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Show HN: osod.im (one sentence, one day - a one sentence journal)

11 points by jeremymcanally ↗ HN
I'm trying to get the motivation up to actually finish building out a "real" product, and I found myself needing a "win" to keep my momentum up. So, I hacked out a little one sentence journal app last night. I experimented with a few UI things (e.g.., the autosaving of the sentence for today and so on), so it was a good learning experience also.

You can check it out at: http://osod.im

6 comments

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fady
interesting app. i signed up. my first entry: "i signed up for one sentence, one day. lets see if i like this"
typpo
I really like this kind of stuff. Have you looked at iDoneThis (https://www.idonethis.com/)? Similar in concept but a couple differences, namely that iDoneThis entries can be done through email.
bokonon
Clickable link: http://osod.im

Nice job! I love self-tracking. This is very similar to http://280daily.com/

I've been using 280daily for quite awhile now. It's really awesome to look back at random days months ago and recall what you did or didn't do.

bleakgadfly
Nice! Great idea!

However, your quote on the front page makes me think: Will osod.im be here years from now?

I love the concept, but I would hate to loose it if I did choose to start writing a sentence a day, describing what I've done or thought about. If only to look back at it once myself or potential children. Have you considered 'open sourcing' it? Making it self-hosting.

It would also be neat to have a bit more settings, like whether or not stuff should be public, etc.

But I read that you hacked this in one night and might not have thought about all this (but I hope you do now!)

prassarkar
If you're looking to cultivate this into a long term project, I'll offer some tips:

1. Notifications are going to make or break you. I had signed up for OhLife.com 2 years back and it emails me every single day with a gentle reminder to write about my life. It also chooses a random entry that I've written in the past so that I actually look forward to reading what banal things I had written about. Prioritize this over all else.

2. Support email entries. I have visited the OhLife website about 3 times in the last 2 years. My main interaction is through email. It also lowers the barrier to actually composing an entry. Your users can create and refine drafts throughout the day and only send it across when the reminder email comes in.

3. Create a mobile app (lower priority than the above two). I've found that my most profound thoughts and exciting experiences are when I'm traveling. A mobile app is exactly what one needs during those times (Note: I use the word "app" loosely. It could just be a mobile-friendly UI for your website)

4. With apps/websites like these which solve one specific problem, it's always best to keep the feature set very minimal (even though as a developer your likely motivation will be to keep working on new features).

Good luck!