How do you like Peabrain so far?

[Buster Benson]

Be honest. Since this is still just a little experiment, I'm super interested in whether or not anyone other than myself finds this useful.  Either way, how long did it take to figure out what it was for, and if it was for you?

[Sabrina Tang]

I've been using it as much as I can so far and love the low-barrier method of updating - SMS is definitely the way to go. It beats opening up an app, or having to type special syntax to direct message something on twitter.  I've tried to use Evernote in the past for similar small bits of notes, but creating a new note was always too slow on my phone.

So far I've been using it for: media consumed (books, movies, music), log of my workday with hashtags relating to specific areas of focus, a food diary, people I've seen/met with, sleep log, tracking mileage for my business, places I've been, baby milestones.  I can see this as a great habit tracker especially re the calendar interface that shows how many times you've done something that day.

Would love the ability to edit past posts via the web interface :)

Anyway - love the implementation so far and hope this experiment is a success! (now off to write my 750 words.)

[Buster Benson]

Thanks for spelling it out, Sabrina.  You use it in a very similar way to me.  One of the things I'm really curious about is whether or not that particular kind of recording is as interesting to other people as it is to me.

And yeah, part of my reason for making this is because opening an app and creating a new note and all that was just too much work for most of the random thoughts that passed through my head.

Yes, more kinds of web-enabled functionality will be available.

Thanks for trying it out and sending feedback.

[Ken Gordhamer]

So far I'm using it to jot down story ideas and random thoughts.  It would be a good habit tracker, if I had a habit I wanted to track!

To tell the truth, I was a little hesitant to start using it because I am one of those dinosaurs who still has a limited texting plan for my phone - but I figure one or two a day can't hurt me.  I just turned off the responses and I'm good.

I personally would also like to see some more interactivity on the web.  Of course I'm also only a few posts in, so I'm sure there's some stuff I'm not seeing yet.

Honestly, I can see my interest in Peabrain waning if I don't use it for anything beyond what I'm already using it for - but I can definitely see the utility of it for others.

[Buster Benson]

Thanks, Ken!

Yeah, I'm gonna add some interactivity on the web, especially as you add more notes.  But I want to make sure that the core functionality is useful before going too far along with that (this is a side project, still).

Can I recommend a way for you to use it?  Use it as a way to quickly remember small events, ideas, conversations that happen during the day.  The kind of thing that was enjoyable and valuable in the moment, that you'd like to remember again sometime in the future.  Sort of a text-only Kodak Moment.  That's been the most enjoyable use for me so far, and something that I don't have any other way of capturing.

[DW]

I've been finding it useful, great job Buster.

Whenever something interesting comes into my head that I want to remember, I type it out.  Sending an SMS is the easiest way to do it and it forces me to be compact, like Twitter does.

I've been recording random ideas, dreams, feelings that I want to get rid of or develop more.

I DON'T use it as a data tracker, I think something like Daytum is a lot better equipped for that sort of thing and I hope Peabrain doesn't go into that sort of raw data direction at the hindrance of more nebulous, open-ended recording.  

I would very much love an API someday, but I know that isn't trivial.

Thanks for making this!

[Buster Benson]

Thanks, DW.  I have no plans to take away the open-ended aspect of it at all.  But there might be ways to get more structured data out of the open ended text if I'm clever.  

Also definitely have an API planned.  Are you more interested in reading or writing to Peabrain?  Or both?

[Scott Fischer]

I'll jump in the middle of this.  I'm more interested in writing to it and agree with DW that the heavy statistical analysis isn't probably needed.  Don't get me wrong, I like to see streaks of consistency and percentages of days where I do an activity, some some statistics are good, but that's not the point, for me.  Just being able to send the SMS is enough for me.

After 7 days, I turned off the acknowledgement texts and considered turning off the prompts too.  I left the prompts on though because I suspect that there will be an aha! one in there that triggers something.

Yesterday, I sent a "remember to do this", no tag, no @.  The act of sending it was enough of a reminder, but I wonder if there might be a to-do tag, or a shopping cart tag (same thing), bucket list that we might have the ability to check-off.

So far, great tool, I'm loving it and hope it sticks around.

[bentsai]

I haven't been using it regularly, but the more I look at it, it looks very much like a service I would use all the time. I would like to use it as a personal timeline to keep track of various events and things. I recently found fetchnotes too (actually through your blog) and I'm trying that service out for this purpose.

I do like the concept of using SMS as input. What I would like to see is another interface that is just as easy. First, because it bothers me how much I have to pay for SMS, and secondly, sometimes I want to rapid fire notes into the system. One thing I really like about fetchnotes is that they have a desktop widget which is basically a big input field.

On a related note, I've started to use 750words, and it is very impressive. I love the metrics and metadata that I see, even after just 3 days of use. That itself has compelled me to give peabrain another look. Maybe I'll try to use both at the same time.

Cheers!

[Buster Benson]

Scott, thanks for the feedback.

As for the possibility of adding special treatments to certain tags, I think that that might eventually happen if people keep finding this useful.  It's not on the short list of features coming up yet, though, unless you want to make a case for it.

[Buster Benson]

Bentsai, 

Consider your request for a web-based way to add notes noted.  :)

When you rapid-fire notes in, what are those notes about? If I may ask.

b.

[bentsai]

Hi buster, 

I've been reconsidering my request for facilitating rapid-fire notes. On second thought, I don't think I need a way to allow me to create notes rapidly. I'm glad to hear that a web-based method has been noted, because I still would love to be able to easily add notes when I'm on my desktop (which is for many hours during the week). It's fairly cumbersome to have to grab my phone and pull up the SMS app, tap in the message and hit send when inspiration hits:)

I am starting to use peabrain as a personal diary/timeline. It's a place I am tracking events, emotions, moments that are important or interesting to me personally. The ability to review my timeline in various dimensions is very intriguing to me. I love what you've done with 750words, and I could see something along those lines to be pretty cool.

Going along with this, and with previous discussions about API and such, I have a proposal. If you implemented a way to create a note via email, you could easily integrate with the IFTTT service. That opens up some neat possibilities. For my use case of a timeline, I would then explore piping my activity on twitter, foursquare, etc into peabrain, so that those events/moments/actions can also be added to my personal timeline automatically. 

Also, I could see the timeline in peabrain have different "renderers", based on tags. If a note contains a url, perhaps that could be auto-expanded. If it points to an image, it could show the image. If the note is tagged with #todo, it could have a checkmark icon. Those are just some random ideas, which are getting less concrete now:)

Again, love what you're doing, and I'm excited to see where this goes!

Ben Tsai

[Scott Fischer]

Thanks for responding.  I know my "requests" were quite rambling and I may not actually need any of them.  I'm betting what I'm looking for (re: shopping lists or bucket lists) is something that I bet I can acheive with creative use of tags, I'll just have to play with it.

Now that you've mentioned the "short list of features coming up", is there a way we can see what that is?

Also on the 60 days free, $1/month after:  that's cheap and shouldn't be enough to scare people away.  I may even be able to help a bit more to get started.

[Scott Fischer]

bentsai,

750words is one of the habits that I'm tracking here and the two dovetail nicely.  Of course I don't NEED peabrain to track the 750words habit since it's already built in, BUT  because I have other habits that I'm also trying to track, I love being able to track them all, including 750words,  in one place.  

Buster,  Thanks for allowing multiple tags per SMS, that's vital for me.

[Buster Benson]

The short list of features is highly flexible and dependent on mood of the given day, and not all are fully formed ideas yet, but these are the things I've got on my #peabrain page:

1) monthly summaries via email for active members

2) some improvements to the way stats are tracked for hashtags

3) figure out what prompts work, maybe allow users to suggest prompts

4) create something sharable, not sure what yet

5) combine SMS messages that get cut off due to character limits (maybe)

6) an API so others can create cool ways of adding notes to peabrain

7) more ways to reminisce

And about a dozen more.  I'm very open to all ideas that come in from you guys too... 

[Buster Benson]

Yeah, multiple tags per SMS was crucial for me too.  I'm glad you like it!

[Ryan MacMichael]

I'm enjoying Peabrain thus far -- one thing I'd like to see: updates via IM. During the day, I'm sitting at my pc and would be more likely to add an update via an IM window than I would be to grab my phone and awkwardly text it.

Perhaps even allow IM updates to be free in your pricing model (ie. if someone updates via IM during a month but not text, they won't be charged)?

[DW]

@Buster, definitely reading from Peabrain re: API.  I'm interested in eventually incorporating it into a dashboard and maybe doing some auto sentiment analysis.  Or maybe a certain #tag will trigger the message to be sent somewhere else.   http://ifttt.com integration would be amazing!

[bentsai]

These sound really great. I'm really looking forward to the API and what you'll do with sharable things, stats and summaries.

With the API, I'm imagining doing things like

- automatically adding a note of the day's weather

- including any tweets, checkins I make in the timeline

One idea is to allow editing a note after it's been created. Particularly, I'm thinking about tags that are more ephemeral, like #todo. Once I've done my task, I'd like to be able to remove that tag so it no longer shows up. I think it's critical to keep the creation time of a note around, though.

[Shrutarshi Basu]

I'm looking forward to an API too. For starters, it would be good if I could just push a note and download the CSV. Then you could add more fine-grained push/pull options. As for stats and analytics, I think it's ok if the website just does some simple analysis. I could do my own analysis if there's anything in particular I'm looking for.
Thanks,
Basu

[Buster Benson]

I like the idea of integrating with http://ifttt.com but realize now that their Email channel only lets you send email to your own email address, and not to any email address.  I have been talking with them on Twitter and it looks like they're gonna add that ability soon, but until then there isn't much we can do.  Unless you had another idea about how to tie it all together.

[Buster Benson]

Unfortunately, integrating with IM is quite difficult.  I looked into it a bit this afternoon and there are no simple (or free) ways to do this without a lot of work.  If you've heard of a way, though, let me know.

[bentsai]

Integrating with IM would come for "free" with IFTTT integration. For example, if there were a Peabrain channel, you could use the GoogleTalk bot trigger to send to that. I know you're looking into IFTTT, but just wanted to point this out:)

[DW]

I don't know how IFTTT works, but a use case for me would be to save all messages I send with #idea to a new Evernote note that I keep all of my ideas in.  Tag-based trigger to the "thens" would be sweet.  But again, I'm not sure how easy it is to tie IFTTT in.

[Jackie Shelley]

I just discovered it today, and have only used it once or twice, so am not qualified to say a lot yet. That said, I am familiar with your other products (started with 750words and went on to healthmonth), so I had a really easy time navigating to what I needed. I also am a heavy text user with an iphone and unlimited text plan (important!). 

I seriously text myself things all the time, and once experimented with texting myself a whole conversation (but I am a very strange person, and I also created my own facebook group with two different facebook accounts that were just me, so I hardly think I am your typical user...) 

So I see a use for this. I also have a lot of practice hashing and tagging things; I was a user of @hashable from the early days, and use twitter chats on and off. So it's not a stretch to create and manage the tags.

I think what I am getting at is that as an early adopter and experimenter, I find the service intuitive and ridiculously easy to setup and get running. I appreciate the nice design, as with your other products.

The question in my mind is whether this will become as regular a part of my workflow as 750words did. I'm not as hooked in to healthmonth yet, but that may be because 750 words has become part of my daily routine and therefore, habit.

That's my early feedback :) 

SO glad I had some trouble logging in to 750words this morning, and that led me to check out what you'd been up to, Buster. Nice to get to be in on a new project! I feel special to be here.

Jackie

[Buster Benson]

Awesome to see you here, and thank you for the feedback. You're pretty much an ideal user for the current state of peabrain, so interested to see if you find it useful enough to continue using...

[Chloe VanDuinen]

I just found this. Where has this been all my life? Well not all my life, just since I got free texting. I'm still the proud user of a "dumb phone" so I am forced to text to Facebook and Twitter if I want to post something. I've been working on putting a personal timeline together and this would be great. I use 750 words to record major events in detail but this would work perfect for small moments. Silly things I overhear and stuff my friends say. I'm a writer so I'm always listening. Being able to sort by tag means I can keep track of story ideas. I'm so excited to start using this. Also when I post stuff to Facebook or Twitter I can also send it here. This can catch all the stuff I want to send to my social networks but that I should probably just keep to myself. 

[Katie Chadwick]

Just started using a few days ago and I love it! Desperately hoping it's not falling off the radar. As a brand new mother, I've been using it to kept track of various baby activities--when the baby eats, what I'm eating, when baby is fussy.

I would love to be able to export messages based on the hash tag....I.e., only messages tagged "journal". Or perhaps, in the complete export, add an additional data column for entries that is just the hash tag associated, so the entries can be sorted in excel easily.

Not really a necessity, but the ability to message pictures? That'd be awesome, although I have no idea how this would interplay w the export.

I'm curious how many users you have currently? The reason I love this project is both the ease of text messaging and the time stamp inherent in that. However, I think creating a phone app that would function, not as the point of data entry, but as an easy way to view data/analytics could be a great way to increase exposure and get more users. I set up a bookmark on my iPhone home screen so I can easily go to the web based log in to view entries by hash tag, but an app would work just as well, if not better.

Hope to hear back! I encourage you to keep this experiment going... So much potential!

Katie

[Eliza Wee]

@ken -- just a thought, i tied peabrain to my google voice number for a variety of reasons, but it could potentially get around both the web interface (you can send sms from your computer) and the text plan limits.

[Eliza Wee]

Just started, so nothing huge to report yet. Turned off the sms replies, but it would be kind of cool to see that info on the website (not super attached to it, just thinking as I use this). Really like that I can export it all and keep it (also no idea what I'd do with it...but love that I can take it with me). Nice tool/toy!

[Eliza Wee]

+1 for the idea of ifttt integration.