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This is great. I want this but for much more. I want it to also be a nextcloud and zotero replacement, storing all my documents and books and documenting when I added, opened, edited them. I want it to store all notes that I write. I want it to record and display all browser tabs I open, when I do so, everything I copy and paste, every key I press. I want a record of everything I do in the digital world that is searchable and that can answer the question: "what was I working on 2 weeks ago on this day?" and bring back all the context also.

For obvious reasons this has to be self hosted and managed. I'm not interested in creating surveillance software or technology.

It sounds extreme but whenever I have seen peoples obsidian set ups with heaps of manual and bidirectional linking I always thought that time is the one thing we should look at. If I look up some concept on wikipedia today, there is a higher chance of me looking up related concepts or working on something related to that around this time also.





I think Microsoft has some kind of product that can help you Recall what you were working on?

Well, I can rationally evaluate their product/idea. Their idea itself for that product is fairly interesting which is why I propose a solution one can actually host and control oneself. I don't see why I would need Microsoft to do that for me. It is I who creates the data after all.

The problem with that wasn’t the idea for me, it’s that Microsoft was doing it and they’re a known bad actor

https://activitywatch.net/ gets you part of the way there.

I already use it. It's quite good but more for time tracking!

I can never find it now, but someone had an idea for a computing system which was purely temporal for every object and then you'd only access outside of temporal by filter.

I wish I could find it again.





Are you, by chance, referring to https://perkeep.org/ ?

This is absolutely crazy. Every secret service on this planet will be happy! They have been working so hard to get all these informations about every person. With this software they get everything delivered FOB. The united spies will make a worldwide ad campaign for your software.

No. It's not like services/products people use of big companies don't already collect to this type of level.

I'm at least proposing that this be open source, self hostable and valuable to yourself.

Also, I know my threat model. Maybe you are James Bond though.


> I want it to also be a nextcloud and zotero replacement, storing all my documents and books and documenting when I added, opened, edited them. I want it to store all notes that I write.

Sounds in-scope so far. Long-term, perhaps, and maybe optional add-on features rather than built-in, but we'll see.

> I want it to record and display all browser tabs I open, when I do so, everything I copy and paste, every key I press.

That is possible in theory, but for me personally that's just too detailed. :D I wouldn't need all that granularity, myself.

But hey, the vision is pretty similar. We are generating all sorts of data to document and understand our lives -- we don't even have to deliberately write a journal -- but we have no way of comprehending it. This app is an attempt to solve that.


> That is possible in theory, but for me personally that's just too detailed. :D I wouldn't need all that granularity, myself.

I do see that. I think for that reason it would be cool to support a kind of extension system for arbitrary "collectors". And then solid filtering to filter data.

The vision is definitely similar. I am very pleasantly surprised to see your project. And I also like your ideas/roadmap on the website. I know you are building this for yourself/your family but I certainly would be open to contribute to it.


Wonderful, I'd love to collaborate!

Dig deep on "dogsheep" from Mr Willison. We're all circling on the same orbit here.

Woah. Hadn’t seen that yet. Link: https://dogsheep.github.io/

I feel like nextcloud replacement is out of scope ?

I mostly felt like Timelize was about being *behind* data-generating applications and showing and cross-referencing their data when reading the website.

I think the way is to do some sort of nextcloud extension that puts data into Timeline.

I also saw it tracks "documents" on the website but I didn't try it yet, and I would hope it can use external document sources that are already processing documents like paperless for example (which I am already using and liking)


Well, I don't plan on 1:1 feature parity with NextCloud or any comprehensive cloud suite. But I think in terms of what was mentioned: "storing all my documents and books and documenting when I added, opened, edited them. I want it to store all notes that I write," I think that's in scope.

So yes, Timelinize sits behind your current work flows. It's more of a resting place for your data (which you can still organize and curate -- more features to come in this regard), but I also can see why it might make sense to be one's primary photo library application, in the future, with more development.

As for document storage, this is still WIP, and the implementation could use more discussion to clarify the vision and specifics.


I also should have mentioned in my comment that I only host nextcloud for myself and my family.

That may be more realistic and in scope than how nextcloud actually supports entire orgs/organizational units.


Timelinize looks rad. Congratulations.

> That is possible in theory, but for me personally that's just too detailed. :D I wouldn't need all that granularity, myself.

Think this can go quite far with just the browsing history & content of viewed webpages.


Thanks! Yes, I agree. Someone already implemented a Firefox history data source; I don't think it includes the _content_ of the pages, but that could be interesting.

"I'm not interested in creating surveillance software or technology."

That is exactly what you would be doing though


To surveil... myself?

It's interesting to read such a comment here. I see comments from people on this site frequently who work for Google, Facebook, OpenAI and other such companies where everyday software that doesn't respect users or their privacy is being worked on.

However, if I suggest doing similar data collection and analysis that they already do but in a way that is self hostable/governable and respects my privacy and threat model, it is bad?


Na you are right its not bad as a personal tool (I didnt say it was bad) but yea you spying on yourself mate :D

I think you might appreciate this talk, which uses a micro kernel to do a lot of the ideas you’re talking about.

https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical-sessions/...

This could even allow resetting the state of the computer back in time so you can pick up exactly where you left off, or undo away mistakes regardless of app, etc.

Definitely some privacy concerns but for a self ran open source thing I think it could be really cool




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