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Geography and productivity — a peek inside Fetchnotes
Since November, Fetchnotes has had a roughly 50% international user base spanning 180 different countries. It's pretty crazy to think about, since Fetchnotes was hatched by a couple guys in an apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan!
This week, we decided to scratch some intellectual itches around our users and geography — thanks to some Mixpanel and Excel wizardry, we found some pretty interesting results. Enjoy!
Which country opens Fetchnotes the most (per user per day)?
Taiwan! Followed by Japan, Italy, South Africa and Poland.
Creates the most notes?
Japan! Followed by New Zealand, Turkey, Poland and Australia.
Share the most notes?
Our very own USA! Followed by Malaysia, the United Kingdom, Poland and Canada.
Edits the most notes?
Japan again! Followed by Taiwan, Italy, New Zealand, Poland.
Archives the most notes?
Aaaand Japan again! Followed by China, the United Kingdom, United States, and Netherlands. A lot of people use archive as "complete," so this is a pretty interesting one to watch.
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This is obviously a skewed sample representing only our user base, so we're not saying the Taiwanese and Japanese are the most productive people on earth. Nonetheless, we wonder what kind of cultural factors might lead them to open our app more!
*Data pulled from our Mixpanel activity in January 2014. Everything is on a per user basis, so it controls for varying numbers of users across nations.
You’re sad, you’re hurting, we get it. Your beloved companion has decided he’s just not that into you anymore (kidding, we know Notespark is being very responsible in this decision). Nonetheless, you need a rebound. Any luck, this will be the person you marry.
HELLO, WE ARE FETCHNOTES, AND WE WANT TO BE THAT PERSON.
But really, who are we? Well, we are a group of note-takers, of frankly all different sizes and hairstyles, but with hearts of gold. We have a cloud-notes based app, and we want to hold your notes.
How might this new transition work, you ask. Easy! We have built an importer for you. We can help you with all of those memories, leftover items you have already boxed up and entries for your journal. We can put them directly into our- well our notes app! (where did you think we were going with this?)
We promise to keep them safe, we are a bunch of ladies and gentlemen from the Midwest (well one from Rhode Island), and our mothers raised us to be gentleman.
Anyway, here are the steps to import your notes:
Step 1: Sign into your Notespark account and export the file.
Step 2: Visit our Fetchnotes importer
Step 3: Login to Fetchnotes or create an account (if you don’t already have one, you won’t regret it, we send cool emails, so we’ve been told)
Step 4: Upload your CSV, and see this-
Step 5: Go to Fetchnotes, and see all your notes!
In all seriousness, Notespark will be shutting down service on December 31st, 2013. After fighting the good fight since 2008, the co-founders Sho Kuwamoto and Mike Schiff (no relation to our CEO- that we know of...), have explained that-
“[they can] no longer do a good job of supporting the service. It’’s difficult for us and doesn’t serve your needs either.”
We wish Sho and Mike the best of luck on their newest adventure, and welcome everyone who wants to join to the Fetchnotes family!
To our new Notespark...friends, also be sure to check out our iPhone and iPad Apps to access your notes while on the go.
And don’t forget to give us feedback, we love hearing what you think.
Welcome to the Fetchnotes Family!
By Chelsea Hunersen. Fetchnotes expert and trapeze artist.
I love keeping track of things. I love interpreting the data that comes out of my everyday life habits. There are some things that make less sense to record than others (how many bananas I’ve eaten in one week, how long it takes for me to lose a pencil, etc.). However, here are some things you can observe to make life more efficient!
Get to your destination the quickest way
Being a student at a relatively huge university, I know that there is a practically infinite number of ways to get from one building to the next. Specifically, ways to get from my bed in the morning to my class – and fast. Since I’m lazy – oh, wait! I meant, since I don’t want to spend too much time in transit – I started keeping track of how long it took me to get from point A to point B for lots of destinations. I downloaded a free stopwatch app for my phone and got started right away. By taking notes on this for just one week, I figured out the truly quickest way to get from one place to another. No more speculating whether or not a ‘shortcut’ is quicker – now you have the proof! I record these by pushing every note into my Fetchnotes with the start/end points and time, then tagging them with #studies and #paths.
Get the most out of your gas
With gas prices constantly on the rise, saving even a few cents per gallon is a big deal. I had once heard that different gas stations have different qualities of gas that affect your mileage, so I decided to test it out for myself. I wanted to see how the quality of the cheap, shady-looking gas station compared to a slightly more expensive, big-name station on the same street. Every time I went to fill up, I recorded the name of the station, the number on my odometer, the total price of the gas, and the number of gallons I bought. Then, once my tank had run dry, I would do the same thing for a different gas station and do the math to figure out how many miles I was getting out of each gallon, and how much money I was spending on each mile. By doing so, I found out which gas station was giving me the best quality/price ratio and never looked back. Each of these records I push into Fetchnotes and tag with #studies and #gas.
What Else?
There are plenty of things you can keep track of, especially lifestyle specific data. Here are some other ideas you can try:
How much caffeine you have vs. how awake you feel during the day
What time you went to sleep and how many hours you slept vs. how you feel the next day
How much you spend on certain grocery items at different grocery stores
Lulu Tang is the Graphic Designer for Fetchnotes. She uses Fetchnotes to keep records of lots of nonsensical things, but sometimes she knows what’s going on.
More than a to do list: our team's favorite hashtags
Some people think Fetchnotes is all about to do's and groceries. We love to keep track of strange things, and we've found that once we make a new category, we use it even more.
Here are some examples of our team's favorite hashtags!
Alex Schiff, CEO (Boss-guy)
#randomfacts - Alex likes to pull strange facts out of his pocket during awkward silences. He likes to do this so much so, that he wrote an entire article about it.
#explore - Alex bikes around a lot on the weekend. He says these are "places that I think look cool - and I want to be an explorer."
Mike Marsh, Lead Engineer (In-House Nutritionist)
#nutlog - This is a log of all the nuts that Mike has tried and his allergic or non-allergic reaction to them.
#food - Mike eats a lot of food, and he's always experimenting with different ingredients. He keeps track of all the general food ideas he's had and recipes he's found in here, as well as slow cooker meals for once he gets a slow cooker.
Alex Horak, Head of Product Dev (Cheese Expert)
#dateideas - Always a romantic, Horak is ready to sweep a lady off her feet with these date ideas.
#dreams - Horak has some of the most wild dreams the team has ever heard of. The moment he wakes up, he records his dream. One day, Horak and Lulu plan to make a comic book of his dreams.
Matt Brandly, Platform Engineer (Hair)
#weirdgithub - Matt is a rather huge fan of GitHub. He's found some very strange repos and runs a small tumblr showcasing weird GitHubs. He keeps track of the repos in this tag.
#samples - Matt is also an up and coming music-making machine. This is a collection of music samples he wants to mix into his tunes.
Giles Van Gruisen, UI Engineer (Professional Pun Machine)
#lyrics - Giles collects song lyrics that he likes.
#brands - As a designer, Giles loves gathering inspiration from other brands. He collects his favorite ones under this hashtag.
Ryan Gonzalez, Gestalt Engineer (Really Into Coffee)
#dopebeats - An avid music lover, Ryan is always prepared for the question "Can you suggest some dope beats?" with this tag.
#novelideas - Ryan has a creative tendency for more than design. He keeps track of all his ideas for novels under this tag.
Lulu Tang, Graphic Designer (Dog Drawer)
#mashup - Lulu one day hopes to mix music. When that day comes, she will make mash-ups of all the songs under this hashtag.
#studies - Lulu keeps track of how much time it takes to get from point A to point B on common paths she takes. This is for the sole purpose of maximizing sleep time and minimizing travel time.
Most people don't know this, but the idea behind Fetchnotes was all about writing. I had a note in my Blackberry memopad called "Idea Bank," which was just a running list of column ideas when I wrote for The Michigan Daily. Fast forward to today, and I still can't shake that craving for the creative process. But I remember more ideas, write more and explore different topics with Fetchnotes.
Write down your ideas, even the bad ones.
About 3 years ago, I trained myself to write down all of my ideas. It started because I needed a "queue" for my columns at The Michigan Daily, but it evolved into all ideas — writing, business, wouldn't-it-be-cool-if, etc. I do this for a couple reasons. First, if I don't write something down, it may as well have never happened as far as my memory is concerned. So I need to chronicle it somewhere, and I throw it on my #ideas tag.
Second, and more importantly, writing down ideas is an unnatural behavior, so you need to work to make it a habit. Psychologically, creating habits is most successful when you can clearly tie a trigger to an action. In this case, that's idea → write it down. The more steps you put in between those — i.e., idea → evaluate it → write it down — the less likely your brain is to create the habit. By writing all my ideas down, I ensure I never miss any good ones because I'm lazy or forgetful.
I end up with this mix of terrible, mediocre and actionable — but nothing falls through the cracks.
I know what you're thinking, and don't bother — I've already registered trampolinelasertag.com.
Writing down your ideas makes them actionable.
Now let's take a look at my #blog tag.
These are literally snippets of my stream of consciousness as I go about my day. But by writing them down — no matter how bad or undeveloped — I've given myself a place to 1) reflect on them and 2) add more thoughts later. Let's take a look at some others:
If I kept these in my brain, I would never legitimately develop them. And if I just had a running list of ideas like I used to in the stock notes app, I'd have to sift through ALL of my random ideas, rather than just the ones related to blog posts. Instead, when I want to write a blog post, I just click #blog and I'm only looking at what I need to act on right now. For ADD creative types like me, focus is important.
I've seen more serious writers (like authors or reporters) often tag the name of a story like #fetchnotespost or #autobiography, but I'm not that organized!
Journaling feeds creativity.
Writing information down enhances your ability to remember it. But if you get in the habit of writing down more than ideas, some cool things start to happen. I remember more #randomfacts in conversation, inspirational #quotes become more strongly absorbed, and, most important of all, my #thoughts and observations are more immediately top-of-mind.
These compound and build on each other, enriching my writing. Last year, I wrote down an idea for a book premise about 6 unique storylines (told from 6 different perspectives) intersect at an airport. After I wrote down the thought and saw it sitting in my Fetchnotes, I started to write down different character ideas, settings, plot lines and more. It was as if hitting save gave it life.
Now, let's look at some of my seemingly unrelated #thoughts that I've jotted down recently.
Next time I'm people-watching after hacking my way into first-class, I'm thinking of who could be a "social chameleon" in my book. Writing down my observation about acknowledgements and compliments makes it more top-of-mind, so it's going to make me think about them more while observing myself and others. That could feed into the story, or be an entirely different writing topic of its own.
The point is, you remember more by writing it down, which allows your ideas to cross-pollinate and feed off each other. In doing so, you become a better observer, more creative, and, ultimately, a better writer.
Alex Schiff is the founder and CEO of Fetchnotes. In a different life, he is a traveling columnist for The New York Times.
Did you know about the Fetchnotes Chrome extension?
Yes! It's true! We have a Chrome extension!
The Chrome extension makes it really easy to add notes without ever opening the app. Just click the icon, type in your note, hit add or enter and it immediately appears in your account.
