The Memory App – Instant personalized memory recall | Hacker News Reader

The Memory App – Instant personalized memory recall

thememoryapp.com

54 pointsmariamagi45 comments

Why can't they provide at least a little bit of information about how it works? All we get is glossy descriptions without substance... "you want this app, it's really good".. but nothing about whether it works offline, what cloud services it uses, or any details about back-ups, data handling or web version, permissions, or anything.

This is my pet peeve these days particularly with mobile apps. Sure, you can use hooks to draw my attention but if you want me to install it - you've got to tell me "How it works".

I'd also appreciate seeing the real cost - free with in-app purchases doesn't tell me much.

So I have to remember to manually tag every photo I take for this app to be useful? It seems like Google Photos is superior to this app in every aspect.

The only disruption in photo management and search that could get me to switch from Google Photos is an open source alternative with equivalent ML-powered auto-tagging features.

Having all my photos in Google Photos feels like I have super powers. I've managed to find so many photos I was looking for without any specific search criteria I knew would work 100%. But Google Photos tends to do a pretty good job at finding them.

I did write some open source[1][2] software I use in conjunction with Google Photos[3].

[1] https://github.com/jmathai/elodie

[2] https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal...

[3] https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-go...

Nah. Downloaded it but it's asking for way too many permissions without explaining why. And there's no conceivable reason you need my phone number. So, deleted.

My memory sucks, and I would love an app to help me. Alleviate my concerns about data privacy, and make it available on Android, and I'll give it a serious try.

Same here. My memory is terrible. I've looked at these types of apps, but I have never seen one that was actually helpful.

Instead I stick with sticky notes for to-do's, and a folder of txt's of notes from meetings/conversations that I think I'll want to remember. This really helps remembering details, unfortunately I still can't remember faces for the life of me.

I can highly recommend this course, Learning How To Learn [1]. Among things it explains how memory works, how to avoid procrastination [2], and how to use several tools at your disposal in order to improve your memory. It is free, btw.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

[2] https://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/

It's highly possible that in reality you have a very good memory, like most of people. For example if you're a programmer you probably remember hundreds of API calls, syntax features for various languages, keyboard shortcuts and so on.

I always taught myself that I have terrible memory but then I realized that it's not terrible - it's selective. We have so much information coming at us every day that our brains have to make choices what to remember and what to forget in few minutes. The problem is how to make them cooperate and actually remember stuff that we want :). I found that if I really want to remember something there are two things required - repetition and connecting it with something I already do remember.

>For example if you're a programmer you probably remember hundreds of API calls, syntax features for various languages, keyboard shortcuts and so on.

As a programmer my memory is largely used to remember hundreds of API calls, syntax features for various language and memes.

There is no space for my daily life in there so on average my memory goes back like 8 minutes, just beating the average goldfish, after that it's pushed away for more important stuff.

unfortunately not everything can be solved with an app. i highly recommend the coursera 'learning about learning' course for some deep insight on how our brains work and how to maintain and improve them.

I'm the same way - I kinda freaked out when I realized that I'm graduating college soon and barely have any memories to look back on (besides the obvious ones, but that's not too fun). That's why I came up with www.remnis.com - I'd love to hear what you think.

Ever since I was a child I've always dreamt of some way of being able to 'download' and organise my memories. Like, if you're looking at an awesome view, or some serendipitous event happens that's too quick for a camera (e.g. a shooting star)

Obviously as I've grown older the reality of something like this is in the realm of science fiction, along with the privacy concerns of others and keeping memories that you would rather forget, but often I find myself in situations like at a concert where I'd rather not be viewing it behind a phone/camera screen.

I've seen wearable cameras in the past for people who suffer from memory problems, but I don't think anyone's ever commercialised it - for obvious reasons.

Who are the people who built this? If everything is proprietary, how can we trust their storage? Looks like a fight between google and some other guys for my photos. Even if the app really was magical, my photos should remain safe(i know). at google

I want people to want this but I know that people don't.

Imagine having a rewind button on your whole life, with annotations and references. That means everything you think or associations you make can be "sourced." That's an amazing thing that would eliminate any self delusion, deceitful action or inconsistent behavior.

Trouble is, humans are knots of inconsistency, deceit and delusion and we can't live otherwise. It puts our brains into panic mode and existential dread. If we could handle it, all the world's problems would go away, but we can't. Our current conception of ourselves is a polished and selective reinterpretation of our own past so that we can try and make our future selves fit some narrative. An accurate and auditable history would blow that up entirely.

I really want to figure out a way to build such a system but my fear is that it's incompatible with humanity.

Reminds me of the third episode of Black Mirror:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You

Similar, but in the case of the episode you could also replay every interaction you had with other people... Was that a slight frown before they smiled?

Or this Ted Chiang story?

> There’s no denying the usefulness of software that can actually answer the question “where did I put my keys?” But Whetstone is positioning Remem as more than a handy virtual assistant: they want it to take the place of your natural memory.

https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_o...

Thanks for that link, interesting reading for sure

Wow the app size is 159 MB, just wonder what all they have baked inside

https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/the-memory-app/id1182717566?...

probably the whole Elephant for the logo.

You can download the app in iTunes, find the .ipa file and extract it to look what's inside.

Edit: also it's not the actual size that you will download on your phone. Visit the AppStore from your device and it will show you the correct size for you.

As somebody noted below, this just looks remarkably like Evernote: store notes, photos, places and reminders, with multiple tags that you can define yourself. It's an incredibly manual process, although as someone with 610 notes in Evernote, I attest to its usefulness :)

Really, this seems like the killer app for always-on video lifelogging, coupled to really advanced computer vision and automatic tagging. I would love an app that I could ask whenever I put my keys down in yet another inventively silly place, or ask when I last saw my wallet (was it stolen, or did I just leave it at home?), or ask to show me all the times I'd put away a cable so that I could figure out where my rarely-used external HD power supply was stashed.

This reminds me :-) of the Remembrance Agent, an MIT project that looked at what you were doing in your Emacs and would pop up related hints and notes from your past as you changed contexts. I think they were trying to move the idea into wearables, but it didn't translate well with clunky eyewear and wearable keyboard. Now, with OCR and vision, your killer app is getting closer.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160304120939/http://xenia.media...

Oh, interesting. Eclipse has a similar feature called Mylyn, which allowed you to associate contexts with tasks - so, for instance, if you were working on a feature and had to quickly switch over to working on a priority bug, you could have different sets of open files for each of those tasks.

http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/

A quick Google doesn't reveal any link between the projects, but I do wonder if Mylyn was inspired directly by the Remembrance Agent project.

Evernote?

I'm looking at hosting my own paperwork to replace Evernote:

https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork

I've been using Evernote since I first used the PalmPre app (they probably have the highest platform support out of any app), but with the recent price changes, I'm not sure if they'll be around for much longer. If I'm going to pay for something, I might as well have control of the data too.

I cringe on anything that uses MySQL to store information, but looks like something I wished I made, so I will definitely check this out, thanks for posting.

You do realize how many major (aka Top 1000) websites are powered by MySQL don't you? It's easy to dismiss MySQL if you're stuck with experience from <5.x, but the latest versions are actually quite good. I still prefer Postgres for many things, but MySQL definitely doesn't deserve to be cringe worthy anymore, imho.

So you "cringe on" Wikipedia?

Good point. Still, MySQL in 2016, almost 2017 :)

I think the point is: if it's able to handle the data needs of one of the largest sites in the world do you really need to worry about it not being able to handle a pet app?

It is obviously up to the task.

I don't think thats a good point. I mean I can probably make a console application using .txt file on disk as the database and scale it to handle large websites.... if I had spent $100M on servers and 10 years of my life. Almost anything is possible with most of the technologies out there. But its about using the right tool for the job.

Stackoverflow is huge, its built with SQL server. If they had for example used mysql they would probably have had to hire 2x engineers + spent twice as much time tuning and tweaking.

All those top1000 mysql sites are heavily customized and tweaked to perform as well as they do. Using other modern technologies may had saved them 1000 of hours and money.

You can't bash on a technology by pulling numbers out of your ass and calling it a day.

It sounds like you've been drinking a lot of kool-aide and haven't given MySQL any real thought.

Please do suggest an alternative technology rather than just sneering at them for using MySQL.

I'm confused by this comment. My understanding is that MySQL is a respected and powerful relational database used in millions of projects because it's feature-rich, reasonably perfomant, and stable. Am I wrong?

Elephant and all.

App features aside, elephants are associated with memory in some cultures. Evernote likely chose an elephant for this association. PostgreSQL has Slonik as its mascot for the same reason.

https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Logo#Why_elephant.3F

Elephants are associated with memory

Yet another iPhone-only app. Please remember 2/3rds of your market runs Android, not iOS.

Please stop leaving money on the table.

They're not leaving money on the table if it takes 6mo to learn android and rebuilt they're app.

I hear your frustration, but this goes against other common HN advice: "avoid the hip thing, build it with the tools you know best" (not to mention "ship early and often").

99% of "Show HN" type of apps are website-in-a-box HTML+CSS+JS blobs.

There is at least 50 frameworks for easily building apps for both platforms (with some also supporting Windows Phone as well) with a single press of the button. Choose one, use it, stop reinventing the wheel.

So.... What does it do? Is it a brain training app like lumosity or a spaced Repition system like Anki or a cause in using memory palace or what is it?

There is nothing on that page telling me how this app will help me remember stuff (or what kind of stuff)

Why does it keep telling me the phone number I'm entering is incorrect?!?

Can't even verify because it tells me I used the wrong phone number, lol. Wtf

Looks like Google Keep.

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