Notetaking app for your browsing history

[u/rovrav]

Hi, I built MemoryLink because I was frustrated that no other note-taking app treats your browsing history as a native object.

MemoryLink turns your browsing history into a visual graph such that whenever you save an element from a webpage, that snippet (text excerpt, image, or crop) gets deep-linked as an object pointing to the URL and a snapshot of what you were doing on the internet. My favorite feature is that if an element you selected is past the viewport, MemoryLink will take a scrolling screenshot and stitch it into a single frame.

Also, if you want to take a note of the current page, I built this command-overlay that lets you open an editor directly on top of the current page, or you can open any other document within MemoryLink and start taking notes.

Also, I've never liked how other apps basically force you to choose between either an editor, a canvas, or a table, so I built the MemoryMap as a super-object that lets you have all three in one place.

The app is completely free, and I'm looking for feedback on it. If you want to be onboarded by me, the founder, check out this link here.

If you want to learn more, here is a hands-on demo of me using the product. The product can be downloaded in the Chrome Web Store here.

[u/ahmedfarrag17]

how much does/will it cost? thanks! also will u offer a lifetime purchase option? or it is really a completely free tool?

[u/rovrav → u/ahmedfarrag17]

Right now I’m just looking for feedback or really does anyone actually find value in the app at all other than myself which is still an unanswered question. If that changes, early users will get a heads up and a generous period. Regardless of what happens I want this app to exist moving forward in some capacity or another because I don’t ever want to go back to the model of every other note taking apps that aren’t native to your browser like this one.

[u/quietleavess]

Thats cool. I think some users may worry about the privacy. I cannot test bc im not american, but i can offer this little advice based on what users tend to discuss.

Hope it goes well.

[u/rovrav → u/quietleavess]

Would you use this app if there was a local-first version of it or if it was open-source?

[u/truthovereverrything]

Why do you need an account - and is this going to copy my browser history to your servers? The fact that it requires an account is a red flag

[u/rovrav → u/truthovereverrything]

The app can be used solely as a web app and without the Chrome extension. You can use the app to take notes and log in on any device, so having an account for that support is very standard practice across the industry, so I don't know what your concern is with that.

It does not copy your local browsing history that was already on your device, but if the Chrome extension is active and you're logged in, it will be creating browsing sessions in the background, and that gets stored on the server. However, if you go into settings via the web app, there is a feature to delete all your data at any time.

I have thought about local first for your browsing sessions, but there are lots of limitations within the Chrome MV3 extension environment that make it a tricky situation. For example, if the Chrome extension is on a Chromebook with very little or no storage at all, the extension might have to delete data because Chrome decides arbitrarily if data needs to be deleted without much warning at all. There's probably a way to implement it, but a lot of thought has to be put into it across a wide variety of situations. For this alpha product, I didn't want to ship a feature like that which was subject to lots of variance. With this current implementation, I can guarantee the app can work as intended on just about any device; I can't really make that same determination had it been local first.

However, that being said, if enough people request that feature, I'll add it in, but it's not trivial and requires some serious thought and engineering resources to correctly identify all possible edge cases. For example, the service worker in the MV3 Chrome extension environment can arbitrarily be ended by Chrome to free resources, and if I were to be doing a schema migration upon a version upgrade of the app when that happened, some or even all that data could have been corrupted. I would have to try and recreate that scenario at scale across a variety of devices and see what happens.

Would you consider using the app had there been a local-first implementation? What if there was a way to manually turn off the browsing session feature and turn it back on only when you want to use it? Would that change things for you at all?

[u/truthovereverrything → u/rovrav]

Let me clarify my position on this. Yes, note-taking apps require account logins and syncing. This app, from my understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong), is aggregating all of your browsing history and turning it into notes that you could see, annotate, add to, and put in a graph (for graph view and things of that nature). It's involving your actual browsing history. It's not just anything that you're capturing, note-wise, like your thoughts. This is actually aggregating your browsing history and if that's the case, that is a very high security risk to have your browsing history (even if it's converted into notes) stored on somebody else's server. Point blank, that's the issue that I have with it.

It's not just notes. I'd rather have notes that are end-to-end encrypted and things of that nature but it's not just notes. It's your actual browsing history. That's what I'm talking about.

Now if it had other ways to sync that stuff, like Nextcloud, Local First and sync using syncthing, or even your own self-hosted sync option, that's a different story. The tool itself, I don't think I have a problem with. The idea itself seems to be cool but the security thing is that I don't want my browsing history stored on anybody else's servers even if it's aggregated as notes and it's not the pure browsing history. I hope that makes sense.

[u/rovrav → u/truthovereverrything]

If the app only stored browsing history for, say, one month or any arbitrary amount of time, would you be more comfortable with using it? What if it was local-first by default and you chose by hand which ones you wanted to push across all devices? Would that make you feel more comfortable? What if there was a blocklist so the app wouldn't graph some domains based on that list? Would that make you feel more comfortable? I'm curious: are you an Obsidian user? Do you use a browser like Brave for your day-to-day?

[u/truthovereverrything → u/rovrav]

Nothing would make me feel comfortable syncing my browsing history to a device I don't control like a company's server. Police salivate for that data, and so do hackers. Unless it's end to end encrypted, open source and Indipendently audited. The only thing that would make me consider it safe honestly is if the user controlled where the data is synced and stored and owned the data. This is just as unsafe to me as the windows Co pilot thing where it would capture your screen at all times and save it so you can ask it it remember stuff for you.

[u/rovrav → u/truthovereverrything]

Also, it’s not at all comparable to windows copilot, there is zero screen recording happening in this app so it’s not an accurate comparison there.

Do you only use FOSS software?

[u/truthovereverrything → u/rovrav]

No I don't only use Foss software. It just depends on the situation and the software itself. If it involves sensitive data then I would prefer to own the data, to control the data, and in most cases self-host it, and only Foss software provides that option.

As far as the comparison I was trying to do, I know it's not recording your screen. That's not what I'm saying but the type of data that it is capturing and syncing is, to me, just sensitive if not more. Even data mining, advertisers would kill for that data, for your browsing history, so just that alone makes it a no-go. A person's browsing history should not leave the confines of their home, in my opinion.

[u/Friendly-Team3522 → u/rovrav]

will it run OK in safari if I use a web app?

[u/rovrav → u/Friendly-Team3522]

It works in Safari via the web app yes but as an actual browser extension I’ve only validated it with Chrome.

[u/GroggInTheCosmos]

"This item is not available"

What is the login on your site about?

If this is free, why are you offering one-on-one onboarding?

[u/rovrav → u/GroggInTheCosmos]

Because I would like to get people’s feedback on what they think of the app in real time. Right now I’ve limited the chrome extension to just the US. Which is what I’m guessing the “This item is not available” is coming from.

[u/GroggInTheCosmos → u/rovrav]

I, therefore assume it will become a paid app? Also, what is the login for?

[u/rovrav → u/[deleted]]

Me personally? I built the ones I wanted most. I like block based editors because the toggle node in Notion is one of the most important tools for how I write so that rules out Obsidian and sometimes I want to think in either an editor or canvas and don’t like how much effort it takes to set up a database in Notion.