It’s called OhLife, and it’s incredibly simple.  Its primary component is email, so there’s pretty much nothing new to learn.  Every night at 8PM it sends you an email asking you how your day was, and includes a random entry you’ve made previously.  All you have to do is reply to the email with your entry for the day, and OhLife takes care of filing & formatting it.

The web site is equally simple.  Once you log in, there are only a few options: view the most recent entry, view a page of past entries, change settings (of which there are very few), and view individual entries or a random entry.  The interface is designed to look like you’re reading from a page in a real, physical journal.  It’s enjoyable to read entries, even if you’ve just written them & know what they say.

They make a point of telling you that the service is built around privacy.  They don’t have any way to connect to social networks, or publicly share your entries.  The only way to see what you’ve written is to log in to your account, and the only way to contribute or communicate with OhLife is through the email address you register with them.

So there’s not much to the service, which is actually appealing.  There are a few flaws to it though.  The most noticeable problem is that there’s no way to export your entries if you decide you no longer want to use OhLife.  Hopefully that feature is in development, but for a service that’s intended entirely for personal information it seems like something that should have been available at launch.  Also, it would be nice to have the ability to share data as an opt-in feature.  It’s not likely that I’d want to share my entries, but having the choice would be nice.

I’ve only made 3 entries so far, but I’m enjoying using OhLife.  I also discovered that it’s designed to properly file your entries by date regardless of when you send them.  Each daily reminder email that OhLife sends you comes from a unique, identifiable email address so that when you reply, it knows what date the entry is for.  I didn’t submit my second entry until the next day, so I was happy to learn this.

It’s a pretty neat idea, and is the first solution I’ve found to keep me diligent about documenting my activities.  It’s easy to use, and enjoyable.  A few missing features, but by no means a deal breaker.  Definitely worth giving a try!

Update (7/29/2010): OhLife added the export feature the day after this post was originally published.  You can find it on the “Past” page, and it creates a simple text file that you can download with all of your entries.

Anyway, the video begins at the end of the mooring row at Boothbay Region Boatbard and ends at our dock on Boston Island.  Pretty much perfect weather.

Before we go any further, let’s take a look at the official demo video that YouTube put out with the release of the new site:

There are some important things to note in this video. First off, the native app feel of the interface: the web site & the videos themselves look & feel like they were part of an app written specifically for & installed on each device being shown.  The video seamlessly transitions when the phone is changed from portrait to landscape orientation.  The site is smooth & behaves like a native app.  Everything about it is very polished, and the best part: it looks & behaves exactly the same across multiple devices.  Android, iPhone – it doesn’t matter what you’re using, you can have the same experience as everyone else.

There’s an even deeper & more important element: access to YouTube’s content can’t be controlled by a platform developer.  YouTube is the biggest video sharing site on the planet – 20 hours of video are uploaded every minute – and is an integral part of the modern media & content consumption experience.  Why allow various device manufacturers, OS developers, etc. to decide on a whim they no longer support YouTube by banning its app from their platform?  By making an awesome mobile web app, control is put back in the hands of YouTube, and most importantly the users.

As I mentioned above, there’s an element of cool to any web geek out there who’s excited by the prospect of full-featured mobile web apps.  This is one of the first major examples of a web interface being as good as, or better than, native software on a mobile device.  This is true proof of concept in a significant way, not only in its reach of user base, but in the fact that it’s tackling something that can be very tricky: cross-platform video compatibility.  YouTube and Google has made a strong move in the progress toward HTML5 and rich web apps, in some ways technically but even more importantly – symbolically.

I’ll get down off my soapbox & back to the facts: YouTube has done an excellent job with the new mobile web site.  It’s so good that I’ve replaced the YouTube shortcut on my phone’s home screen from the one for the native app to a bookmark directly to YouTube mobile.

I can’t wait to see what they do next.

For the past two weeks I’ve been using Grooveshark exclusively for music.  I initially learned of & heard good things about the service on an episode of This Week in Google and figured I’d give it a try.  After all, it’s only $3 a month for unlimited streaming so what did I have to lose?   Well, after using it for 14 days not only did I not lose anything, but I’m totally sold & hooked on streaming vs. downloading.  Why?  Well, for a number of reasons.

First, convenience.  I don’t like spending time cultivating my music library, or copying songs to my phone, or fixing file tags.  I love listening to music, but I still consider it to be a secondary activity that I don’t want to dedicate a lot of time to.  By extension, I don’t like spending time downloading new music.  So to have  millions of songs available, already curated & managed and waiting for me to decide on a whim that I want to listen to them is ideal for me.  Pretty much anything I can think of to listen to, I can find.  I also don’t enjoy using iTunes as it seems to be increasingly bloated & resource intensive.  Plus, I don’t have to store all those songs on my computer & phone, which brings me to my next point:

Peace of mind.  Anyone with a sizable music collection on their computer is aware of two things: all those songs take up a lot of space, and it takes a lot of time to acquire & maintain.  I have about 25GB worth of music on my laptop, which I’ve accumulated over the course of 6 or 7 years.  It’s nice to have all that music in that I have a lot of variety, but about 70% of that music I probably haven’t listened to in at least a year.  So why bother taking up that much space on my computer?  Plus, with that much time & money invested I have to spend additional money & effort to ensure that it’s all backed up, or risk losing all of it if my computer fails.  None of this is very appealing.  By using a streaming solution, none of this is an issue.  I don’t have to store anything – just a little bit of software to access the service, and there’s nothing to back up because it’s all kept on the streaming servers, which is much cheaper – which leads me to my final point: price.

The cost of a single song from iTunes in 99 cents.  The cost of a VIP subscription for Grooveshark is $3 a month, and even cheaper if you opt to be billed annually (I didn’t only because I wanted to have some time to decide whether it’s really worth it before committing for a year).  So for the cost of 3 individual songs, I can listen to unlimited songs.  There are other services out there that do streaming such as Rhapsody or Napster, and they’re a little more expensive but still much cheaper than buying all that music.  Music is expensive & at more than a few songs starts to become a luxury expense that isn’t important enough to me to pay.  Streaming is very affordable, and fully satisfactory to me.  Since I have a Droid & unlimited data over 3G (and I’m very rarely ever outside the coverage of either 3G or WiFi) it’s very practical for me to rely on an Internet-based solution for my music.  Between Pandora & Grooveshark, I have no need to store any music on my phone or computer at all.

Now admittedly, there are some disadvantages to streaming.  You do need good bandwidth to enjoy smooth playback.  You are kind of SOL if you’re in a place with no connection available (though Grooveshark does allow you to store songs for offline use on your phone, as long as your subscription is active), such as a plane or the subway.  Also, your music is at the mercy of the streaming provider.  However, with the increasing proliferation of broadband & Internet connected mobile devices the drawbacks are becoming less & less noticeable.  It also seems like a much more appealing distribution method for record labels, since it reduced the convenience & appeal of pirating, and still ultimately gives them some control over the content.  It’s pretty much a win-win.

So I’m totally done with downloaded music.  I’m planning to copy my stored music onto my server at home in an archive, and then delete it all from my laptop.  I’ve already removed it all from my phone (freeing up a sizeable chunk of memory), and have replaced the native music player widget on the home screen with the Grooveshark widget.  I’ve totally switched over to streaming – and couldn’t be happier.

Would you (or have you already) stopped downloading in favor of streaming, or are you unable to bear separating from your iTunes library?

The iTunes logo is a registered trademark of Apple, Inc.

As it got closer the lightning & thunder became much more intense.  At one point, the lightning & thunder went off at the exact same moment (indicating they were directly above us) with an intensity I’ve never heard before.  It frightened a couple of members of the family, but it just seemed like a lot of light & noise with no consequence.  It wasn’t until a moment later when we went into the kitchen and my dad shouted “holy shit, the shed is on fire!” that we realized it was more.

Before I go any further, let me paint the full picture for you.  Boston Island is about a mile from the closest point on the mainland, and we have no electricity or running water on the island.  We haul drinking water, we use oil lamps & propane for light, heat, cooking, etc. and we collect rain water for showering, dishes, and other water needs that don’t require potable water.  If we need electricity we have a small generator that we keep in the shed, but we rarely use it.  The island is only accessible by boat; there are no ties to the shore whatsoever.

As I heard my dad shouting this a very interesting thing happened, something which hasn’t happened to me before in a real-life situation: I reacted from what felt like instinct, due mostly to the training I’ve received from the Coast Guard & Mass Maritime.  We immediately went out the back door of the house & up the path to the shed, and as I got closer I started running down the checklist of things to do when dealing with a fire: assess the area for people who could be trapped/injured/otherwise affected, determine hazards in the surrounding area, identify an egress route, try to determine the class of fire.  As I reached the shed door, keeping low to avoid the smoke coming out of the door, I quickly realized this was a fuel/paint fire (a Class B, for those familiar with basic firefighting).  The first thing I made sure to do was tell my father & sister who came out as well NOT to put water on it, against their own instincts.  I also told my father to stay outside the shed, well clear of the door as I ran back to grab the dry chemical fire extinguisher from the house (I realize that it was an oversight not to grab it on the way out the door, but a learning experience as a result).

I came back a few seconds later with the extinguisher.  As I was going out the door of the house with it in my hand, I remember saying out loud what I needed to remember about this extinguisher – again, information & technique that I’ve drilled on many times in training & I now fully understand why – pull the pin, grab the hose, approach the opening to the shed staying low, get about 6 feet from the flame, aim at the base of the fire & discharge the extinguisher, sweeping across the base to ensure full coverage until the can is empty.  Within a second or two of discharge all flames were gone, even the ones on shelves above the base of the fire which was on the floor of the shed.

My sister had gotten the other extinguisher from upstairs in the house which she’d handed to my dad.  As he went to discharge it I made sure to instruct him to aim at the base & stay right outside the door of the shed (about 6 feet from the base of the fire).  Once this can was empty we took a bucket of water my sister had filled & poured it judiciously on the base of the fire, making sure not to splatter any of the original fuel while cooling the area.  We did this around the entire part of the shed near the fire.  I went back into the house to get some wet towels & remember instructing my father to stand by as reflash watch, and my sister to fill every bucket she could find with water from the rain sistern.

For the next hour we continued applying water throughout the shed until everything was cold.  We took turns monitoring the area & within 2 hours the only indication of the fire was the smell, some blackened wood & burnt paint cans, and the mess from fighting the fire.  It was at this point that we realized a) how much unbelievably worse it could have been (the entire house is made of wood & connected to the shed by a wooden path, and the rest of the island is woods), and b) how lucky we were to have reacted so quickly & effectively.

We all took lessons away from this experience, but the biggest one for me was the value of effective training & continuous practice and drilling.  I’ve grumbled about excessive fire drills in the past, but now I fully understand why we do them and how important they are in saving lives & property.  Without the knowledge I’ve gained in the past few years, I may very likely have been writing a much more somber story today.  I owe a lot to my instructors both at Mass Maritime & in the Coast Guard, the most important of which is the health & safety of myself and my family.

Beyond my technical training of basic firefighting, a more important honed skill kicked in: the ability to stay calm & think clearly.  Given all of the circumstances out on this island (no utilities, no access to public fire departments, limited training among residents, limited firefighting equipment, etc.) it would have been very easy to slip into a state of panic, resuting in potentially catastrophic damage.  However, my training and ability to maintain a level head, as well as those around me, enabled the rest of my knowledge to prevail & prevent further loss.

I’ve included some pictures of the shed & contents that I took this morning as we were cleaning up, including the damage inside the shed, the mess of dry chemical powder, water, paint & other substances, the burnt paint cans, and all of the other materials that were spared thanks to the dedication of teachers I’ve had, the knowledge I’ve gained, and the quick response & teamwork of my family. I also have the full gallery and an overview video.

Our property is called Boston Island, and it’s located north of Southport in the Sheepscot River.  It’s a 24 acre island, and our family owns 19 of that (though nobody really cares about property lines, and there are only 3 other families that own land).  I’ve been coming up here all my life, and given that I’m an Army brat it’s one of the few places I can really call “home”.  It’s where I learned my love of the water & boating, and of seafood (especially lobster!).

So keep an eye out for posts throughout the week of stuff from the island, including videos.