Ask HN: Any of you who keep a journal like to try a beta release of our iOS app?
blobly.com
blobly.com
Your app seems to integrate location and photos which would be a bonus (a picture is worth a thousand words, after all). I would definitely try this app. I'm an android user
Would any of you (Bay Area preferred but not necessary) would like to try an app I just got done building? I spent the last 2 months designing and building it and I'm really excited to be able to finally share it with some of you guys. It's still a work in progress but I'm real close to launching it.
So the app in question is called Blobly and it's going to help us remember life's important moments. Blobly's mission is to become the repository of our lives.
If you are interested, please sign up in the link provided in the title. You'll get an email from me with a simple how-to-install instruction.
Thanks for reading and have a great day :)
It's completely private and it will stay that way. I really want us to be completely honest with ourselves when it comes to writing an entry. Because you are your only audience, I hope this will encourage us to just pour our hearts into it without the fear of others reading it.
I don't want to give too much information away but there will be encryption at flight and at rest.
How about something more straightforward, like:
Captured
Moments
etc
I'll definitely consider it and see if there's something I can come up with. For now it's Blobly. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_%28cake%29#Literary_r...
We all can agree that naming your product is tough. Especially when registering a domain for it. I initially went with the name "SympleMe.com" but I didn't like having to explain to people that there are two "y"s in the word simply. Time spent explaining about the incorrect spelling could've been spent talking about the actual product. I chose Blobly because well A) I love it :) B) the word "BLOB" stems from a technical term and I felt like it was very fitting for this product.
A couple of things spring to mind which other HN'ers have addressed, but I will put my thoughts down regardless
1. Having an iPhone app is great - given the fact that you can take pictures, log your location - but for a large part of my day, I have a full blown keyboard and a 25" screen - and not being able to use that to jot down thoughts defeats the purpose. Everyday.me and Day One get this right (although they both have issues that I will highlight next). Case in point - I need a client on the desktop. Momento, the app that I have been using for close to 2 years now sucks at this, but they get almost everything else right.
2. With regards to having a client, perhaps an API would be nice - one that someone can run with to build a desktop client. I have no issues using a web interface, but Day One gets this right - a rich client, a keystroke away to capture something really quickly. Furthermore, it gives me the ability to post longer - like an end-of-the-day entry covering how I felt, and how I thought the day went
3. Export - I want my entries out of the system. Momento (my current journalling app of choice) gets this right. They give you ways to back up your entire journal, and a way to export your entries as plain text. This is my current issue with Everyday.me (I know they allow you to export entries now, but it's only specific ones - No bulk export capability)
4. Security - This is the reason I stopped using OhLife - I still post once in a while, but all my truly personal thoughts go in Momento. You mentioned that you already have Dropbox integration on your list, and that would certainly be nice. That does not mean I will not post to blobly but I need to know that security is a top priority.
5. Tags and potentially Address book integration - Momento gets this right, to some extent - But tags not only help search better, they provide (at least to me) some context to "group" things together.
6. Multiple photos per entry - Momento gets this right, Day One not so much.
7. Integration with other social networking sites - Twitter/Facebook at a minimum. Momento gets this right. Another one is the potential to hook into an RSS feed (Momento does this)
7a. (Addendum to point no. 7) Here's my approach to it - I export my phone entries, text messages, photos, momento entries, and calendar entries every month. I am working on a script that "stitches" together all this information to give me a full view of what my day looked like. I think for most this would be a little extreme, but getting close to it would be nice :)
With all that said, let me say that your app looks gorgeous, and I can't wait to give it a spin on my phone (once I get my invite :D) - I would love to have a one-stop full featured journaling app on my phone (and desktop). I wish you well - and you can be certain you will be getting some feedback from me - and something tells me, even some money :)
Good luck.
* Have you checked out OhLife? I love that it optionally reminds me once a day at the time of my choosing, with an email (Subject: "It's Tuesday, Oct 30 - How did your day go?"). Anecdotally, this greatly increases my retention and activation. Not sure about others.
* OhLife also reminds me of moments in my past, as it learns more about me. (It ends emails with "Remember a year ago? You were all like...".). I've always wanted it to be associated with a mood so it could constantly remind me of good things in my life (filter by mood > X or something). Think 'gratitude' journaling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratitude_journal. I've always wanted an app that would make me happier. Gratitude journaling 'coach' app would be as close as I can think of for this vertical, and MVP could be some simple notifications on top of your app.
Your app in particular:
* Mobile will be great for photos and quick notes, but web input (likelihood I'll be able to use a real keyboard) is important to me for journaling. I hope that'll be an available feature.
* I'm on a 15" Macbook Pro and the path that is supposed to visually draw you down through the product explanation to 'invite' were way off the fold for me. I almost thought you'd removed the invite link. I'd suggest scooting things up a bit, maybe cut off the bottom X% of the phones, since by then I get that it's a mobile app.
* I agree with others that I didn't immediately get that it was private. I'd also want assurances that I can get my data out at any time, but the latter may be a bias among HN people.
* This will suffer from a "Mint"-like bootstrapping problem. It's value is extremely low at the very beginning. Any chance it could import moments from an existing timeline (FB? Path?) that I then choose to keep or not in the app?
* There's a certain "one app to rule them all" mentality, and I'm curious what, in practice, I'll do with events that I want to both (a) remember privately, and (b) share with FB friends. Have you noticed anything with this in your own personal use?
It's the three key features that DayOne doesn't have: Search, Notebooks (organization), and Data.
Search - I really enjoy writing. My thoughts are always racing which means I'm constantly writing into Blobly. As the number of entries continues to grow they become a lot harder to find. So I built a search functionality into the app to make it easy to find old memories.
Notebooks - Blobly provides away for you to organize your memories through Notebooks. You can have a memory notebook for home improvement projects, memories about your kids growing up, or simply a list of movies you've watched in the past.
Data - Last but not least data. The data gets automatically synced with our servers. I plan on building the app on multiple platforms with the SAME user experience and design. So your data will always be with you no matter what.
Data encryption is definitely on the list but wasn't sure if i should mention it because I wanted to limit myself to 3 talking points. I want to keep all the magic behind scenes and just focus on letting you guys know that it just works. Safe keeping your data is very very important.
How do you intend to make money? I read in another comment that your sync is a home-grown, non-iCloud solution. So you definitely have costs.
I ask because I would like to know why I should trust you with my personal data, and unless you have a non-privacy intrusive way of making money, how do I know that the data will not get "sold" later?
I was going to respond to your comment but since this is a very important topic, I thought I would reply the original commenter so that it becomes more visible. The response was for both you and tsyhco :).
Blobly will have a freemium and a premium plan to help keep the application running. However, I can't list right now what some those features are just yet but I can assure you that your data will be safe.
Good idea! I'll definitely get that message across.
Love to give this a try, if its not forcing me to use social networks.
It's all home-grown solution. Sync was definitely hard but it was one of my top priorities from the very beginning. Though it definitely still needs a bit of an improvement but it's working beautifully at the moment.
I'm wondering if sync might have stalled the Momento guys - they had big plans for Android and iPad versions but haven't brought anything out besides small fixes in over a year. (Disclosure: I'm in the iOS diary space too).