6 ms·

Thoughtback - Program Your Mind

106 points by nbashaw 15y ago

kasperset 15y ago
Reminds me of Ohlife - http://ohlife.com http://ohlife.com
- codabrink 15y ago
  Yeah, except this seems more like a "don't forget this lesson learned" kind of site to me.
  - colinwinter 15y ago
    Agreed. And thats where I can see the value. However I'd want something a lil more. For example, perhaps 'things' would keep coming back for say 30, 60, 90 days. You complete the thought and turn it into a habit and now you're good, so you can archive it. The more you turn into habits the better visual feedback you get. Another idea: Add video to this. Help ingrain the lesson learned by doing a full-blown reflection on what it means to you and why its important. Also, to see yourself to yourself to-do/NOT-to-do something every so often could be interesting. BTW: I have a folder in Evernote for things like this, I just dont check it that often, but a system that could automate this and push things to me could be interesting. One step further: sharing. Famous people could share short videos of their 'lessons learned' and you could subscribe to their lessons until you complete them as habits (remember not everything will turn into a habit though). Just a few thoughts, hope it helps!
    - RandallBrown 15y ago
      The iPhone app has image uploading right now but now video yet. We've been toying around with the idea of some sort of followed hashtag system where you could see what other people are thinking about. We just don't want to accidentally end up as a twitter competitor.
- marksu 15y ago
  The idea of that site is great, thanks! I just started using it. I plan on writing a few sentences as well as a #hashtag containing my general mood for the day. After a few months, I plan on plotting this and seeing what moods were more common when and why.
codabrink 15y ago
Nice idea, it's like a journal. I don't know if it's because I'm an introvert, that I would enjoy something like this more? Although it's fun to play with once, I don't know if there's anything here to keep me coming back. I can't say I'm in love with the color scheme of pink and gray. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but something bothers me about it.
- nbashaw 15y ago
  Using the website isn't honestly that great of an experience, but the iPhone and Mac apps keep me coming back for sure. Every time you put a thought in, you get one back from the past. It's always an interesting surprise.
vidiviciveni 15y ago
Cool idea. I was just thinking today that I wanted to write down my thoughts more often. I feel like I come up with good ideas in small bursts but I never organize them into categories or build on them. I would suggest to improve this site is to have valuable feedback. That is, instead of randomly sending back ideas, how about sending them back in a somewhat organized fashion that helps people build on ideas? I just think you can do something more useful with the feedback rather than simply being arbitrary.
bluedanieru 15y ago
This sounds great, too bad they've limited their user base by not supporting the most widely-used mobile OS. Maybe someone will come along and eat their lunch.
- RandallBrown 15y ago
  Currently we all have Macs and iPhones so that's what we're building right now. Don't worry once we get things stabilized a bit we're planning on making our API public as well as building apps for other platforms.
  - bluedanieru 15y ago
    My comment was meant to be (mostly) tongue-in-cheek but was perhaps a bit too harsh. As such I'll leave it there and eat the downvotes :-) Best of luck.
JesseAldridge 15y ago
I made something very similar to this: http://www.jotreminder.dotcloud.com/ http://www.jotreminder.dotcloud.com/ I've got about 50 little notes. I hit the bookmark in my toolbar whenever I'm bored. It works pretty well.
invalidOrTaken 15y ago
I really like this. I don't know how many miscellaneous files I have lying around my desktop filled with one-line lessons learned. I didn't have access to a computer for two years and carried around a pocket notebook. I think I added only twenty pages over the whole two years, but it was very pithy stuff. At some point I want to connect it up with Growl to remind myself of things. Any plans for an API?
- badalyan 15y ago
  An API is coming soon along with a few other major updates that get your thoughts back to you more frequently and effectively. It's in heavy testing right now so we can't wait to release it for others to use.
pepsi_can 15y ago
I'd like to save small code snippets with this. Would you consider adding some kind of markdown support?
- invalidOrTaken 15y ago
  This seems like one of those things the usefulness of which I habitually underestimate.
jarin 15y ago
This would actually be really handy for all of those one-off weekend project ideas I never get around to.
- nbashaw 15y ago
  haha that's exactly what I use it for too. I just keep a big #startupidea list in it.
dcpdx 15y ago
I think there's a lot of potential here, especially in terms of tying specific thoughts/ideas/moods to websites you were checking out at the time. If you could add links to your "thoughts" and recall the context under which you were having those thoughts, it would trigger more lucid memories and an instant recollection of the resource which you could then re-read. Sort of like an "enhanced bookmark" tool which allows you to annotate resources with your thoughts and recall them later either at random or intentionally. Then, create a visual "tree" around your specific hashtags by date which would basically take you through a historical account of your discovery process over a period of time. So, if your hashtag was #startup, you would be able to recall every resource you read and every idea you had and know exactly when those ideas came into mind and what they were tied to. Neat.
whimsy 15y ago
Is this spaced repetition studying for random one-liners?
shimonamit 15y ago
What a great name for your application!
revorad 15y ago
What a delightfully simple, useful and beautiful app. Great name and THANK YOU for making the easiest sign up form in the world. I almost didn't try to register because I neither have an iPhone nor a Mac. But I filled out the form anyway and realised it works through any web browser too. I think you might want to mention that it is a web app too.
nodata 15y ago
I'd like to see a more developed "What is Thoughtback" page. Currently I'm just left wondering, piecing together information from HN.
sambocyn 15y ago
um, random? why not spaced repetition? something like Anki would be nice in a browser though.
- RandallBrown 15y ago
  we're exploring more options on how to get people their thoughts back. We don't want to be a flashcard site, but we do want to be flexible enough that people can use it like they want to. Would setting a reminder time on a thought or hashtag work?
skrebbel 15y ago
Love it. I would like to be able to easily send thoughts to it from random places and devices, though. How about via email and/or SMS? I doubt you'll make an app for my Nokia anytime soon, but having to start up a mobile browser just for logging a thought will probably be a blocker.
- chad_oliver 15y ago
  Yeah, an SMS frontend would add a huge dose of ubiquity. Not everyone has smartphones or is close to a computer all day, but everyone I know carries a cellphone everywhere they go. This should be really easy to implement with twilio, but they haven't got international SMS yet.
  - RandallBrown 15y ago
    We've been beta testing Twilio for awhile now. It should be coming soon.
  - johns 15y ago
    You can get in our beta international SMS program here http://www.twilio.com/international-sms http://www.twilio.com/international-sms
daveungerer 15y ago
I've been meaning to create something like this as a side-project. Well done! The first thought I captured was: "If you're in front of the computer right now, get away from it and use your notebook (i.e. pen and paper) for a while instead." Questions: When will it send me things back? You might want to make it configurable since not everyone is in the same timezone. I'd also like to be sure I get messages tagged as #work or #inspiration in the middle of the working day. Bug report: A thought that was just created is listed as created 2 hours ago.
- tete 15y ago
  I also created something like this, but it's not public. Call me paranoid, but I don't want to upload (potentially stupid) thoughts somewhere else. Meanwhile it became a project where I try out things. It has a nice API for this. I thought about uploading it to GitHub, but it's very optimized to me, the code isn't exactly clean and well... maybe I should do so anyways. Oh and it features a protocol where passwords never will be transmitted, not even encrypted, just compared. Wikipedia++
  - codeodor 15y ago
    I'd like to know more about the protocol feature for the passwords that you mention. I've often wondered how to authenticate safely from a phone without requiring the user to enter their details every time they use it. Where on wikipedia did you learn about it? (I'm assuming that was what the "Wikipedia++" was for -- If not, care to elaborate?)
    - tete 15y ago
      Do you know OTR (Off the record messaging). It uses some nice stuff, like the Socialist millionaire protocol which exactly does this. Comparing values (for example passwords) without sending them. I still use salted hashes, which in this case also have to be implemented on client side. I don't think it makes a lot of sense for passwords anyway, because there is SSL. Again, this is just a personal project where I just played with this stuff. However it can still be useful in authentication. See OTR for example. I suggest to read this. http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.1.0.html http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.1.0.html There are also related protocols which might be very handy. Wikipedia is a very good source for finding such stuff. Follow interwiki links and external ones. There are many great protocols allowing you to do amazing things, that seem impossible in first place. I also like it because it shows how great math can be. Like most people school mostly made me afraid of math and it took a while until I started enjoying it. I guess math (like programming) isn't something you should learn in a school, but something you should learn on your own. It's something you won't learn or enjoy when someone else explains it. You have to get things on your own, especially in your own pace, because people simply have different brains. I guess I'm very off topic now. It just makes me sad when people hate to learn.
skrebbel 15y ago
hmm, it's like twitter with only your future selves as followers. nice!
blankslate 15y ago
Say I create a follow-protected twitter account, which only I follow, write a couple lines of ruby to retweet stuff randomly to myself and a crontab entry for it ... did I miss anything?
- F_J_H 15y ago
  My mom couldn't do what you are suggesting. She could use ThoughtBack though. Maybe that is what you are missing?
keke_ta 15y ago
Love it - simple, easy to use and really cute.
Hisoka 15y ago
Something like this is extremely useful for language learning especially for languages like Japanese and Chinese. Put a kanji character, and have it bring it up after a certain period of time. Maybe gradually show it to you less and less frequently as you guess the correct meaning.
- jerf 15y ago
  That's been implemented in a number of places. If you want that, you don't want it to be returned "randomly". You should use one of the existing software packages that do this rather than jamming it into this site. I think there may also be some services online, but personally I'd suggest local software for this. With the way that sort of learning works, it isn't even necessarily that big a deal to keep two learning stores in sync, because even if you learn a lot on Computer A but then switch to spending a few hours with Cell Phone B, you take advantage of the review, and just tell the cell phone program "yes, I solidly know that" until you catch back up. Manual syncing is almost a feature, not a bug.
pi18n 15y ago
This is a cool concept and I want to like it. Right now it's absolutely useless for me if the iPhone client doesn't work without an internet connection.
Pistos2 15y ago
Unfortunately, I must confess this strikes me as being of questionable utility (for me). I guess I'll see how it goes after I enter a few more thoughts, and get some back. Interface issue (in Opera): There's no key to just submit the thought. None of these work: Enter; Shift-Enter; Alt-Enter; Ctrl-Enter. As a workaround, though, I see that you can use Tab, Enter. [edit] I just set up the thoughtback submission box as a custom search engine in Opera. So now I can enter thoughts from the address bar (and press Enter at the end). I realize that it would just make things like Twitter, but I was interested to see other people's thoughts, and found no interface for that. Perhaps you could experiment with letting people tag some thoughts #public or such, or have a checkbox under the submission field.
lhnz 15y ago
I actually had a conversation about creating a service like this with somebody else from Hacker News... Looks like it wasn't him but still nice to see it come to fruition. Though I had thought it would be nice to have a version which sends you an SMS -- available on all phones and difficult to ignore -- and perhaps an Android version, too.
alanh 15y ago
I love how well your blog matches your website, and that classy button back to the main website. Well done! (This is essentially the problem we are attempting to automate at my start-up, Blogic.)
barkmadley 15y ago
Does anyone else think that thoughtback is to twitter as ohlife is to blogging?

106 points by nbashaw 15y ago

kasperset 15y ago

Reminds me of Ohlife - http://ohlife.com http://ohlife.com

codabrink 15y ago
Yeah, except this seems more like a "don't forget this lesson learned" kind of site to me.
- colinwinter 15y ago
  Agreed. And thats where I can see the value. However I'd want something a lil more. For example, perhaps 'things' would keep coming back for say 30, 60, 90 days. You complete the thought and turn it into a habit and now you're good, so you can archive it. The more you turn into habits the better visual feedback you get. Another idea: Add video to this. Help ingrain the lesson learned by doing a full-blown reflection on what it means to you and why its important. Also, to see yourself to yourself to-do/NOT-to-do something every so often could be interesting. BTW: I have a folder in Evernote for things like this, I just dont check it that often, but a system that could automate this and push things to me could be interesting. One step further: sharing. Famous people could share short videos of their 'lessons learned' and you could subscribe to their lessons until you complete them as habits (remember not everything will turn into a habit though). Just a few thoughts, hope it helps!
  - RandallBrown 15y ago
    The iPhone app has image uploading right now but now video yet. We've been toying around with the idea of some sort of followed hashtag system where you could see what other people are thinking about. We just don't want to accidentally end up as a twitter competitor.
marksu 15y ago
The idea of that site is great, thanks! I just started using it. I plan on writing a few sentences as well as a #hashtag containing my general mood for the day. After a few months, I plan on plotting this and seeing what moods were more common when and why.

codabrink 15y ago

Nice idea, it's like a journal. I don't know if it's because I'm an introvert, that I would enjoy something like this more? Although it's fun to play with once, I don't know if there's anything here to keep me coming back. I can't say I'm in love with the color scheme of pink and gray. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but something bothers me about it.

nbashaw 15y ago
Using the website isn't honestly that great of an experience, but the iPhone and Mac apps keep me coming back for sure. Every time you put a thought in, you get one back from the past. It's always an interesting surprise.

vidiviciveni 15y ago

Cool idea. I was just thinking today that I wanted to write down my thoughts more often. I feel like I come up with good ideas in small bursts but I never organize them into categories or build on them. I would suggest to improve this site is to have valuable feedback. That is, instead of randomly sending back ideas, how about sending them back in a somewhat organized fashion that helps people build on ideas? I just think you can do something more useful with the feedback rather than simply being arbitrary.

bluedanieru 15y ago

This sounds great, too bad they've limited their user base by not supporting the most widely-used mobile OS. Maybe someone will come along and eat their lunch.

RandallBrown 15y ago
Currently we all have Macs and iPhones so that's what we're building right now. Don't worry once we get things stabilized a bit we're planning on making our API public as well as building apps for other platforms.
- bluedanieru 15y ago
  My comment was meant to be (mostly) tongue-in-cheek but was perhaps a bit too harsh. As such I'll leave it there and eat the downvotes :-) Best of luck.

JesseAldridge 15y ago

I made something very similar to this: http://www.jotreminder.dotcloud.com/ http://www.jotreminder.dotcloud.com/ I've got about 50 little notes. I hit the bookmark in my toolbar whenever I'm bored. It works pretty well.

invalidOrTaken 15y ago

I really like this. I don't know how many miscellaneous files I have lying around my desktop filled with one-line lessons learned. I didn't have access to a computer for two years and carried around a pocket notebook. I think I added only twenty pages over the whole two years, but it was very pithy stuff. At some point I want to connect it up with Growl to remind myself of things. Any plans for an API?

badalyan 15y ago
An API is coming soon along with a few other major updates that get your thoughts back to you more frequently and effectively. It's in heavy testing right now so we can't wait to release it for others to use.

pepsi_can 15y ago

I'd like to save small code snippets with this. Would you consider adding some kind of markdown support?

invalidOrTaken 15y ago
This seems like one of those things the usefulness of which I habitually underestimate.

jarin 15y ago

This would actually be really handy for all of those one-off weekend project ideas I never get around to.

nbashaw 15y ago
haha that's exactly what I use it for too. I just keep a big #startupidea list in it.

dcpdx 15y ago

I think there's a lot of potential here, especially in terms of tying specific thoughts/ideas/moods to websites you were checking out at the time. If you could add links to your "thoughts" and recall the context under which you were having those thoughts, it would trigger more lucid memories and an instant recollection of the resource which you could then re-read. Sort of like an "enhanced bookmark" tool which allows you to annotate resources with your thoughts and recall them later either at random or intentionally. Then, create a visual "tree" around your specific hashtags by date which would basically take you through a historical account of your discovery process over a period of time. So, if your hashtag was #startup, you would be able to recall every resource you read and every idea you had and know exactly when those ideas came into mind and what they were tied to. Neat.

whimsy 15y ago

Is this spaced repetition studying for random one-liners?

shimonamit 15y ago

What a great name for your application!

revorad 15y ago

What a delightfully simple, useful and beautiful app. Great name and THANK YOU for making the easiest sign up form in the world. I almost didn't try to register because I neither have an iPhone nor a Mac. But I filled out the form anyway and realised it works through any web browser too. I think you might want to mention that it is a web app too.

nodata 15y ago

I'd like to see a more developed "What is Thoughtback" page. Currently I'm just left wondering, piecing together information from HN.

sambocyn 15y ago

um, random? why not spaced repetition? something like Anki would be nice in a browser though.

RandallBrown 15y ago
we're exploring more options on how to get people their thoughts back. We don't want to be a flashcard site, but we do want to be flexible enough that people can use it like they want to. Would setting a reminder time on a thought or hashtag work?

skrebbel 15y ago

Love it. I would like to be able to easily send thoughts to it from random places and devices, though. How about via email and/or SMS? I doubt you'll make an app for my Nokia anytime soon, but having to start up a mobile browser just for logging a thought will probably be a blocker.

chad_oliver 15y ago
Yeah, an SMS frontend would add a huge dose of ubiquity. Not everyone has smartphones or is close to a computer all day, but everyone I know carries a cellphone everywhere they go. This should be really easy to implement with twilio, but they haven't got international SMS yet.
- RandallBrown 15y ago
  We've been beta testing Twilio for awhile now. It should be coming soon.
- johns 15y ago
  You can get in our beta international SMS program here http://www.twilio.com/international-sms http://www.twilio.com/international-sms

daveungerer 15y ago

I've been meaning to create something like this as a side-project. Well done! The first thought I captured was: "If you're in front of the computer right now, get away from it and use your notebook (i.e. pen and paper) for a while instead." Questions: When will it send me things back? You might want to make it configurable since not everyone is in the same timezone. I'd also like to be sure I get messages tagged as #work or #inspiration in the middle of the working day. Bug report: A thought that was just created is listed as created 2 hours ago.

tete 15y ago
I also created something like this, but it's not public. Call me paranoid, but I don't want to upload (potentially stupid) thoughts somewhere else. Meanwhile it became a project where I try out things. It has a nice API for this. I thought about uploading it to GitHub, but it's very optimized to me, the code isn't exactly clean and well... maybe I should do so anyways. Oh and it features a protocol where passwords never will be transmitted, not even encrypted, just compared. Wikipedia++
- codeodor 15y ago
  I'd like to know more about the protocol feature for the passwords that you mention. I've often wondered how to authenticate safely from a phone without requiring the user to enter their details every time they use it. Where on wikipedia did you learn about it? (I'm assuming that was what the "Wikipedia++" was for -- If not, care to elaborate?)
  - tete 15y ago
    Do you know OTR (Off the record messaging). It uses some nice stuff, like the Socialist millionaire protocol which exactly does this. Comparing values (for example passwords) without sending them. I still use salted hashes, which in this case also have to be implemented on client side. I don't think it makes a lot of sense for passwords anyway, because there is SSL. Again, this is just a personal project where I just played with this stuff. However it can still be useful in authentication. See OTR for example. I suggest to read this. http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.1.0.html http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.1.0.html There are also related protocols which might be very handy. Wikipedia is a very good source for finding such stuff. Follow interwiki links and external ones. There are many great protocols allowing you to do amazing things, that seem impossible in first place. I also like it because it shows how great math can be. Like most people school mostly made me afraid of math and it took a while until I started enjoying it. I guess math (like programming) isn't something you should learn in a school, but something you should learn on your own. It's something you won't learn or enjoy when someone else explains it. You have to get things on your own, especially in your own pace, because people simply have different brains. I guess I'm very off topic now. It just makes me sad when people hate to learn.

skrebbel 15y ago

hmm, it's like twitter with only your future selves as followers. nice!

blankslate 15y ago

Say I create a follow-protected twitter account, which only I follow, write a couple lines of ruby to retweet stuff randomly to myself and a crontab entry for it ... did I miss anything?

F_J_H 15y ago
My mom couldn't do what you are suggesting. She could use ThoughtBack though. Maybe that is what you are missing?

keke_ta 15y ago

Love it - simple, easy to use and really cute.

Hisoka 15y ago

Something like this is extremely useful for language learning especially for languages like Japanese and Chinese. Put a kanji character, and have it bring it up after a certain period of time. Maybe gradually show it to you less and less frequently as you guess the correct meaning.

jerf 15y ago
That's been implemented in a number of places. If you want that, you don't want it to be returned "randomly". You should use one of the existing software packages that do this rather than jamming it into this site. I think there may also be some services online, but personally I'd suggest local software for this. With the way that sort of learning works, it isn't even necessarily that big a deal to keep two learning stores in sync, because even if you learn a lot on Computer A but then switch to spending a few hours with Cell Phone B, you take advantage of the review, and just tell the cell phone program "yes, I solidly know that" until you catch back up. Manual syncing is almost a feature, not a bug.

pi18n 15y ago

This is a cool concept and I want to like it. Right now it's absolutely useless for me if the iPhone client doesn't work without an internet connection.

Pistos2 15y ago

Unfortunately, I must confess this strikes me as being of questionable utility (for me). I guess I'll see how it goes after I enter a few more thoughts, and get some back. Interface issue (in Opera): There's no key to just submit the thought. None of these work: Enter; Shift-Enter; Alt-Enter; Ctrl-Enter. As a workaround, though, I see that you can use Tab, Enter. [edit] I just set up the thoughtback submission box as a custom search engine in Opera. So now I can enter thoughts from the address bar (and press Enter at the end). I realize that it would just make things like Twitter, but I was interested to see other people's thoughts, and found no interface for that. Perhaps you could experiment with letting people tag some thoughts #public or such, or have a checkbox under the submission field.

lhnz 15y ago

I actually had a conversation about creating a service like this with somebody else from Hacker News... Looks like it wasn't him but still nice to see it come to fruition. Though I had thought it would be nice to have a version which sends you an SMS -- available on all phones and difficult to ignore -- and perhaps an Android version, too.

alanh 15y ago

I love how well your blog matches your website, and that classy button back to the main website. Well done! (This is essentially the problem we are attempting to automate at my start-up, Blogic.)

barkmadley 15y ago

Does anyone else think that thoughtback is to twitter as ohlife is to blogging?