
The Memory App – Instant personalized memory recall - mariamagi
http://www.thememoryapp.com
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exodust
Why can't they provide at least a little bit of information about how it
works? All we get is glossy descriptions without substance... "you want this
app, it's really good".. but nothing about whether it works offline, what
cloud services it uses, or any details about back-ups, data handling or web
version, permissions, or anything.

~~~
denzil_correa
This is my pet peeve these days particularly with mobile apps. Sure, you can
use hooks to draw my attention but if you want me to install it - you've got
to tell me "How it works".

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Sephr
So I have to _remember_ to manually tag every photo I take for this app to be
useful? It seems like Google Photos is superior to this app in every aspect.

The only disruption in photo management and search that could get me to switch
from Google Photos is an open source alternative with equivalent ML-powered
auto-tagging features.

~~~
jmathai
Having all my photos in Google Photos feels like I have super powers. I've
managed to find so many photos I was looking for without any specific search
criteria I knew would work 100%. But Google Photos tends to do a pretty good
job at finding them.

I did write some open source[1][2] software I use in conjunction with Google
Photos[3].

[1] [https://github.com/jmathai/elodie](https://github.com/jmathai/elodie)

[2] [https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-
personal...](https://medium.com/@jmathai/introducing-elodie-your-personal-
exif-based-photo-and-video-assistant-d92868f302ec#.7smu1wflb)

[3] [https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-
go...](https://medium.com/swlh/my-automated-photo-workflow-using-google-
photos-and-elodie-afb753b8c724#.4brchihgz)

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geuis
Nah. Downloaded it but it's asking for way too many permissions without
explaining why. And there's no conceivable reason you need my phone number.
So, deleted.

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dajohnson89
My memory sucks, and I would love an app to help me. Alleviate my concerns
about data privacy, and make it available on Android, and I'll give it a
serious try.

~~~
pitaa
Same here. My memory is terrible. I've looked at these types of apps, but I
have never seen one that was actually helpful.

Instead I stick with sticky notes for to-do's, and a folder of txt's of notes
from meetings/conversations that I think I'll want to remember. This really
helps remembering details, unfortunately I still can't remember faces for the
life of me.

~~~
Fnoord
I can highly recommend this course, Learning How To Learn [1]. Among things it
explains how memory works, how to avoid procrastination [2], and how to use
several tools at your disposal in order to improve your memory. It is free,
btw.

[1] [https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-
learn](https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn)

[2]
[https://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/](https://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/)

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djhworld
Ever since I was a child I've always dreamt of some way of being able to
'download' and organise my memories. Like, if you're looking at an awesome
view, or some serendipitous event happens that's too quick for a camera (e.g.
a shooting star)

Obviously as I've grown older the reality of something like this is in the
realm of science fiction, along with the privacy concerns of others and
keeping memories that you would rather forget, but often I find myself in
situations like at a concert where I'd rather not be viewing it behind a
phone/camera screen.

I've seen wearable cameras in the past for people who suffer from memory
problems, but I don't think anyone's ever commercialised it - for obvious
reasons.

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sturza
Who are the people who built this? If everything is proprietary, how can we
trust their storage? Looks like a fight between google and some other guys for
my photos. Even if the app really was magical, my photos should remain safe(i
know). at google

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AndrewKemendo
I want people to want this but I know that people don't.

Imagine having a rewind button on your whole life, with annotations and
references. That means everything you think or associations you make can be
"sourced." That's an amazing thing that would eliminate any self delusion,
deceitful action or inconsistent behavior.

Trouble is, humans are knots of inconsistency, deceit and delusion and we
can't live otherwise. It puts our brains into panic mode and existential
dread. If we could handle it, all the world's problems would go away, but we
can't. Our current conception of ourselves is a polished and selective
reinterpretation of our own past so that we can try and make our future selves
fit some narrative. An accurate and auditable history would blow that up
entirely.

I really want to figure out a way to build such a system but my fear is that
it's incompatible with humanity.

~~~
daveguy
Reminds me of the third episode of Black Mirror:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You)

Similar, but in the case of the episode you could also replay every
interaction you had with other people... Was that a slight frown before they
smiled?

~~~
ttctciyf
Or this Ted Chiang story?

> There’s no denying the usefulness of software that can actually answer the
> question “where did I put my keys?” But Whetstone is positioning Remem as
> more than a handy virtual assistant: they want it to take the place of your
> natural memory.

[https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_o...](https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang)

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Thanks for that link, interesting reading for sure

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vc4
Wow the app size is 159 MB, just wonder what all they have baked inside

[https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/the-memory-
app/id1182717566?...](https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/the-memory-
app/id1182717566?mt=8)

~~~
leviathan
probably the whole Elephant for the logo.

You can download the app in iTunes, find the .ipa file and extract it to look
what's inside.

Edit: also it's not the actual size that you will download on your phone.
Visit the AppStore from your device and it will show you the correct size for
you.

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camtarn
As somebody noted below, this just looks remarkably like Evernote: store
notes, photos, places and reminders, with multiple tags that you can define
yourself. It's an incredibly manual process, although as someone with 610
notes in Evernote, I attest to its usefulness :)

Really, this seems like the killer app for always-on video lifelogging,
coupled to really advanced computer vision and automatic tagging. I would
_love_ an app that I could ask whenever I put my keys down in yet another
inventively silly place, or ask when I last saw my wallet (was it stolen, or
did I just leave it at home?), or ask to show me all the times I'd put away a
cable so that I could figure out where my rarely-used external HD power supply
was stashed.

~~~
imglorp
This reminds me :-) of the Remembrance Agent, an MIT project that looked at
what you were doing in your Emacs and would pop up related hints and notes
from your past as you changed contexts. I think they were trying to move the
idea into wearables, but it didn't translate well with clunky eyewear and
wearable keyboard. Now, with OCR and vision, your killer app is getting
closer.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20160304120939/http://xenia.media...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160304120939/http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~rhodes/Papers/remembrance.html)

~~~
camtarn
Oh, interesting. Eclipse has a similar feature called Mylyn, which allowed you
to associate contexts with tasks - so, for instance, if you were working on a
feature and had to quickly switch over to working on a priority bug, you could
have different sets of open files for each of those tasks.

[http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/](http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/)

A quick Google doesn't reveal any link between the projects, but I do wonder
if Mylyn was inspired directly by the Remembrance Agent project.

------
Breefield
Evernote?

~~~
djsumdog
I'm looking at hosting my own paperwork to replace Evernote:

[https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork](https://github.com/twostairs/paperwork)

I've been using Evernote since I first used the PalmPre app (they probably
have the highest platform support out of any app), but with the recent price
changes, I'm not sure if they'll be around for much longer. If I'm going to
pay for something, I might as well have control of the data too.

~~~
desireco42
I cringe on anything that uses MySQL to store information, but looks like
something I wished I made, so I will definitely check this out, thanks for
posting.

~~~
dumb-saint
So you "cringe on" Wikipedia?

~~~
desireco42
Good point. Still, MySQL in 2016, almost 2017 :)

~~~
daveguy
I think the point is: if it's able to handle the data needs of one of the
largest sites in the world do you really need to worry about it not being able
to handle a pet app?

It is obviously up to the task.

~~~
gressquel
I don't think thats a good point. I mean I can probably make a console
application using .txt file on disk as the database and scale it to handle
large websites.... if I had spent $100M on servers and 10 years of my life.
Almost anything is possible with most of the technologies out there. But its
about using the right tool for the job.

Stackoverflow is huge, its built with SQL server. If they had for example used
mysql they would probably have had to hire 2x engineers + spent twice as much
time tuning and tweaking.

All those top1000 mysql sites are heavily customized and tweaked to perform as
well as they do. Using other modern technologies may had saved them 1000 of
hours and money.

~~~
CaveTech
You can't bash on a technology by pulling numbers out of your ass and calling
it a day.

It sounds like you've been drinking a lot of kool-aide and haven't given MySQL
any real thought.

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DiabloD3
Yet another iPhone-only app. Please remember 2/3rds of your market runs
Android, not iOS.

Please stop leaving money on the table.

~~~
sampl
They're not leaving money on the table if it takes 6mo to learn android and
rebuilt they're app.

I hear your frustration, but this goes against other common HN advice: "avoid
the hip thing, build it with the tools you know best" (not to mention "ship
early and often").

~~~
DiabloD3
99% of "Show HN" type of apps are website-in-a-box HTML+CSS+JS blobs.

There is at least 50 frameworks for easily building apps for both platforms
(with some also supporting Windows Phone as well) with a single press of the
button. Choose one, use it, stop reinventing the wheel.

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wodenokoto
So.... What does it do? Is it a brain training app like lumosity or a spaced
Repition system like Anki or a cause in using memory palace or what is it?

There is nothing on that page telling me how this app will help me remember
stuff (or what kind of stuff)

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rednerrus
Why does it keep telling me the phone number I'm entering is incorrect?!?

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wmccullough
Can't even verify because it tells me I used the wrong phone number, lol. Wtf

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corndoge
Looks like Google Keep.

