
Show HN: Everyday.me - a mobile app to record your life and store it forever - yukuan
http://everyday.me/
======
alister
I can see how a "life recorder" sounds appealing, and even genuinely useful.
But shouldn't we also think about how much mischief and damage could be done
to your life if someone decided to comb through your "life record"?

Real-life cases of people who made extensive audio recordings of their day-to-
day lives and what happened to them:

(a) High-profile private investigator Anthony Pellicano recorded all his
conversations with his clients, including Sylvester Stallone and Hollywood
producer Aaron Russo ("Trading Places"). Details about the tapes were leaked
by the police after his office was raided on an unrelated matter.

(b) Tax-shelter promoter Gary Kornman, in his bankruptcy proceeding, was
forced to reveal and turn over 8000 secret recordings he made of conversations
with clients.

(c) Former U.S. President Richard Nixon installed hidden microphones in his
own office so that his advisers could not claim to have disagreed with his
decisions. Nixon felt that such a record was very important but the taping
system trapped himself.

It's unfortunate that each of the examples above involve wrongdoing--they're
the most readily found because they get the most publicity.

But I think that _anyone_ with a continuous record of their life will be
vulnerable to being screwed over in some way. It could be as simple finding
instances where you said or did anything that was contradictory to your
current opinions and beliefs.

Putting the data in the cloud, and under the control of a third party, makes
it that much worse to being exposed.

A "life recorder" that was _completely and utterly_ under your own control
would make more sense.

~~~
wslh
Yes, I am a life recorder junkie and will never put my private data on the
cloud. TrueCrypt is your best friend :-)

~~~
alister
You should take a look at <https://deniablevideo.com/> for any video you
record. but for a fixed location like a home or office, since it's not a
mobile device.

~~~
Someone
That 'deniable' part is a bit thin. Say, law enforcement finds this device at
your home. Even if it is not plugged in, a case could be made that you have
been videotaping. It would be more useful if this thing had a secondary
function, say as a file server, and if it were priced like one (this box is US
$5999.00 for 500GB)

------
ashamedlion
* forever or until we get purchased

But in all seriousness, the design looks really great. It's reminiscent of
path, but that's a good thing. It seems like Evernote would be one of your
main competitors, but luckily your application has a much more casual user
friendly design.

~~~
yukuan
Thanks, we're glad you like our design! I think Evernote is a very well done
app also, but targets a more business/work-driven use case. A poor analogy may
be if Evernote is good for those 8 hours you spend at work each day, then we
hope to be helpful a few times during the rest of those 16 hours in the day
(minus sleep, of course).

------
daviddaviddavid
The juxtaposition of the "Record Your Life. Store it Forever." slogan with the
now-trendy-tomorrow-not website makes me cringe.

The word "Forever" is loaded with so much meaning.

The cursive font, the .me URL, the tired-ass layout with those obligatory
three boxes at the bottom... all of these things reflect aesthetic
sensibilities that may as well belong to fruitflies.

Maybe this app will be great and genuinely add meaning to people's lives but
it makes me want to buy a notebook, some picture frames and a sturdy old chest
that I can bury underground.

~~~
heelhook
I totally understand that and it lines up with what I thought when I first saw
the story in the front page.

I think a good way to mitigate that fear is for this guys to open source the
server side of this app, allow people to easily and securely transfer their
data out and expose a setting in the app to change the server it uses.

------
guynamedloren
Ok... so I get what the app does, but why would I want to use it? Why would I
want to capture every single moment of my life, regardless of importance,
forever? What do I care where I was a year ago? And why on earth would I want
a "quarterly report" of my life _with statistics_? Honest questions. Apologies
for the bluntness.

~~~
gojomo
You could create a retrospective like Stephen Wolfram:

[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-
analytic...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-
my-life/)

~~~
yukuan
Indeed! That's the direction we hope to move in with our period reports based
on your entries. Nicholas Feltron was also a big inspiration for our work.

------
radagaisus
I think this whole Personal Analytics thing is going to explode. Every time I
see a service like this my heart skips a beat. I want to work on this stuff so
much but I have to finish my army service first. Good job.

~~~
staleydavid
Yeah the concept of their quarterly and anual reports reminds me very much of
what Nicholas Felton was trying to do with Datum. Where Datum broke down for
me was that I had to stay consistent with manually updating it.

~~~
yukuan
Good point. You don't mind something that automatically tracks you (gps,
events, etc), it wouldn't creep you out?

and we were quite inspired by Nicholas Feltron's work also. I think they're
amazing.

~~~
dfriedmn
This is the big challenge when it comes to quantified self -- passive tracking
can be creepy, but manual track has such high adoption costs. Seems like it
would be hard for manual tracking to go extreme, bc few people care as much
about quantifying everything as this community does. Any form of passive
tracking has higher upside but also must be treated carefully so it seems
trustworthy.

------
heelhook
Small piece of feedback: if you are going to connect with facebook anyway,
instragram and whatever else, why are you making me write my name, email
address, etc.? Nitpicking here.

Also, I'm just testing the app, but if I were to use it for real, I would like
to know who I'm going to be trusting my most private thoughts and activities
to. I didn't see much about that in your page, the "who am I and why I am
here" question would be extremely important for your users to trust you, so
including information about where you want to take everyday.me is important
(how will you monetize it? there are many black hat monetization schemes you
could pull with this kind of data which wouldn't be ok so we want to know what
your plans are).

Thanks for sharing!

~~~
yukuan
Hi, thanks for the feedback. We just need it to stay in touch with you and we
don't want to spam your Facebook, Twitter, etc to do so.

Re: the About page. Yes, in our rush we didn't have time to put up an About
page to tell you more about us. We'll be putting one up soon. We really hope
to build something that can help people collect and tell the stories of their
lives. To me that's what gets me really excited, is knowing that this app may
be able to help someone share an exciting trip they've had to London, or to
reflect back on how they've gotten to this point from a year ago. That's
really fulfilling for us to know, and our motivation for building this.

~~~
lovskogen
You didn't answer his question about monitization. How will the product stay
alive?

~~~
atrus
I'm sure those quarterly printed reports don't come free.

------
bherms
I'm not sure I like the direction a lot of these applications seem to be going
where the point of living becomes to distill all of our experiences and
adventures through a 3" screen. It drives me nuts to no end when I am hiking
or at a concert and everyone has to stop what they're doing and waste time
trying to view what's right in front of them through their phone.

------
CyrusL
I got a letter in the mail recently that I wrote to myself almost 10 years
ago. It was only one page long but it's ridiculous how much it moved me. I
wrote about my relationship with my family and what I hoped to do with my
career. Getting that brief window into my former self was amazing.

I've been using Everyday.me for about a month now and it gives me a
lightweight version of that feeling. I don't record everything in my life, but
I throw in the occasional photo or comment about my weekend. I probably could
keep that same data in a physical scrapbook or word document, but having an
iOS app makes it convenient.

For me, journaling is not really about the input; that part is tedious. I
enjoy consuming the journal later, so the input is necessary. Everyday.me just
makes the input a little less of a hassle.

~~~
unimpressive
> I got a letter in the mail recently that I wrote to myself almost 10 years
> ago.

How? Did an external organization hold your letter for you?

------
alagu
This could very well become a good mobile personal diary. Love the way old
history from Facebook/Instagram/Twitter is imported. It would be great to have
a good way of visualizing this (Examples: Snapjoy, Facebook Timeline, iPhoto,
Flickr Calendar)

------
tylermenezes
The "Receive beautifully printed quarterly & annual reports with highlights
and statistics." isn't prominent enough. To me, this is the killer feature -
I've wanted this for years but I've been too lazy to collect it all myself.

~~~
moizsyed
Yeah, the printed quarterly report is a brilliant feature. I helped the
everyday.me team with the design of it, esp around the data visualization bit.
Excited to hear how people respond to it.

<\humblebrag>

------
ajlburke
Now that so many things in our lives are timestamped and available online,
collating it all together is a natural next step. It's interesting to see all
the different ways that this is being done by different apps and services.

When I came up with Remembary in 2010, I thought I was the first to mix diary-
writing and all these public feeds - and then I discovered that Momento had
been doing a similar thing for almost a year beforehand. I feel like there's
been a lot more of these kinds of apps and services popping up lately.

I like the Annual Reports idea - I'd be interested to see what gets tracked
and how it's analyzed. It's also a great monetization strategy, although I
know from experience that print fulfillment and shipping can be a headache!

Also, their "Blast From The Past" feature highlights one of the less-known
benefits of keeping a journal: seeing what you were doing in the past and
comparing it to what you're doing now - and thus getting perspective on both
the past and the present. I have about six years of handwritten diaries, and
I'll often go through them and check the same day in each one. The new version
of Remembary (just finished QA testing - should be in the App Store in a few
weeks) has "1 Year Earlier" and "1 Year Later" buttons just for this kind of
thing.

Congratulations on a cool looking app. Trust me when I say I know how
difficult it can be to make something that seems to simple.

~~~
AtTheLast
"Now that so many things in our lives are timestamped and available online,
collating it all together is a natural next step. It's interesting to see all
the different ways that this is being done by different apps and services."

I completely agree. It seems like the timing is right for an app like this.

------
angryasian
" Store it Forever. " till they got bought out and shut down, acquihired or go
out of business.

------
kefs
By 'mobile', do you mean iOS only?

~~~
yukuan
Sorry, yes we're only iOS for now. But hopefully expanding to Android soon!

------
robbfitzsimmons
Love the addition of printed reports (revenue!) but this seems (quite
literally looks) like Path in terms of the layout. Given that you are pulling
from other networks and adding other improvements on Path's model, why not
change up the look a bit to differentiate?

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dannyr
What does "Store it forever" mean?

Would it automatically send me a formatted archive of my entries (say every
week or month)?

Send me a file that is automatically uploaded to Google Drive or DropBox or
even just email it to me regularly.

~~~
385668
I'd be much happier if it only kept records locally, or had the option. As
creepy as... every social network has gotten, I want my privacy and anonymity
back. As interesting, and potentially useful as this seems, I don't feel
comfortable giving every detail of my life to a private third party to store
"forever." I don't make committing crimes a habit or anything (copyright
infringement not withstanding), but with the US government's position that
anything you choose to store with a third party being accessible without a
warrant, I'd prefer to store things locally.

------
ihuman
How does this app compare to Day One and other journal applications?

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AtTheLast
Not everyone wants to share everything. So this could be a great personal
analytics tool capture life and build a better self. Then anything you don't
mind sharing could go into a more public social network. I like the idea of a
private timeline.

In the Reddit AMA Kevin Rose said he thought "Quantified self (eg. fuelband,
fitbit)" were the next trends. So a Quantified self timeline would make a lot
of sense and bring things together quite nicely.

Good luck with this and excited to see how this progresses.

~~~
weitingliu
thank you! yes we are also big believers in the power of "quantified self" &
life-logging, and we will be adding more analytics features.

------
vhf
Why does this kind of app scare me ? (Regardless of how beautiful they look,
how well they are programmed, how kind/smart/known is the funder, ...)

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fnazeeri
Funny, i had this same idea 4 years ago. Bought iCapsule.com. The idea of
"generational" digital asset preservation is a big problem to solve. Museums
across the world are struggling with this. My guess, is this startup hasn't
figured out the problem of how to preserve assets for 25-50 years. That is a
real problem. Solve that and I'll be a customer!

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khalidmbajwa
Apart from the printed reports, i wonder what is so different here from Path ?
Path is an established app with a massive user base, that does everything i
can ask from a journal,with the additional ability to share it to a private,
handpicked social graph. I see no compelling reason that would make me switch
to everyday.me

------
ajlburke
A lot of these kinds of 'Automatic Diary' apps use Twitter feeds as a key data
source (especially now that Twitter accounts are integrated directly into iOS)
- is anybody else worried that this valuable source of life records might dry
up if Twitter starts shutting down API access?

~~~
alanh
Sounds like a pitch for <http://join.app.net>!

But in seriousness:

1) If you are pulling these tweets, you should be saving them.

2) This source is already “drying up” in some sense in that you cannot access
your own tweets older than 3,200 tweets ago. (That’s a number I blew by years
ago. It sucks. It’s “my” data — and text, at that! — and Twitter won’t let me
have it.)

~~~
yukuan
We're definitely following app.net very closely, and would be quite interested
in figuring out how we can integrate in the future.

------
unreal37
I don't see the main competition of this being Evernote or other "life
recorder" applications. The main competitor is Facebook. People record where
they are, put all their pics there, and mark all the moments of their life
there.

------
MJR
The name confused me at first because I already knew about the Everyday app by
Noah Kalina, Adam Lisagor, William Wilkinson and Oliver White -
<http://everyday-app.com/>

------
aarondf
How are you installing this over the air? Are you using an enterprise license?

~~~
Soliah
Probably using TestFlightApp: <https://testflightapp.com/>

~~~
taterbase
From what I understand you still need user's udid with test flight. This just
simply installs on any device.

~~~
aarondf
Exactly, that's why I was so curious.

------
brianstorms
What a pointless app. You have a brain. it processes memories. Brains have
worked pretty well for millions of years recording memories. And they don't
require a Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.

~~~
lukifer
You mean that notoriously unreliable system which drifts over time by re-
storing altered information during every recall, selectively stores some
details and not others, and nearly always functions poorly during old age, the
time when people would most like to tell stories and reminisce? That one?

~~~
prodigal_erik
Yeah, written records were probably the greatest advance of all time, simply
because they aren't made of meat.

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jarek
What's the business model ensuring the "forever" part?

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josephagoss
Is it possible to export all the data to a service like dropbox automatically,
so that if you do disappear, it really is forever?

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jenntoda
Beautiful! Well done! Hopefully, it will be a good replacement for paper
journal. Would greatly look forward to the iPad release!

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chubs
I _love_ the idea of the printed book being sent out each quarter - that's
very cool! Scrapbookers would love that.

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mourique
isn't this a lot like <http://www.momentoapp.com/> ? I've been using it for
some time now, it only stores the data locally with an option to backup into
itunes.

Your POS seems to be the Statistics thing, momento doesn't have that.

------
wamatt
Neat app. Don't think it will have mainstream success, in current form. People
are lazy.

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ExpiredLink
Forgetting is a blessing, not a curse,

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tejaswiy
Just curious. What's the reasoning behind this being a mobile app? Shouldn't
this just primarily be a website ?

~~~
doktrin
Are you asking "why mobile", or "why native, as opposed to HTML5?"

The answer to the first question is obvious, IMHO. I always carry a mobile
device, whereas I'm _only_ at a computer 12-14 hours a day.

As to the second, opening a web-app using a mobile browser is cumbersome and
thus a fairly large barrier to adoption. The key to this app's success - as
with _any_ personal analytics tool - is continuous use.

~~~
yukuan
We do have a website option btw, it's not as full-featured as the mobile app
(yet), but you'll access it once you download the app.

------
suren
Slick looking app. Kudos!

------
tedmoore
This looks sick. Is this all native? Did you guys design and build this in-
house?

