

Ask HN: Any of you who keep a journal like to try a beta release of our iOS app? - razor
http://blobly.com

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hammock
The concept reminds me of OhLife (ohlife.com) which sends me an email every
night that I can reply to and it automatically makes a journal entry. I just
type a few dozen words and it's easy that way. With each email it also pulls
up a random old entry like "Remember four weeks ago when you
wrote...[excerpt]." It's interesting to look back like that.

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

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razor
Hi!

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 :)

~~~
dave1619
My first reaction to the name "blobly" is ... yuck. Can you explain how you
got the name?

How about something more straightforward, like:

Captured

Moments

etc

~~~
rohern
Agreed. razor, you should brainstorm and change your branding. That is not a
good name. It's not even particularly pronounceable.

~~~
razor
Your voices have been heard.

I'll definitely consider it and see if there's something I can come up with.
For now it's Blobly. ;)

~~~
rohern
You should name it Madeleine. Ready-made logo.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_%28cake%29#Literary_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_%28cake%29#Literary_reference)

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raju
Website looks good (Still waiting on your email - No worries though)

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.

~~~
ajlburke
Shameless plug: you might like Remembary (<http://remembary.com/>) - it's
based more around writing in your diary, but it also pulls in Twitter and
Facebook and RSS feeds like Momento. It also automatically finds the pictures
you took each day, and puts any geotagged stuff into a no-work-required map.
It automatically fetches your calendar entries (well actually it doesn't at
this exact moment due to an iOS6 bug but it will in about a week), It doesn't
have a desktop client but it was originally built for iPad and now has an
iPhone version. It has a manual data export/import option instead of 'syncing'
but I decided that privacy is more important than seamlessness. It doesn't
really have tags or address book integration, but given your other other
requirements I think you might find it interesting.

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staringispolite
Feedback incoming! I enjoy the idea, it makes me imagine being a better,
happier person, given the context I already have with gratitude and
journaling. Looking forward to the invite! A few points that come to mind from
my past usage of similar apps:

* 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?

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gallamine
Can you compare/contrast this with another iOS app I've been looking at for
journaling - Day One <http://dayoneapp.com/>?

~~~
razor
Sure :)

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.

~~~
abyssknight
I came here to ask the same question. Honestly, I was hoping for proper
encryption. That's the only feature Day One does not have that I want so very
badly. I have no desire to upload my secrets to your server. No offense, but
that's just irresponsible for a private journal.

~~~
razor
Excellent question and your concerns are very much valid.

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.

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tsycho
Requested an invite, and am in the Bay area.

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?

~~~
joelrunyon
Please answer the privacy/encryption question. Probably the most important
piece of info if the usp for this is a "private journal app."

~~~
razor
Hi Joel,

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 :).

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sumrania
it looks impressive. Is there a way to export the notes to another software?
Also, how is it better/worse than Evernote? I tend to use Evernote as a
journal...

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mattmiller
That is great, but is it private? If so you should explicitly state that. That
will be your differentiating feature that you should stick with.

~~~
razor
Yes it's completely private.

Good idea! I'll definitely get that message across.

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navs
I keep a very detailed journal. It's part of my therapy. The social stuff
bothers me and so I stick to use apps like Byword which offers markdown
support and Dropbox sync. What's lacking is the ability to link articles and
images. Something I can do in markdown but is tedious.

Love to give this a try, if its not forcing me to use social networks.

------
hberg
I've tried the web version and played with the iphone version. Slick app for
keeping memories.

~~~
razor
Thanks for helping me test during development. Your feedback definitely helped
shape what Blobly is today.

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ajlburke
Looks nice. I'm curious though: the site mentions that everything is synced
through the Cloud. Did you use iCloud or is it a home-grown solution - or
something else? Sync is hard - and I've found iCloud sync in practice is still
pretty hard.

~~~
razor
Hi and thank you for the complement.

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.

~~~
ajlburke
Congratulations! I think sync is much easier when it's done up front rather
than bolted on later.

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).

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caseorganic
I'd like to, but only if I can export my data later. I like the interface, but
don't want another 3rd party keeping my data and evaporating eventually (and
unexpectedly). Email invite to case at caseorganic dot com.

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jc4p
Seems like something that I would actually use [which is more than I can say
about most Ask HNs I see ;)] and I requested an invite, but just out of
curiosity why are you saying Bay Area preferred?

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kin
Would love to! I just got iOS and have been keeping up with my
<http://ohlife.com/> for 2 years now

~~~
razor
I'm a huge fan of OfLife and I actually use it myself. Phil Libin and OhLife
were definitely a huge inspiration of mine when building Blobly.

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awakeasleep
Does it store data in a secure manner? How easy is it to export what you've
saved?

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dhconnelly
Just requested an invite. Can I sync with Dropbox?

~~~
razor
Not at the moment. This is definitely good idea and will add it to the product
roadmap.

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yranadive
how is this better than evernote?

