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My Weekend Project: Mr. Goal -- simple goal reminders by Email and SMS.
- dadupta 16y agothis works
- alexharrower 16y agoNice! This is exactly what I've been looking for to keep track of my goals. Feedback page?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- omarish 16y agoGoing for a run and I'll have one up. For now, you can contact me directly: omar.bohsali@gmail.com. Thanks.
- PStamatiou 16y agoFeel free to integrate Notifo for push notifications. Dirt cheap. :) https://api.notifo.com/ https://api.notifo.com/
- omarish 16y agoNice, I'll definitely try this out soon. Thanks.
- dholowiski 16y agoThat's awesome, I'll be checking it out for my project. I thought I was going to have to write my own iPhone app, but I see you've already done that.
- liedra 16y agoNice project! It'd be nice to have a link to who you are (an about page) on the site. Makes things a bit more friendly :-) You also might want to put a dedicated page for your privacy policy up (even if it's just a very simple one) since you ask for contact info.
- crazymik3 16y agoVery nice stuff! If you don't mind me asking, what do you use as an SMS gateway?
- dholowiski 16y agoI'd like to know too. I'm building an SMS project and the best I can get is around $0.03 per SMS (moonshado through heroku) and I'm not sure how I'll be able to make any profit at that price.
- ashitvora 16y agoAt my previous job we were using msgme.com Not sure what their rates are.
- willcannings 16y agoBeware of moonshado unless you're sending marketing messages - their support pages state that all texts sent from them have this footer: "Msg&Data rate may apply txt STOP to opt-out". Not something I'd want if your users are paying to be sent messages (like with this service). I'm looking at using CDYNE for texts. At volume they also charge 3c, but there's no distinction between networks with their price so you pay the same to text Nepal as you do San Francisco.
- dholowiski 16y agoThanks for the tip. So far the texts have been 'clean' - no extra stuff, but I'll keep an eye out for that. The reason I went with them is that you pay $20 for 20000 credits and I thought it was a credit per SMS, but it's actually around 29 credits per message. Another person mentioned twilio- it's the same price but looks like it has some other nice features.
- willcannings 16y agoYeah their credits are a bit sneaky :) Twilio only supports US numbers which is a problem. If you're looking at telephony companies, Tropo (https://www.tropo.com/ https://www.tropo.com/) is only 2c per message and sorta supports international numbers. Their 'support' is basically "if it works, awesome, if it doesn't, well we never said it definitely would". It's worked well to Australia for me so far. International support is coming at some point, though I don't know if it will still be at 2c per message.
- stretchwithme 16y agowhat are the advantages over having your yahoo or gmail calendar text you? will remembering my goals better actually help me reach them, as is stated? why might that be? do you vary the frequency of the reminders at all? Would this be enhanced if you had human mentors that saw the interactions? I find messages computers are dismissed pretty easily, while people a need to respond or show progress to humans.
- mahmud 16y agowill remembering my goals better actually help me reach them I think quite the opposite. What makes you reach goals is never forgetting them to begin with. I can't speak for others, but I have very few goals, and they haunt me, awake or asleep. The rest of the "self dev" stuff I off-load to my fiancee :-P
- stretchwithme 16y agoI think what really would be helpful is breaking down goals into concrete tasks, which only a human can do or push you to do. I think technology can facilitate mentors as they ask the questions one needs to answer if one is to translate goals into the actions required to achieve them.
- derefr 16y ago> breaking down goals into concrete tasks, which only a human can do or push you to do. If it's a goal a lot of people have, and which follows a general formula, then once someone has written it down, the software can store it in a central database and let everyone else make use of it. Imagine entering "write book" into your to-do list app, hitting TAB, and watching it expand into "write proposal chapter, find writing group, show chapter to group, modify chapter using feedback, write outline for draft, [...], submit to publisher." Then, if you immediately know how to "write proposal chapter," you can just stick with that and check it off when it's done—but if you're unsure, you can select that sub-task and hit TAB again, and it will expand into "select writing tool, find environment suitable to writing, schedule writing time, create new document"—and then there would be a placeholder step with a question in it, "what are you writing: {prose fiction, technical guide, biography, etc.}" You'd select, say, prose fiction, and it would replace the placeholder with more steps: "think of name and other physical details for main protagonist, think of conflict, write first paragraph introducing both character and conflict, [...]" And there's already a collection of such lists available online to get your database off the ground: the eHow/Wikihow/etc. type sites. You could also parse the StackExchange-driven sites for answers that look like ordered lists.
- va1en0k 16y agoIt neither logs me in with my password (just registered and a) I didnt forget the password I typed and b) it was saved to LastPass) nor restores it to my email (I checked Spam, yes) And, something like a random time (like, some random moment from 17pm to 20pm) will be a cool option
- va1en0k 16y agoGreat thing you are using Django, by the way!
- omarish 16y agoThat's a bit weird. Could you please email me at omar.bohsali@gmail.com ? I'll debug this one with you, sorry for the inconvenience. As for random times, it actually does that a little bit. I pushed most of the timezone code to behind the scenes so that it will automatically figure out your timezone through javascript and then push it server side via ajax. I also put in a random checker in the views that will decide if the user should have their timezone checked. Given the timezone, it tries to guess your "working hours", i.e. 8am to 6pm your time. It'll send you a set number of random texts throughout each day, that number is set by the message frequency in your profile. That was one of my biggest concerns. Google calendar sends me a daily email at 5:15am with my calendar in it. That's nice, but I have a hunch that the texts will be less effective if people know that they will come at a set point throughout the day. So that's my rationale for randomizing the delivery time throughout the day. I have been thinking about dropping in a slider bar to set both the text message frequency, as well as the texting window throughout the day, so I'll definitely be implementing your feature in the near future.
- va1en0k 16y agothanks. my problem is I can't keep a schedule due to serious sleep problems (it just not worth it). I think randomizing my timetable will help to distribute my tasks so getting them done will be simpler. I'm not sure, but experimenting with such idea sounds great for me
- kluikens 16y agoI use Todoist, and love it. But the one feature I desperately want added is the ability to have start dates so that Gantt charts can be created for my week/month/year. If you had this, I would give Mr. Goal a try and if it was any good, I'd probably pay for it. It'd be nice to have a service that told me how hellish some school weeks would be in advance.
- quickpost 16y agoI love it. Simple and to the point - will definitely try it out. What are you using as your payment processor?
- omarish 16y agoI just plugged in Chargify a few days ago and it's working out well so far. Glad you like -- feel free to pass any feedback to omar.bohsali@gmail.com. Thanks!
- ramanujam 16y agoReally well made. Here are a few things that i wanted to share 1. I signed up for the free plan and i am not seeing an option to upgrade to the paid plans. 2. A better word choice for 'Introspections' would be nice 3. Making the 'forgot password' page consistent with the site design would be good. I guess you will be having it on your list. 4. Notifo push notifications would be really awesome!
- jharrison 16y agoCongrats omarish. I had this exact same idea rattling around in my head a week or two ago. I have recently been thinking that I needed someone to work with as an accountability partner, someone that would keep me on point. Not wanting to burden anyone with that I began thinking of a way to automate it. Your new service looks like it fits that bill. Thanks for executing.
- omarish 16y agoYou're welcome. I hope you find it useful :).
- Omnipresent 16y agoexcellent idea. For weekend projects like these...where do you get the pre made de facto buttons like login, signup, forgot pwd among others..
- omarish 16y agoI found this tutorial that did a great job explaining it: http://particletree.com/features/rediscovering-the-button-element/ http://particletree.com/features/rediscovering-the-button-el... The icons are from FAMFAM: http://famfamfam.com/ http://famfamfam.com/
- microcentury 16y agoOn your home page, 'every-day' should be 'every day'. (You only use the hyphen when it's a compound adjective, e.g. 'every-day event'.) And actually, re the sentence 'Doing something, every-day, until you achieve it', you could remove all the commas and it would mean the same but read better.
- omarish 16y agoGood point. Fixed.
- shaytac 16y agoHaving the app send random texts makes it much better imho. If you set it up like yahoo and google calendars it just-another-reminder-app. Btw, liked the Ataturk background.
- omarish 16y agogood eye :)
- _grrr 16y agoLooks like it could be useful. One comment, the tag line: "do everything you'd like" doesn't seem quite snappy enough, might be to do with the use of the apostrophe. Maybe something shorter might be more memorable, such as "achieve anything".
- constabulary 16y agoMy project: Mr Gaol -- parole reminders by email, SMS and uniform
- eurohacker 16y agoas a beginner to programming - what programming languages / platform you used for it
- omarish 16y agoI wrote the site using Django [1]. Here's a great tutorial I used to learn the ins and outs of django a few years ago [2]. Feel free to ping me if you have any questions if you decide to give python/django a try. I'm omarish on freenode. I also keep this page updated with the technologies we're using: [3] (see the section on technologies). [1] http://www.djangoproject.com/ http://www.djangoproject.com/ [2] http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/ http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/intro/tutorial01/ [3] https://mrgoal.net/about/ https://mrgoal.net/about/
- Ramirez 16y agoHi, I made a similar service www.randomremind.me, but it is not so serious as yours. I use it for rotting goals in my to-do list. Also I tested your app a bit and it tells me to 'choose a password that's at least 5 characters' even when I am putting in 5-character password. But otherwise seems OK. Good luck.
- vnchr 16y agoOn the payment page, I was confused by two things: - "Regime Length" - HOW MUCH I'D ACTUALLY PAY It actually seems that they might be tied together? Is "regime" in your context referring to the months of subscription that I can sign up for, the max length ahead of time I can set a goal...? I did not recognize its meaning in this context. Also, it was not clear how much I'd actually pay you if I signed up for a paid plan. The sub-heading of the "Cost per Month" shows that I can cancel, but am I paying monthly or per year? Anyway, that's what I thought reactively. It seems that cost per month multiplied by regime length is the sub-heading cost amount for each subscription. That makes no sense to me. And as someone trying it out, I'm not sure if I'd sign up for a free plan that I'd be afraid of upgrading. Cool idea. But I am afraid to sign up for anything besides the free plan based on the payment matrix.
- omarish 16y agoSo Regime Length -- how long the plan with Mr. Goal will last. I think of it as a personal trainer, so a 1-month regime will be 1-month of help with you goals. The actual amount you pay is in the cost per month row -- $3.06, $2.70, $2.96. If you multiply the cost per month by the number of months in each regime and then scale by the discount, ($2.70 / month * 6 months) / .82 (as it's 18% off), you get $19.74. It's pretty confusing, so I think at this point I'll figure out how to simplify the process as a whole. At the moment, the table moves on 2 degrees of freedom: 1. feature set, 2. plan length. I'll try holding plan length constant -- so I'll make every plan 3 months. I suspect that it's hard to understand a 2-d table when the featureset itself is moving both on features and plan length. I'm going to re-work the pricing table today. Could you please shoot me an email: omar.bohsali@gmail.com if you're interested in providing some feedback on a new pricing plan? I'll get you setup with whatever plan I come up with, for free, of course. Thanks.