While looking for information on Mem, I saw a reference to this program on Demetri Panici's YT channel: https://anytype.io/en . Have not really had a chance to look at it, but those concerned about data privacy might find it interesting.

--Ken

Ken wrote:

While looking for information on Mem, I saw a reference to this program
on Demetri Panici's YT channel: https://anytype.io/en . Have not really
had a chance to look at it, but those concerned about data privacy might
find it interesting.

--Ken

I've been participating in the alpha for a year or so. It's more akin to Notion than anything else I've tried, if anyone wants a starting point. Building blocks are objects (notes, people, whatever), relations (attributes of objects) and sets (groups of objects with shared attributes(.

It's very much in development (alpha is a fair designation) but what's available is stable and, within limits, very functional. It's not as easy to get into as the likes of Logseq/Obsidian - like Notion, you need to get your head round the underlying concepts.

The basic proposition is that all your data is yours and held locally (as opposed to Notion, for example) although in the current phase, sync is via an Anytype server. In future, the app will be open source and free, with a charge for using their sync service and for a backup service. You will, apparently, be able to set up your own sync for privacy.

Access to the alpha is free. Runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, IOS/iPadOS.

In sum, it's a very interesting attempt at a Notion-type data tool. Im' enjoying it and it's been very very stable, but it has some frustrating limitations at present (no bulk delete, for example) that mean I'm still test-driving rather than committing (only someone really silly would commit to using an alpha for critical work, right :-) )

Hi everyone - long time follower of this forum - first time poster. Nice to meet you all.

Came here to say that I joined a 1h long onboarding call for Anytype yesterday. Visually the app looks a lot like Notion, but a better comparison would be Capacities.io - which was mentioned recently multiple times. Huge focus on creating re-usable elements that live in multiple places at the same time. Both these apps have rather steep learning curves, with their own specific lingo for essentially the same thing: what Capacities calls 'databases' is called 'objects' in Anytype. And Capacities' 'collections' are called 'sets' in Anytype. Where Anytype takes things up a notch is the ability to manually define the relation between two different objects. Plus the integrated task management is a nice touch and feels natural.

Anytype's marketing material is heavy on the 'owning your data' and 'giving back privacy and data ownership to users', but there's a lot of air in that balloon. One of the top posts on the user forum is called "Fake local first strategy and the user don’t actually own their notes".

Still early days for Anytype. I still prefer Capacities, but will keep following them.

I was curious if there had been any discussion of anytype https://anytype.io/ and found this thread which is from Sept 2022. Interested in people's thoughts and experiences. Also interested in experienced crimpers here sharing their feedback with the anytype team who are quite open. I am not involved with the company, but I am pretty interested and hope they are successful even if it does not turn out to be the perfect tool for me. There needs to be more open source platforms like this.

Anytype looks pretty interesting as an application and also philosophically. Unlike many other platforms which I look at as mainly tools, Anytype's broader philosophy is attractive to me here. I like open source. I like transparency. I want privacy and security. I really like it when those things are core building principles with a group of developers. In this situation, these principles are driving the Anytype team to not only create a PKM/KMS app but also a larger platform for communities to publish information and collaborate together in a decentralized way.

There is already a pretty active user base and community open to user feedback and where people are showcasing how they are using the software (I will include some links below). It is somewhat difficult to figure out what issues are from previous alpha releases and what are new issues. It recently entered Beta and then shortly after that an updated android app was released. Installers exist for Mac, Windows, Linux, IOS, and Android) No web app, in order to handle local encryption/decryption on the device and to avoid other issues browsers have. Syncing is done with E2E encryption via a new P2P protocol IPFS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System
The are doing staged development and their roadmap is interesting. The first stage is the "operating system for life" a local first application geared for the individual, the second stage is broadening the community collaboration and the 3rd stage focuses on scaling larger to collectives and associations.

It still is in early development, so there are still features missing. Most notably a calendar system and a web clipper, but both are in the works. Also, while local first, current Alpha/Beta users sign in and use Anytype's backup node servers. In the future users will be able to selfhost their own backup nod, or use an alternative backup node when their devices are not all on the same local network. There is some talk about making this easier for individuals who are not tech savvy, but there are still some questions.

The cost to us the software locally, on your devices and with your own bandwidth will be free, but it looks like there will be costs to use their backup node, but those costs have not been released yet. There is also an idea of having some sort of cooperative where people's contributions are taken into consideration but again, this has not been released.

While there is a learning curve, what I have liked is that there are built in options that help you figure out how you might want to set it up as shown here: https://youtu.be/KtV3L0Wrgew?t=146

Documentation is pretty good already:
https://doc.anytype.io/d/

I have been impressed with the graph view:
https://imgur.com/a/bF0Ca0d

Interesting User Showcases on the forum:

Anytype - 0.32.3 -> Fusion of Notion & Obsidian into one System
https://community.anytype.io/t/anytype-0-32-3-fusion-of-notion-obsidian-into-one-system/9628

Picture thread: Sets, Relations, Types, and Templates
https://community.anytype.io/t/picture-thread-sets-relations-types-and-templates/1507/3

My Anytype setup for fans of environment/bg art (incl. resource links)
https://community.anytype.io/t/my-anytype-setup-for-fans-of-environment-bg-art-incl-resource-links/2772

Anytype: The Best Offline Alternative to Notion (alpha release):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIWsKwEqG00

Anytype Beta Tour! New UI, widgets, and Kansan Board! (New Beta release)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_BjafCXLaU

Anytype Instructional Videos (not sure what release)
https://vimeo.com/teamanytype


Philosophy
https://blog.anytype.io/our-open-philosophy/
Product hunt (not sure of when these reviews are from)
https://www.producthunt.com/products/anytype/reviews

I have looked at Anytype multiple times, but it is lacking a key feature that makes it unusable for me - I can't share my documents and templates with others like I can with Coda and Notion.

I see. I believe they are going to begin rolling out sharing documents between now and August, but it is hard to know if them will meet their deadline.

Garland Coulson wrote:

I have looked at Anytype multiple times, but it is lacking a key feature
that makes it unusable for me - I can't share my documents and templates
with others like I can with Coda and Notion.

Just to let folks know, Anytype is on producthunt today. I believe they are doing a q&a as well.

https://www.producthunt.com/products/anytype

Wow, AnyType has really evolved from the very basic concept I was playing with a few months ago. Very sophisticated stuff – I've just imported a whole bunch of Obsidian files at impressively high speed. Hm. I'm going to have to play... (oh no, not another CRIMPing trap!)

My brief play yesterday evening suggests AnyType is indeed set up for collaboration, they just haven't finalised it yet (there are various UI elements that refer to sharing, commenting etc.)

Ah, and in fact they have a rather useful roadmap on their home page. Team wikis and shareable docs are planned for Q3 2023, while community hubs, public blogs and collaborative projects are planned for Q4 2024 (that's in a year and a half's time!)

How very sensible and organised! It's like a kind of open-source Craft as much as an open-source Notion.

There's an insightful thread going on in hackernews* on this topic in case anyone's interested.

The news received a mostly critical reception there. The one that interested me most is people's criticism of it being open source, one of the founders replied on the thread that it's open source, but it doesn't seem to be, and is instead "source available", which has more restrictions on the use of the source code. It's fine by me, they can do whatever they want with their code, but why consciously, deliberately mislead about them being open source? I think they want to associate that idea with their product, and count on people not taking a closer look.

One of the top comments, a guy who works at Notion apparently, all but claimed they copied everything from Lotus Agenda. That's a PIM that gets mentioned here a lot, and since I've never used it, I am wondering if any of the members here could comment on whether they really are similar, and if so to what extent / in what way.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36799548

There's quite a few apps inspired by Lotus Agenda.

Many of the open source licence arguments remind me of the Life of Brian.
They seem to have wanted to be open source but scared by the MongoDB issues and worried that their income stream would be stolen and so devised their own licence, with some code being entirely open source.

One of the issues with source available is that most people don't understand what it is. Nearly all the demands I've seen by "open source" fans have been around being able to check the code, which source available allows, but the "open source" branding has grabbed all the oxygen.

Oh dear, the Lotus Agenda thing again. I can't believe people are still "accusing" developers of ripping off Agenda. It's an ancient program, pretty good in its own way, but with very limited resemblance to AnyType (or indeed any other modern PIM), except inasmuch as it uses a list format, a calendar, and rich-text notes. As did many programs before it. Agenda itself was accused of being a rip-off of another well-known PIM in the day, the name of which I've totally forgotten.

AnyType is more similar, perhaps, to Lotus Notes, but that was a truly horrible thing. I admit to being fascinated by it and trying to use it as the backbone of our intracompany communications. But it just wasn't friendly enough (especially for sysadmins!). We resorted instead to a very powerful but now, alas, moribund mail/notes/filing system called DeskNow. Very easy to use, very powerful Australian software that died a couple of decades ago.

Heh, that's amusing. I made my Lotus Notes comment before reading the interesting YCombinator thread – and the very first post mentions Lotus Notes. Well, there are a few people who remember it, then.

Most of this thread seems to be self-certified opens source purists complaining that Any doesn't follow their particular brand of FOSS and people complaining that Anytype "rips off" two antediluvian products from Lotus. For these purposes, "antediluvian" means "before the internet".

I've been forced to use Notes in many different environments. It was horrible and required a substantial, well qualified IT support team to do anything but the simplest things.

I never used Agenda, but I've used many, many information managers and I can say that Anytype has the potential to be as good as any all of them; whether that potential will be realised remains to be seen.

As to the "is it or is it not truly open source" - it is exactly what the Anytype team says it is.

Fun trivia - IBM used Lotus Notes internally until fairly recently and may still use it to this day. I'm not sure.

I am no longer an IBM'er and will neither conform nor deny I ever was one.

No, wait, I meant "confirm". "Conform" must have been entirely unintentional. Sorry. Never meant to write that.

THE AGENDA BEHIND LOTUS AGENDA
By Jimmy Guterman. Special to the Tribune
Chicago Tribune
Jul 31, 1998 at 12:00 am

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-07-31-9901120098-story.html

"Lotus Agenda is the brainchild of one man: Lotus Development founder Mitchell Kapor ... "Today's PIMs are very Web-influenced and they have connectivity features, but they're stuck in the old mindset," Kapor observes. They're focused on managing contacts and calendars. Agenda was all about managing ideas. ... 'God, I wish there was a modern version of this' because I have the problem it was designed to solve."

Kapor has even tried to create some of Agenda's functionality into existing Windows products. "I use Microsoft Word in outline and I've written a small number of Visual Basic macros that do a couple of the things I most cared about in Agenda, maybe 10 percent of Agenda. But that's all," "

Ah yes, I've remembered what I was wittering about earlier. Lotus Agenda wasn't the app I was thinking of, as it happens – I was thinking of Lotus Organizer, originally developed by a small UK-based firm and then bought by Lotus. A very similar program was originally published by Borland: Sidekick. The Windows version of this was really quite powerful and pleasant to use, and I used it for a couple of years before CRIMPing away to something else...

And that in turn reminds me of the (again, very similar) Palm Desktop. We did a lot of work for Palm Europe back in the day, but you youngsters won't remember what a Palm handheld device even was. My whole production team had Treo mobile phones for a few years, before the iPhone comprehensively nuked the market, blew away Windows CE and caused Palm to sell off PalmOS (after the latter had caused Psion to sell off their extraordinary and much-lamented Windows-lite OS – vastly superior to Windows CE). Ah, those were the Golden Days! I still toy with my AlphaSmart Dana (running on PalmOS) and Psion 5mx even now, before regretfully putting them back in the drawer where they belong.

Oh, my bad, so Lotus Notes and Lotus Agenda are two different software. Strange that two (or more?) big software projects of the past both have Lotus in their name.

Good to know Anytype is way better than Lotus Notes despite what people claim. We really are living in the golden age of software. Anytype has enough good ideas that it might turn out to be the one that outlasts all the others, who knows.

I don't find Anytype entirely intuitive for my use case though. For example, I don't need to see all books I've ever listed, but need the mention of some books to be part of another whole. Eg. a specific class that lasts 6 months. So I can neither use "class" nor "book" types to really capture what I'll need for the next 6 months. That's something Airtable is better suited for.

Also, not sure why they call the items "objects" when they really mean "type" and it's even in their name.


MadaboutDana wrote:

Heh, that's amusing. I made my Lotus Notes comment before reading the
interesting YCombinator thread – and the very first post
mentions Lotus Notes. Well, there are a few people who remember it,
then.

Yeah, the name is a bit odd. Wasn't there some kind of font utility called AnyType back in the day? Maybe there still is?

Lucine wrote:

Also, not sure why they call the items "objects" when they really mean
"type" and it's even in their name.

I used Sidekick on an old 386 DOS machine. It's best feature was that you could use it to clip text from one application and paste it into another. That was almost revolutionary back in the day.

MadaboutDana wrote:

Ah yes, I've remembered what I was wittering about earlier. Lotus Agenda
wasn't the app I was thinking of, as it happens – I was thinking
of Lotus Organizer, originally developed by a small UK-based firm and
then bought by Lotus. A very similar program was originally published by
Borland: Sidekick. The Windows version of this was really quite powerful
and pleasant to use, and I used it for a couple of years before CRIMPing
away to something else...

And that in turn reminds me of the (again, very similar) Palm Desktop.
We did a lot of work for Palm Europe back in the day, but you youngsters
won't remember what a Palm handheld device even was. My whole production
team had Treo mobile phones for a few years, before the iPhone
comprehensively nuked the market, blew away Windows CE and caused Palm
to sell off PalmOS (after the latter had caused Psion to sell off their
extraordinary and much-lamented Windows-lite OS – vastly
superior to Windows CE). Ah, those were the Golden Days! I still toy
with my AlphaSmart Dana (running on PalmOS) and Psion 5mx even now,
before regretfully putting them back in the drawer where they belong.

NickG wrote:

Most of this thread seems to be self-certified opens source purists

This should have read "Most of *that* thread - the combinator one. Apologies for the confusion

Lotus Organizer was my first personal info manager. After that was the PalmOS desktop app with a Palm Pilot.

I could write Graffiti without looking at the screen almost as fast as I could write on paper. It was great for meetings and note-taking.

Shu Omi on YouTube: "Anytype is like a baby between Notion and Apple Notes with a hint of Obsidian." A positive overview coming from an Amplenote super-fanboy, although he ultimately says it has too much of a learning curve and there "too much" time that would be spent on the Notion-like customizations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSXrKM1iUZA

It does seem like a guided/handholding variant of Notion - which I consider a good thing. And I like the customizable sidebar widgets.

But one of the reasons I've avoided Notion is because of the vast open-endedness in customization (which results in making and remaking one's dashboard and pages - as evidenced by posts in all the Notion-oriented fora I've read) - and that complaint about Anytype is somewhat of a deterrent for me.

Oh, he’s on Amplenote now. He started out as a super-fanboy of either Logseq or Roam and he’s been super-fanboying other stuff in the interim. I’m wary of commentary from people who make their living out of talking about these tools (as opposed to those who use the tools to help make a living)

satis wrote:

Shu Omi on YouTube: "Anytype is like a baby between Notion and Apple
Notes with a hint of Obsidian." A positive overview coming from an
Amplenote super-fanboy, although he ultimately says it has too much of a
learning curve and there "too much" time that would be spent on the
Notion-like customizations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSXrKM1iUZA

It does seem like a guided/handholding variant of Notion - which I
consider a good thing. And I like the customizable sidebar widgets.

But one of the reasons I've avoided Notion is because of the vast
open-endedness in customization (which results in making and remaking
one's dashboard and pages - as evidenced by posts in all the
Notion-oriented fora I've read) - and that complaint about Anytype is
somewhat of a deterrent for me.