750 Words | Hacker News Reader

750 Words

750words.com

19 pointsams128 comments

One thing that struck me as weird was-- after the spiel about the site being private (between 'you and you'), it asks you to sign in via facebook.

Presumably just for the authentication aspect, but it'd be good if they clarified.

Hmmm, speaking of Facebook, I found it strange that their Facebook application page only lists 2 active users this month: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?v=info&id=2...

I was tempted to try it, but the Facebook thing is a no-starter.

I was actually going to try it, but I simply do not have a facebook account, and have no intention of getting one. I kind of get that one might want to avoid writing all the authentication stuff, though.

I deleted my facebook account due to the fact I think the various world's intelligence services are more than a little interested in it. NOW this guy wants raw, unfiltered brain dumps to it? Excuse my French but, FUCK THAT. My moleskin journal works just fine and can be pulverized into a fine powder if need be, rather than endlessly backed up through the cloud and associated with my name.

The CIA absolutely cares about the three pages of fiction you write every day, and there is certainly a way they could take that and use it to make the world worse.

I like this service. I don't like writing in journals, regardless of the brand name, and I think I might give this a try. I guess you're allowed not to like it, but it bothers me that you're so obnoxious about your dislike. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to open every Hacker News article I have a disagreement with and loudly state my opposition, because excuse my French but, FUCK THAT.

I think the parent poster and the repliers are just a bit too paranoid. Looking at his site, it's obvious he's only using FB for authentication. Also, FB will always explicitly ask you before allowing his app to post anything public on your profile.

One of my daily habits for the last few years has been writing morning pages, though my goal is 500 words, and I typically write 550 - 600. I use the excellent WriteRoom, which helps block distractions and also provides a handy word count in the bottom left corner. I now have hundreds of text files documenting my inner monologue over the last few years...I expect it'll come in handy if I ever decide to write my memoirs :)

For those of us on Linux, PyRoom is a nice clone, which has the additional benefit of being easily hackable via Python.

So what do they mean when they say "it's online?" It's obviously a web application, but why is it one (other than that being the paradigm the author is most acquainted with)? What's the advantage of using this over, say, a desktop tool like WriteRoom/OmmWriter plus a scoring script?

This question comes up a lot, but to me it always sounds like "Why eat at a restaurant when you can cook at home?" The main reason people do it is that simply to have someone else do all the work other than the eating, or in this case, the writing.

What other work? It's no more work to open an application than to open a website. In fact, it's a lot less because I don't have to fire up my browser, navigate to the site, sign in through Facebook, etc.

That's not the kind of "work" I'm referring to. Actually, I'm mystified at how you can even call any of that work. The physical and cognitive load of reaching any site, anywhere, is already small, and vanishingly so when it's a site you use frequently. A new browser window or tab is something you probably do dozens of times a day. Think about it: the site is intended to be used daily--anybody that actually 'buys in' is going to have that bookmarked, shortcut-ed, homepage-ed, or at least in their autocomplete. And logging into Facebook? A typical Facebook user is never not logged in. Where is the work coming in?

I'm sorry to expend so many words on that, but it really does seem strange to me that someone in this day and on this site would regard going to a website as a lot of work.

But to my original point: I'm talking about the work of actually making the thing. The parent post specifically refers to "WriteRoom/OmmWriter plus a scoring script" as the alternative. Where does that script come from? Who maintains it? Whose computer does it run on? Who is responsible for ensuring that it continues to work?

The answer to all of those is either "you, yourself" or "someone else". There are occasions why "you, yourself" are the best person for the job, but quite often there is no particular need to waste your attention on a problem that already has an adequate solution for. Sometimes (just as with cooking) you may even get more satisfying results that way.

In this case, the author is selling you on a specific habit with a tool specifically tailored for the problem of incorporating and maintaining it. If you are interested in that problem at all, the attention-conserving approach would be to try that tool first, before reimplementing your own partial solution.

I never said that this application shouldn't exist; I just don't see the point in making it a web application, when both the process and the product of using it are completely anti- or a-social. Is it just that you don't have to worry about where to store it/when to back it up? I've forgotten about that concern since I started using Dropbox.

There are a few implicit advantages to making something a web application: upgrades for free, no installation, etc. but there are also implicit disadvantages: network latency, inability to use when out of service range, and so on.

What I'm really saying is that this application seems like the perfect candidate for http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ -- it's not really web application, per se, it's just an application that requires an Internet connection, and happens to use HTML as a presentation layer.

I never said that this application shouldn't exist; I just don't see the point in making it a web application

And that's exactly what I was responding to. A web application is somebody else's problem, from start to finish. In this case, everything but the writing. Any other solution has its own constraints and so on that become your problem, which quite often isn't worth the expenditure of attention.

What I'm really saying is that this application seems like the perfect candidate for http://mozillalabs.com/prism/

http://fluidapp.com/ + 30 seconds.

And you just agreed with me without realizing it, because we're talking past each other. The term "web application" doesn't refer to a technology, but rather a means of access. I never asked "why does this product use HTTP/HTML/CSS", or "why is this product accessible over the network", or anything like that—those are technical questions, and have technical answers. The question I asked was "why is this a web application—meaning, why should this be accessed through a web browser?"

Web browsers imply a certain social cognitive model. Prism, and Fluid as well, as you pointed out, are programs written to shift the user's mental image of how the application works, from the social, public, status-seeking "web application" mindset, to the local, safe, tinkering-around "desktop application" one. The fact that these programs exist is a testament to the fact that how a user accesses your application matters to them.

Remember, Prism/Fluid apps are still "somebody else's problem"—that's what makes them so great, compared to regular desktop apps. So the question is, why did the developer choose the web mindset, rather than the desktop mindset, when options (Fluid, Prism) are available that nullify the disadvantages of the desktop mindset?

why should this be accessed through a web browser?

I have no idea what kind of answer you're looking for. If not technical then what, philosophical? I never knew that writing a web app required such justification. Especially one as trivial as this.

Web browsers imply a certain social cognitive model.

Bullshit. Remember that the single most successful kind of web application--the kind which nobody will bat an eye at you for using instead of a desktop application--is email, which is exactly as social regardless of how you access it. There is no "public, status-seeking" mindset to web based email that is missing with desktop email. The web is just an interface in that case. So to with this.

* So the question is, why did the developer choose the web mindset, rather than the desktop mindset, when options (Fluid, Prism) are available that nullify the disadvantages of the desktop mindset?*

Why should the developer care at all about these? He doesn't have to do anything special for the small number of users who choose to use them.

> If not technical then what, philosophical?

Aesthetic. User-experiential. However you want to put it. The thing that makes Facebook different from MySpace, text messages different from push email, isn't technical, it's all in how users think about what they're doing.

> There is no "public, status-seeking" mindset to web based email that is missing with desktop email.

There is a public, status-seeking mindset inherent in using email—that's why it works so well on the web. It's actually kind of useless to make it a desktop application; it's just a historical accident that it was first incarnated through the desktop metaphor at all.

> Why should the developer care at all about these?

The point is to hide the fact that the user is using a website, because the user has certain connotations about web sites that he or she doesn't have about desktop applications, even if those desktop applications happen to render HTML over HTTP under the hood. The user should be able to download a desktop application and not know that there's a web application sitting at a URL somewhere that it's just accessing and displaying.

For a perfect example of this, look at the iTunes Music Store. It's all HTML—but would it feel the same if you accessed it as a website, rather than through iTunes? People trust iTunes with their credit card information more readily than they trust a website. People are more willing to click a "Buy" button in a desktop app than a website. There are usability studies that prove both of these things. Again, it's about how the user thinks about your service—and by using Fluid or Prism on the developer's side to package your service as a desktop app, you can change how the user thinks about your service, without having to change how your service works internally.

Aesthetic. User-experiential. However you want to put it.

Which is it? I'm asking you because it's your argument. You're craving a justification for developing a web application that isn't inherently social--that is clear--but it isn't clear why you think there needs to be a reason or what answer could possibly suffice.

There is a public, status-seeking mindset inherent in using email—that's why it works so well on the web. It's actually kind of useless to make it a desktop application; it's just a historical accident that it was first incarnated through the desktop metaphor at all.

With all due respect, this is a giant pile of bullshit. Every bit of it. You're just taking what I said and turning it around rather than actually explaining how the web has an inherently social cognitive model. Of course email is social--I pointed that out myself--but it was social long before the web even existed. You've made no connection between the task and the supposed cognitive model. That's the big gaping whole in your argument that I was pointing to.

(The bit about desktop email clients being "kind of useless" is just ignorant, and a pointless tangent, so I won't waste words.)

The user should be able to download a desktop application and not know that there's a web application sitting at a URL somewhere that it's just accessing and displaying.

...but why? And more specifically...why should this developer do that for this application?

the iTunes Music Store. It's all HTML

It isn't, actually, and the degree to which it does is more likely due to technical reasons than people somehow inferring a social or asocial cognitive model. It also helps that, y'know, iTunes is a desktop application, and that for the first several years the store existed, iTunes was explicitly required to play the music the store sold. Incidentally, it also is not accessible from the web, except in a different form, making it a poor example of a web application.

I'm not clear on what this is supposed to be a "perfect example" of, other than something completely unrelated to the site in question. Yeah, yeah, I get that desktop apps and web apps are different, but please, get to the point.

you can change how the user thinks about your service

...but why? Do you have usability studies to back up the idea that only 'social' applications should be on the web, and that 'non-social' applications, even if they are web-based, should be desktop applications?

the guy that made it:

http://busterbenson.com/

Bottom of the page, 'rules to live by', good stuff!

Perhaps posting the source code and allowing people to host it on their own terms would be a bit more realistic. If someone is to write as 750words intends, spilling their deepest thoughts; I don't think they want to attribute their facebook account to it, let alone entrust someone they know nothing about with that very data. It would be interesting to know if they changed the authentication procedure + made it anonymous, how much the conversions would change.

Journler -- http://journler.com/ is a good desktop app for Mac users. It shows the number of paragraphs words in the status bar. It also has a load of other features without getting in the way of writing.

Thanks for bringing the idea of writing morning pages into our attention.

I really liked this. I've written a shell script that does something similar, but there isn't any chart generation or word tagging, for example. This is nice and polished. I'm always overjoyed when someone works on something I want. :)

"typically encouraged to be in 'long hand' ... "

Probably because your brain works differently when you write that when than when you type, a difference that matters.

Looks cool but I wish you could publish your writing.

I did morning pages (long hand) for a while, and while the process certainly was interesting and helpful, most of it was garbage, trite, uninteresting, and truly boring. Any interesting pieces would have required rewrite/cleanup before being anything close to publishable.

Actually, there is an option on each of your posts to make them public. They are just private by default. But really, you wouldn't want to publish this anyway. The same way nobody publishes NaNoWriMo novels either. The point is to get the words flowing, not to write editorially correct writing. In fact, focusing too much on writing "well" is what gives most people the mental block that is much complained about. Unrestrained expression followed by judicious culling is the way to write.

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