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I used to journal for years and stopped. Then I messed with OhLife (a YC startup) and kept going with it. I'm not connected with them other than being a user,

by dabent 16y ago

I used to journal for years and stopped. Then I messed with OhLife (a YC startup) and kept going with it. I'm not connected with them other than being a user, but if you're online anyway, it's a pretty handy tool to keep a journal. http://ohlife.com/ http://ohlife.com/ It's also a good example of a clean design and user experience.

donniefitz2 16y ago
I have never really kept a journal, but when OhLife came along I thought it was a great idea, for about 3 days (the idea is still good). OhLife is great, my wanning self discipline however, is not so great.
cousin_it 16y ago
Thanks for the link. Just signed up.
sleight42 16y ago
Interesting. Somewhat off-topic but what on earth is their business model? Journals are private. There are no advertisements. The service is free. YCombinator hopes to make money from this how? Don't get me wrong: it's a simple and clever idea. Just... it's not philanthropy, is it?
- alanfalcon 16y ago
  They send you an e-mail daily... one that you presumably actually look forward to getting. Surely they could add an advertisement to this e-mail if they wanted?
  - sleight42 16y ago
    Probably. And don't call me "Shirley". I'm so sorry. I just couldn't resist.... (If you don't get it, watch this movie soon: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/)
    - idoh 16y ago
      Never explain jokes! You can dissect a joke, but it dies in the process.
      - dhimes 16y ago
        But it's ok to point to a reference for the joke. It helps to educate people.
- omouse 16y ago
  Some things don't need a business model. They should release the code as free/open source software if they haven't already. Just think of it as a gift to the world and you can rest easy at night :D
  - philwelch 16y ago
    Y Combinator is supposed to invest money in startups with the hope of making bucketloads of money. It's not a charity for establishing cool web apps as a gift to the world.
alanfalcon 16y ago
Phenomenal, simple idea. I, too, signed up. I can still dig up random LiveJournal entries that I wrote on a whim ten years ago. What would people here rate the chances of me being able to do the same with OhLife entries in ten years?
- patrickgzill 16y ago
  Don't you keep all emails you send in a "sent" folder?
  - alanfalcon 16y ago
    Good point, and true enough. I should have signed up using my Google account (I should still sign up using my Google account). I recently unearthed my AOL user database from the late 90s. Dropping it into a simple text editor, I get a ton of garbage characters but also every e-mail I ever sent or received on my AOL account for about five years (including almost all the Spam). While it was sometimes painful reading through that mess (for various reasons), I gained some interesting insight into my past that I found useful. What's interesting is that I have a great deal more mail saved up in my various e-mail boxes, but I wouldn't think to go through and read those chronologically as I did with the AOL mail.
hammock 16y ago
I use OhLife because it's so easy just to hammer off a few sentences at 8pm when it sends you that daily email. And the random excerpt from the past is what keeps me opening the emails every time. Interesting to look back at the past.
klbarry 16y ago
I love Ohlife, it's just so easy and natural to send an email, it takes almost no activation energy.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
atoumey 16y ago
That looks like a great site. I've been using http://www.memiary.com http://www.memiary.com for over a year now. Its method of encouraging use is to present five small text boxes. Seeing that you only need to enter in a few list-like entries encourages me to actually write _something_ down. It also has iphone and android apps (I actually wrote the Android version), which make it really convenient to update.

by dabent 16y ago

donniefitz2 16y ago

I have never really kept a journal, but when OhLife came along I thought it was a great idea, for about 3 days (the idea is still good). OhLife is great, my wanning self discipline however, is not so great.

cousin_it 16y ago

Thanks for the link. Just signed up.

sleight42 16y ago

Interesting. Somewhat off-topic but what on earth is their business model? Journals are private. There are no advertisements. The service is free. YCombinator hopes to make money from this how? Don't get me wrong: it's a simple and clever idea. Just... it's not philanthropy, is it?

alanfalcon 16y ago
They send you an e-mail daily... one that you presumably actually look forward to getting. Surely they could add an advertisement to this e-mail if they wanted?
- sleight42 16y ago
  Probably. And don't call me "Shirley". I'm so sorry. I just couldn't resist.... (If you don't get it, watch this movie soon: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080339/)
  - idoh 16y ago
    Never explain jokes! You can dissect a joke, but it dies in the process.
    - dhimes 16y ago
      But it's ok to point to a reference for the joke. It helps to educate people.
omouse 16y ago
Some things don't need a business model. They should release the code as free/open source software if they haven't already. Just think of it as a gift to the world and you can rest easy at night :D
- philwelch 16y ago
  Y Combinator is supposed to invest money in startups with the hope of making bucketloads of money. It's not a charity for establishing cool web apps as a gift to the world.

alanfalcon 16y ago

Phenomenal, simple idea. I, too, signed up. I can still dig up random LiveJournal entries that I wrote on a whim ten years ago. What would people here rate the chances of me being able to do the same with OhLife entries in ten years?

patrickgzill 16y ago
Don't you keep all emails you send in a "sent" folder?
- alanfalcon 16y ago
  Good point, and true enough. I should have signed up using my Google account (I should still sign up using my Google account). I recently unearthed my AOL user database from the late 90s. Dropping it into a simple text editor, I get a ton of garbage characters but also every e-mail I ever sent or received on my AOL account for about five years (including almost all the Spam). While it was sometimes painful reading through that mess (for various reasons), I gained some interesting insight into my past that I found useful. What's interesting is that I have a great deal more mail saved up in my various e-mail boxes, but I wouldn't think to go through and read those chronologically as I did with the AOL mail.

hammock 16y ago

I use OhLife because it's so easy just to hammer off a few sentences at 8pm when it sends you that daily email. And the random excerpt from the past is what keeps me opening the emails every time. Interesting to look back at the past.

klbarry 16y ago

I love Ohlife, it's just so easy and natural to send an email, it takes almost no activation energy.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

atoumey 16y ago

That looks like a great site. I've been using http://www.memiary.com http://www.memiary.com for over a year now. Its method of encouraging use is to present five small text boxes. Seeing that you only need to enter in a few list-like entries encourages me to actually write _something_ down. It also has iphone and android apps (I actually wrote the Android version), which make it really convenient to update.