News, notes and everything else.

Since our update last week regarding the introduction of photo support, we’ve introduced 9 new features (depending on what you determine a feature) plus a bunch of tweaks!

Graphical Statistics
We’ve begun the introduction of graphical statistics which you can access by clicking your email address in the top right hand corner. Currently the graph shows your character length over the past 30 days, helping you spot days when you’ve forgotten to write an entry or days in which you’ve had less to talk about. Let us know if there’s a set of statistics you’d like to see. We’d like to make it possible to find trends, which would allow you to formulate conclusions. What makes a great day?

New Photo Features
In terms of photo support, we’ve been playing around with it trying to get it just right. We’re not quite there yet, let us know what you think. Other than the ability to view your image when viewing your entry, there is an updated standard flick through gallery, a new thumbnail gallery and a new full screen gallery. Along with this, we’ve introduced the ability to download your original picture file. Our photo uploader has also been improved to show the progress of your upload.

Date based relation
Essentially this allows you to link to other entries through referencing a point in the future or past. For example, if you type ‘yesterday’ in your entry, when you view the entry, the word yesterday will become a link to the day before. This would similarly work with ‘this time next week’ plus other references.

Advanced PDF
One of the features we were desperate to build was advanced PDF functionality, this feature is still in progress, but it’s a vast improvement on previous functionality. You can now export entries based on an array of variables into an array of shapes and sizes. Paper sizes now include Letter, A4, A3 and A5 as well as the ability to determine orientation and margin size. A significant enhancement is the ability to include your photos in your export. Again, we’re still working on improving PDF export, so please let us know what you think.

Other updates
You might notice changes in date formats, settings, search and account overview. The rate of new users has exceeded all expectations and we have a feature to-do list longer than a very long flat fish. Keep your eyes peeled for updates and thank you for using 280daily.

Tea? Coffee?
280daily is a free service, but we do have hosting and development costs. You now have the ability to purchase a 280daily mug, great if you enjoy a hot drink when writing your entries. We’ve made the process of purchasing a mug as simple as possible. Costs may be high in your continent or country due to shipping, we’re sorry about this!

Modelled beautifully by our bearded dragon lizard. The mug is designed to be amusing and is in no way meant to be offensive. The slogan is a spoof of a marketing campaign by a leading sports-wear company. It’s the ideal writing companion!

Yesterday we rolled out photo support for 280daily. Along with your (up to) 280 character entry, you can now upload a photo. By default the picture will display under your entry when you view it. This can be changed in your settings under “Appearance”, along with the ability to completely disable photo support (you can re-enable at any time).

If you have uploaded photos, you will have access to your gallery (Daily Photo). Photo support is in its infancy and we’ll be working to improve it (while keeping it simple).

Along with photo support we’ve added a new account overview box, “Random Photo”, this isn’t enabled by default. When enabled, it will display a random photo that you’ve uploaded, clicking on the photo will redirect you to that particular entry.

I also wanted to talk a little about the feedback we’ve received and the features we’re working on. The beauty of 280daily is in its simplicity, so there’s a delicate balance between features and simplicity, which is why it’s important that users configure 280daily exactly how they would like it.

Arun sent us this feature request,

“It would be great if I could get the “Account Overview” as a side bar on the right hand side of the screen.”

This seemed like a reasonable request, you can enable this by visiting your “Appearance” setting and locating the “Sidebar Box” header.

John sent us this feedback,

“It would be very useful to be able define a date range when exporting 280s. I could see this being useful for team members at work when they want to review what their tasks have been for say, the last two weeks. The sheet could be printed out and brought to a meeting.”

We’ll be working on advanced exporting options for exporting to PDF and printing. Plus we’ll be introducing one of our most exciting features in the next few months, the ability to export your entries to a physical book.

We’ve received feature requests and compliments, but some of you like to share your experiences with us,

“I remembered my trip to Japan for a study abroad program at my university. I always wished I’d blogged more, or took more pictures, or SOMETHING to document everything. But I didn’t because just taking a picture and downloading it, figuring out the essay-format post for a blog… those seemed so tedious. 280 characters would’ve worked beautifully for a simple travel log, something to remember that trip by.”

It’s great for us to hear your experiences! It’s also great to hear that a lot of you are using 280daily to improve how you spend your days. But I’m not dictating how you should live your life! However, if you can achieve one thing a day that you’re proud of, then what a life you must be living! This would be great, but it is of course unrealistic for most of us, which is why we have the “Day of note” feature!

“I use quite a few web services, but your interface is one of the cleanest, best structured and organized interfaces! Thanks and keep up the good work!” – Mirco

“Great concept & a beautifully designed site.” – John

“I thought of starting a diary this year, but I’m too lazy to write pages and pages so dropped the idea. But after I saw details of your site on TNW, I felt this was exactly the service I was looking for (should be online, secure, short, neat and have a clean interface). Excellent work guys.”

Finally, some of our non-english members are requesting translated versions of 280daily. This is something we’d like to do when 280daily has planted itself firmly. While we’re currently introducing features and growing, it’s difficult to maintain translations.

Thanks again for all your feedback, we will get around to responding to every feedback request individually, but it might be a while before you hear from us.