Everyday.me (YC S12) - an "Evernote for Your Life" | Hacker News Reader

Everyday.me (YC S12) - an "Evernote for Your Life"

techcrunch.com

75 pointsweitingliu60 comments

As an introvert who is in the process of deleting their facebook account for privacy reasons, I see real value in this. I'd like to keep a private journal more in line path/instagram/twitter - just for me. That being said I have a couple pieces of advice:

Make sure I can export ALL of the data, anytime. Make sure you securely backup all of my data. CHARGE ME for this service, so I know you won't sell my data. Only way I'll do this is if you address my privacy concerns.

Got it, we hear you and definitely feel the same way. Working hard toward meeting all of them.

The only way you will know they won't sell your data is if those terms are clearly stated in a contract between you and the vendor. Otherwise, you won't have any way to know they won't sell your data in the future.

Imagine if you are the owner of Everyday.me and Facebook comes calling, flashing a huge check. They want your data and are willing to pay big bucks for it. If there's nothing in customers' contracts stating you can't sell their data... cha-ching!

But if it's in the contract, then you know? That seems naive, you can't possibly know that they won't sell your data, but you can make an educated guess.

The point is, a user has recourse in that event. Without those contract terms, they don't.

I agree, but my point still stands. You don't know anything, but as you said, you get more "power"

If you have a mac or iOS: http://dayoneapp.com/

Every comment so far (except for developer responses) is negative. Sad state of affairs.

With that said I would like to congratulate the developers. Good work. More choice is good for everybody.

> An iPhone and web app called Everyday.me

Right, so I get into the "private beta" and go to the link in the email. It gives me a popup saying, "Please use an iPhone to install this app."

Meanwhile, on their homepage: > Access from anywhere - on mobile, email, or the web

If having an iPhone is a requirement of using your website (which I assume functions perfectly well on its own), you're doing it wrong. If the website is merely a way to view (but not edit) your content, then you're REALLY doing it wrong.

Also, why are people still developing exclusively for iPhone? Last quarter there were four times as many Android phones sold as iPhones.

>> Also, why are people still developing exclusively for iPhone? Last quarter there were four times as many Android phones sold as iPhones.

I can only speak for myself, but developing for Android is a nightmare compared to developing software for iOS. Different behaviour amongst different Android devices makes it really hard to provide a consistent user experience.

I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, but is "consistent user experience" necessarily something that should be a goal?

There's more to it, but when I hear that I'm reminded of web site "designers" that only use photoshop and focus/obsess over pixel-perfect layouts and font-sizings, to get everything to match exactly what their original photoshop 'design' looks like on their monitor, ignoring the variety of browsers/devices that may also visit the site.

You're not going to develop for both platforms simultaneously because that is a recipe for headaches and higher costs - especially if you're still figuring out your product-market fit.

Let's not even talk about Android device fragmentation, which I can only imagine is a serious problem. The difference lies in that while Androids may dwarf iOS installs in terms of units sold, the iOS platform dwarfs the Android in terms of the size of the market of people willing to buy apps.

We do want to develop for Android, just didn't have enough time and resources to do them both at the same time. Sorry for that, we'll bring it to Android soon!

"Also, why are people still developing exclusively for iPhone? Last quarter there were four times as many Android phones sold as iPhones."

Have you ever been in a 2-3 person startup? You have to make a choice and do something exclusively. iPhone is the right choice if you want to get to market and start talking to users sooner. It's also the right choice if you want to raise money and get tech press in the Valley (it turns out virtually no investors or bloggers have anything but an iPhone).

Nice App. I worked on this Idea for quite long time and discussed with many web developers as I am not into web development.Many suggested me to learn and develop but I couldn't. That is a different story. My perspective was different and it was not just simple Private Journal of your personal life.It meant to improve your way of life. I thought of many features which can do so. For example: Capture moment and also mark some as milestones along with its type as good/bad or traits like new learning's/adventurous etc etc. Thus at any point of time if you look back, how your time period(last year lets say) had been. you will know if it was insipid or adventurous or had any new learnings etc and where you need to improve. Pls feel free to discuss with me if you need more feature ideas.

Yes! I'm really into self-learning and improvement as well, both in athletics and music. We're hoping with with this v1 of Everyday.me we first lay the groundwork for self-chronicling, then there's _so_ much we can do around goal setting, tracking, and helping people achieve their goals. That's what gets me really excited about working on this.

Email me at techynirvana[at]gmail[dot]com. I can share some more inputs for the betterment of the app.

After reading this, I still don't know what this is. Other than being like facebook, a notebook, twitter, blogs, a private journal, and Evernote, not that I've ever heard of Evernote before. How can something be like a facebook timeline and private at the same time?

Why is it so difficult for people to describe their new service? Alternatively, why am I so bad at understanding?

>> Why is it so difficult for people to describe their new service? Alternatively, why am I so bad at understanding?

Because it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Bingo. That's one sentence that sums up the vast majority of tech startups nowadays.

Could also be a solution to a problem you don't have.

I like the idea of a detailed Facebook timeline that goes back many years. But I don't want to share, or give FB, enough information for it to be worthwhile. Also, I'm not I'll be on FB in 10 or 20 years.

This might be their biggest challenge: Convincing me that they'll be around in 20 years

Hi, we're sorry the description is confusing. It's similar to Facebook's Timeline in the sense that we list things chronologically, but it's completely private.

I think the easiest way to think of it is a mobile journal that not only lets you input things, but also automatically collects your social activities across the web for you. Does that help?

Serious, non snarky question - how are you different than Path, then?

A few different ways, I think Path is amazing for what it does, btw. A real inspiration for all of us. It seems to really promote you to share with your friends. We don't share at all. We also import your activities from other networks. You can post to it by email, view it on the web...please give it a try and let us know what you think.

Since most people are eager to share a lot of the content they create this can be seen like some sort of backup of your shared data with a built-in viewer. Which may sound like what Facebook is doing right now. But with the added bonus of storing all the other content not considered worthy of sharing in public for whatever reason. This is essentially what any other 'cloud' storage services want to achieve. The chronological timeline or whatever filters can be easily added to any service once it has the data. Phone/tablet vendors have the edge on this since they can implement this feature directly into their devices (e.g iCloud, Google Drive).

ok, how are you different from these guys http://dayoneapp.com/?

Then why not just say you list things chronologically? Why confuse your potential customers by making them work backward from Facebook's Timeline feature to simply listing things chronologically? If you have to attach to Facebook's success in order to sell your product, you probably have a long way to go. Try defining it in your own words.

Interesting you say this, as most people will tell you to define it in terms of products people already know and use. Most people would get "a Facebook timeline but private"

It's essentially a posterity engine

Too me, the Evernote comparison didn't make a lot of sense. But the FB timeline explanation did.

So it's basically: a private fb-timeline like journal filled with things from social networks and real life

Does TechCrunch have an army of upvoters? just seems like their posts come from nowhere to the front page with almost no discussion.

No, but YC does.

Another startup being prominently featured on Techcrunch started by "ex-Googlers" I swear every startup that gets Techcrunch coverage was started by ex-Googlers. That all side, I don't see what makes Everyday.me so special (I don't mean to sound so cynical) but what makes this application different in comparison to all of the other available services and mobile applications that do the same thing? Evernote is one of those applications that comes to mind.

It looks to me Everyday.me borrows heavily from the Facebook timeline except it's private. I don't see how Everyday.me is different to Facebook Timeline and Path especially. Am I missing something big here that makes Everyday.me a "killer startup" please kindly put me in my place if I am. To add to the confusion further, what do YC see in Everyday.me to make it worthy of being funded?

what do YC see in Everyday.me to make it worthy of being funded?

That they are "ex-Googlers."

It may be disingenuous to say that other applications do the same thing; it's as if you were saying ConnectU and Thefacebook do the same thing. In any case, they are simply launching their product. It's the first step in a long journey.

It's sometimes difficult to notice a great startup unless you've launched. For example, Groupon was a much more modest "tipping point for change" type of startup before they realized they could apply the same concept to small business commerce.

I'm not sure if I would feel comfortable having my private journals on someone else's server.

Agreed. I love the Feltron Reports and the stuff Wolfram Alpha does with his own personal data, but I can't really get down with this. ThinkUp (for social media) and Day One / Daytum (for personal data) is all I need. You can't really reproduce Feltron Reports on scale.

What if you could do the Wolfram Alpha thing with a local appliance (e.g. a plug computer type thing) and its backups - if you did not explicitly want to manage them yourself - were encrypted before they ever left your network or were seen by a third party?

I guess the problem then is making subscription money on it.

I like the idea. Though I don't like social anything, would a smart long game here be, after many users, to turn this into a social network where users can opt to change their content from private to public ?

Millions of profiles could go live on the same day? All individual content as well as types of content (tweets, images, posts, etc) could have public/private flag, giving you ultimate control but also free to have all tweets or images display instantly from twitter or instagram?

While I'm not a target customer I'm sure you'll find early adopters thanks to YC&TC. Launching is hard, so congrats on that. That being said, I am still trying to wrap my head around the whole 'limited sharing' trend. Path got the ball rolling and has gotten pretty popular. Then came the sharing between couples - Pair, cupple etc. (seriously?) And now no sharing but just journaling for yourself ? How do you guys make money ?

Charging for the app would be the best way, although if this becomes venture funded then then it will be hard to just do that given the pressure to support a high valuation (see the recent google acquisition of sparrow)

For a long time I tried to build a lifelogging app, something pretty similar to this, hell, we even went to the YC interview with that idea. I love this space & I love seeing someone tackle the problem with such a simple & clean app. This is actually something I would use myself: no numbers, no social bullshit. Just a simple app to keep track of my day. Great job! Good luck & godspeed!

Nice idea, and I'm eager to use it day to day, but one small quibble: It would be nice if the setting allowed me to set the language - you currently set the language based on the location, right? Assuming the language of the land is my preferred language setting is not correct.

Can we use location services and set the language preference?

Send a similar pitch to ycomb S12 ;)

here are my small feedback:

1. concentrate on collaborative experience, mixing together social feed from different user on the same experience 2. i absolutely hate daily mail :) 3. UI is a little bit boring 4. guess travel are the best fit for this app 5. grab the future of people, not only the past :)

So when they shut the service down in 18 months and kill all access to our data, will they be quick to point out that "indefinitely" = for as long as they are profitable? Now I'm not saying this is what's going to happen, but you would have to be foolish not to consider this the most likely outcome.

Well hopefully with your support we wouldn't have to shut down ;)

Promising -- and delivering, asap -- a friendly export format would be more convincing at this point.

Will the data be exportable?

Aside from the fact that your answer wasn't an answer, you are essentially making false claims on your Web site using words like "never" and "anything." Hopefully you don't get sued by a paying customer who holds you to account for those claims.

Looks really excellent. Wanted to check it out to see if it's something I could get in to - didn't realise it was iPhone only until I already gave over my email address. Would be nice if this was clear on the website.

Evernote already is for my life. This is going nowhere.

Why would I voluntarily hand over all this data to a third party if the only person who SHOULD ever consume the data is me?

too much techcrunch on YC

this is more of a case of too much YC on techcrunch.

50-75% of stories on TC are one way or another originated from hacker news...

How do they do the web page to install iPhone app, without you going into the app store?

But can you export your data?

previous discuss http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4336977

Sounds like evertale.

No privacy policy?

Yet another startup trying to use the success, brand or popularity of other companies or products to attract customers. Everyday.me, how about defining yourselves instead of "We're the Facebook of" or "an Evernote for?" Be confident about your product--that it can stand on its own and has merit above and beyond what competitors can offer.

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