The Nimbus Notes topic morphed into discussing Clibu and as someone suggested a new Clibu specific topic should be started, so I have.

For those who don’t know anything about Clibu here is some information.

———————-
Clibu captures information, lets you edit it and easily find it again.

Some Key Features
- Hierarchical Tags and Multiple word tags.
- Rename, rearrange and delete Tags.
- Access your information from any PC anywhere.
- Content on all users PC’s is updated in real time and is always up to date. No need for Synchronize data across PC's.
- Share and collaborate with others.
- Rich Editing capabilities.
- The Web Clipper collects Web page content in a snap.
- Email information to Clibu from your smart phone, tablet etc.
- Link articles together.
- Image Capture from the Web & Clipboard.
- Smart full text search.
- Clean design and simple to use.

Various comments were posted about having your data stored locally instead of in the cloud. My response to that was:

To cater for folks who want tight control I’m planning several Clibu variations.

a) The ability to have a complete local install of Clibu on your PC. This will include the database, server etc. With an option to still access it from any PC anywhere, if you want. This may still run in a Browser or be a Packaged App. So in essence you are back to having a Desktop app + the various benefits Clibu offers, such as real time updates, KB sharing & collaboration etc.

b) Similar to (a) except Clibu would be installed on a Server you control and own. In other words your own private Cloud.

c) Clibu as it is now, but with Offline capabilities. This would give you a local database that would be used when there was no Internet connection which would then synchronize with the real Clibu server, next time you were online. Unfortunately the world of Browser based databases is far from ideal, which constrains what we are able to do in this scenario. But it will no doubt continue to improve.

I hope these options satisfy your needs.


I look forward to ongoing discussions with Outliner Software members and getting your input into future development so that Clibu can best suit your needs.

—————————-
Neville, http://www.clibu.com

Hi Neville,

just a few comments, questions, wishes.

Will it be possible to link to a Clibu item from an external application (will it have its own URL)?

I'd prefer to have the full time of the capture (full date and time stamp, like in Surfulater) recorded and displayed for each note.

It would be good if the basic bibliographic info of a note (title, original article URL, its own item URL, time and date created, tags) or selected notes or all notes could be easily exportable (through a button or context menu).

Will it be possible to attach a file to an item and attach links to local files?

Dr Andus wrote:

Hi Neville,

just a few comments, questions, wishes.

Will it be possible to link to a Clibu item from an external application (will it have its own URL)?

Yes, every article will be accessible via. a URL.

I'd prefer to have the full time of the capture (full date and time stamp, like in Surfulater) recorded and displayed for each note.

All Dates in Clibu are stored as ISO 8601. The visual representation "Today at 9:27am" is simply a fancy layer on top. I can provide options for the way they are displayed.

It would be good if the basic bibliographic info of a note (title, original article URL, its own item URL, time and date created, tags) or selected notes or all notes could be easily exportable (through a button or context menu).

There will be full Export capabilities. The most widely used data interchange format on the Web is JSON and this is what I plan to use.

Will it be possible to attach a file to an item and attach links to local files?

Yes to attaching (and storing) files with articles. And yes to links to local files as long as Browser permissions allow this to work.

Neville Franks wrote:

>It would be good if the basic bibliographic info of a note (title,
original article URL, its own item URL, time and date created, tags) or
selected notes or all notes could be easily exportable (through a button
or context menu).

There will be full Export capabilities. The most widely used data
interchange format on the Web is JSON and this is what I plan to use.

Actually I meant something else: an export of the meta data of a given note or a selection of notes, only including title, original article URL, its own item URL, time and date created, tags, but not the full text and images. Let's call them the properties of an item.

A bit like what the "Create Link" Chrome extension can do for a webpage or the CoLT Firefox add-on (and those are highly customisable regarding the output).

How much is it going to cost? I don´t want to migrate my stuff to find later it's too expensive.

Neville, even though I may not be able to use Clibu in a practical way initially, I am most interested in what you are doing. And though I remain to be convinced on a couple of things, you've made me doubt my assumptions, and I respect the high degree of thought and work you've put into Clibu.

I'll be following Clibu's course.

Given what we're seeing from EN, and the number of similar start-ups, Clibu may be uniquely positioned and timed to do very well.

I wish you success!

Daly

Dr Andus wrote:

>There will be full Export capabilities. The most widely used data
>interchange format on the Web is JSON and this is what I plan to use.

Actually I meant something else: an export of the meta data of a given
note or a selection of notes, only including title, original article
URL, its own item URL, time and date created, tags, but not the full
text and images. Let's call them the properties of an item.

A bit like what the "Create Link" Chrome extension can do for a webpage
or the CoLT Firefox add-on (and those are highly customisable regarding
the output).

Ok, I understand. I assume you want to paste this into other documents, is that the use case?

kalkito wrote:

How much is it going to cost? I don´t want to migrate my stuff to
find later it's too expensive.

I haven't finalised pricing yet, however I'm thinking around $5 per month for a basic package, possibly less for a light package etc.

How does that sound?

Dr Andus wrote:
>Actually I meant something else: an export of the meta data of a given
>note or a selection of notes, only including title, original article
>URL, its own item URL, time and date created, tags, but not the full
>text and images. Let's call them the properties of an item.

Neville Franks wrote:

Ok, I understand. I assume you want to paste this into other documents,
is that the use case?

Yes, that's right, e.g. to order a selection of notes into an outline in WorkFlowy or in a ConnectedText document, as part of a project dashboard. In both cases it would be useful not only to get the raw URL but a bit of description (note title at least).

The nice thing about the aforementioned Chrome/Firefox extensions is that they allow you to completely customise what you copy, so if you could make Clibu play nicely with them, that would be fine too.

Daly de Gagne wrote:

Given what we're seeing from EN, and the number of similar start-ups...

The big issue in this market seems to me how a developer balances the need to satisfy "power users" (who use the app constantly, need sophisticated features, deal with huge amount of data) and "light users" of the mass market who provide it with revenue.

The problem seems to be that the segment of "power users" is either too small for this kind of software to sustain the business or that there are marketing difficulties to reach them (marketing is too expensive or developer lacks marketing skills or is too busy developing).

I'm not convinced Evernote is a good model. I've stopped using it as soon as they started dumbing down, and I've seen lots of power users complaining about having been abandoned, and the ones that stayed seem to be complaining regularly (see the Evernote forum link in the other thread). It seems to me that Evernote has gone too far in chasing the "light user" dollar.

Maybe software developers could learn from gyms. A gym can have sophisticated equipment for power users, and it looks good for them when power users are around, showing off the use and benefits of the equipment. At the same time large enough amount of light users (and paying non-users) are constantly being recruited, who can use the sophisticated equipment in a "light user" way, and support the business with their membership. So there is a compromise that suits everyone.

Of course if light users overrun the gym to the extent that power users can't use the equipment, then they go elsewhere, and the gym may suffer as a result, having lost its most loyal customers who draw in--and are role models for--new members.

Although software developers have the advantage that is fairly easy for them to create two (or more) different gyms, separated by a glass wall, for light, intermediate, pro, ultimate etc. users.

This is a good analysis of the problem faced by developers. The Evernote management has always been in a state of deep confusion about this question. When they made the transition years ago from Windows-only to a ubiquitious app, they deliberately stripped Evernote of much of its functionality. I remember that Libin then proclaimed that he didn't much care for power users and was quite happy to have just the "lazy slobs" of the world as his customers. Nevertheless, Evernote has been gradually adding sophisticated features ever since (including some that had been earlier thrown overboard), and nowadays it is struggling to move into the very demanding business world. At the same time, there are still odd little spasms of oversimplification: the latest Evernote updates often conceal menus and display enormous expanses of blank screen, supposedly to make it more user-friendly.

If all developers are faced with this dilemma, as you suggest, then Evernote is the supreme example of an interesting (and potentially very powerful) piece of software trapped in an endless identity crisis.

Hi Neville.

Will there also be a Mac desktop app?

Thanks, Franz
(who'd love to kiss EN goodbye but needs a reasonable web clipping/note storing application that allows sharing data on Windows PCs an Macs)

Franz Grieser wrote:

Hi Neville.

Will there also be a Mac desktop app?

Thanks, Franz

Hi Franz,
It is a bit early to say for sure, but probably. You can of course use Clibu now on your Mac, Windows and Linux PC's using Chrome or Firefox. Safari should also work fine, however I'm not testing against Safari at this time.

Note however that the Clibu Web Clipper is only available for Chrome at present.

Thanks, Neville.

To be sure I understand: Do I need internet access when using Clibu through Firefox or Chrome on my Mac? That would not be a solution for me. I want my data locally, from time to time I go to places where I have no internet access. And I want to be able to work there.

Franz

Franz Grieser wrote:

Thanks, Neville.

To be sure I understand: Do I need internet access when using Clibu
through Firefox or Chrome on my Mac? That would not be a solution for
me. I want my data locally, from time to time I go to places where I
have no internet access. And I want to be able to work there.

Franz

Hi Franz,
At present you need Internet access, however in future we intend to have a version you can use off-line. See the a,b,c items in my very first post.

Neville

Thanks, Neville

Hi Franz,
At present you need Internet access, however in future we intend to have
a version you can use off-line. See the a,b,c items in my very first
post.

Neville

In your first post you were talking about a Windows desktop app, not about Mac OS X. That's why I asked :-)

I believe that very few (user-friendly) information managers provide all of the options below. (b) in particular is excellent for the SME sector. Should I assume that one would be able to access this private cloud beyond the LAN via VPN or other technique?

It may yet be early to decide, but as a small business owner with ever more information-heavy long term projects in my hands, I am looking into solutions for the next 3-5 years.

Neville Franks wrote:

a) The ability to have a complete local install of Clibu on your PC.
This will include the database, server etc. With an option to still
access it from any PC anywhere, if you want. This may still run in a
Browser or be a Packaged App. So in essence you are back to having a
Desktop app + the various benefits Clibu offers, such as real time
updates, KB sharing & collaboration etc.

b) Similar to (a) except Clibu would be installed on a Server you
control and own. In other words your own private Cloud.

c) Clibu as it is now, but with Offline capabilities. This would give
you a local database that would be used when there was no Internet
connection which would then synchronize with the real Clibu server, next
time you were online. Unfortunately the world of Browser based databases
is far from ideal, which constrains what we are able to do in this
scenario. But it will no doubt continue to improve.

It would be private inasmuch as only people you told about it would know it exists. As for external access, absolutely. It would be identical to how Clibu works now, except running on your own server and with you controlling who can Signup and get access and what level of access they can have.

At present Clibu's Sharing provides either full access or view-only, however this is built on a much finer grained set of permissions. See this Blog post: http://blog.surfulater.com/2014/11/15/clibu-version-0-80-a-major-new-release-knowledge-base-sharing/


Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

I believe that very few (user-friendly) information managers provide all
of the options below. (b) in particular is excellent for the SME sector.
Should I assume that one would be able to access this private cloud
beyond the LAN via VPN or other technique?

It may yet be early to decide, but as a small business owner with ever
more information-heavy long term projects in my hands, I am looking into
solutions for the next 3-5 years.

Neville Franks wrote:
>a) The ability to have a complete local install of Clibu on your PC.
>This will include the database, server etc. With an option to still
>access it from any PC anywhere, if you want. This may still run in a
>Browser or be a Packaged App. So in essence you are back to having a
>Desktop app + the various benefits Clibu offers, such as real time
>updates, KB sharing & collaboration etc.
>
>b) Similar to (a) except Clibu would be installed on a Server you
>control and own. In other words your own private Cloud.
>
>c) Clibu as it is now, but with Offline capabilities. This would give
>you a local database that would be used when there was no Internet
>connection which would then synchronize with the real Clibu server,
next
>time you were online. Unfortunately the world of Browser based
databases
>is far from ideal, which constrains what we are able to do in this
>scenario. But it will no doubt continue to improve.

Hello Neville,

what I could find out about Clibu sounds interesting to me.

So I signed up at myclibu.com and received a password. But although I tried a lot of times I was not able to log in (either appeared a message that the server connection was lost or a message that an unknown error appeared).

So I had no possibility to test Clibu or even see how it looks. Therefore I would like to ask some simple (but important for my needs) questions here in this forum:

1. Is Clibu something like an (online) Wiki (respectively can it be used in this way)?

2. Does it fully support Unicode?

3. Does it offer a search function (filter) so that the search can be restricted to the titles of the articles (that means: no search concerning tags, no full search)?

I tried out a little bit Surfulater (on the desktop) and this has exactly such a feature (a stable window above the list with the articles in the tree where I can type the title I am looking for).

For my needs such a filtered search would be essential because primarily my knowledge base would be a dictionary.

4. For the same reason of importance for me: Can Clibu create automatically a strictly alphabetical order of the titles of the articles?

5. Does Clibu offer a fast "Find-as-you-type-search"?

6. Is it possible to transfer contents from Word documents to Clibu without losing the complete formatting? (Some loss is inevitable, I fear).

7. Is there any restriction (for technical or other reasons) concerning the number of articles I can create? In my case each keyword of the dictionary would correspond with an article. This would mean in practice some thousands of them.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Hi Peter,
We had a problem yesterday caused by the number of people signing up, which prevented access to Clibu. It is back up and running however I'm still working on fully resolving the underlying issue. That said you should be able to complete the Signup now.

Unfortunately I don't have the time to answer your questions right now, other than to say some are yes and other's no. If you have time and are still interested, please give Clibu a try for yourself.

Thanks for the information, Neville.

I will try again to log in.

Clibu V0.80.60 has been released and includes a new compact article view, enabling more articles to be viewed per page. From memory this was requested by Dr. Andus & Daly.

For more information on this release see: http://blog.surfulater.com/2014/12/18/clibu-v0-80-60-released-ui-enhancements/

Neville Franks wrote:

Clibu V0.80.60 has been released and includes a new compact article
view, enabling more articles to be viewed per page. From memory this was
requested by Dr. Andus & Daly.

Hi Neville, many thanks for that. I'd suggest to go even further and make them single line only (as they are in Surfulater, for instance), to be able to display even more notes per screen.

Also, it would be nice if that button could also work when articles are expanded. First I thought the feature wasn't working because I tried it when they were expanded. Only then I realised first I need to collapse the articles and then click on Compact view (which makes it a too-step implementation and a bit confusing). Cheers.

Dr Andus wrote:

Neville Franks wrote:
>Clibu V0.80.60 has been released and includes a new compact article
>view, enabling more articles to be viewed per page. From memory this
was
>requested by Dr. Andus & Daly.

Hi Neville, many thanks for that. I'd suggest to go even further and
make them single line only (as they are in Surfulater, for instance), to
be able to display even more notes per screen.

Also, it would be nice if that button could also work when articles are
expanded. First I thought the feature wasn't working because I tried it
when they were expanded. Only then I realised first I need to collapse
the articles and then click on Compact view (which makes it a too-step
implementation and a bit confusing). Cheers.

I've just made some more changes including reducing the total character length of the compact article view.

The 'Compact Collapsed View' button is a bit confusing I agree, which is why I pop a tip when there are no collapsed articles. Keep in mind this works whether you've collapsed one or more or all articles. I did try getting it to collapse all articles if none were collapsed, but felt this was even more confusing. The other option is to disable it if there are no collapsed articles, but I'm not a fan of disabling UI components, hence my displaying a tip.

I've also added a new button which hides all articles, except the current one. See http://blog.surfulater.com/2014/12/18/clibu-v0-80-60-released-ui-enhancements/ And fixed a few issues in yesterdays release.

Are there any full-size screenshots of clibu?

Will there be an offline desktop version?