
Fabric (YC S16) Is a Home for All Your Memories - stvnchn
http://www.themacro.com/articles/2016/08/fabric/
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erikb
The internet of post-web-2.0 is forgetting things very fast, sometimes through
information overload (like my Gmail archive or my smartphone photo cloud) and
sometimes simply because services die, APIs change and become incompatible,
company A buying company B which had all your data, etc.

Thus if you make a home for all my memories it is not just important to
connect all the data points, but to provide a solution that will exist for me,
even if you as a company won't exist anymore. It must be a priority 1 topic
for you to make me care about your product.

That being said, having a searchable, connected history of all my data points
is really neat. Wish you all the luck in the world!

~~~
nikolayav1
Thanks! I believe both Facebook and Twitter have the options to export your
data.

That's definitely something we would like to make available at some later
point for the content you generate within Fabric. Realistically though,
because of just keeping something like the current thing between a team of 2
is a massive challenge, it would be later down the line.

~~~
erikb
Yeah, well the way FB handles it is glueing on features later. I'm thinking
more of something like Github or Dropbox. See, if Dropbox or Github dies I
still have my data in a readily usable form on at least 3 machines. It's
inherent to the tools, not a feature that is glued on later. People are too
lazy to regularly export their Facebook.

Btw I know it's quite hard to make as an inherent feature for that kind of
service, but it's still part of what I understand as the promise of "home for
my memories".

If you have to do it the export way. Please make it an API, and put your data
in open formats like odt, email, what ever open street map uses for map files,
etc.

And don't forget. If you make a cool business that only runs for 2 years, you
may make 6 or 7 digits of money. But if you provide a real solution for
people's problems you make a living, even if the first business around it
dies.

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jbob2000
This is kinda weird, it feels a little uncanny. So instead of doing the
_human_ thing, like remembering something, I'm going to store them in an
electronic device. And instead of doing the _human_ thing of quietly
reflecting on memories, I'm going to grab my phone and have it dictate the
memories back to me. I haven't used the app, but it just sounds unauthentic.
What problem is it solving?

I read the blurb about where the idea came from, and I have to criticize a
little bit; Without Fabric, learning about your father has become a wonderful
journey, where you have to visit and talk with people to connect and learn
about your father. If you had Fabric, you'd just flip through a couple of his
pages while taking your morning dump.

~~~
captn3m0
There is also the "archival" use-case that I can see (and appreciate). A
single window into what I was doing this day 5 years back? People would pay
for that.

~~~
scrumper
Kind of useful for business purposes too. I was in this city, I took some cabs
and photographed the receipts, I met with these people, I wrote these entries
in my notebook (and snapped a picture of the pages) etc. Recap a business trip
or even a busy week, get your expenses in order, associate handwritten notes
both spatially and temporally with people and projects.

------
Asparagirl
How does Fabric plan to make money?

(I can't believe the #1 most important question about a new _business_ is the
one that's totally glossed over, but hey this is HN so maybe I can.)

~~~
whamlastxmas
Same way Facebook does, advertising. Except they have every piece of your
location data in addition to everything Facebook has, which means better
targeted ads.

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stevenmays
Some company should just back up someone's facebook, insta, gmail, etc etc
etc... and sell them back their own information upon request. It would
probably take a while to make money but I've heard this era called a digital
"black hole" because all of the data that's going to be stored and lost
because individuals don't have data retention plans.

------
imadfy
Google Maps has Your Timeline. Google Photos already groups and searches by
location, as well as automatically creating photo stories based on your
vacations.

------
arunv
Hey all! Arun from Fabric here. Nikolay and I are here to answer any questions
you guys might have.

Hope you enjoy Fabric!

~~~
pbiggar
This seems really cool! I installed it yesterday to try it out - I really want
something like this.

Your on-boarding is really good. However, when it comes time to create an
account, I need to create a username and password. Can't I just create the
account with facebook? I already gave you access?

I found it very hard to see what's actually going on. The images on the cities
are so big that they obscure the context. The "history bar" is confusing (I
figured it out eventually), but I thought it was some glitching, and it made
it look unprofessional.

I feel lots of data is missing: you pulled from FB but I didnt see evidence of
my facebook history.

My use case is to have "reminders" of my life. I'd love if you can pull data
from lots of places, in particular my email. The email headers in my gmail
probably include where I was at all times over the last decade. Can you
include that in some way? If you can pull the photos from my dropbox account,
you'd probably have a complete look at my life for the last 10 years at least,
but my phone only goes to 2012. (Everalbum does a good job with this).

Anyway, awesome idea, looking forward to trying it again.

~~~
nikolayav1
Hey, thanks for your thoughts. The other team member here.

1\. Onboarding: thanks, we thought really hard about what to do there.

2\. Images on the cities too big--can you clarify that one, you mean on the
intro map you will see an image that is not necessarily representative of your
entire time there as you'd like?

3\. FB data missing--is that still the case? It's possible you looked while it
was still importing where you were expecting content. Basically everywhere you
go in the app, Days (when you posted), Cities, Places, People should have data
from Facebook if the intro map indicated that the import was working. Feel
free to send us a message to feedback@echo.works to follow up if that still
looks broken.

4\. Reminders: Great ideas, noted. We have also noticed that when we're
missing Fabric, the best ways to remember what we were up to are our
calendars, emails, and messaging.

Thanks again!

