Thoughtback - Program Your Mind | Hacker News Reader

Thoughtback - Program Your Mind

thoughtback.com

106 pointsnbashaw45 comments

I really like this. I don't know how many miscellaneous files I have lying around my desktop filled with one-line lessons learned. I didn't have access to a computer for two years and carried around a pocket notebook. I think I added only twenty pages over the whole two years, but it was very pithy stuff. At some point I want to connect it up with Growl to remind myself of things. Any plans for an API?

An API is coming soon along with a few other major updates that get your thoughts back to you more frequently and effectively. It's in heavy testing right now so we can't wait to release it for others to use.

Nice idea, it's like a journal. I don't know if it's because I'm an introvert, that I would enjoy something like this more? Although it's fun to play with once, I don't know if there's anything here to keep me coming back. I can't say I'm in love with the color scheme of pink and gray. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but something bothers me about it.

Using the website isn't honestly that great of an experience, but the iPhone and Mac apps keep me coming back for sure. Every time you put a thought in, you get one back from the past. It's always an interesting surprise.

I think there's a lot of potential here, especially in terms of tying specific thoughts/ideas/moods to websites you were checking out at the time. If you could add links to your "thoughts" and recall the context under which you were having those thoughts, it would trigger more lucid memories and an instant recollection of the resource which you could then re-read. Sort of like an "enhanced bookmark" tool which allows you to annotate resources with your thoughts and recall them later either at random or intentionally. Then, create a visual "tree" around your specific hashtags by date which would basically take you through a historical account of your discovery process over a period of time. So, if your hashtag was #startup, you would be able to recall every resource you read and every idea you had and know exactly when those ideas came into mind and what they were tied to. Neat.

I'd like to see a more developed "What is Thoughtback" page. Currently I'm just left wondering, piecing together information from HN.

What a delightfully simple, useful and beautiful app. Great name and THANK YOU for making the easiest sign up form in the world.

I almost didn't try to register because I neither have an iPhone nor a Mac. But I filled out the form anyway and realised it works through any web browser too. I think you might want to mention that it is a web app too.

Unfortunately, I must confess this strikes me as being of questionable utility (for me). I guess I'll see how it goes after I enter a few more thoughts, and get some back.

Interface issue (in Opera): There's no key to just submit the thought. None of these work: Enter; Shift-Enter; Alt-Enter; Ctrl-Enter. As a workaround, though, I see that you can use Tab, Enter. [edit] I just set up the thoughtback submission box as a custom search engine in Opera. So now I can enter thoughts from the address bar (and press Enter at the end).

I realize that it would just make things like Twitter, but I was interested to see other people's thoughts, and found no interface for that. Perhaps you could experiment with letting people tag some thoughts #public or such, or have a checkbox under the submission field.

I'd like to save small code snippets with this. Would you consider adding some kind of markdown support?

This seems like one of those things the usefulness of which I habitually underestimate.

Reminds me of Ohlife - http://ohlife.com

Yeah, except this seems more like a "don't forget this lesson learned" kind of site to me.

Agreed. And thats where I can see the value. However I'd want something a lil more. For example, perhaps 'things' would keep coming back for say 30, 60, 90 days. You complete the thought and turn it into a habit and now you're good, so you can archive it. The more you turn into habits the better visual feedback you get. Another idea: Add video to this. Help ingrain the lesson learned by doing a full-blown reflection on what it means to you and why its important. Also, to see yourself to yourself to-do/NOT-to-do something every so often could be interesting. BTW: I have a folder in Evernote for things like this, I just dont check it that often, but a system that could automate this and push things to me could be interesting. One step further: sharing. Famous people could share short videos of their 'lessons learned' and you could subscribe to their lessons until you complete them as habits (remember not everything will turn into a habit though).

Just a few thoughts, hope it helps!

The iPhone app has image uploading right now but now video yet. We've been toying around with the idea of some sort of followed hashtag system where you could see what other people are thinking about. We just don't want to accidentally end up as a twitter competitor.

The idea of that site is great, thanks! I just started using it. I plan on writing a few sentences as well as a #hashtag containing my general mood for the day. After a few months, I plan on plotting this and seeing what moods were more common when and why.

I've been meaning to create something like this as a side-project. Well done! The first thought I captured was: "If you're in front of the computer right now, get away from it and use your notebook (i.e. pen and paper) for a while instead."

Questions: When will it send me things back? You might want to make it configurable since not everyone is in the same timezone. I'd also like to be sure I get messages tagged as #work or #inspiration in the middle of the working day.

Bug report: A thought that was just created is listed as created 2 hours ago.

I also created something like this, but it's not public. Call me paranoid, but I don't want to upload (potentially stupid) thoughts somewhere else.

Meanwhile it became a project where I try out things. It has a nice API for this. I thought about uploading it to GitHub, but it's very optimized to me, the code isn't exactly clean and well... maybe I should do so anyways. Oh and it features a protocol where passwords never will be transmitted, not even encrypted, just compared. Wikipedia++

I'd like to know more about the protocol feature for the passwords that you mention. I've often wondered how to authenticate safely from a phone without requiring the user to enter their details every time they use it.

Where on wikipedia did you learn about it? (I'm assuming that was what the "Wikipedia++" was for -- If not, care to elaborate?)

Do you know OTR (Off the record messaging). It uses some nice stuff, like the Socialist millionaire protocol which exactly does this. Comparing values (for example passwords) without sending them. I still use salted hashes, which in this case also have to be implemented on client side. I don't think it makes a lot of sense for passwords anyway, because there is SSL. Again, this is just a personal project where I just played with this stuff. However it can still be useful in authentication. See OTR for example. I suggest to read this. http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.1.0.html

There are also related protocols which might be very handy. Wikipedia is a very good source for finding such stuff. Follow interwiki links and external ones. There are many great protocols allowing you to do amazing things, that seem impossible in first place. I also like it because it shows how great math can be.

Like most people school mostly made me afraid of math and it took a while until I started enjoying it. I guess math (like programming) isn't something you should learn in a school, but something you should learn on your own. It's something you won't learn or enjoy when someone else explains it. You have to get things on your own, especially in your own pace, because people simply have different brains. I guess I'm very off topic now. It just makes me sad when people hate to learn.

Thanks for pointing me to that page. I've got some reading and playing around to do now. =)

Regarding the bug: I think the website isn't taking into account the different timezones. I created a thought, and it was listed as created 12 hours ago.

I love how well your blog matches your website, and that classy button back to the main website.

Well done!

(This is essentially the problem we are attempting to automate at my start-up, Blogic.)

I actually had a conversation about creating a service like this with somebody else from Hacker News... Looks like it wasn't him but still nice to see it come to fruition.

Though I had thought it would be nice to have a version which sends you an SMS -- available on all phones and difficult to ignore -- and perhaps an Android version, too.

Love it. I would like to be able to easily send thoughts to it from random places and devices, though. How about via email and/or SMS? I doubt you'll make an app for my Nokia anytime soon, but having to start up a mobile browser just for logging a thought will probably be a blocker.

Yeah, an SMS frontend would add a huge dose of ubiquity. Not everyone has smartphones or is close to a computer all day, but everyone I know carries a cellphone everywhere they go.

This should be really easy to implement with twilio, but they haven't got international SMS yet.

We've been beta testing Twilio for awhile now. It should be coming soon.

You can get in our beta international SMS program here http://www.twilio.com/international-sms

I made something very similar to this: http://www.jotreminder.dotcloud.com/

I've got about 50 little notes. I hit the bookmark in my toolbar whenever I'm bored. It works pretty well.

hmm, it's like twitter with only your future selves as followers. nice!

Say I create a follow-protected twitter account, which only I follow, write a couple lines of ruby to retweet stuff randomly to myself and a crontab entry for it ... did I miss anything?

My mom couldn't do what you are suggesting. She could use ThoughtBack though. Maybe that is what you are missing?

This is a cool concept and I want to like it. Right now it's absolutely useless for me if the iPhone client doesn't work without an internet connection.

This would actually be really handy for all of those one-off weekend project ideas I never get around to.

haha that's exactly what I use it for too. I just keep a big #startupidea list in it.

Does anyone else think that thoughtback is to twitter as ohlife is to blogging?

Is this spaced repetition studying for random one-liners?

Love it - simple, easy to use and really cute.

What a great name for your application!

um, random? why not spaced repetition? something like Anki would be nice in a browser though.

we're exploring more options on how to get people their thoughts back. We don't want to be a flashcard site, but we do want to be flexible enough that people can use it like they want to. Would setting a reminder time on a thought or hashtag work?

Something like this is extremely useful for language learning especially for languages like Japanese and Chinese. Put a kanji character, and have it bring it up after a certain period of time. Maybe gradually show it to you less and less frequently as you guess the correct meaning.

That's been implemented in a number of places. If you want that, you don't want it to be returned "randomly". You should use one of the existing software packages that do this rather than jamming it into this site. I think there may also be some services online, but personally I'd suggest local software for this. With the way that sort of learning works, it isn't even necessarily that big a deal to keep two learning stores in sync, because even if you learn a lot on Computer A but then switch to spending a few hours with Cell Phone B, you take advantage of the review, and just tell the cell phone program "yes, I solidly know that" until you catch back up. Manual syncing is almost a feature, not a bug.

This sounds great, too bad they've limited their user base by not supporting the most widely-used mobile OS. Maybe someone will come along and eat their lunch.

Currently we all have Macs and iPhones so that's what we're building right now. Don't worry once we get things stabilized a bit we're planning on making our API public as well as building apps for other platforms.

My comment was meant to be (mostly) tongue-in-cheek but was perhaps a bit too harsh. As such I'll leave it there and eat the downvotes :-) Best of luck.

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