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It's very pretty, but I can't really see how it's better than a Google Docs document.
by brianwillis 16y ago
It's very pretty, but I can't really see how it's better than a Google Docs document.
- duck 16y agoThe key is how it uses your email as it's interface. I tried it, and really liked how it worked. I'm not much into writing a journal so I'm not using it, but I could see that approach working for other ideas/sites.
- lylejohnson 16y agoYou're correct that it's not really about the writing interface per se. I've been using OhLife for about two weeks now, and the fact that you get this daily email prompt to write is the key.
- bravura 16y agoSurely it must be more than that, because you can just as easily add a daily task on Google calendar with an email (and SMS) reminder.
- gwern 16y agoCertainly, but I don't see any automatic way way for a Google calendar reminder to automatically include a previous entry. That would need a Labs or something else more advanced.
- crazydiamond 16y agoThe rest of these features are just frills, like replying to an email, or getting a previous random entry. A simple shellscript does the main job. In fact, mine actually used to do a "tail" of the existing file before prompting me for a new entry, but i found that a bit annoying.
- gwern 16y agoAre they frills? There is no before-after comparison, of course, but the articles does say: > It sounds far too basic, but the OhLife team says that it works: they report that 50% of users who complete their first entry have continued to add an entry at least once every other day. It probably helps that, despite the spare feature set, the site is very nice to look at. At this point OhLife isn’t doing anything to monetize, but if it can get traction then the team will consider freemium options.
- cmelbye 16y agoIt is more than that. If you actually read the link for a few seconds, you'll see that one can simply reply to the nightly reminder it sends. Compare that to a Google reminder that would send you a link which you'd click, then log in, then open your Journal document, then scroll down, create a new heading, etc.
- revorad 16y agoYeah, that's exactly what I tried for a while. Daily Google email reminder asking something like "How do you feel today?" or "what did you learn today?" and I'd write a short quick reply to my private posterous. I think OhLife's idea of including an old post is very clever.
- barmstrong 16y agoIt's better in the same way Posterous is better then a normal Blog. Email is a great UI!
- gisenberg 16y agoAgreed; Posterous differentiated themselves by executing on a common idea with a different philosophy. This seems to follow that trend. The idea itself is something for which there are many solutions, Docs included, but the philosophies behind it bring something new to the table.