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Comment by smalter | Hacker News Reader

Coincidentally, fellow HNers rguzman, peng and I recently built a simple web app which was inspired by this article.

We email you on a daily basis asking you what you got done today. We put your email response into a calendar and check off the day. Look at your calendar to see your streak from yesterday to motivate you today.

We posted the site on HN back in January and got some great feedback which we incorporated (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2064038) along with some nice press coverage (http://thenextweb.com/lifehacks/2011/01/03/idonethis-have-yo...). We're at a few hundred users, a good proportion of whom email us on a daily basis and tell us that that the site is helping their productivity, helping them quit smoking, reminding them to exercise & diet, etc.

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My chain of thought while reading this article:

1. "It would be cool if I had a web app for this."

2. "Hey, I can build a web app for this."

3. "There must already be an app like this"

4. "In fact, I bet someone has already commented on HN about having built an app inspired by this."

I couldn't have been the only one with similar chain of thoughts, right?

Try this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1665467

Here's the one for programmers:

http://calendaraboutnothing.com/

btw, it seems universal in tech that the first to make something doesn't always win the market. E.g. search engines, or even angry birds, even Jerry wasn't the first comedian. Sometimes, many many people have a go, getting little traction, until someone finally cracks it (due to increase in platform install-base, change in tastes, formation of niches, change in market, better marketing, scientific insight, better implementation, longer commitment, or luck).

Also true for your first version.

For what it's worth, http://screencast.com/t/s8okyRVDbaT8 the back icon doesn't render properly using Chrome 9.0.597.102 on OSX 10.5.8. I also tried incognito mode, with no luck. It does render properly in Firefox 3.6.13 on the same system, for what it's worth.

Also, there's a FB "like" icon on the landing page, but once I've logged in, it's gone. I don't know about others, but I'm more likely to like it once I've tried it! This is true both in Firefox and Chrome.

Good point on the like button. Going to make this change.

Thanks for the heads up on the back icon. I'll look into the issue.

Thanks, I just signed up. Loved your "inch by inch" tagline; I use a similar one on my site.

I'll be using iDoneThis to keep me motivated to write everyday ... hopefully it'll really keep me at it :) Is there any way to change the time zone so it'll email me at the end of my day? I'm in Thailand; GMT+7.

Awesome. Email us to let us know how it goes for you. Unfortunately, there's no way to change the time zone right now. But stick with us, as we're going to fix this in the near future.

Awesome. I just signed up. Could I make a small suggestion though? A time-zone/location setting, as the end of the day server time is probably the middle of the day for me in Australia.

Great suggestion, and we've been hearing that from a bunch of folks overseas. We hear you, and we're going to fix this. Unfortunately, the way we process the emails makes this take more work than it should -- but we're going to get this done.

You can still use us! The timings may just be off by one day.

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