> Is there an easy way to build, or a startup that offers, something that will email you once a day asking "What's happening?" and then accumulate the replies?
> Unfortunately, though, in this one case I can't promise that if you build it, I'll use it. Unless I know you, I can't trust that you won't read my emails. (I trusted the previous startup that did it because we'd funded them.)
How do you solve the "won't read my emails" problem ?
I've seen the statement in your website:
> Your data stored and transferred securely. No one will ever read or process your notes even the staff. Your data belongs to you and can be easily exported in preferable format by request.
But once the data leaves the browser there is no way to know, wouldn't you consider to partner with Gmail(or others) and appear as an addon to an already trusted company in order to start off the business ?
> How do you solve the "won't read my emails" problem ?
99% of the people who tell you they wouldn’t use the product unless it can’t read your email wouldn’t actually use it regardless, and are just asking for things they don’t really have any intention of using.
edit: I just wanted to add I think it's kind of a dick move on pg's part to ask someone to build this when there are like four different versions that already exist. If you like those products then you should promote them, and if you don't like them then you should email the creators with feedback. Asking folks to build additional competing products without doing that first is poor form, as is asking people to build stuff that you don't actually care enough about to Google to see if it already exists. I don't mean to pick on pg specifically, I just see this kind of behavior on Twitter (and HN) all the time, often from startup investors, and I think it deserves to be called out.
> How do you solve the "won't read my emails" problem?
Have the user generate a device-local SMIME certificate for <diary@wherever.com>, register their certificate's public key with the server, have the server generate a mobileconfig that enforces SMIME when emailing anyone, and then in Mail.app change the From: address to <diary@wherever.com> when emailing the diary address. iOS will remember that From change and use SMIME to encrypt all diary messages to the public key in your keychain (which the server can't decrypt), the server can reroute the incoming mail back to you using your private key, and your device-local key is the only one capable of decrypting.
Since you're using SMIME, you'll need to use IMAP for your data store, which provides perfect compatibility to any platform that can do SMIME key generation. I'm very curious if SMIME-encrypted emails can be used as encrypted Notes on iOS, now that Notes supports IMAP accounts :)
> But once the data leaves the browser there is no way to know, wouldn't you consider to partner with Gmail(or others) and appear as an addon to an already trusted company in order to start off the business ?
Also, I understand the concern and that Paul most likely will not trust their secrets to anyone. The problem is that's not a business, but a beautiful hobby project that I honestly love, so it's unlikely that I will ever spend time rewriting it and then paying Google $15K (https://www.gmass.co/blog/google-oauth-verification-security...) so they could vet me.
Remember KISS. He wants a Gmail add-on? Keep it even simpler.
Create a filter that applies a "Journal" label to emails from your own address. Then create a filter to have it skip your inbox. Whenever you want to view your journal, just search for archived mail with that label.
> How do you solve the "won't read my emails" problem ?
Nobody but a handful of very vocal HN posters care about this. In the marketplace this isn’t a problem.
At the end of the day, you have to trust your data in somebody else’s hands. Unless your print your own circuit boards, make your own CPUs and write your own operating system, you cannot escape trusting a third party.
Since when is Google a "trusted company" when it comes to user-generated content? Their business model is literally to gather as much data as possible from their users in order to manipulate their collective behavior to Google's financial benefit.
I love that someone followed through and got it done. I bet a lot of people thought about it. I bet that there's even someone seeing this right now pissed off that they didn't finish first.
Great design. Where'd you get your little illustrations?
It looks classy as hell and I think the verbiage on the front page is very strong. There is a back button issue on iOS that needs to be resolved. When you visit the Open Diary link, you can’t get out using the back button. It might be just me. My iPad has been acting wonky lately.
I was thinking -- this morning -- about this type of proactive system that asks questions to stakeholders in a project; especially about their expectations. This is a killer feature that I have never seen in my 18 years as a PM. PM tools still pose high barriers for adoption, in general, since you have to login, navigate, find elements you are related to, analyze them and then feedback. That's a long path if you are not fully allocated into the project. I think there is a lot of room for "feedback automation" via email in Pm tools.
The app is cool man good work! old school boy here made an vi alias to my journal.txt file and have been using it for 5+ years. alias opens the file in edit mode on a newline at the bottom. VI search lets me find whatever i need quickly all from the keyboard!
This whole 'email yourself as diary' seems like overkill to me when you could just write something yourself. Unless you are cool with sharing your diary with 3rd party services. Anyways it's still a cool little thing, just throwin my two cents.
This used to exist, it was called OhLife. They would email you every day and say "What's happening in your life" and "Hey do you remember this?" with one random email from your history included. I always liked this service and was sad when they shut down. Pretty sure I started using it due to a post right here on HN.
I wrote WhoaLife ( https://github.com/vonnieda/WhoaLife ) when OhLife shut down. It's self hosted for privacy and designed for Heroku Free Tier. Takes about 15 minutes and no code to deploy.
I've been using it since OhLife shut down and it completely fills the gap for me.
I recently modernized the code a bit, ported it from Mongo to Postgres and improved the selection of the random entry that is sent to you, but I haven't pushed those changes yet. They'll go out in the next week or so.
I also used to use Oh Life and loved it. When it shut down I started using DailyDiary [0] which launched an Oh Life importer on Oct 8th, 2014. That's _before_ Oh Life even shut down on Oct 15th, 2014.
I've been continuing to use DailyDiary since.
I have an apps script that automatically adds a draft response to these prompts, which still starts with an "Oh Life, ...." salutation. The script also adds the day's weather report to the bottom of the draft. My todo list has an item to add top and random tracks from my scrobbled music listening for the day.
In the evening I fill in the body of the response with reflections from the day and off it goes.
I have a feature in the fast track queue that sounds like the "draft response" you're inserting with script. Ping me - I'd love to get your input on that. lance at dailydiary.com.
You can encrypt those emails with PGP, the best encryption there is.
A good email client can also learn to automatically encrypt when you send to a specific email, so you can send to a specific alias (with a plus or subdomain aliasing scheme).
But then will your diary service work right with it? Honestly, you should use a mail server that isn't from an ad company. And then if you also want to layer encryption on top, feel free.
(Also, calling PGP "the best encryption there is" might be a bit of hyperbole.)
I love that you took the programmer equivalent of a writing cue and ran with it. And I think this is a really cool idea to explore.
I know it's largely a one person experiment and not a real business, but some feedback
> I won't sell your data and will be very personal with you.
This isn't good enough anymore. You need to promise that my data won't ever _ever_ be sold. Especially since you're asking me to share my diary with you. I'm not sure if this kind of promise can be made though. Maybe we need some legal apparatus you can declare that gives me peace of mind that no future owner of your company can change their mind.
No "promise" will make me share my diary with a stranger, not even a legally enforceable one, unless I self-censor my diary. Honestly not sure why anyone would entrust their diary to some web service, unless they take a nothing-to-hide approach with their diaries.
Although, a web service to share notes with friends is probably okay.
"Diary" usually means personal and private. But it can mean a lot of things. I can imagine cases where people are okay with that. I've managed a personal "diary" that's on Github publically. It's really just a reference of tech stuff I've learned.
Thank you for your feedback and I understand your concern, but I'm not sure how to pull it off. I don't have a fancy lawyer that could customize such thing to me, nor I have a budget for it.
Here're some facts that could help you to find peace of mind. First of all, I operate in the EU, so I can't simply sell your data. Also, it costs me virtually $0 to maintain the service (thanks to Firebase and Mailgun), so I won't be forced to sell out to keep it afloat. At last but not least I use it myself with my close friends so we're in the same boat.
Why doesn't the guy just write a python script to mail himself that prompt everyday? Sometimes I think if Paul Graham tripped he would start wondering if there was a start-up aiming to put an end to uneven ground.
Exactly my thought. But further I love when some well off VC (Fred Wilson does this type of thing often) will ask the community for something they could simply pay someone to write that fills 100% the need they have and is tailored toward them specifically with features that they want. Or just hack it together themselves. Much easier generally (for this type of thing) than having to trust and use a product with bells and whistles that may not matter to you.
I mean I get the trying to push a startup in a direction (so they can invest potentially) but somehow I don't think that is what is going on.
Readit News
> Is there an easy way to build, or a startup that offers, something that will email you once a day asking "What's happening?" and then accumulate the replies?
I did just that! Let me know what you think.
> Unfortunately, though, in this one case I can't promise that if you build it, I'll use it. Unless I know you, I can't trust that you won't read my emails. (I trusted the previous startup that did it because we'd funded them.)
How do you solve the "won't read my emails" problem ?
I've seen the statement in your website:
> Your data stored and transferred securely. No one will ever read or process your notes even the staff. Your data belongs to you and can be easily exported in preferable format by request.
But once the data leaves the browser there is no way to know, wouldn't you consider to partner with Gmail(or others) and appear as an addon to an already trusted company in order to start off the business ?
99% of the people who tell you they wouldn’t use the product unless it can’t read your email wouldn’t actually use it regardless, and are just asking for things they don’t really have any intention of using.
edit: I just wanted to add I think it's kind of a dick move on pg's part to ask someone to build this when there are like four different versions that already exist. If you like those products then you should promote them, and if you don't like them then you should email the creators with feedback. Asking folks to build additional competing products without doing that first is poor form, as is asking people to build stuff that you don't actually care enough about to Google to see if it already exists. I don't mean to pick on pg specifically, I just see this kind of behavior on Twitter (and HN) all the time, often from startup investors, and I think it deserves to be called out.
Have the user generate a device-local SMIME certificate for <diary@wherever.com>, register their certificate's public key with the server, have the server generate a mobileconfig that enforces SMIME when emailing anyone, and then in Mail.app change the From: address to <diary@wherever.com> when emailing the diary address. iOS will remember that From change and use SMIME to encrypt all diary messages to the public key in your keychain (which the server can't decrypt), the server can reroute the incoming mail back to you using your private key, and your device-local key is the only one capable of decrypting.
Since you're using SMIME, you'll need to use IMAP for your data store, which provides perfect compatibility to any platform that can do SMIME key generation. I'm very curious if SMIME-encrypted emails can be used as encrypted Notes on iOS, now that Notes supports IMAP accounts :)
> But once the data leaves the browser there is no way to know, wouldn't you consider to partner with Gmail(or others) and appear as an addon to an already trusted company in order to start off the business ?
Also, I understand the concern and that Paul most likely will not trust their secrets to anyone. The problem is that's not a business, but a beautiful hobby project that I honestly love, so it's unlikely that I will ever spend time rewriting it and then paying Google $15K (https://www.gmass.co/blog/google-oauth-verification-security...) so they could vet me.
https://github.com/maccman/oped
Encrypt it before sending.
Create a filter that applies a "Journal" label to emails from your own address. Then create a filter to have it skip your inbox. Whenever you want to view your journal, just search for archived mail with that label.
Nobody but a handful of very vocal HN posters care about this. In the marketplace this isn’t a problem.
At the end of the day, you have to trust your data in somebody else’s hands. Unless your print your own circuit boards, make your own CPUs and write your own operating system, you cannot escape trusting a third party.
Just encrypt locally before sending.
true end-to-end encryption is the only way?
Great design. Where'd you get your little illustrations?
Any feedback is appreciated!
https://www.friday.app
e: Also, I used to use https://750words.com which is quite similar.
name+ideas@ for app ideas
name+notes@ for random notes
name+writing@ for article ideas
(edit: formatting)
Sometimes I don't even press "Send". Just keep pages of daily notes in the "Draft" folder ;)
This whole 'email yourself as diary' seems like overkill to me when you could just write something yourself. Unless you are cool with sharing your diary with 3rd party services. Anyways it's still a cool little thing, just throwin my two cents.
Stats wouldn't be possible (of the top of my head) but I don't care about that much.
I've been using it since OhLife shut down and it completely fills the gap for me.
I recently modernized the code a bit, ported it from Mongo to Postgres and improved the selection of the random entry that is sent to you, but I haven't pushed those changes yet. They'll go out in the next week or so.
Also, for those of us who never used OhLife the readme doesn't really tell me what it does.
I've been continuing to use DailyDiary since.
I have an apps script that automatically adds a draft response to these prompts, which still starts with an "Oh Life, ...." salutation. The script also adds the day's weather report to the bottom of the draft. My todo list has an item to add top and random tracks from my scrobbled music listening for the day.
In the evening I fill in the body of the response with reflections from the day and off it goes.
[0] https://www.dailydiary.com/
It’s as private as your email...which probably means not private.
Like most people, I depend on an advertising company to host my emails. But I wouldn’t share my private diary with them.
A good email client can also learn to automatically encrypt when you send to a specific email, so you can send to a specific alias (with a plus or subdomain aliasing scheme).
(Also, calling PGP "the best encryption there is" might be a bit of hyperbole.)
I know it's largely a one person experiment and not a real business, but some feedback
> I won't sell your data and will be very personal with you.
This isn't good enough anymore. You need to promise that my data won't ever _ever_ be sold. Especially since you're asking me to share my diary with you. I'm not sure if this kind of promise can be made though. Maybe we need some legal apparatus you can declare that gives me peace of mind that no future owner of your company can change their mind.
Although, a web service to share notes with friends is probably okay.
Here're some facts that could help you to find peace of mind. First of all, I operate in the EU, so I can't simply sell your data. Also, it costs me virtually $0 to maintain the service (thanks to Firebase and Mailgun), so I won't be forced to sell out to keep it afloat. At last but not least I use it myself with my close friends so we're in the same boat.
Thousands of active users. Very (very) slowly enhancing and monetizing with additional features, but it's far down on my priority list.
I mean I get the trying to push a startup in a direction (so they can invest potentially) but somehow I don't think that is what is going on.