App. There’s no markdown support (not a priority for me but iOS version has it) and of course no support for images. 

I haven’t used it long enough to spot any sync errors — recent versions of Simplenote were very reliable.

I hope this is a sign that Simplenote has a future. Now if they would only figure out a way for me to pay for it…

Progress of sorts - integrating my simplenote memory extensions with gDrive

Nine years ago I wrote What my blogs are for: memory management and the Google-Gordon geek-mind fusion. It’s hard to believe now, but in those days we did not yet fear Google. Back then, we liked Google. Google was good.

That was a long time ago. Google has since transcended mere human morality (Galactus is a much better name than Alphabet btw). Unfortunately I haven’t transcended my need for artificial extensions to my working memory. To the contrary, that need has grown. Now in addition to my old technical expertise a change in employment means I manage more organizational and political knowledge. Oh, yeah, and I’m back to being a practicing doctor. So now I need to know adult male ambulatory internal medicine. Also, I am old and my brain is crud.

So, yeah, I need those memory extensions. I still use Google’s tools, though the Custom Search Engine I rely on to integrate my blogs with my link share stream and my ancient (hidden) web pages is all but forgotten. Since 2008 though I’ve moved away from the Google dominated web back to files and file systems as a memory store. Carrying a connected computer in my pocket made 1980s style files useful again. I rely in particular on plain text Simplenote to carry around fragments of memory. For regulatory/security reasons I have one Simplenote account for work memory and one for non-work memory — with some notes shared between both using Simplenote’s (simple!) sharing mechanism.

Spotlight indexes simplenote files on my iPhone — sadly only for one account. On my Mac nvAlt syncs to my personal simplenote account — so the text files are indexed by Spotlight there too. Today, guided by a @simplenoteapp tweet I installed Simplenote Electron (which Automattic is abandoning for a future fully native Mac upgrade [1]) and tied that one to my work account. Then I used the improved text export to create a local read-only copy of that memory store — which Spotlight Mac now indexes. So the stores are in one search space at last.

The last twist is that Simplenote local text stores are in a Google Drive folder, so synchronized to gDrive with appropriately stored folders such that appropriate text stores are searchable on both devices. Sadly gDrive does not support “Available offline” at the folder level — so when I don’t have data access I also lose some memory access. (I’m hoping Google will fix this.)

The gDrive integration is important because there are limits to plain text - particularly for medical topics. I have PDFs, Word Docs, Google Sheets and other detritus of decades of notes. I can put all of that in gDrive alongside the text notes and let search figure it out. (This is what Evernote is supposed to be good for but they don’t have a clear exit strategy. It’s trivial to walk away from Simplenote. I need that exit strategy [2].)

It’s all one heck of a kludge, but so is my memory. So kind of fits.

See also:

• What my blogs are for: memory management and the Google-Gordon geek-mind fusion 7/2008
• Snippets Explained (Version 2) 2/1999
• Beyond Simplenote: I still want a graph layer (concept map) overlay for my memory augmentation notes collection 5/2016. Sigh. This would be wonderful.
• Project Memfail: Tackling my search space problem 9/2013. My work space problems got sorted out when the company died. I’m much more cautious now about creating new memory pockets.
• Thinking tools 2014 - holding steady but future unclear 5/2014. RIP App.net.
• Full text search and digital prostheses: new email, new mind 7/2008
• Strange loops: Google custom and customized search - and a memory blog 3/2008. Non-evil Google.

- fn -

[1] It has the same search bug as Simplenote/Mac!

[2] For example - if they don’t fix that damned search bug [1].

 

Simplenote is not dead -- and the joy of nvAlt backup

Simplenote.app, an Automattic product I use a zillion times a day, is less dead than I thought. They just released a version for Android, I installed on my ultra-cheap Moto e and in the blink of an eye my notes are there.

Before I did that experiment though, I made a backup.

I launched nvAlt and my local Mac folder of Simplenote RTF files was instantly updated. I then zipped up that folder — maybe 2MB. Stuck the zip in a folder of things like that. A record of the state of my extended memory on this day.

Only a geek can understand the warm glow I get from that special level of backup. The age old problem of Cloud backup (how do you recover a single mis-edited note from a month ago?) solved. (But will nvAlt work on Sierra? Brett Terpstra’s long delayed nvAlt replacement drops Simplenote support.)

Now if only Automatic would fix the #$!%%! broken search on (only) the Mac version. I confirmed search works on the new Android version.

See also

• Beyond Simplenote: I still want a graph layer (concept map) overlay for my memory augmentation notes collection. 5/2016. Why don’t billionaires fund projects like this? More useful than most ego projects.
• Cloud data: Should I trust (Simplenote) Imperium? 8/2010. I don’t trust Automatic either, but with local file stores I don’t need to.

Mac OS X Mail: Import Mailboxes from a different user account or computer - and Old Netscape email import

It's been a long time since I've been impressed by Apple desktop software.

Partly that's because I have high expectations, but it's also that I'm not Apple's target demographic. I prefer capability over ease of use. I'm one of the very few people who likes iTunes for example -- because of it's very powerful playlist query language. I'm not looking forward to Apple's overhaul -- because I'm certain they'll remove the features I like.

Been a long time, but today I was impressed. I'd just completed a Eudora to Mail.app conversion in a user account I created to test the import process. 

The process went well, so I planned to repeat it on my primary account. I wondered though, if there was a way to simply import from the folder in ~Library/Mail. I couldn't find much documentation or discussion on Mail.app's merging or important of another Mail.app database, but the UI is simple enough. I updated my backup and give it a try.

First I moved the 'Import Folder' in ~Library/Mail to the Shared folder for my primary machine so I could do the import from my primary account. Then I selected that folder from the Import UI. Mail.app scanned the folder tree and returned a list of a few hundred folders I could import from. I told it to go ahead.

Fifteen minutes later I had my archive. Unfortunately there was no way to know if I'd gotten all 55,000+ messages; all I had were unread message counts and those didn't match up (but I didn't trust them anyway).

Happily OS X Mail has a very clean message structure, one message is one .emlx file (attachments are in a separate folder) and files are organized by a Finder folder corresponding to a Mail.app folder.

So I used Get Info from the Finder:

• Original: 2.36GB for 84,871 items
• Import: 2.36GB for 84,405 items

That's not too bad, except I'm short about 466 items. Coincidentally, I recall from the EudoraMailboxCleaner process that I had 478 folders. By directly inspecting the folders in the original and the import I could see that most of my folders were missing a .plist file that was in the original. This file didn't seem to be necessary; the messages are rendering correctly both times.

So it seems the import worked.

That's good, but what really impressed me was I noticed Netscape import option. I happened to have some old Netscape archives lying around. A few minutes later and my Netscape email was in Mail.app.

Twenty years of email in one repository; 9GB, 200,000 messages - that's impressive.

Update: I wrote too soon. The message metadata displays, but the Netscape messages are all blank. (A few Eudora emails are blank too.) OS X will preview them in the file system and I can read them with a text editor. So the data is there, but Mail.app doesn't want to render it yet.

Update b: Well, that was interesting. I tried REBUILD on one of the folders. All the emails vanished. I checked in ~/Library/Mail; they were still there and still viewable. So I tried removing the plist file and then tried restore again. This time they all came back, and they're readable. But the real weird part is that now all the Netscape emails in other folders are non-blank. I didn't touch any of those.

My Google Custom Search just died. Did I offend the GoogleNet? (fixed)

Two days ago my much loved Google Custom Search was working beautifully (emphasis added) ...

Why coupons? Price concealment information and memetic archeology in the pre-web world 

... I found that reference through my pinboard/wordpress microblog/memory management infrastructure now integrated into my personal google custom search...

My latest enhancement was paying off; my ("free" = ad supported) personal custom search engine was now successfully indexing a blog that archived my pinboard.in shares and annotations [1] as well as my ancient web pages (archived) and my tech.kateva.org and notes.kateva.org blogs.

My extended memory was better than ever!

Until it died. [2] As of yesterday my custom search engine is returning very few results.

My first thought was that I'd unwittingly committed a Class One transgression against the GoogleNet. Perhaps Google considers my link/annotation blog to be a link-farm-equivalent -- and had blacklisted my entire kateva.org domain. Perhaps I had broken an unwritten rule of the GoogleNet (formerly known as the Internet, home of Archie and Veronica [3]).

I'm still able to find my notes.kateva.or and even kateva.org/sh posts in Google's standard search however (if I restrict by domain). So I'm not certain I've transgressed. If the search doesn't work soon I'll try recreating that engine. If that doesn't work, or if I detect more signs of transgression, I'll have to remove my pinboard archive and beg mercy of The Google.

I've a broken iPhone I could burn. Perhaps that will appease.
--
[1] It's my tawdry substitute for my long lost and much mourned Google Reader Share page. I hate the way it looks, but it's primary use is RSS consumption and index fodder. I am looking for a better template but WordPress themes/templates are a rats nest of complexity.
[2] Echoes of losing Google Reader Share!
[3] If you know what that means you either used Google or you are a very old geek.

Update 5/31/2012: It's back.

I followed some of advice that "omr" (not a Google employee) generously gave on the Google Search product forum. Instead of creating a new CSE however, I replaced many of the entries of the old CSE with the patterns he suggested. Perhaps most importantly, I changed the setting for indexing kateva.org/sh.

I'd previously opted to index all entries and all linked pages. Considering I add about 20-60 links a day I think that was a tad ambitious. I now index only the text of this shared items/pinboard (micro) blog.

For reference, here's an edited version of omr's recommendations:

In the "Sites to search" box, enter this URL Pattern:
  *.kateva.org/*
If you wish to include some of your other sites, enter additional URL Patterns to match them.  (Enter one URL Pattern per line.)  For example, if you want to include the msptrails site, add:
  *.msptrails.org/*
For more information about URL Patterns, see
Please include only a limited number of sites.  Start with the minimum number of sites that you consider necessary to include; or, if you wish to include several, preferably no more than ten.  (If you own some older or less-active sites that you don't need to search anymore, don't include them.)
Click the new CSE's "control panel" link (which takes you to the "Basics" page of the control panel).
Leave the "Search engine keywords" box empty.
Near the bottom of the page, note the "Show automatic thumbnail" option.  The automated thumbnail-image selection is not always ideal, so perhaps you may want to turn off that option.  (Click to remove the check-mark, then click the "Save Changes" button BELOW the option.)

Pinboard and IFTTT to Twitter

A few weeks after Google 2.0 killed Google Reader Social, I decided I'd take the Twitter route.

My Twitter feed was active for about two months, but in time I gave up on Twitter (again). It didn't work as a memory management solution, I don't like the length limit and the lack of structure, and I don't expect Twitter to take better care of my data than Google. Worst of all, like Google, Twitter is free. I can't afford free.

Next I ran through PosterousandTumblr. They both failed, for different reasons. Worst of all, both are too expensive.

Lastly, I turned to Pinboard. I thought I'd use it restore access to my Google Reader JSON exports -- but that didn't work. I could have gotten my $10 back, but I like Pinboard's style, microblog post formats, export formats, import options, ownership, feed-focus, and bookmarklet -- and I really like the Reeder (and, via SendTo, Reader) integration. Most of all, I like paying for it. Oh, and it's Google-Free too [2].

So I've stayed with Pinboard. I tag my (all public) posts with 1 tap codes that are meaningful only to me - s for share, b for blogworthy, y for yammworthy. Each tag has its own stream. The 's' stream is really aimed at Emily, but anyone can consume it. It shows up in her copy of Reeder.app and on her iGoogle page.

No, it's not Google Reader Social. Then again, nothing is. I've come to think of GR Social as a future-fluke, a transient window into a future that might never be. Pinboard isn't GRS, but it's the best microblog/share platform in the mundane world. It beats the heck out of Twitter and (shudder) G+.

Except Twitter, despite my neglect, refuses to die. So I decided to try injecting my Pinboard shares into the Twitter stream. Pinboard doesn't support this, and they don't intend to. However IFTT supports both Pinboard and Twitter, so I now tweet from Pinboard via IFTTT (recipe) [1]

For example:

• Original in Pinboard: Pinboard: Bookmark Detail
• Format in Twitter: Twitter / @jgordonshare: Information Technology Cog ...: ""

It mostly seems to work, though I don't know what happens if my Descriptions are too long.

For the moment then, I share the same items in two places:

• Pinboard 's' with feed.
• Twitter - jgordonshare

[1] In my own task I have a colon between Title and Description, otherwise they run together in Twitter.
[2] Is it Google's ambition to be more disliked than AT&T?

Pinboard imports Google Reader JSON exports

Pinboard is the first service I know of that will import a Google Reader Social (shared item) JSON file:

Pinboard: howto page

Google Reader Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the page. Select the Import/Export tab. Choose either items you have starred or items you have shared and click the Reader JSON link (the rightmost column)

When I stumble unexpectedly over something I've been looking for, I look for who else found it. Then I add them to my reading list. Google gave me only these references:

• Google Reader Shared Items -> Pinboard, FeedDemon, Send to Pinboard… « cmiles – blog 11/5/2011
• Pinboard Blog - Nov 2011 - "... Added importers from Firefox JSON format and Google Reader. Wrote scripts for tarring up user archives in human-readable form so people can download them. Removed Google Reader support (RIP, Google Reader, I'll mourn you til I join you)...

Pinboard has a feed, I don't know if importing will trigger feed actions (probably not)

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Recovering Shared Reader items: JSON import into Wordpress
• Gordon's Tech: Sharing and annotation: Instapaper's supporting apps

Update: I paid my $10 and imported by Google Reader shared item JSON file. I have 3 days to cancel. I used Amazon payments.

Here are the results; as of today the most recent post is 7 weeks old. I may also try importing the JSON for my Reader shared items, which may produce some duplicates.

• http://pinboard.in/u:jgordon - my pinboard collection - really my Google Reader shared items. Note my user name is a part of the URL, so it's nice that 'jgordon' was available. Posts show a title, a bookmark, and an excerpt. I think my GR annotations precede the excerpt. It's more like Google Reader Social than I'd expected.
• http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:jgordon/ - the public feed for my collection. I viewed this in Google Reader; gave me a real sense of deja vu. Alas, GR only pulled in 44 items.

I'm still studying the results. So far Pinboard is only showing a fraction of the JSON file, there are not tags, and every item shows with date of '9 weeks ago'. I don't see a convenient way to navigate across the entire collection.

Update 12/31/11: Pinboard has now imported 2 months of Reader shares - about 1100 items or roughly 1% of the total.

Sharing and annotation: Instapaper's supporting apps

I haven't found a replacement for the rough annotation-share-feed ecosystem that had grown up around Google Reader Social (RIP). I've given up, for example, on using Twitter as a Reader Social replacement.

Yes, I miss Google 1.0. I even miss Microsoft these days.

So I'm continuing to explore the pieces of the post-Google world; trying to see where this micro-market may go. This is poorly tracked territory, but today I came across an unexpected guide in the Instapaper: Supporting iPhone and iPad Apps page.

Instapaper has an ecosystem, and although it doesn't have a feed, it will post to Tumblr, Twitter and Pinboard. Tumblr has a feed (barely), Twitter can be turned into a feed (awkwardly) and Pinboard has a feed (and, mercifully, it's not free).

So what can I do with these pieces? Can I archive the output of Pinboard as WordPress posts?

I'll find out.

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Pinboard imports Google Reader JSON exports

Update

• I tried Instapaper's bookmarklet, but it hangs in Chrome with a "saving" status in the tab.

Recovering Shared Reader items: JSON import into Wordpress

Google amputated a portion of my distributed memory, but they left me a frozen json remnant.

(Yes, we are living in a cyberpunk novel. Sigh.)

Across the net there are unanswered questions about what to do with these json archives. Google has been silent. I believe the Google humans who might help are ashamed or demoralized or fearful. Google 2.0 is not a happy place for them.

I want to represent my JSON archives as posts in a WordPress blog, perhaps with some kind of synthetic title. Then they will be available to search and link. Eventually I hope to add new annotations and shares to that archive, though there will be a gap of several months that will be difficult to fill.

This feels doable, but so far Google (the search engine) hasn't told me how. This is what I have found so far. When I do find an answer, I'm going to answer some of the dangling questions across the net ...

• Dariel: wrote a Python script to import shares into ReadItLater
• What are the good ways to import Google Reader Notes (.json) to Evernote? - Quora - an unanswered question
• battis.net » Transmogrifying those Google Reader JSON dumps into something useful - Seth Battis wrote a "PHP script that converts (at least my) Google Reader JSON dump into an XML file that WordPress can import as a list of posts. With the tags and annotations converted over. In fact, with all of the data in the JSON dump embedded in the XML file (although WordPress doesn’t read all of it)."
• Importing .json archives (Wordpress) - Stack Overflow - an unanswered question
• osx - Json viewer for mac - Super User: a way to at least view JSON documents.
• How can I Import Google Reader JSON archives into WordPress - Super User: I ask on SuperUser
• A public question I asked on Google+: I ask on G+

I'll update this post as I learn more. Seth's contribution suggests a fix is close; he needs to tweak some of his code.

Update 12/25/2011: Seth writes that he won't have time to work on this further but he recommends downloading his php file from his linked zip. I'll have to learn how to run PHP scripts from my Dreamhost account, but I don't think that's too hard.

Update 5/3/2012: Coping With Google Reader Changes | Much Ado About IT - accessing the lost items.

Tinderbox, Simplenote, MindNode and data freedom

I really think Tinderbox ($250!) should have said something about this earlier ...

Tinderbox: The Tool For Notes

.... Tinderbox shares notes with with Simplenote for Web and iPhone access...

The big (Big) problem with apps like Tinderbox, Evernote, or MindManager and its kin is data freedom. Specifically, the absence of data freedom. There's no standard for the representation of attributes and relationships in a nodes and arcs graph app -- it's a fundamental knowledge representation problem [1][2]. Years of rich data get flushed away when an app dies.

When, not if. All software dies. Ask Lotus Agenda users. Or the users of, and this is far from a complete list, Ecco Professional, InfoCentral, PackRat, Sidekick, Arrange (Common Knowledge - MacOS), InfoDepot, In Control, Cross-Ties, Palm Notes, Commence, Ascend, Arcadia (OS/2!), GrandView and MORE, Inspiration, Outlook Notes, and so many, many, many more.

Assyrian clay tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal have endured for thousands of years, my GrandView notes didn't do so well.

Data can outlive software -- but only if it's portable. Not forever of course, but maybe until the end of civilization [3]. JPEG images are in the running, video not so much. UTF-8 text files are serious contenders.

The SimpleNote ecosystem is based on UTF-8 text and RTF files with optional markdown formatting. That's why I like it - the core data store can endure. It's accessible from iOS device, OS X, XP, W7, Dropbox [4] web -- everywhere.

Still, notes alone, even with tagging and search, are not enough. I want a way to layer arcs upon the text nodes.

I could almost do it using MindNode Pro. I could attach SimpleNote notes to MindNode nodes and keep both MindNode file and SimpleNote files on Dropbox. Problem is, it's awkward to attach and create files to MN nodes. The icons are too large and the node doesn't inherit the file name -- and I need a keyboard shortcut to create an external text file on demand.

Doesn't that text icon seem a bit big to you? It can be resized, but it always defaults to enormous.

I haven't given up hope that Markus Muller will accept my suggestions, but I'm reluctantly leaving MindNode Pro on the shelf while I watch where he goes with it.

Tinderbox though -- if it could actually use SimpleNote ... and if it could become Dropbox compatible ... and if I'm careful about how I manage and distribute Tinderbox specific metadata ... That's interesting. It's a heck of a lot of money though, and I fear using its full power would put me into deep data lock.

See also:

• ATPM 10.10 - ATPO: Deep Tinderbox: 2004 view -- but gives a good sense of how it works

Update: MaysonicWrites points us to Dave Winer's World Outline project, I think as an example of a liberated data solution to managing some kinds of information.

- fn -

[1] Consider HL7 RIM 3 and the challenges of CDA/SNOMED model integration. Ok, so nobody knows what I mean by that. Trust me, it's relevant.
[2] Ok. There is a standard. It's called the hyperlink and HTML. This post is long enough, but I'm tempted to look for late 1990s book on hypertext I have somewhere, and to summon a BYTE article on a hypertext version of Gopher from the 1990s. I suppose software archeology is a hobby now. I am disappointed that we don't have wiki-like personal information tool that uses HTML/RTF/text and hyperlink as the information store, WordPress API as an authoring option, and the ability to migrate the repository from local drive to cloud.
[3] Outrageous you say! What could last that long? Well, yes.
[4] I'm a late adopter, but increasingly a fan.

Personally sad changes to Google search

Google has changed the way it indexes my blogs (notes.kateva.org, tech.kateva.org). Until recently search results were individual posts. Now search results are increasingly archive pages that include significant numbers of posts.

This may reflect Google's declining opinion of my worth, or simply a declining interest in blogs, but whatever the cause the new behavior is far less useful.

I tried Bing, but it's much weaker.

Blogger's "Links to this Post" is working?

I was reviewing an old post when I came across "LINKS TO THIS POST" at the bottom of the post.

That's not surprising. Blogger featured this long ago. I thought I'd turned it off though -- it's never shown anything.

Today it does. So has Blogger restored the long lost backlink function? That would be a big memory management boost.

Migrating Notes from ToodleDo to ResophNotes and the Simplenote ecosystem

[Shortly after I first wrote this, C.Y. released ResophNotes 1.0.5. Among other things, such as the ability to store notes as indexable .txt files, it has direct support for importing ToodleDo’s CSV file. He’d told me the release was coming soon, I did it my way just for geek fun. I’ve therefore moved the details of what I did to a footnote. BTW, turns out C.Y., like me, migrated to Simplenote from Toodledo/Appigo!]

Once I'd rescued my memory fragments from Outlook 2007 my next goal was to unify them from the former Palm Memos I'd (painfully) migrated to ToodleDo and thus Appigo's Notebook.app.

I've been reasonably happy with the combination of ToodleDo and Appigo, but notes are very much a 2nd class citizen on ToodleDo (they're all about tasks) and their search tools are pretty weak. I also wanted to be able to access and work with my notes from my desktop on Windows and the Mac, to be able to back them up, to have them be exposed to Spotlight search on OS X, to integrate my old corporate Outlook Notes with my old personal former Palm Memos and to have at least one open source repository in the mix. I needed the notes to live in a standard file format (UTF-8 text or RTF) free of all data lock.

Sounds like a lot, but the combination of ResophNotes (XP and higher - free but do donate), Simplenote (Cloud, ad-supported or $9/year - I paid - see documentation), Simplenote.app (iPhone and iPad app, free) and Notational Velocity (open source, OS X - documentation) gave me everything I wanted -- plus Chrome extensions for editing.

There was only one thing standing in my way. How could I get my ToodleDo notes into Simplenote?

I knew that ResophNotes (Win) would import Outlook's peculiar CSV files (embedded paragraphs!), but the developer, C.Y. I still days away from releasing a more general CSV import feature. I was impatient, so this is what I did. (see footnote [1])

During my early import experiments, because I used a Mac for part of the process, I ran into character encoding problems. Since ResophNotes doesn't yet have note multiselect and delete [2] I had to find its database and delete it.

ResophNotes exports and imports .RSN files (yay! backup!), but that's not how it works with notes. I found them in "C:\Documents and Settings\jfaughnan" in a .ResophNotes folder (hidden). To delete them and start over you have to quit ResophNotes, then find the instance in Task Manager Processes and kill it, then you can delete the files.

That let me start over again.

BTW, here's how the notes look in Notational Velocity's "Notational Notes" store:

Yes, each note a separate Rich Text file (I may convert to safer plain text) -- all Spotlight indexed.

Just in time for my birthday.

Nerdvana.

[1] Now that ResophNotes has direct ToodleDo import, I’ll include this as a reference for how one might support CSV variants other than ToodleDo or Outlook. My procedure was especially weird because I happened to have a Mac at hand…

1. Use ToodleDo's Notes CSV export to my Mac.
2. Import into FileMaker and use Calculation field to merge the ToodleDo Title and Notes into an Outlook style "Note Body". I next renamed the ToodleDo "Folder" column to Category.
3. Created FileMaker columns to match Outlook's names, and exported as CSV. I had to paste this string in as the first row: "Note Body","Categories","Note Color","Priority","Sensitivity". I left all values except Note Body and Category null. In retrospect I should have appended "Categories" as a string to the end of "Note Body" to facilitate search.
4. I used TextWrangler to clean up some character encoding CR/LF issues. This was only necessary because I got a Mac in the mix. Curse that ancient CR/LF screwup. It seems to have survived into the world of UTF-8 encoding.
5. I fired up my Fusion VM (way better than it first was on 10.6) and my old XP image and moved the file over. I opened it in Word and saved as UTF-8 to remove any residual character encoding issues.
6. I imported into ResophNotes. When I was sure all was well, I synchronized ResophNotes with Simplenotes and all my notes merged into one lovely repository. I fired up Notational Velocity in another window and confirmed all was fine there as well.

[2] Since the latest version can store as .txt files, I assume one could just delete all the .txt files! I haven’t tried this tough.

Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, SimpleNote for iPhone and Notational Velocity

I had despaired of rescuing my notes from Outlook 2007.

I'd written hundreds over time. In the old days I used Palm products that would sync with Outlook, so I could carry them with me. Now my iPhone, after years of struggle, gives me good Outlook sync with Contacts and Calendars. Notes and Tasks, however, have been orphaned. There's no real hope of an Outlook Notes to iPhone sync solution; although a few people use Outlook Tasks almost nobody uses Outlook Notes.

I've learned to live without corporate Outlook Tasks (I schedule my time on a 3 week plan basis), but I wanted those notes. I decided they needed to live within either ToodleDo Notes/Appigo Notebook, iPhone Notes (unlikely), or the Simplenote / NotationalVelocity universe (for various reasons I've given up on Evernote).

Today I discovered ResophNotes, a Windows app that syncs with the Simplenote cloud data store. The Simplenote cloud data store, of course, also syncs with Notational velocity (open source, OS X Spotlight indexed), OS X Tinderbox, OS X Yojimbe (3rd party sync), and there's a Chrome extension for editing notes.

I exported my Outlook 2007 notes to Outlook's odd CSV format (includes line feeds!), then I imported into ResophNotes and synchronized with Simplenote's cloud store. Then on my iPhone I viewed them in the Simplenote iPhone client.

It worked better than I'd expected.

Now I can move my old (originally Palm III Notes, now ToodleDo/Appigo Notebook) personal notes to the same cloud store. I'll sign up for the $10/year premium Simplenote service. (Currently I have free version.) If Simplenote belly up the rich ecosystem and open source Notational Velocity desktop solution provides the insurance I need.

A good day.

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: The rise of software rental (aka software as service)
• Moving Palm notes to Toodledo via CSV file - what worked. (Hard!)
• Appigo Notebook is coming to the iPhone
• Kiss your Google Notebook good-bye
• Palm to iPhone migration - address book and notes (Aug 2008 - dated)
• Toodledo gets it
• Appigo and Toodledo – nasty emergent design flaw makes a mess of my iPhone Notes and Tasks
• Evernote's import/export test (updated)

Update 7/31/10: The author of ResophNotes tells me he's preparing a new version that will import CSV files -- like the ones ToodleDo Notes export creates. Incidentally, I discovered that FileMaker Pro 8 does a great job opening Outlook's CSV files with embedded line feeds. I never imagined ...

More of me: My Google Reader Shared Item Feed

Google Reader has been my primary feed reader on my iPhone and desktop since I left Bloglines in 2007.

It’s a great reader, but I especially I love the ability to search my read, starred and shared posts, and to incorporate my GR feeds and my blogs and legacy pages into one custom search.

Since May of 2008 I’ve also been sharing my annotations on posts, and using Google Reader as a micro-blogging platform. Unlike Twitter posts, these GR micro-posts work with my memory management strategy [1].

My GR micro-blogging has changed what I right here. Many of the small frequent posts I used to do are now simply shared items in Google Reader.

So if you’re not getting enough here, you might consider subscribing to my Google Reader shared items feed:

feed://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/06457543619879090746/state/com.google/broadcast

This feed currently does not work in IE 8 or Bloglines and probably doesn’t work in Outlook 2007 (does anyone still use Bloglines or IE?). It works in Google Reader (of course), Firefox, Safari and OS X Mail.app.

Be warned that my GR feed includes everything I’m interested in, so it’s high volume and undifferentiated. It mixes geeky stuff with politics, science, etc.

I’m going to be including a link to my “Google Reader Shared Item Feed” at the bottom of most posts from this blog and Gordon’s Notes, so you can pick up or drop the feed at any time. I should be easy to find.

--

[1] I’d prefer to be able to reflect these microblog posts back into my blog. For one thing the blogs are exportable (thank you Google Data Liberation Front!)

Related posts:

• About the FLH: DejaNews, FrontPage, Google Reader, feeds, iframes and more
• Loving Google Reader - Shared post feed
• Google doing weird stuff with GR Shared Item feed
• Using Bloggers undocumented label (category) feeds and Yahoo Pipes to create a tech opinion feed out of Gordon's Notes
• How do I share my Google Reader Shared Items Feed and process it via Yahoo Pipes?

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My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Google doing weird stuff with GR Shared Item feed

This morning I was experimenting with adding a link to my Google Reader shared (annotated) item feed (see Google Help) as a footnote to each blogger post.

That's when I discovered the feed URL on our family news page was bringing up someone else's feed. As best I can tell these weren't items shared by people I follow, they were completely odd.

That feed url has been unchanged for over a year. (I've removed it for now.)

I then visited my GR generated page to get a new feed. That seemed to work - once. Then I tried again and got a no-page error.

There's something broken. I'll try posting on the Google help forums -- very, very occasionally someone from Google notices things there.

Annoying.

Update:

First, some basic references ...

Shared page URI

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jfaughnan

Shared page "Atom Link" URI

http://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user
%2F06457543619879090746%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fbroadcast

If I click the above link in Safari I get this feed URI:

feed://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user

%2F06457543619879090746%2Fstate%2Fcom.google%2Fbroadcast

If I use the "mail feed" feature from Safari I get the same link without the URL encoding:

feed://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/06457543619879090746/state/com.google/broadcast

If I paste the latter (feed) URI into bloglines or IE 8, it doesn't work (I assume Bloglines, deceased as it might be, does support Atom. I'm sure IE 8 is supposed to). It does, however, work in the latest versions of Firefox [1] and Safari and, of course, in Google Reader.

So what's going on here? I'm guessing it's some mixture of a weird Google screw up (getting the wrong person's feed) and Google using some Atom feed that IE 8 can't handle.

Update 10/17/09: I'm beginning to sort this out. There's a bug in the feed Google provides for the shared item page. The Feed includes items that are not shown on the shared item page. They are not items I've every seen, and they aren't items that the people I "Follow" have shared. They're simply foreign. Not necessarily bad, just not mine.

For example, here are screenshots taken from my shared item list in Google Reader and from the corresponding feed as rendered in Safari:

My shared item list:

Shared item feed as rendered in Safari. The first two are not items I've seen, after these I do find items I've shared.

[1] In FF the link has to start with feed://, in Safari either feed:// or http:// work.

Update 10/22/09: I've reported this problem in two places

• GetSatisfaction
• Google Reader Forum

Update 10/23/09

Groan. I got a prompt response from GetSatisfaction, but there I managed to post my personal (not accessible) reading list feed:

feed://www.google.com/reader/atom/user/06457543619879090746/state/com.google/reading-list

So that was waste of Google time, fortunately not too much. I don't know how I ended up with that url in my clipboard.

The misbehaving feed I meant to refer to is:

feed://www.google.com/reader/public/atom/user/06457543619879090746/state/com.google/broadcast

Tonight though it's behaving properly. So I'll just have to watch and see if it misbehaves again.

Gmail iPhone web app has Google Contact and Gmail search. Who knew?

I can't find the post, but I know I've complained how weird it is that Google's iPhone optimized Mobile app didn't include search for Gmail mail or Google Contacts.

Wrong.

It's had Gmail search for months at least, maybe longer. Problem is, the search screen is in an odd place. It's way down at the bottom of the email display screen. You can double tap to to jump to the top of an iPhone screen, but I don't think there's a shortcut to jump to the bottom. This should either be at screen top or on the "More" menu.

There's also Contacts search. Go to Contacts from the main menu. Again, scroll to the bottom. Yes, there's a search button there too. Unlike the general Mobile App search function that runs against the iPhone's Address Book, this one runs against the Gmail Contact list. Like the newly improved web site search it searches all strings associated with a contact -- not just name and company.

None of this functionality is documented by Google. To be clear, these aren't related to the iPhone search function that Google actually markets -- that's an integrated search function that looks at the OS X Address Book as well as the web. These functions are much more useful. I'm exasperated that I didn't know about them.

Why so useful? Age and a congenitally bad memory for names. Age means that not only is my already bad name recall worsening, but the number of names in my Contact list is steadily increasing even as I'm expected to remember more of them on a daily basis. I'm over 1,500 contacts now; scrolling is not an option.

I'd love to have full text search across my entire iPhone, and it's aggravating that Apple doesn't provide full text search across the iPhone Address Book -- but again Google comes to the rescue. When I can't remember a name I can now search my full Google contact repository by city, by notes, by nickname, by any of a number of clues -- such as the names and keywords I attach to Contact notes. It's all part of my Google-powered prosthetic memory strategy.

Now if Google would be so kind as to move the $!$#!%#$ search screens to a more obvious and accessible location?!

Update 2/14/09: If you tap the "More" menu item you'll see a "Previous" and "Next" buttons in mid-screen. They hop to the top and bottom of the screen. Weird, but a good shortcut. I expect Google will soon split Contacts out into their own Mobile App screen; they're gradually doing that with Google Apps and Gmail. That will be handy.

Google -- please give me those backlinks ...

Come on Blogger, please give me backlinks ...

Gordon's Notes: WordPress's possibly related posts -- I want this from Blogger

.... This feature is core to my memory extension strategy ....

I want a Google Blogger "possibly related posts" feature that follows links and tags and, heck, textual analysis to create entries -- and that lets me choose whether to restrict to my own domains or open it up....

Google, I'll give you money if you do this.

Pretty puh-lease?

PS. Oh, yeah. And fix BlogThis, and give us label (tag) feeds, and emulate Yahoo Pipes! and ...

Update for the PS - 2/2/09: Damnit, there are label feeds -- it's just not documented.

Using SiteSucker to backup my Blogger blogs - and my extended memory

For several years I've used Teleport Pro to create local searchable and browsable copies of my Blogger blogs.

That way, if Google falls to the The Dapocalypse I'll at least have my own copy of my extended cybernetic memory. More recently Google has added the ability to export one's blog in a google-readable format, so I do that as well.

Recently Teleport Pro ran out of gas. I hit a 65K limit for its URL database. TP has great support, and the author referred me to a $165 upgrade to their professional web spider. I've been very pleased with TPP, so if I weren't (with occasional regrets) primarily an OS X shop these days I'd pay for the upgrade.

Instead I decided to re-evaluate an OS X spider I'd tested years ago: SiteSucker for OS X. It's donationware (Paypal, sigh) and a quick download with no nasty system side-effects. I'd used it years ago, but even back then my much smaller blogs broke it. I had to set it aside.

I used it to download the site that broke Teleport Pro. It's not nearly as fast as TP Pro, and it wasn't able to handle blogger's tag links (I need to contact the author) but, overnight, it completed the download of over 15,000 separate files related to about 4,000 posts occupying 560MB of disk space (clearly the actual text is the least of the content). The download doesn't include any images, they're included by reference since I constrained the spider to my blogger path.

The first time I did the download I forgot to localize my links, so I couldn't navigate internally. The localization seems to work for some links, but not, as mentioned earlier, for the tag links.

I suspect Teleport Pro is a more robust solution -- but it's XP only and it can no longer handle my blog. Site Sucker looks very promising. I'm going to try tuning it and corresponding with the author about the tag links. If it passes my further tests I'll add configuration notes to this post and I'll be making a donation (much as I dislike using PayPal!).