Luminotes personal wiki for GMs

[witten]

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you know about a software project I've been working on called Luminotes. It's a personal wiki designed for organizing your ideas. The reason I'm mentioning it here is because I've been using it successfully for several months now to run a D&D game.

The wiki contains all of my characters, locations, story arcs, and really everything necessary to plan and run a gaming session. It's really handy because I can link to more information for every character in a scene. So when the party stumbles into a tavern and begins chatting up the local dwarf, I can just follow the wiki link to get to the background information I've prepared on that dwarf, so I'll know what his motivations are and how he should react. It allows for some pretty cool plot lines.

Anyway, if you'd like to check it out, head on over to http://luminotes.com/

The wiki itself is web-based, and you'll need Firefox or Internet Explorer to try it out. (Safari/Opera support is on the way.) Let me know if you do end up using it to run any of your games. And I'd love to hear about any improvements you can think of.

Dan

 

[Ebonyr]

I'm going to check this out.

 

[DMFTodd]

What advantage does it have over any other wiki software?

 

[witten]

The main advantage is that it's streamlined for use as a personal wiki. That means there's no distinction between viewing and editing mode, so you're not always having to click edit/save/edit/save. It also means that it's complete WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) with its visual editing, so you don't have to use an arcane markup language to enter your wiki text. Lastly, all of your opened notes are viewable on a single page, which is useful for brainstorming or viewing several notes simultaneously.

Other wikis have some of these features, but I don't know of any wikis that have all of them. Anyway, feel free to try it out and see if it meets your needs. It's certainly not the wiki for everyone or for every purpose, but I know that I sure find it useful for running my D&D game.

By the way, if you're interested there's a tour with screenshots at http://luminotes.com/

 

[stonegod]

On my Mac, I use similar software on a desktop scale: VoodooPad which works great. Drag anything into it, link anything. It can publish to HTML if you wish, but I don't need an online mode.

 

[Redrobes]

Well I just tried it and I really like it. I have used several wikis like mediawiki and TWiki and there are a few points here that make it a little different. I do like the way you don't have to edit / save. You can go back and re-edit a post just like a notepad.

The killer for me is the https interface. I like to check in on topics / web pages and stuff and I don't like to do this unless its either on my PC or its via https. I know thats not ultra secure but its better than wide open. For example I wont use any webmail interface that is not https.

A few questions now.

If I create a new notes section and email my mates the username and password for that session then wont I be sharing it ? What is the difference between that and your upgrade sharing model.

If I have two usernames would I get 2x30Mb of space ?

Can you insert images ? If I link to images can I get them inline ?

Is it possible for web crawlers and other scavengers to run through the entire site and steal all of the info (excepting full on hacks naturally).

I could see myself using this for todo lists and not-so-sensitive work lists etc. Small stuff that I would edit a lot, possibly editing it down to nothing rather than the more traditional wiki pages of trying to get a comprehensive final state through many edit of a page getting bigger. Its probably better than carrying a text page on a flash pen drive. Its very slick.

I think that there are better ways still of doing the notes for a DnD session tho but this would be quite high on the list.

Edit -- I have also discovered that the username is case sensitive which is an issue with Firefox and the auto complete.

 

[witten]

A few questions now.

If I create a new notes section and email my mates the username and password for that session then wont I be sharing it ? What is the difference between that and your upgrade sharing model.

If you're all sharing a single user account, then it won't show you for instance that you made one change to the wiki and your friend made a different change. It'll just show all changes as coming from that single user. Also, with a single account, you won't be able to give each friend different access rights. With multiple accounts, you could give one friend full collaboration access, while giving another friend view-only access.

If I have two usernames would I get 2x30Mb of space ?

Theoretically, although doing so may be "forbidden" by a future Terms of Service. And either way, two usernames for one person would be less convenient because you couldn't easily browse and switch between your different notebooks. I do plan on increasing the included storage space for the different rate plans at some point.

Can you insert images ? If I link to images can I get them inline ?

You can't insert images yet. You can however link to an image. Linked images won't show up inline but you can always click the link to view the image. Inline images and general file uploads are both on my todo list.

Is it possible for web crawlers and other scavengers to run through the entire site and steal all of the info (excepting full on hacks naturally).

Nope, your wiki is simply not viewable by someone unless they're logged into your account or you explicitly grant them access by sending them an invite.

I could see myself using this for todo lists and not-so-sensitive work lists etc. Small stuff that I would edit a lot, possibly editing it down to nothing rather than the more traditional wiki pages of trying to get a comprehensive final state through many edit of a page getting bigger. Its probably better than carrying a text page on a flash pen drive. Its very slick.

Cool, glad you like it so far! Let me know if you think of any other questions or feature requests.

Edit -- I have also discovered that the username is case sensitive which is an issue with Firefox and the auto complete.

If this is causing you problems, feel free to send me an email with details.

 

[Redrobes]

Cool. With images I reckon a nice feature would be to link to an image on another web/ftp site like you have but have a small thumbnail inline to just remind you of what that image is all about. I usually have a list of images like map1, map2, map3 etc I don't need to see the entire image inline but I also don't want to click on each one to see what it was. If there was a way to point at an image url and then for the wiki to make that into a link and thumb at the same time then that would be excellent.

The auto complete thing was just that I registered with a capitalized R like on this site but when I logged in I think firefox substituted it for a lower case r and then the password would fail. I thought I was mistyping until I looked/typed carefully and adjusted it.

Oh and I don't think ill ever enter 30Mb of text notes let alone need twice that ! That would take some doing. You'll be lucky if I ever hit 30K !

Mentioned it to another chap today who was half hearted until I said it was https then he brightened up immeasurably. I tell you thats its killer. Maybe other wikis have that too but this one is nice and simple, text based and private and has a domain name that no BOFH IT admin will block. That ticks all the boxes for me.

 

[FormerlyDickensC]

Cool. With images I reckon a nice feature would be to link to an image on another web/ftp site like you have but have a small thumbnail inline to just remind you of what that image is all about. I usually have a list of images like map1, map2, map3 etc I don't need to see the entire image inline but I also don't want to click on each one to see what it was. If there was a way to point at an image url and then for the wiki to make that into a link and thumb at the same time then that would be excellent.

I checked it out..real nice. Simple and Straighforward. There are some small things that I will need to investigate farther.

But in regards to the above mentioned inline image issue...what would be pretty neat is to have small thumbnails inline along with a bigger thumbnail popup on rollover of the thumbnail. A click of the thumbnail might take the user directly to the included image (or open it in a new tab/window) to save or view in its entirety.

You got some good ajax goodness in there, so keep it going without over weighting it.

You might want to implement "tags" for each note item..maybe.

Seeing the yellow box show up when I click a link when I'm viewing gets somewhat annoying (altho this is being pretty pick) perhaps implement a "view" mode turned on and off by a simple button click on the right side. When in view mode, on mouseover of a link the traditional pointy finger shows up instead of the I-beam and no yellow box. this is picky tho.

 

[witten]

If there was a way to point at an image url and then for the wiki to make that into a link and thumb at the same time then that would be excellent.

Excellent idea. I'll look into coding up something like this.

The auto complete thing was just that I registered with a capitalized R like on this site but when I logged in I think firefox substituted it for a lower case r and then the password would fail. I thought I was mistyping until I looked/typed carefully and adjusted it.

Ah okay, that explains it.

Oh and I don't think ill ever enter 30Mb of text notes let alone need twice that ! That would take some doing. You'll be lucky if I ever hit 30K !

Yup, I have tons of notes and I'm only up to a few MB. But wait til I introduce images and file uploads.

Mentioned it to another chap today who was half hearted until I said it was https then he brightened up immeasurably. I tell you thats its killer. Maybe other wikis have that too but this one is nice and simple, text based and private and has a domain name that no BOFH IT admin will block. That ticks all the boxes for me.

Glad you like it. Keep those ideas coming!