After Donovan reminded us about Nimbus Notes in the recent Evernote thread, I thought I'd start a new thread to discuss the app.

I've dabbled with Nimbus Notes a few times; most recently last November (well, and this morning). I like a lot of what I see, but what keeps me from committing to Nimbus Notes is that I don't see any method of exporting my notes. I hope I am just missing it.

Other reactions to Nimbus Notes would be appreciated.

Steve Z

The Windows desktop version allows exporting to JSON and HTML, under the file menu. I'm not savvy enough to know if that's adequate. I seem to recall that my past efforts to import via JSON were messy at best.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I've dabbled with Nimbus Notes a few times; most recently last November
(well, and this morning). I like a lot of what I see, but what keeps me
from committing to Nimbus Notes is that I don't see any method of
exporting my notes. I hope I am just missing it.

Other reactions to Nimbus Notes would be appreciated.

Steve Z

Sorry, let’s try this again.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I’ve dabbled with Nimbus Notes a few times; most recently last November
(well, and this morning). I like a lot of what I see, but what keeps me
from committing to Nimbus Notes is that I don’t see any method of
exporting my notes. I hope I am just missing it.
>Other reactions to Nimbus Notes would be appreciated.
>Steve Z

Hi Steve,

I mostly use the web app, iOS, and the Windows program.
I have used the Windows program to export all files — JSON and HTML and they both worked flawlessly. It was important to me as well. I found the following on their site and #3 addresses export.
https://nimbusweb.me/data-protection.php

Another interesting page are side-by-side comparisons with Nimbus Note vs all major competitors.
https://nimbusweb.me/comparison/

OCR was also a big factor for me. It searches jpg and many other image formats for text and also searches contents of PDF.

The web clipper is really nice, too.
https://nimbusweb.me/clipper.php

Hope this helps some, Steve.
Thank you for your many contributions to this forum!

- Mike Donovan

In installed the app from the App Store, and registered an account. (Apps that require registration before use are somewhat annoying.)

In the app, I clicked on the icon for information about Nimbus Clipper. It took me to this site which (today at least) was half English and half Russian.

https://nimbusweb.me/ru/clipper.php

Big stop sign for me until I research more about where this company is actually located and where my data are stored. The apps appear to be front ends for web storage, so I think I'll pause with getting to know Nimbus for now.

Hi, Mike,

I appreciate the information. I can't, however, find any way to export the data from the Mac app or from the Web app. Is it possible you can only export from the Windows version at this time? I just submitted the question to the developers.

Thanks!

Steve

Donovan wrote:

Sorry, let’s try this again.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I’ve dabbled with Nimbus Notes a few times; most recently last
November
>(well, and this morning). I like a lot of what I see, but what keeps me
>from committing to Nimbus Notes is that I don’t see any method of
>exporting my notes. I hope I am just missing it.
> >Other reactions to Nimbus Notes would be appreciated.
> >Steve Z

Hi Steve,

I mostly use the web app, iOS, and the Windows program.
I have used the Windows program to export all files — JSON and
HTML and they both worked flawlessly. It was important to me as well. I
found the following on their site and #3 addresses export.
https://nimbusweb.me/data-protection.php

Another interesting page are side-by-side comparisons with Nimbus Note
vs all major competitors.
https://nimbusweb.me/comparison/

OCR was also a big factor for me. It searches jpg and many other image
formats for text and also searches contents of PDF.

The web clipper is really nice, too.
https://nimbusweb.me/clipper.php

Hope this helps some, Steve.
Thank you for your many contributions to this forum!

- Mike Donovan

So I got a response from the developer of Nimbus Notes. He (or she) said they are working on a new, improved editor at the moment. After that they are planning to add export functions.

Steve Z

Nimbus Notes "recognizes business cards", but has no export feature. I question their priorities...

I don't see "export" on their Trello roadmap, either.

This deal may be of interest:
https://saasmantra.com/deals/nimbus

Ends in 36 h as of this post.

Donovan wrote:

Sorry, let’s try this again.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I’ve dabbled with Nimbus Notes a few times; most recently last
>OCR was also a big factor for me. It searches jpg and many other image
formats for text and also searches contents of PDF.

Do you know if the OCR is performed locally when using the desktop version?

$69... marked down from $2,750!

Ha ha ha ha ha, that was a good laugh on a day in which I needed one. Thank you.


Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

This deal may be of interest:

Hey Stephen, and everyone talking about Nimbus Notes.

I'm not associated with the app. Just a user. Thought I'd jump in to answer a few of the questions, as I actually know a few answers.

RUSSIA? AMERICA?: The app developer/owner is Russian, but the company is based in Cleveland Ohio. His name's Pavel. He's a nice guy.

YOUR DATA'S LOCATION & EXPORTING IT: On this point, I have no idea where it's stored. I've wondered this myself although, it's not that big of a concern for me at present time.

How to export it... this too, has also been a pet peeve of mine. The only place I've found where you can actually export it is in the Windows app. This is bad and needs a remedy.

I think it's safe to say, that the with regards to where your data is stored and how to export it, Nimbus Notes is seriously lacking. They definitely need some documentation.

That being said...

I've tried Evernote. I've tried, Ulysses. I've tried all notes apps, and this Nimbus Notes (when used with slightly tweaked CSS), for me, is the closest thing I've found to the golden unicorn .

It's got:

- A real, live, actual file sidebar, that—if you use my css at the bottom of this post—will make your UI look like Ulysses.

- Wiki Style Links--you can create a link to any line of any text, in any note or folder. And when you're in one note, then click a Wiki Link to a specific line of another note, you really are taken to the specific line of that specific note—sometimes (I'll admit, sometimes it doesn't work). REGARDLESS! This, right here, to me, is a big deal.

- Draggable columns--did you know that? They just revamped their editor and it's really slick. You can create these "column-section-thingys" in a note that can have 2,3,4, or 5 columns. You just drag the 3 circle thingy that's on the left side of all lines of text when hovering over it. No one else has that.

- Collapsable lists -- that's right: ordered & unordered lists collapse (although it could be done better.)

- You can embed videos from YouTube, files from google drive, or... upload, then watch videos directly to the Nimbus notes server (although their video player needs a bit of work.)

- Rich text - not markdown (thank you very much.)

What it needs is:
- A Better way to search, all your notes, like you can in Dynalist,
- A way to manually manage/drag files in the file sidebar.
- And there's a whole bunch of other stuff it doesn't have, but for me, it's better than anything else.



P.S. Below is a link to my css for Nimbus Notes. If you're a dark mode fan and use the dark mode in the app, to me, the css below makes everything easier to read:
There's a whole bunch of other changes I made too.

https://userstyles.org/styles/181198/nimbus-notes-updated-ui

Nimbus Notes is now Fusebase and has expanded services to cover the following use cases:

- Personal note-taking, knowledge management (PKM)
- Project Management, team knowledge management
- The main: Client collaboration for Professional Services

More here:
https://appsumo.com/products/fusebase/

Numbus have changed their business model and no longer are aimed at the (fleeing) Evernote customer base, where they were once considered a main alternative. They apparently killed the native Mac app and are using an Electron app (ugh) now. It lacks a mass-export, and you cannot cancel the trial from the website but must email customer service with a support request.

If anyone is still interested they are offering 40% off until tonight.

Future "focus for 2024 will be AI automation. You can already experience the powers of the AI assistant in your workspaces and •Create content from scratch and improve it. •Analyze information on the page. •Replace the translator’s work and produce multilingual content"

There's a lot of shape shifting in the market of PKMs, even if it is sort of subtle. Most of it going from personal knowledge management to team KM or collaboration. Nimbus (less subtle). Most of Walling's new feature seem to be related to sharing information. Craft, which began as a writing app for iPad and Mac, now is also putting most of its efforts into collaboration and sharing. Those are the ones that come to mind first, but I'm sure there are others. Seems like they are taking the personal out of PKM.

Steve Z.

Nimbus itself calls their changed focus a "profound transformation". Their roadmap is here.

https://nimbus.nimbusweb.me/share/4244497/etd897m7ooisp1qmk0a8

Sharing and collaboration and a move to group sales makes sense because businesses pay for software, and once they do there is institutional inertia and lock-in. Consumers aren't reliable customers, and most don't want to pay at all, as evidenced by the popularity of free mass market alternatives from big players like Apple, Google and Microsoft, to much smaller free and freemium products like Joplin, Obsidian, Logseq, Notion, Standard Notes etc.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

There's a lot of shape shifting in the market of PKMs,
Most of it going from personal knowledge management to
team KM or collaboration. Nimbus (less subtle). Most of Walling's new
feature seem to be related to sharing information. Craft, which began as
a writing app for iPad and Mac, now is also putting most of its efforts
into collaboration and sharing. Those are the ones that come to mind
first, but I'm sure there are others. Seems like they are taking the
personal out of PKM.

satis wrote:

Nimbus itself calls their changed focus a "profound transformation".
Sharing and collaboration and a move to group sales makes sense because
businesses pay for software, and once they do there is institutional
inertia and lock-in. Consumers aren't reliable customers, and most don't
want to pay at all,

It's still profoundly irritating to find these apps changing direction and even more because it's a trend.

I'm not convinced that it's necessarily a great business decision - just a recognition that their previous strategies were failing.
Most of these apps are too small to break into large corporates, even if individual teams go for it. Smaller businesses maybe, where teams are task oriented (another common request from users of those apps) or working off or producing a single set of documents..
It is also a fashion among users - User U has a Friend F and wants to collaborate; frequent amongst world-builders and students. This group wants to pay even less than other groups of users.

I see these pressures within the whiteboard apps Heptabase and Scrintal. I'm not using either at the moment, so I can afford to wait and see which directions they travel and what their destinations look like.

Dormouse wrote:

I’m not convinced that it’s necessarily a great business decision -
just a recognition that their previous strategies were failing.

I'm not sure what a "great" business decision would look like but this change seems interesting given that Nimbus has been one of the top (if not the top) recommended alternatives to Evernote, and Evernote customers by all reports *have* been leaving for other platforms.

If marginal costs per additional Evernote customer were not profitable they absolutely needed to make a change, and it doesn't take much business acumen to aim at a more profitable niche if the current approach they've had since 2014 was faltering.

There are so many ways to combine notes, tasks and to-dos (and project management) and so many companies in this space offering variations on the mix, often with unique features, for different markets (solo use, SOHO, work from home, corporate) that there is surely going to be a shakeout. After two years Microsoft Loop is finally generally available and ready to eat marketshare from Notion, and well-financed productivity apps that are free or have generous free tiers or seemingly subsidized pricing are causing problems for a lot of the products out there today.