The original Forevernote was intended to be a replacement for how I used (and depended on) Evernote. When I had to stop using Evernote, I looked for alternatives and ultimately nothing that existed fit the bill, so I started building my own.
The idea is simple: a box of durable digital storage that looks like a network printer. To save things forever, simply print them to the device and they will be archived in PDF format.
What I found was that the hardest part was getting things into Forevernote from the various devices and tools I work with (including lots of physical notes). I knew I didn’t want to write an “app” for each device (especially my phone), and I didn’t want something with a complex web interface because I use a lot of things that don’t have a web browser. What I needed was some sort of universal interface, akin to how Preposterous.us uses email* to get stuff into this thing.
Also, I just don’t like writing that kind of thing anymore.
So I kind of forgot about Forevernote and went back to using primarily notebooks because I knew they would work and could do everything I needed, even if less convenient. Then the other day I was talking to Jamie about finding a recipe she had lost and recommended she print it so that there’s a copy somewhere that can’t disappear the way digital things do. This gave me the idea for Forevernote II.
To retrieve these PDFs, the box contains a specialized search engine which can be queried by both metadata (time of storage, document properties, etc.) or full-text search of the contents**. The search engine has both a web and REST interface so it can be used directly via any web browser or consumed in an automated way by other tools.
As formats go, PDF strikes a good balance of proven longevity with sufficient fidelity to capture most of the information I want to hold on to. By using printing as the input method, Forevernote II can work with virtually any device without modification, and the stored document is a self-contained copy that is easy to index. While some things might loose some fidelity through the conversion to PDF***, in almost all cases it’s better than nothing and for most cases it’s perfect. PDF is also easily printed, so conversion to hardcopy is straightforward should there be a need to export the archive to an even more durable format****.
Perhaps best of all much of what I’d need to build for Forevernote II can be reclaimed from the original Forevernote along with a few other of my projects, so building a usable proof-of-concept should be fairly easy.
*Why not just use email? For no good reason it’s hard to send email from some of the machines I use for the sort of work I’d like to capture
**Maybe even an image search, maybe
***Why not store and index other formats? Maybe eventually, but that breaks the printing-as-input model, complicates indexing and rendering and makes storage requirements larger. It also pushes the device in the NAS direction and there’s a lot of existing options in that direction to choose from
****Perhaps a printer could be included in the design…