

Thoughtback - Program Your Mind - nbashaw
http://thoughtback.com/

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invalidOrTaken
I _really_ like this. I don't know how many miscellaneous files I have lying
around my desktop filled with one-line lessons learned. I didn't have access
to a computer for two years and carried around a pocket notebook. I think I
added only twenty pages over the whole two years, but it was very pithy stuff.
At some point I want to connect it up with Growl to remind myself of things.
Any plans for an API?

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badalyan
An API is coming soon along with a few other major updates that get your
thoughts back to you more frequently and effectively. It's in heavy testing
right now so we can't wait to release it for others to use.

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codabrink
Nice idea, it's like a journal. I don't know if it's because I'm an introvert,
that I would enjoy something like this more? Although it's fun to play with
once, I don't know if there's anything here to keep me coming back. I can't
say I'm in love with the color scheme of pink and gray. I'm not exactly sure
what it is, but something bothers me about it.

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nbashaw
Using the website isn't honestly that great of an experience, but the iPhone
and Mac apps keep me coming back for sure. Every time you put a thought in,
you get one back from the past. It's always an interesting surprise.

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dcpdx
I think there's a lot of potential here, especially in terms of tying specific
thoughts/ideas/moods to websites you were checking out at the time. If you
could add links to your "thoughts" and recall the context under which you were
having those thoughts, it would trigger more lucid memories and an instant
recollection of the resource which you could then re-read. Sort of like an
"enhanced bookmark" tool which allows you to annotate resources with your
thoughts and recall them later either at random or intentionally. Then, create
a visual "tree" around your specific hashtags by date which would basically
take you through a historical account of your discovery process over a period
of time. So, if your hashtag was #startup, you would be able to recall every
resource you read and every idea you had and know exactly when those ideas
came into mind and what they were tied to. Neat.

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nodata
I'd like to see a more developed "What is Thoughtback" page. Currently I'm
just left wondering, piecing together information from HN.

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revorad
What a delightfully simple, useful and beautiful app. Great name and THANK YOU
for making the easiest sign up form in the world.

I almost didn't try to register because I neither have an iPhone nor a Mac.
But I filled out the form anyway and realised it works through any web browser
too. I think you might want to mention that it is a web app too.

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Pistos2
Unfortunately, I must confess this strikes me as being of questionable utility
(for me). I guess I'll see how it goes after I enter a few more thoughts, and
get some back.

Interface issue (in Opera): There's no key to just submit the thought. None of
these work: Enter; Shift-Enter; Alt-Enter; Ctrl-Enter. As a workaround,
though, I see that you can use Tab, Enter. [edit] I just set up the
thoughtback submission box as a custom search engine in Opera. So now I can
enter thoughts from the address bar (and press Enter at the end).

I realize that it would just make things like Twitter, but I was interested to
see other people's thoughts, and found no interface for that. Perhaps you
could experiment with letting people tag some thoughts #public or such, or
have a checkbox under the submission field.

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pepsi_can
I'd like to save small code snippets with this. Would you consider adding some
kind of markdown support?

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invalidOrTaken
This seems like one of those things the usefulness of which I habitually
underestimate.

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kasperset
Reminds me of Ohlife - <http://ohlife.com>

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codabrink
Yeah, except this seems more like a "don't forget this lesson learned" kind of
site to me.

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colinwinter
Agreed. And thats where I can see the value. However I'd want something a lil
more. For example, perhaps 'things' would keep coming back for say 30, 60, 90
days. You complete the thought and turn it into a habit and now you're good,
so you can archive it. The more you turn into habits the better visual
feedback you get. Another idea: Add video to this. Help ingrain the lesson
learned by doing a full-blown reflection on what it means to you and why its
important. Also, to see yourself to yourself to-do/NOT-to-do something every
so often could be interesting. BTW: I have a folder in Evernote for things
like this, I just dont check it that often, but a system that could automate
this and push things to me could be interesting. One step further: sharing.
Famous people could share short videos of their 'lessons learned' and you
could subscribe to their lessons until you complete them as habits (remember
not everything will turn into a habit though).

Just a few thoughts, hope it helps!

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RandallBrown
The iPhone app has image uploading right now but now video yet. We've been
toying around with the idea of some sort of followed hashtag system where you
could see what other people are thinking about. We just don't want to
accidentally end up as a twitter competitor.

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daveungerer
I've been meaning to create something like this as a side-project. Well done!
The first thought I captured was: "If you're in front of the computer right
now, get away from it and use your notebook (i.e. pen and paper) for a while
instead."

Questions: When will it send me things back? You might want to make it
configurable since not everyone is in the same timezone. I'd also like to be
sure I get messages tagged as #work or #inspiration in the middle of the
working day.

Bug report: A thought that was just created is listed as created 2 hours ago.

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tete
I also created something like this, but it's not public. Call me paranoid, but
I don't want to upload (potentially stupid) thoughts somewhere else.

Meanwhile it became a project where I try out things. It has a nice API for
this. I thought about uploading it to GitHub, but it's very optimized to me,
the code isn't exactly clean and well... maybe I should do so anyways. Oh and
it features a protocol where passwords never will be transmitted, not even
encrypted, just compared. Wikipedia++

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codeodor
I'd like to know more about the protocol feature for the passwords that you
mention. I've often wondered how to authenticate safely from a phone without
requiring the user to enter their details every time they use it.

Where on wikipedia did you learn about it? (I'm assuming that was what the
"Wikipedia++" was for -- If not, care to elaborate?)

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tete
Do you know OTR (Off the record messaging). It uses some nice stuff, like the
Socialist millionaire protocol which exactly does this. Comparing values (for
example passwords) without sending them. I still use salted hashes, which in
this case also have to be implemented on client side. I don't think it makes a
lot of sense for passwords anyway, because there is SSL. Again, this is just a
personal project where I just played with this stuff. However it can still be
useful in authentication. See OTR for example. I suggest to read this.
<http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.1.0.html>

There are also related protocols which might be very handy. Wikipedia is a
very good source for finding such stuff. Follow interwiki links and external
ones. There are many great protocols allowing you to do amazing things, that
seem impossible in first place. I also like it because it shows how great math
can be.

Like most people school mostly made me afraid of math and it took a while
until I started enjoying it. I guess math (like programming) isn't something
you should learn in a school, but something you should learn on your own. It's
something you won't learn or enjoy when someone else explains it. You have to
get things on your own, especially in your own pace, because people simply
have different brains. I guess I'm very off topic now. It just makes me sad
when people hate to learn.

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codeodor
Thanks for pointing me to that page. I've got some reading and playing around
to do now. =)

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alanh
I love how well your blog matches your website, and that classy button back to
the main website.

Well done!

(This is essentially the problem we are attempting to automate at my start-up,
Blogic.)

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lhnz
I actually had a conversation about creating a service like this with somebody
else from Hacker News... Looks like it wasn't him but still nice to see it
come to fruition.

Though I had thought it would be nice to have a version which sends you an SMS
-- available on all phones and difficult to ignore -- and perhaps an Android
version, too.

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skrebbel
Love it. I would like to be able to easily send thoughts to it from random
places and devices, though. How about via email and/or SMS? I doubt you'll
make an app for my Nokia anytime soon, but having to start up a mobile browser
just for logging a thought will probably be a blocker.

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chad_oliver
Yeah, an SMS frontend would add a huge dose of ubiquity. Not everyone has
smartphones or is close to a computer all day, but _everyone_ I know carries a
cellphone everywhere they go.

This should be really easy to implement with twilio, but they haven't got
international SMS yet.

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johns
You can get in our beta international SMS program here
<http://www.twilio.com/international-sms>

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JesseAldridge
I made something very similar to this: <http://www.jotreminder.dotcloud.com/>

I've got about 50 little notes. I hit the bookmark in my toolbar whenever I'm
bored. It works pretty well.

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skrebbel
hmm, it's like twitter with only your future selves as followers. nice!

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blankslate
Say I create a follow-protected twitter account, which only I follow, write a
couple lines of ruby to retweet stuff randomly to myself and a crontab entry
for it ... did I miss anything?

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F_J_H
My mom couldn't do what you are suggesting. She could use ThoughtBack though.
Maybe that is what you are missing?

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pi18n
This is a cool concept and I want to like it. Right now it's absolutely
useless for me if the iPhone client doesn't work without an internet
connection.

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jarin
This would actually be really handy for all of those one-off weekend project
ideas I never get around to.

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nbashaw
haha that's exactly what I use it for too. I just keep a big #startupidea list
in it.

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barkmadley
Does anyone else think that thoughtback is to twitter as ohlife is to
blogging?

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whimsy
Is this spaced repetition studying for random one-liners?

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keke_ta
Love it - simple, easy to use and really cute.

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shimonamit
What a great name for your application!

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sambocyn
um, random? why not spaced repetition? something like Anki would be nice in a
browser though.

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RandallBrown
we're exploring more options on how to get people their thoughts back. We
don't want to be a flashcard site, but we do want to be flexible enough that
people can use it like they want to. Would setting a reminder time on a
thought or hashtag work?

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Hisoka
Something like this is extremely useful for language learning especially for
languages like Japanese and Chinese. Put a kanji character, and have it bring
it up after a certain period of time. Maybe gradually show it to you less and
less frequently as you guess the correct meaning.

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jerf
That's been implemented in a number of places. If you want that, you don't
want it to be returned "randomly". You should use one of the existing software
packages that do this rather than jamming it into this site. I think there may
also be some services online, but personally I'd suggest local software for
this. With the way that sort of learning works, it isn't even necessarily that
big a deal to keep two learning stores in sync, because even if you learn a
lot on Computer A but then switch to spending a few hours with Cell Phone B,
you take advantage of the review, and just tell the cell phone program "yes, I
solidly know that" until you catch back up. Manual syncing is almost a
feature, not a bug.

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bluedanieru
This sounds great, too bad they've limited their user base by not supporting
the most widely-used mobile OS. Maybe someone will come along and eat their
lunch.

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RandallBrown
Currently we all have Macs and iPhones so that's what we're building right
now. Don't worry once we get things stabilized a bit we're planning on making
our API public as well as building apps for other platforms.

~~~
bluedanieru
My comment was meant to be (mostly) tongue-in-cheek but was perhaps a bit too
harsh. As such I'll leave it there and eat the downvotes :-) Best of luck.

