Memiary Blog

Memiary API

After having spent a year ignoring “When will the Memiary API be published?” requests, I decided to do something about it today. Anyone can now build an app that talks to Memiary. To request a unique developer key which is needed with every request, drop me a line!

Also, you may find this page useful to test/debug.

1) GetUser
http://www.memiary.com/api/getuser/

Needs variables: key, username, password

If user doesn’t exist, creates account and shows “signedup”:
<memiary>
<status>true</status>
<action>signedup</action>
</memiary>

If user exists and credentials (username/password) are correct, shows “loggedin” indicator:
<memiary>
<status>true</status>
<action>loggedin</action>
</memiary>

(Standard to other requests too) If user exists and credentials are incorrect, shows “false” and “invalid info”:
<memiary>
<status>false</status>
<action>invalidinfo</action>
</memiary>

(Standard to other requests too) If not all fields are passed (i.e. username/password/key), shows “fieldsmissing”:
<memiary>
<status>false</status>
<action>fieldmissing</action>
</memiary>

(Standard to other requests too) If key is found to be invalid, shows “invalidkey”:
<memiary>
<status>false</status>
<action>invalidkey</action>
</memiary>

2) GetEntries
http://www.memiary.com/api/getentries/

Needs variables: key, username, password, lastUpdate (in format: 2008-11-10 10:08:38)

For default, i.e. first attempt, use “0000-00-00 00:00:00”. This will return ALL the entries for that user.

If no entries are found:
<memiary>
<status>false</status>
<action>fieldmissing</action>
</memiary>

If entries are found with a timestamp that is later than lastUpdate (<lastupdated> is the timestamp container in each entry just incase you find it useful, shows when it was lastupdated):
<memiary>
<servertime>2008-11-10 11:19:17</servertime>

<entry>
<date>2008-11-10</date>
<lastupdated>0000-00-00 00:00:00</lastupdated>
<one>BLAH1</one>
<two>BLAH2</two><two>
</two><three>BLAH3</three><three>
</three><four>BLAH4</four><four>
</four><five>BLAH5</five><five>
</five></entry>

<entry>
<date>2008-11-09</date>
<lastupdated>0000-00-00 00:00:00</lastupdated>
<one>BLAH1</one>
<two>BLAH2</two><two>
</two><three>BLAH3</three><three>
</three><four>BLAH4</four><four>
</four><five>BLAH5</five><five>
</five></entry>

</memiary>

3) SetEntries
http://www.memiary.com/api/setentries/

Needs variables: key, username, password, date (in format: 2008-11-10)
Optional variables: one, two, three, four, five (indicates each list item)

If entries are successfully updated (as long as the “needed” variables are supplied, this should be the case), shows:
<memiary>
<status>true</status>
<date>2008-11-11</date>
<action>entryupdated</action>
</memiary></lastupdated>

Memiarising Classrooms

Memiary has been getting some great traction in the teaching community lately. Mark Warner, a primary school teacher from the UK, has been using it extensively with children he teaches to record things they learn everyday, and recently made a fantastic presentation about his use for the Teachmeet Sussex conference. The presentation was so well received that it got on SlideShare’s most tweeted list and has noticeably brought Memiary onto the radars of many teachers all around. You can read Mark’s blog post here.

As the creator of a utility, this is way way way beyond what you could hope for. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined the service being put to such use, let alone a teacher making a 12-slide presentation for a conference to show other teachers how to use it with their own respective classes.

The iPhone app has sold thousands of copies so far, the website has tens of thousands of users of which thousands still use it daily — even a year after launching — and yet I’ll openly admit the biggest reward for me so far has been hearing that primary school children are using it to better their outlook at education. Now that’s something.

It’s easy to get a few users and sell a few apps, but reaching that golden demographic? It’s a challenge even to attempt, which is why I am so glad that it has reached the most fantastic userbase, and one who believe in helping turn good ideas into good utilities.

Plan Tomorrow

As I was flipping through a yearly-planner/diary today — one of the many New Year presents one rarely uses — something crossed my mind.

Diaries, by nature, are there to help you remember and recall your past. Memiary, as a quintessential ‘online’ diary, wants to help you do exactly that. But the absoluteness of a real-life diary, as opposed to Memiary, allows you to cheat and skip to any date in the future — essentially using it as a planner. The diary manufacturers market this as a ‘feature’ (it’s a diary, but it’s also a meeting planner! And a calendar! And a to-do list!).

As an aside, for the last two months or so, I’ve been using TextEdit on the Mac to keep a simple 3 - 5 item to-do list. In the list, I have important things noted which I need to remember to do for tomorrow. It can be ‘Watch Bruno’, or ‘Pick up bread.’ These are not things I want to do today or right now, and they’re not months in the future I want to put in iCal.

So, when I was looking at the static diary on the table, I had a flash: what if Memiary could be used to plan tomorrow — just tomorrow? This would make it a simple 5-item todo-list, while still keeping its basic essence alive: to remember your past. And also, since I know most of the things I’ll be doing tomorrow (especially if they’re important ones), it begs the question: why not just enter it today?

Another thing it does is bring the 5-item simplicity to to-do lists. Never before has a todo-list been limited to a specific day (tomorrow) and a specific number of items (5). So, it’s a constraint worth attempting. I don’t want to spend 10 minutes planning 10 things I need to do right now, but I can spare a couple to find 5 or less for tomorrow.

With that said, Memiary has now be used to plan tomorrow. When you log in, you will now see that tomorrow is clickable on the date bar (i.e. Wed Thu Fri Sat San Mon Tue Wed). When you click on it, you’re posed with the question, “What will you do tomorrow?”, and the same 5-item list Memiary is known for. You can enter things today, and of course, come and change or add to them tomorrow.

Something to note is that this functionality is not currently available on the iPhone app, but it will be in the 2.0 version, coming soon given that things go our way.

New feature: Tagging (and a new nav bar too!)

I’ve been working on a lot of stuff under the radar, but today I’m happy to release a couple major(ish) new features and upgrades to Memiary.

Firstly, say hello to #hashtags. #You #use #them #with #Twitter, #and #now #you #can #use #them #with #Memiary.

Here’s how they work: you can include #hashtags anywhere in your memory — like “#work Went to product meeting.” — and this will allow you to browse through your memories by #hashtags either clicking on the tag itself (love how it instantly becomes clickable?), navigating to memiary.com/tag/whatever, or using the top nav to navigate to your tag cloud at memiary.com/tags (browse -> by tags).

Why would want to use them? Categorizing (“#work”), remembering and bookmarking (“#specialday”), moods and feelings (“#happy”), travel (“#france2008”), special events (“#olympics2008”), etc. etc. Basically, it’s going to make your memorable memories even more memorable by allowing you to associate them with a particular feeling or category or thing rather than just a date in time.

Secondly, a new top nav bar is in town!

I’ve always thought there was something lacking in Memiary’s information architecture (i.e. navigation), so I spent the last few days trying new solutions and came up with the nav bar you’ll see in top-right (near the logout link). Here’s its structure:

• record
  • today
  • yesterday
  • 18 month year
  • 17 month year
• browse
  • by timeframe
  • by date
  • by tags
• settings

I think it adds a lot of flavor and clarity to Memiary’s purpose, features, and structure.

As always, I am craving for a complement or a put-down. Please drop me a line at feedback@memiary.com and let me know what you think!

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