jottit lives again
Welcome to another episode of sharing simple, easy, and minimalist web publishing tools with you all. I discovered today's free and open-source pastebin tool, Jottit, thanks to Pablo's Jottit regresa. He linked to Simon's Rebuilding Jottit, which starts like so:
In 2007, Aaron Swartz and I built a small tool called Jottit. The idea was simple: make it as easy as possible to put a page on the web. You typed something, clicked a button, and got a page on a secret URL. You didn't need to create an account first. If you wanted to keep it, you claimed it with your email and put it on a subdomain.
For context, take a look at how the Wayback Machine presents Jottit from as far back as September 2007. Besides a more barebones presentation that shows the editor upfront, the old Jottit seems to match how the rebuilt version operates.
However, the journey to the rebuild wasn't without struggle. A few months after launching Jottit, Simon's father died of cancer. Simon didn't want to work on Jottit anymore. Furthermore, Jottit's About page notes the following:
After Aaron's death in 2013, the original Jottit eventually went offline.
Building a career and family occupied Simon until old web nostalgia made him start working on an open-source tool like Jottit last year. That became rebuilding Jottit itself after Paul Graham approved funding it after Simon had asked. Simon concluded his post with the following words:
Jottit is back at jottit.org. Same idea, same name, rebuilt from scratch. You type, you publish, you have a page. No tracking, no followers, no algorithms.
It's a small project, not a startup. I just wanted it to exist again.
Go give Jottit a try. Press that Start writing button and see if it satisfies your needs. It uses CommonMark Markdown and has a simple interface at the time of writing:
- An editor panel with a title and body section that's left-aligned on desktop.
- A desktop-only preview panel that sits on the right.
- A bottom bar with a link to CommonMark's Markdown Reference on the left, followed by
PublishandCancelbuttons on the right.
As for life lessons:
- Ask for what you want because you might just receive it.
- Build cool projects and memories with your family and friends while you're all still alive and well.