Narrato – a personal journal you won’t give up on | Hacker News Reader

Narrato – a personal journal you won’t give up on

blog.narrato.co

51 pointsramykhuffash46 comments

"We decided to charge upfront for Narrato Journal because we wanted to make it clear that we have a business model that doesn’t involve advertising or selling your data. You own all of your data and you have full control over it."

I like this. I wonder if they also include an option to export all data in a static HTML page with photos and videos in a directory sitting beside it. I'd love to have something like this.

I stopped sharing and posting on fb a few years ago, but still have a ton of valuable 'content' (photos and the comments on them). I'd use Narrato to purely 'download' and manage my data from fb in such a way that I own and control the data.

Overall, looks very promising. Best of luck folks!

Charging up front isn't always a great business model though. They could sell a few thousand copies of the app, no one else wants it, and now they have to support a product they will never get revenue from again. With a product like this I'd prefer to see a subscription model assuring me they were getting paid regularly and there's more chance they'd stick around.

I guess we haven't made this clear enough and that's our fault, but we charge upfront for the app and a year's worth of service. After that, it's $4.99 a year. We're not sure that this is the best business model (when compared to Evernote's for example), but we do know that we will not sell data or advertise. With this model, each paid user covers the cost of their usage (and not the usage of the 10s of free users their money has to cover with a freemium service) and it means we're still incentivised to continue to update and improve the service, so people renew their subscription at the end of the year.

Thanks for clarifying.

It's not clear to me how charging upfront tells me anything about their business model. In fact the wording here even make me wonder if they plan to eventually sell my data in ADDITION to charging me money.

The business model may not include selling my data RIGHT NOW, but they don't give me any assurances that the current business model is set in stone.

It's $3.99 up front, and then $4.99 every year after as shown on the AppStore page: https://itunes.apple.com/app/narrato-journal/id668158681/

"You own all of your data and you have full control over it."

Somewhat bullshit. It clearly states on the App Store page that it's a subscription service.

Export options were my first thought too. The bottom of their website [1] says, "Your data is yours and you have full conrol over it, so you can export or delete it at any time." I'm curious what that actually means though... how can I export it, and to what formats?

[1]: https://www.narrato.co/

JSON, through the web interface. I'm a journaling geek, so I signed up to try Narrato. After you confirm your email address, it takes you to their online account manager, which has an export button. The export looks like a JSON file, plus a directory all of the images that you've uploaded to the app.

That sounds like a terrible option for the average person.

Yep, I agree. This is just the 1.0, export options will improve.

Can you describe a good export experience for the average person? Google takeout service is pretty similar (I think, I have not actually in-archived my files to inspect them).

I am genuinely curious because I use my wife as the average person when it comes to technology and she has absoluy no interest in exporting her stuff from Google. I do it because I have grand ideas of a personalized data store with search tha I can just dump stuff into so my grand children's grandchildren can search for stuff and discover their history through our data.

According to “Zuckerberg’s Law," the amount of information we share online doubles each year.

I stopped reading here and had to talk myself down from burning my computer, burying the ashes and salting the earth around it.

Who knows..? They might be teaching that in schools half a century from now.

Instead, you can write a letter and send it snail mail to an old friend.

I think Zuckerberg's Law actually meant to say is the amount of information facebook collects from users doubles each year.

I really like the premise of this....building the journal from existing web services I use. However, I'm not sure I'd do the aggregation and additional typing on a mobile device. This is the type of thing I'd do on my laptop/desktop, likely much more efficiently. Capturing the initial ideas through Instagram or Twitter is great for my mobile device, but when it comes down to flushing out that inspiration into some private thoughts....I'd prefer using my laptop with a keyboard.

Also, any journaling app that stores my thoughts in the cloud is a non-starter for me.

One thing that would be cool, though, is some form of way to generate a PDF for printing (or something). To me it's not really a journal, until I can get it out of the digital medium.

BTW, our household has tried many of the different mobile journaling apps, and we've always gone back to a combination of typing in regular text editors, printing photo books from Instagram, and the age-old technique of hard-writing with a pen and notebook.

Obligatory will it come to android question? I've longed for a journal that will keep my interest and attention. Loved Oh Life...for the few months I used it, have tried many things, would be on this in a heartbeat if it hits my preferred platform.

I will admit that I've stopped using it, but I really enjoyed http://penzu.com/

Thanks for both the recommendation and admission. I'll very happily give it a try.

Very nice, but wouldn't fit my use case since my concept of a journal is long-form text.

For that, I'd recommend something like 750 Words [1]. Journalling with stat tracking, achievements, reminders, etc.

[1] http://750words.com/

I've used this before in the past, but kinda fell off for whatever reason. It's really great, though. Very simple and clean.

I used to do daily pages as a way to clear my mind to get down to organized real work. I liked the idea of 750 words, but don't trust the cloud for this type of uninhibited flow of words. So I use various text editors. I kind of wish there was a version of 750 words that worked offline, though.

I would pay for an app that did this offline but that is my biggest sticking point as well.

This kind of thing only really works if you are completely uninhibited and I'm not stupid enough to make that information pseudo-public, even with promises from seemingly trustworthy people.

So I just use my org-mode setup and have to write the little reminders/stats bits myself, which means I don't get around to it, but do have a file with all the ideas for them marked TODO.

This feels similar to 2010's Momento: http://www.momentoapp.com

"Connect Momento with popular web services to fill your diary with your online activity. In minutes Momento can build a record of each day, using the information and media you have shared online. A fast, effective and effortless way to record your life."

M.G. Siegler called it the perfect diary app: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/28/momento-app/

Also discussed on HN, Remembary, described by its author here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4069209

I like the identification of the problem, not sure if this is a solution to it (for me). Since it is a journal, I imagine privacy is a concern so: Where are your servers and how do you plan on mitigating the wrong people from trying to read customers journals?

Btw seems like the service costs $5/year. Totally reasonable, but not mentioned until you get the app. Would also love it if I could view local temp in Fahrenheit. Otherwise very cool approach.

I'd like something like this, but I think I'd appreciate it more if all the data lived locally / in a place that I control. I don't think I'd share personal details in a journal on a service not under my control.

Yeah, I have the same privacy issues. I don't like certain personal data like journaling kept in the cloud.

I've also been working on another journal app: https://thyself.io (though it's not quiet ready for prime-time)

Like you said, building the habit is the hardest part, but this type of introspection really has it's benefits once you get going. I've been keeping a diary for years as just a word file in a truecrypt volume. Most of the apps I found in this market were trying to be more of a blogging/sharing platform rather than a private journal.

Like the design of thyself.io.

Looks interesting, I've been thinking about building a journal application just for myself for a while (none of the ones I looked at ever did what I wanted and since I'm a programmer that isn't an excuse I can really live with).

I think for the engagement thing I'll have mine send me an SMS (Nexmo makes this very easy), Emails I silence outside of work but SMS's I always check (as that's how I know servers have gone down).

Thanks for the feedback!

I have a super-simple REST API setup for the site (documentation isn't online yet), so if you can roll out your own service how you like and use my endpoints for the storage/synchronized access.

I've been using Facebook with all posts set to "Only Me" privacy as my journal -- this will probably will kill my karma, but this app seems like essentially a Path clone that you pay for, with a Day One business model to boot.

It's nice and pretty, but it's a crowded space that I fear there isn't enough new in this app to make headway.

So, before I give you access to all of my social networks, where's my guarantee you wont aggregate and sell it to someone else? I mean the sentiment is nice, but how will we know it holds if you're acquired?

Awesome, I will try it out. I'm using a private Facebook account + Timeline to achieve the same, but it's a total pain to maintain multiple Facebook accounts.

The "Get notified for Android" link just takes me to the iTunes download page. Would like to sign up for when it comes to Android. :)

Looks great! I really like the ability to pull socially shared content into the journal.

Another journaling app I'm a fan of is Day One.

meh.

i prefer using old school moleskin and pencil to journal with. why does everything have to be about content aggregation? seems silly to duplicate the data in yet another application. nothing like making time to sit down and write ones thoughts down and exercise the brain in remembering the sequences of the past.

I can't answer for everyone, but I like using my social network streams to jog my memory. Maybe I saw something funny from the bus and tweeted it. Come sit-down-and-write time, I'll pull up Twitter and remember that funny thing and write out a longer description to amuse Future Me.

Will the yet-to-be-released iPad version be a Universal app, or a separate purchase?

It'll be universal and a free upgrade to existing users.

I wonder if the name is a veiled reference? (Dattebayo!)

Is there a Mac OS X companion app for this?

Not currently, but we are expanding to other devices. Our priorities will depend on demand, but OSX makes a lot of sense to us :-)

Thanks for letting me know. Right now I do most of my "journaling" in either notational velocity or byword, but having something that is less rickety would be nice :)

why is a press release for a paths(?) clone so high on the FP with only 10points?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com