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Comment by minikomi | Hacker News Reader

Wow.. The "Program" model seems like it would work for a lot of things - diets, exercise, study... Thought about making it a platform?

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Yes that's the vision! That when you have a problem, you just 'visit The Prof', and he gives you a blended programme to help you. Sleep is a good starting point, since it is a) socially acceptable to talk about, and b) is highly co-morbid with other problems - a good way in to health in general.

A limitation of our current media-rich approach however is the cost of adapting content - we took a short term cheap, long term expensive approach... :)

Man, good luck. It's a head smackingly obvious yet simple idea.. some more: quitting smoking, learning a language, cooking at home.. :)

Thanks man! Yes it's a case of picking battles really at first - even within sleep there's so much we can do...

If it branches out to things other than sleep, then don't you think you will need a new name?

Yes, we'll need an umbrella name. But right now it's more important for it to be immediately obvious what the problem is that we can help with, since we rely on self-diagnosis, (the user is actively looking for a sleep solution either online or in Boots store).

To me, the obvious follow-up would be social anxiety because it is intrinsically hard to talk to other people about, yet discussing it with a computer doesn't pose any difficulty. (I'm currently reading a 'use CBT to cure social anxiety' book which has been rather eye-opening.)

Regardless, I like the site, though it sometimes gets a bit choppy on my old macbook pro. I think £50 might be a bit steep as an up-front cost - it almost put me off.

Also, have you considered doing an iphone app for the diary? I use some supposedly motion sensing app to wake me up with music. It doesn't work very well, but for your purposes I could easily see just thumping the phone when I notice I'm awake instead of having to look at a clock and remember a time.

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