My main note taking apps are currently ObsidianMD and to some extent RemNote and others. I am curious if I could somehow combine Obsidian with Kinopio?
Is anybody here thinking bout this or (even better) doing it already?
I have installed “Custom frames” plugin for Obsidian that gives me Kinopio in the sidebar but I am thinking about closer integration, if possible.
I have to try this out. Thank you for the idea.
I’m currently using Obsidian as a long form tool or where I start writing things down before they end up in Kinopio. I know it’s not using 99% of the Obsidian features, but I really like the editor and device-OS-agnostic sync.
I’ve spent hours fidgeting with data view, complex embedded searches and templates, but now I’m trying to simplify things a bit (not sure how long that’ll last).
So I tried using Kinopio within Obsidian, and while theoretically it should have worked beautifully ( having an Obsidian note open in a sidebar, being able to reference the entire Obsidian library and opening notes in tabs, new windows; being able to write long form while looking at a Kinopio space, etc.), it broke my brain. Instead of empowered, I just felt totally overwhelmed and unfocused. … so I went back to using Obsidian as my over-featured scratchpad and Kinopio as home for permanent notes.
I went back to using Obsidian as my over-featured scratchpad and Kinopio as home for permanent notes.
That you’re using the linear writing tool (Obsidian) for rough thoughts and Kinopio for solidified ideas is especially interesting to me. I would’ve thought you’d do things the other way around and use Kinopio for roughing out ideas and Obsidian to keep the more formal/polished text docs?
being able to reference the entire Obsidian library and opening notes in tabs, new windows; being able to write long form while looking at a Kinopio space
Is this experience like having kinopio in one window and obsidian open in a different window on your screen?
I (have to) keep formal/polished docs as Word/PDF docs or emails. Obsidian would not just be duplicative of that, it would inevitably be incomplete. I use Obsidian on PC as one would use Drafts on iOS. It’s mad fast, just opens to a blank page (or I have it do that by adding minutes to a daily note nomenclature) and supports images.
Obsidian is also handy with wrangling long or complicated pieces of texts. I usually break those down into manageable chunks, paraphrase into my own words and then copy to a relevant home in Kinopio. I then just delete whatever I had in Obsidian but reference the original source.
Kinopio is like my memory palace with note/object permanence. I also use it to think through stuff (often), but the initial idea or problem usually starts somewhere else and then ends up on Kinopio for further thinking.
Yes, but worse. I ended up needing to hide either Obsidian or Kinopio at different times, and having it all resize constantly within Obsidian was too much. I ended up just keeping two separate windows open.
This is fascinating. I would love to get a peek of your memory palace if there’s a portion that is suitable (or you can scrub) 
I’m curious how you scope your spaces, organize within and without. Do you use boxes, tags, other ways to group and annotate data? Etc.
Let me see if I can find something shareable.
But all these comments gave me an idea to create a shortcut kinopio.club/new and see if I can use that as my inbox / scratch book.
I think what I really needed is a blank space to start thinking/writing/processing info. Obsidian made it feel easy and “cheap” to do, as it’s super easy to just create pages and then get rid of them. If I start thinking about Kinopio spaces as “pages” at least for these purposes, it might work similarly.
My current plan is to have Kinopio open a new space each time I have a new thing to write down, and then see if the content is worth saving in an existing space, and if not either hide (archive) or delete the space once I’m done. Hopefully nothing will break, as I’ll have a ton of deleted spaces.
Your inbox might be a good place to have a shortcut to (rather than /new) in order to avoid having a bunch of spaces that might not lead to anything concrete.
Then when you are ready, you can highlight a group of cards in the inbox → Move to new space.
Plus Kinopio has the extension for adding to your inbox and you can use the +Inbox button in Kinopio to add to the inbox when in another space.
Yeah. I’m aware of the Inbox feature but I don’t like having cards in a space already when I start writing something new.
FWIW, I’m finding it much easier to write out initial thoughts in something like Obsidian (especially on mobile) because:
All that said, once this “rough draft” is done. Processing it and thinking it through is much much easier in Kinopio as it provides tactile feel to text blocks, you can move things around incredibly easily and distinguish or link them visually
I have very similar feels to these points. I’ve talked about how in a document it’s super easy to get in and out and it’s obvious where content will go. You don’t have to worry about positioning. (How to deal with groups of sequential cards - #15 by bentsai)
That was in the context of lists, which I’ve been experimenting with in my extension.
But also more broadly there’s something to be said for a quicker entry. Inbox doesn’t quite do it for me because cards go into the ether and I don’t have the context after I input a card. Also in the Inbox space, yea they are neat in a column but they still feel untethered.
I’ve been wondering what would improve this. For me something like a “table” view with metadata so you can see when cards were created and it is easy to sort. I’m not proposing a UI necessarily, just trying to put my finger on what would make this a better experience. A more useful quick entry mechanism which lets you later triage and organize.
Or what if cards in the Inbox are automatically put into boxes by day (all cards entered on this day), and those boxes auto-tidy?
Yeah, it’s kind of why I was trying to just create new pages as an Inbox substitute, as new pages show up right under favorites in order of last modified. And these pages have cool random names, so it’s easy to distinguish from permanent notes. I also use emojis in the names of permanent spaces like 
for projects and 
for explanatory spaces, so spaces without these stand out. Like a poor man’s metadata.
I don’t know what a good solution would be. But it’s definitely one of my biggest pain points right now.
That could help, but with the character limit, Inbox cannot really accept all things. So it can’t really be a true inbox (only for certain things).
What kind of stuff do you want to capture but exceeds the character limit?
Long text excepts and other people’s analysis.
Frankly, I don’t know if anyone has this figured out 100%. Roam-likes are not perfect as you have to tag the blocks to come back to them, and stuff doesn’t always translate into an outline well. Note-based apps like Obsidian /Evernote have more flexibility with taking in a variety of formats but then they are not great with manipulating content. Heptabse is sort of straddling in the middle (but more note-based and not block based), but I think the jury is still out there
This doesn’t solve all use cases but what if you could click the footer inbox button and , in addition to letting you quick entry, it’d display a list of recently added cards that you could click or drag to move to the current space?
That would be pretty awesome
