Desktop App KoboNotes.com, a new website to organize your kobo highlights and annotations

[fferreira]

Hello everybody. I've been reading with my Kobo Aura for more than one year now. It is the best thing I ever bought.

While reading, I enjoy taking notes for later and so I take a lot of highlights and annotations. Unfortunately, I didn't find a note extractor that I fully enjoyed. Most of them either you have to have programming skills or/and the notes appear out of order (not the creation date/book order that I would like to have) and that is really annoying.

That's why I developed a website to extract the notes from your Kobo eReader. I would like to invite you to give it a try at www.thekobonotes.com

Features:

• Note extractor (highlights and annotations) for Kobo eReaders
• As simple as uploading one file
• View the notes from all your books
• Note organization by date of creation
• Saves your data (indefinitely if you sign up)
• Read your notes from any PC, Phone, Tablet...(must be logged in)

To use Kobo Notes, connect first your Kobo to the PC. Upload to the website your "KoboReader.sqlite" file, located on your Kobo in the folder ".kobo". Then choose one of your books with notes and start reading them anywhere and from any device!

Somethings could be better designed, I have no doubt. But as a beginner web developer, this was my solution.

Feel free to use Kobo Notes. If you have any question about it, any bug to report or if you want Kobo Notes to have any new feature, please contact me!

Kobo Notes is free. Nonetheless, if you wish to support this project, and help me pay for the server costs, please follow the link located at the bottom of Kobo Notes page. Thank you in advance

I hope you find value in having your notes organized like this. Enjoy

[PeterT]

Please don't spam the forums. This is the third post I've seen from you on this topic.

[fferreira]

Sorry, you're right. I will not do it again. I was just trying to provide a new tool to the community and spread the message and got overexcited :P. Sorry once again.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by fferreira

To use Kobo Notes, connect first your Kobo to the PC. Upload to the website your "KoboReader.sqlite" file, located on your Kobo in the folder ".kobo". Then choose one of your books with notes and start reading them anywhere and from any device!

Really? You want me to load a file that has a list of every book I have on the device to your web site? And includes the key information that Kobo uses to validate my device every time it calls home? Sorry, as useful as this might be, it's not going to happen.

Of course, I can't work out exactly how useful it is without doing that load. Maybe if you load a demo set of books and annotations we can get an idea of how useful the site is.

And just to check, my current database is 108MB. That's for about 2500 books. Are you ready for databases larger than that?

[fferreira]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Really? You want me to load a file that has a list of every book I have on the device to your web site? And includes the key information that Kobo uses to validate my device every time it calls home? Sorry, as useful as this might be, it's not going to happen.

I don't use any other information besides your notes. I'm not going to argue about this, because you probably know more about this .sqlite file than I do. I only tried to make a free tool that is useful for the community. But who says that other tools don't use your data for other things besides presenting you with your highlights and annontations? I'm not saying that they do...but they could do it and no one would know about it.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Of course, I can't work out exactly how useful it is without doing that load. Maybe if you load a demo set of books and annotations we can get an idea of how useful the site is.

Sorry about that. You can test it with my personal notes with login: testkobonotes@gmail.com and password: test . Just don't upload any data using this account please.

Originally Posted by davidfor

And just to check, my current database is 108MB. That's for about 2500 books. Are you ready for databases larger than that?

I've tested it and it works. If you decide to use this website and somehow it does not upload your file, just let me know.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by fferreira

I don't use any other information besides your notes. I'm not going to argue about this, because you probably know more about this .sqlite file than I do. I only tried to make a free tool that is useful for the community. But who says that other tools don't use your data for other things besides presenting you with your highlights and annontations? I'm not saying that they do...but they could do it and no one would know about it.

The big difference is that for the other tools, the database doesn't leave my machine and the data stays more under my control. If those applications are doing something with the data other then what I expect, then I'll probably detect it. Plus, most have the source code available, so I can look at it. When I give you the database, I have no idea what you do with it. And as there is data in the database that is specific to me and my Kobo account.

Sorry about that. You can test it with my personal notes with login: testkobonotes@gmail.com and password: test . Just don't upload any data using this account please.

Thanks, that means I can see some of what the site is doing.

The main comment is that it is only showing the highlighted text. Any annotation added to the highlight text is lost, as is the location in the book.

I've tested it and it works. If you decide to use this website and somehow it does not upload your file, just let me know.

I'm not likely to do it. I use annotations a lot, but they are nearly all transitory to mark an error I want to fix, or something I want to look up when I am at a computer.

[fferreira]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The big difference is that for the other tools, the database doesn't leave my machine and the data stays more under my control. If those applications are doing something with the data other then what I expect, then I'll probably detect it. Plus, most have the source code available, so I can look at it. When I give you the database, I have no idea what you do with it. And as there is data in the database that is specific to me and my Kobo account.

You're totally right. If you understand a little bit of code, you can check if that python application is doing it right. But for non programmers, it is a little more tricky. Even that desktop application out there, I heard that it is nice, but once I tried to install it, my antivirus blocked it. But, being honest, I never thought that any of those tools were doing something wrong with m data.

Well, I know that my website has that drawback. Being honest again, I don't even know if you could do anything wrong with the user's database.

Nevertheless, I hope the community could appreciate the advantages of using kobonotes.com. It is relatively fast, you can have no programming skills, and then you can save your data and read them anywhere.

Originally Posted by davidfor

Thanks, that means I can see some of what the site is doing.

The main comment is that it is only showing the highlighted text. Any annotation added to the highlight text is lost, as is the location in the book.

I'm not likely to do it. I use annotations a lot, but they are nearly all transitory to mark an error I want to fix, or something I want to look up when I am at a computer.

No problem, I should have posted a test account right from the beginning. Let me correct you, because the website also show annotations, I simply don't take much and so in those books you don't find them easily. But if you select the book "The Monk Who Sold Is Ferrari", you will see annotations right there in the beginning. (They are in portuguese, sorry :P).

Again, the test login is: testkobonotes@gmail.com and password: test

The annotations, if they exist, appear right besides the highlighted text that the belong to.

I hope I helped.

[GERGE]

What about giving the source? I can use it on my own machine then. Privacy is an issue here.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by GERGE

What about giving the source? I can use it on my own machine then. Privacy is an issue here.

Exactly. This is probably honestly meant as a friendly service to the community, but the data is just too sensitive to upload somewhere.

[fferreira]

I understand your worries. I have no way to prove that I'm honest about this application. And I will not give my source code because of the work I had developing it.

If privacy is important for you, I can understand why you would not use kobonotes.com. I can only say that I don't see any of your files. But I have no way to prove that. Sorry.

But privacy is an issue anywhere on the internet. If you have facebook accounts, and instagram, or even if you have a kindle and upload your annotations data through a number of websites that currently exists, you would have the privacy issue also. I am only providing a solution that currently lacks for Kobo and has been developed already for Kindle.

But, once again, if privacy, for you, is extremely important, I totally understand. I cannot prove to you that I would not use your information for other uses besides showing you the notes.

[fferreira]

The last thing I want is being misunderstood with Kobo Notes. I don't use any of your data besides checking what books with notes you have, and showing your highlights and annotations. I just made a Q&A (http://www.kobonotes.com/qa.php) to make this more clear.

I hope you enjoy this new tool

[davidfor]

@fferreira: Addressing the privacy concerns in the Q&A should go a long way. I assume you delete the database as soon as you have extracted the annotations. If so, I would suggest that you state this as well.

Also, what happens if I upload the database a second time? Do you replace the current set of annotations with those from the new copy? Or are you merging them somehow?

[fferreira]

Originally Posted by davidfor

@fferreira: Addressing the privacy concerns in the Q&A should go a long way. I assume you delete the database as soon as you have extracted the annotations. If so, I would suggest that you state this as well.

Also, what happens if I upload the database a second time? Do you replace the current set of annotations with those from the new copy? Or are you merging them somehow?

Thank you for your reply I updated the Q&A to answer those questions:

"Furthermore, once the file is uploaded, I delete all information presented in this database that has nothing to do with your notes (such as your userID). I delete all tables and columns that I don't use and that may contain your most personal information. In the end, I save a very simplified version of the .sqlite file that you uploaded. If you upload your data a second time, the previous one will be deleted."

So, I delete everything besides the text presented on the notes, the books that you read (the titles) and some columns just to organize note's data, such as the creation date of each annotation or highlight.

If there is something missing from the Q&A, please let me know. Thank you very much!

[GERGE]

I will write a simple script that deletes them on my side. I can upload afterwards.

[fferreira]

Originally Posted by GERGE

I will write a simple script that deletes them on my side. I can upload afterwards.

Yes, you can totally do it!

I keep columns "ContentID,ContentType,MimeType,BookTitle,Title,At tribution,Description,DateCreated,DateLastRead,Vol umeIndex,ReadStatus,Series,Subtitle,WordCount,Date Added" from table content

and columns "BookmarkID,VolumeID,ContentID,Text,Annotation,Ext raAnnotationData,DateCreated,ChapterProgress,Hidde n,DateModified,SyncTime,Published" from table Bookmark.

Besides saving columns related to notes, such as "Text", I also save some others for organizations such as DateModified, or Series, or ReadStatus.