How Roam Research analyzes product design and team building

I’ve been using Roam some, and it feels mostly like a personal wiki with markdown, and the pages generate automatically based on the notes entered. I like the functionality, but it’s not optimized for the way I take notes or think about most concepts.<p>I’ve spent years trying different tools to organize information, and none of them feel tailored to my note taking approach. I want something that is light weight, works on every device, syncs immediately, works offline, and functions more like a traditional notebook (focus on creating notes as quickly as possible) while providing just enough tagging and query support to easily find what I need later. Nothing strikes that perfect balance for me, so I started on my own platform.<p>I plan to launch soon, but if anyone is interested in alpha access and would like to give me feedback prior to launch, I would love to hear from you. Contact info in profile!

1) How come this one app in particular seems to permeate all the media I consume (even though there is no way to try the app out right now)? In the same week, several podcasts and friends recommended it to me, and now HN. Kudos to whoever organized this launch.<p>2) I decided this year my personal notes are too long-term and important to me to keep entrusting to every new cloud startup that pops up.<p>Right now my notes are mostly in markdown files, synced by Dropbox. More developed thoughts that need to link to each-other I do in Trello (I like their UX and how it helps me think).<p>I&#x27;m looking for a system that has these features, but:<p>- where I will always be in control of the data (open source?)<p>- syncs &amp; backups reliably<p>- seamless on mobile

=Meta=<p>With the rise of this new breed of knowledge management apps, I have started a repo. to track tools, open-source projects and pros-cons of the Zettlekasten methodology.<p>It&#x27;s slightly opinionated and I try to update it regularly. If you&#x27;d like to stay updated in this space, you can check it out at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;krimlabs&#x2F;z" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;krimlabs&#x2F;z</a>

I wish more of these note taking apps were fully encrypted. I know RR can encrypt parts of notes, but it&#x27;s not the same.<p>It&#x27;s probably paranoia, but if I&#x27;m journaling my life, business ideas, thoughts on contacts - I just want it to be encrypted on my devices before it goes into the cloud. I want each device to sync and decrypt locally.

My antivirus went red.<p>&gt;&gt; We blocked this phishing page for your protection:<p>&gt;&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thetwentyminutevc.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thetwentyminutevc.com&#x2F;</a>

Roam Research is awesome. The lack of pretension around structure and hierarchy of your data is so refreshing. I have used Notion extensively and still think Notion is superior as a place to house canonical unstructured data for groups. But for individuals, RR is A+. Coming from nvALT + Drafts which I still use on mobile and then copy into Roam later.

For me, the biggest problem with all of these note taking systems is they are clunky. If I want to quickly write something down, or find a piece of information, I have to page through tabs in chrome which totally ruins my focus.<p>To solve this, I built <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mmap.it" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mmap.it</a> - a short cut driven note taking tool that allows you to save and search without context switching.