750 Words

http://www.750words.com/

by ams1 • 17 years ago

19 28 17 years ago

ams1• 17 years ago

One thing that struck me as weird was-- after the spiel about the site being private (between 'you and you'), it asks you to sign in via facebook.

jfarmer• 17 years ago

Presumably just for the authentication aspect, but it'd be good if they clarified.

chris24• 17 years ago

Hmmm, speaking of Facebook, I found it strange that their Facebook application page only lists 2 active users this month: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?v=info&id=2...

araneae• 17 years ago

I was tempted to try it, but the Facebook thing is a no-starter.

kowen2• 17 years ago

I was actually going to try it, but I simply do not have a facebook account, and have no intention of getting one. I kind of get that one might want to avoid writing all the authentication stuff, though.

3pt14159• 17 years ago

I deleted my facebook account due to the fact I think the various world's intelligence services are more than a little interested in it. NOW this guy wants raw, unfiltered brain dumps to it? Excuse my French but, FUCK THAT. My moleskin journal works just fine and can be pulverized into a fine powder if need be, rather than endlessly backed up through the cloud and associated with my name.

rinich• 17 years ago

The CIA absolutely cares about the three pages of fiction you write every day, and there is certainly a way they could take that and use it to make the world worse.

I like this service. I don't like writing in journals, regardless of the brand name, and I think I might give this a try. I guess you're allowed not to like it, but it bothers me that you're so obnoxious about your dislike. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to open every Hacker News article I have a disagreement with and loudly state my opposition, because excuse my French but, FUCK THAT.

jamesjyu• 17 years ago

I think the parent poster and the repliers are just a bit too paranoid. Looking at his site, it's obvious he's only using FB for authentication. Also, FB will always explicitly ask you before allowing his app to post anything public on your profile.

derefr4• 17 years ago

So what do they mean when they say "it's online?" It's obviously a web application, but why is it one (other than that being the paradigm the author is most acquainted with)? What's the advantage of using this over, say, a desktop tool like WriteRoom/OmmWriter plus a scoring script?

GHFigs5• 17 years ago

This question comes up a lot, but to me it always sounds like "Why eat at a restaurant when you can cook at home?" The main reason people do it is that simply to have someone else do all the work other than the eating, or in this case, the writing.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

What other work? It's no more work to open an application than to open a website. In fact, it's a lot less because I don't have to fire up my browser, navigate to the site, sign in through Facebook, etc.

derefr4• 17 years ago

I never said that this application shouldn't exist; I just don't see the point in making it a web application, when both the process and the product of using it are completely anti- or a-social. Is it just that you don't have to worry about where to store it/when to back it up? I've forgotten about that concern since I started using Dropbox.

There are a few implicit advantages to making something a web application: upgrades for free, no installation, etc. but there are also implicit disadvantages: network latency, inability to use when out of service range, and so on.

What I'm really saying is that this application seems like the perfect candidate for http://mozillalabs.com/prism/ -- it's not really web application, per se, it's just an application that requires an Internet connection, and happens to use HTML as a presentation layer.

SlyShy3• 17 years ago

I really liked this. I've written a shell script that does something similar, but there isn't any chart generation or word tagging, for example. This is nice and polished. I'm always overjoyed when someone works on something I want. :)

berlinbrown• 17 years ago

Looks cool but I wish you could publish your writing.

kowen2• 17 years ago

I did morning pages (long hand) for a while, and while the process certainly was interesting and helpful, most of it was garbage, trite, uninteresting, and truly boring. Any interesting pieces would have required rewrite/cleanup before being anything close to publishable.

SlyShy3• 17 years ago

Actually, there is an option on each of your posts to make them public. They are just private by default. But really, you wouldn't want to publish this anyway. The same way nobody publishes NaNoWriMo novels either. The point is to get the words flowing, not to write editorially correct writing. In fact, focusing too much on writing "well" is what gives most people the mental block that is much complained about. Unrestrained expression followed by judicious culling is the way to write.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

the guy that made it:

http://busterbenson.com/

Bottom of the page, 'rules to live by', good stuff!

mattwdelong• 17 years ago

Perhaps posting the source code and allowing people to host it on their own terms would be a bit more realistic. If someone is to write as 750words intends, spilling their deepest thoughts; I don't think they want to attribute their facebook account to it, let alone entrust someone they know nothing about with that very data. It would be interesting to know if they changed the authentication procedure + made it anonymous, how much the conversions would change.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

One of my daily habits for the last few years has been writing morning pages, though my goal is 500 words, and I typically write 550 - 600. I use the excellent WriteRoom, which helps block distractions and also provides a handy word count in the bottom left corner. I now have hundreds of text files documenting my inner monologue over the last few years...I expect it'll come in handy if I ever decide to write my memoirs :)

SlyShy3• 17 years ago

For those of us on Linux, PyRoom is a nice clone, which has the additional benefit of being easily hackable via Python.

jamesbritt• 17 years ago

"typically encouraged to be in 'long hand' ... "

Probably because your brain works differently when you write that when than when you type, a difference that matters.

FraaJad• 17 years ago

Journler -- http://journler.com/ is a good desktop app for Mac users. It shows the number of paragraphs words in the status bar. It also has a load of other features without getting in the way of writing.

Thanks for bringing the idea of writing morning pages into our attention.

750 Words

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