

At OhLife (YC S10), daily e-mails motivate a new wave of online diarists - waderoush
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/10/26/ohlifes-daily-e-mails-motivate-a-new-wave-of-online-diarists/

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swombat
To offer a counterpoint, I signed up, posted about 3 entries, then got
distracted and added these emails to the masses of automated mails that my eye
automatically glosses over while looking at my overtaxed inbox.

Then I unsubscribed the next time I had an automated-mail-culling exercise.

So, "one more email demanding my attention" didn't work for me.

~~~
kirpekar
Same here. Kept up for about a week, then unsubscribed to rid the pain.

The solution has to be non-email related.

~~~
hugh3
If you can't stand being reminded to keep a diary, perhaps you just don't
really want to be keeping a diary?

~~~
kirpekar
I want to keep a diary, but I don't want to update it every single day at 8PM.
I'd rather send out an update every few days when I'm less stressed about
other things and have got together my thoughts on what I would like to write.

~~~
there
is the 8pm time not configurable?

i wonder if it could just look at what time you finally sent in each email and
figured out what your typical response time was, then started sending them
later in the day to compensate.

~~~
mcxx
I'd appreciate this feature. I reply to OhLife's emails way past 20.00,
usually around midnight.

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dabent
I've been using this for a few weeks now. It's super easy to use, but I really
wonder how they plan on monetizing this app.

~~~
pkaler
Highly targeted advertising in the daily reminder email. They basically know
your deepest darkest secrets that you don't want to publish widely.

Email CPM ranges from $10/CPM to $100/CPM depending on targeting.
<http://archive.newsmax.com/mediakit/newsmaxemail_rates.cfm>

I'd imagine people would put health and financial matters in their private
journal.

~~~
hugh3
If I were they, I'd steer clear of directly targeting ads towards private
matters discussed in the diary. Creep your customers out too much and they
won't come back.

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nlanier
I signed up when it they first appeared on HN and have been using it ever
since. It's a simple idea that's been well executed. Kudos to them, I hope the
service sticks around!

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h34t
I like the service. Helps keep me on track. For some reason I use this
differently than paper journals.

I think there may be a market for online coaching for independent, creative /
solitary workers. A 10 minute phone call each day with a coach could have gone
a long way for helping me stay focused when I was working by myself on
projects. Journal entries like this could be a natural "entry" into this
space.

If they gave me the option of paying a monthly subscription for a qualified,
trustworthy coach to read my entries and help keep me on track I might go for
it. Knowing there was somebody who would read it would motivate me to keep
going and put more thought into my life.

(Of course, I'd change the way I wrote the entries if I knew it wasn't totally
private. It changes the nature of the service.)

~~~
troutwine
I've been considering building a service for this very thing. Would you be
interested in having a conversation with me? My email address is in my
profile.

~~~
klous
I've had some similar thoughts for a set of services like this, I'd be up for
a discussion. My email is in profile. (your email is not at the moment)

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fylox
No offence, but I am curious: Am I the only person here who doesn't want to
write such personal data on someone else's hd?

This: "OhLife is private, secure, & friendlier than Ned Flanders. Only you can
see your entries. " is pretty brilliant indeed :-D

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grandalf
Shameless plug: <http://www.onepageperday.com> (similar concept but for
authors, launched last winter, starting to go viral lately with NaNoWriMo
around the corner)

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noglorp
Interesting; perhaps the addition of SMS, voice call, or more could help
people with overtaxed inboxes.

This is pretty much exactly what a normal journal doesn't do for me though
(HEY! YOU! WRITE IN ME!)

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briandarvell
Cool idea. Basically it really offers nothing new except they have changed the
way the game is played. You don't need to force yourself to begin, they're
taking that first step for you.

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mkramlich
for those who've used this and like it, how is it different than a blog? how
is it different from or better than, say, Posterous?

~~~
hugh3
I haven't used it, but surely the difference is that the diary is something
you don't want anyone else to read (but secretly worry that somebody will)
while the blog is something you do want others to read (though in fact, nobody
ever does).

~~~
mkramlich
k. i'm wondering if uploading text to the Internet, to some company, is a good
strategy for keeping that text private and secret. :)

One alternative is to write a diary the old fashioned way. Paper and ink. Very
simple and cheap, and you have your choice of security methods. Hidden, safe,
guard dog, etc.

Another is to write it on your computer using any editor of choice, save as
text file or doc, whatever, then if you want security you can ensure it's
stored on disk in encrypted form, perhaps using a 'file vault' app.

On the other hand, automated cloud backup is a good feature you get from
OhLife. But there are ways of doing that independently too, where I can be
absolutely sure it's encrypted on my end before any strangers get a hold of
the bits in stored form.

