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Show HN: Streak.ly tracks what you do daily and I'd love feedback on the concept
I've been working on a side project called Streak.ly with a friend of mine for the past month or so; it's intended to help keep you motivated to do otherwise mundane daily tasks (like do 10 pushups, read for an hour, etc.) by letting you log "streaks" — consecutive days in a row of doing something.
It's in private alpha/beta/gamma/whatever right now (has some rough edges to clean up), but is more or less functionally complete and pretty stable.
I'm a big fan of the Seinfeld calendar, and have seen other services which do similar things but were unsatisfying to use, either from an aesthetic or functional perspective. Streak.ly is designed to be simple, good-looking, fast, fun, (and hopefully addictive). (FWIW, it's also a place to experiment with user stickiness stuff I can potentially roll back in to Forrst.)
There are also some in-progress social/game/motivational features I plan to roll out in the next few weeks that hopefully contribute to the enjoyment factor of the app.
Streak.ly uses Twitter for authentication, and I've set up a URL to let HN folks in early: http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn
I'd love any and all feedback and/or criticism you may have.
Thanks!
- kylebragger 16y agoClickable: http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn http://streak.ly/auth/twitter/start?secret=showhn
- zeedotme 16y agonice looking but pretty limited for the moment. Honestly think most people who use tools like this will be looking for simplicity in their lives...and so convincing them to add another tool to their daily tools list is going very difficult considering all it can currently do (i realise it's alpha mind)
- kylebragger 16y agoThank you, and totally makes sense. Hopefully there is a nice middle ground where this could fit. My theory is also that if I can a) show value to enough folks that they start to realize, "hey, this is pretty useful and I can probably manage to use it 5 mins a day" and then b) get them to invite small groups of friends, the upcoming features in that vein will create a stickiness in those groups. Probably obvious to most but makes sense in my head at least.
- magic6435 16y agoComing soon to Streak.ly... Serial killers
- dhorrigan 16y agoI just completed "Kill Someone" 14 days in a row on Streak.ly
- il 16y agoFor a simple webapp like this, please don't make me get a twitter account/sign in to use. Generate a unique URL for me to use, or hash my email address or something like that. Reduce friction, I want to be able to use this with 1 click.
- kylebragger 16y agoVery good point. I've got plans to add "use it now, sign up later" stuff in, it's just not made it into production yet.
- anonymous236 16y agoYep, needing to use Twitter account for login is a major minus. Maybe I am too old-fashioned, but if I click on Sign-In and it automatically logs me in, this is more of "WTF has just happened and where did it get my login credentials?" rather than "Ohhh, very cooooool, dude. Just saved 5 seconds and not needed to press 20 (twenty!!) keys. Awesome.".
- kylebragger 16y agoThis is actually refreshing to hear; I'm usually used to seeing the exact opposite - "what do you mean another account?!?". I wonder if adding an interstitial page with something to the effect of "you're signing up with Twitter FYI" would be a decent intermediary step.
- zalzally 16y agoGood idea, Kyle. I don't mind Twitter or Facebook OAuth logins for non-sensitive consumer apps (sensitive = apps dealing with financial info, dating sites, health, etc.). Just tell me upfront that you're using the service, and I'll be happy that I don't need to create a new account.
- kylebragger 16y agoGreat point. I'm going to make it a top priority.
- sraquo 16y agoHere's my somewhat similar homebrew GTD system: http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/6109/progressb.png http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/6109/progressb.png You see time spent (in minutes) coding (+) and anything else done at the computer (-) taken from RescueTime, along with basic efficiency score and stuff done / to be done for my main project (game) and everything else (misc). Coloring is manual, blue = "worked well", red = "could have done better". The file sits on the desktop and is the place where I keep my general to-do lists, so it is always open. Works well for me. Note: censored some "misc" stuff, so don't think I normally work 4 hours a day :)
- kylebragger 16y agoThis is really, really cool.
- thesethings 16y agoheya Kyle, This is great. Just signed up. I am familiar with the Seinfeld calendar. (Though not because I've seen it on the show, but it was explained to me in some other geek GTD blog/system/something.) I have an idea for a visual aid that might appear in two places on your site for folks who might not know the basic idea behind the Seinfeld calendar, and for those who do know it, but might want to an incentive on their Streakly page: A visual of a calendar week with a streak (or 2, or 3) through it. This would appear on the front page, and in another form, on an individual's Streakly page. I realize you probably already something similar to this already sketched out (along with many other features). So as you were, take your time! I respect the MVP process :D
- kylebragger 16y agoGlad to hear it! There are indeed plans for a more visual display of your completed days. The cool thing is that it's built in such a way that gives us a ton of cool data to play with. Just a matter of displaying it well.
- jm3 16y agonice idea. i'm sure you know about http://www.freshapps.com/streaks/ http://www.freshapps.com/streaks/ already. wonder if there's an integration point, there, where you could leverage their app with your data.
- kylebragger 16y agoyea, I really dig what they're doing but wanted something web-based. Streak.ly's got an API coming soon; would be awesome to integrate somehow.
- lfborjas 16y agoThis app looks rad, I've been using [calendar about nothing](http://calendaraboutnothing.com/ http://calendaraboutnothing.com/) for my opensource hacking needs and the seinfeld calendar way of being motivated definitely works for me, I saw some of the teasers on forrst and am eager to give it a try; keep up the awesomeness!
- kylebragger 16y agoThanks so much :) Looking forward to hearing your feedback.
- jm3 16y agofeedback re: the reminder portion of the app - would be nice if: 1. i could get the notice as a tweet (DM) instead of an email. since you're using oauth, i'm betting you're facile w/the twitter api. 2. you offered a fuller range of hours for the reminder. the first task i added to streak.ly was, "cook breakfast", but 10am was the earliest reminder i could pick in the list, which is too late for me ;)
- kylebragger 16y agoThanks very much for the feedback; 1. is a great idea and I'll definitely consider it (it does have the advantage of probably showing up as an SMS, too) 2. yep, I had a hunch the list was too short but wanted to try it out. I wonder if there's a happy medium between an 0-23 type list and what exists now.
- grk 16y agoRe. 1: yup, I'd prefer that. A DM would pop up on my iphone via notifo, while email gets lost among other emails, and I check them once per hour only anyway.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- samh 16y agoGreat idea. A similar inspiration to Jason at www.HabitMix.com I think.
- greenlblue 16y agoThis is good stuff, let me know when the API rolls out because I think these kinds of apps are better when they are on a handheld device because you can do a lot more stuff when you can carry the reminders in your pocket wherever you go.
- joshbert 16y agoI'm really enjoying the app the whole 5 minutes I've been using it. I'll use it for a week and see what kind of results I get. For the record, I do realize that results will vary according to the type of person that uses the application. I'm a serial procrastinator, so maybe it'll be worth something for your Customer Development process.
- tomjen3 16y agoMy first feedback - I don't intent to give your my twitter account, so if you want me (or pretty much anybody) to review your site and you are dead set against using the standard create a user that works pretty well (because we now have ways around all the problems) use OpenID. tldr; use openID, nobody is going to want to share their twitter account with the world.
- john2x 16y agoJust signed up. I'm probably gonna try and use it for working out. :) First thing I noticed was that there are only 3 "reminder times", but I'm sure that would change in the future. And being able to set different "reminder times" to different things would be cool.
- kloncks 16y agoQuestion: What's the Seinfeld calendar?
- luminarious 16y agoIt's a productivity method named after Jerry Seinfeld. I first heard about it from this lifehacker post: http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se... Basically you decide to do or practice something every day. If you forget or otherwise fail to keep up, you mark it in red on your calendar. Goal is to try to see how long you can go without a red mark. And get things done in the process.
- jeebusroxors 16y agoYou're wrong. The inverse is correct and is the driving force behind the idea... He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- aik 16y agoThere shouldn't be a need for the page to postback when adding/deleting/completing items. A necessity for a site like this is for it to be faster and more convenient than anything else. My notepad++ session is more practical than this in a lot of ways, just because of the speed.
- kylebragger 16y agoYep, 100%. Have not added any AJAX goodness yet.
- sacrilicious 16y agoI really do like the idea of positively "completing" a task every day. Outliers-wise 10,000 hours is a lot, the sooner I get started the better. The only thing I'd add, besides the request for OpenID love, is that the FAQ needs to put "we won't spam your twitter" higher up - that's what I wanted to know _immediately_ after signing in for the first time(the serious faux pas being "My streakficiency is blahblah, what's yours?"). Besides that, just one detail: the FAQ(which is great, btw) wasn't in the first-login "we're very beta" notice at the top, which would have been easier to find.
- whimsy 16y agoCheck out Joe's Goals. http://www.joesgoals.com/ http://www.joesgoals.com/ What's your edge?
- rocktronica 16y agoNice and simple! I like it! Looks like you've already given some thought to iPhone support. I might also suggest adding fullscreen mode once the app is added to the home screen: http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/ch03.html#ch03_id35932771 http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/ch03.html#ch03_... The "new thing" text input could use some CSS for smaller screens too. Apologies if you already knew all this...
- rocktronica 16y agoAlso, it'd be good if I could edit the text of each entry after it's been going. Just in case I dont't like the wording or something.
- bradybd 16y agoAnother solid web app from the Bragger-Matic. Keep it up Kyle!