DayOne purchased by Automattic

How and what did you do?

Not Quor, I am not currently running my own mail server but I do pull all email down to my own local storage system every five minutes.

This one hurts. I obviously don’t know enough about it to say anything for sure, and I probably never will, but it’s really gotten me thinking about just how little say I have in anything at all.

I’ve invested many years into Day One. I have over 4K entries, and I have a streak of daily writing that goes back over 3000 days. I know I won’t lose the writing. I have it all backed up into PDF and all that, but what I will lose if they pull the app or demand access to things I’m just not good with is the multimedia experiences like watching videos or listening to my daughter gurgle away when she was a baby that I captured and stumble upon once a year in the retrospectives. It’s one of three apps I subscribe to and feel like I get value for.

There may be ‘no current plans’ to change anything, but I simply don’t believe they won’t change it eventually. SOMEday I’ll either be mined for data or required to view ads or some dealbreaker to keep making money off my memories. I guess that may have been true even if they never sold it to anyone. I think I just need to re-evaluate if it’s worth the effort to create such a database of things if someday, without any warning or by-your-leave, it all just goes away.

Blah. Clearly I’m feeling excessively cynical and fatalistic tonight. Maybe it’ll be OK. I’m just disappointed.

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I think Wordpress will be a good and trustworthy custodian. They won’t innovate, but they’ll keep the lights on. That’s what I’m seeing with Tumblr, at least.

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Indeed. They’ve been a good caretaker of SimpleNote for eight years, too. They like to buy software and services they like to use, or that they would hate to see disappeared/ruined. Between Matt’s personal preferences and the strong will of the community in setting development direction (or preventing development on the corporate side with influence on the open source side) it’s hard for Automattic to be evil or greedy.

That said, I don’t use Day One, so this is easy to say! But they’ve been good guys historically.

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For the folks worried about Day One’s future, I recommend reading Matt’s blog post about the acquisition. It’s clear that he uses and cares about the app and wants to be a good steward:

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This x100

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The more Matt likes something, the more likely he will tinker with it and slowly degrade it.

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When did that happen?

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I’m not aware of Matt causing issues, although I know that my opinion of Automattic’s philosophy has been tainted by their more recent “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” push to force WordPress users to update constantly, without (seemingly) any way to pre-check updates or roll back changes.

“These updates won’t break sites”. Except…y’know…when they do. :slight_smile:

If SimpleNote is run as-is, this acquisition won’t be too bad. God help us though if this becomes a “community-driven” project. :smiley:

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I got a vps here:

I installed this:

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As a Day One user (since 2013), I was very interested in this development.

I did my researched and penned my thoughts:

So, what am I going to do?

Well, in short, NOTHING. I will continue using Day One, in fact, I am on a 270-day streak which I do not care to break.

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I have lurked on this forum for many months. This thread has at last provoked me to join so this is my first post.

Entirely by coincidence I posted a few days ago on the Hazel forums a note about how to use Hazel rules and a DEVONThink smart rule to export Day One entries and import them into DEVONThink as individual markdown files. I have done that wirh 18,000+ Day One entries and am very happy to have those entries in both Day One and DEVONThink.

I don’t currently propose to stop using Day One but, like others here, am a little anxious about losing my grandfathered “Plus” status and being forced into a subscription, For that reason I’m working—in an awfully amateurish way—on a DEVONThink markdown daily diary template which matches the style of entries I’ve already imported.

Thanks for your patience in reading this!

Stephen

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I exported my journal into Obsidian from Day One just last week, and I’ve also built templates.

For others using Obsidian, there is an easy way to replicate the “on this day” functionality with a template and this code:

```query 
file:"{{date:-MM-DD}}"
```

It’s not quite the same, as it displays all the files with that date in Obsidian.

I got it from:

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Could you share your template as well?

The template I use is just the date and the “on this day” section:

# Journal for {{date}}

## On This Day 
```query 
file:"{{date:-MM-DD}}"
```
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I’ve been experimenting with Nextcloud. I moved everything out of Evernote and replaced it with Joplin.

It’s not perfect but it works for 95% if my needs. Journals are still in Day One.

Fastmail for email, contacts, calendar

iCloud Drive (still) for electronic docs.

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I’ve thought about running my own server for this, but in the end it came down to the fact that a large company will have a significant and experienced security team keeping my data safe. Something a single person can’t hope to match.

By moving your data onto a VPS, you may be taking control, but you may also be reducing it’s security.

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meh, I wouldn’t store anything sensitve on ANY cloud, this includes Apple.

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I’ve had Day One for quite some time.

I had distaste, a hunch etc when they started with their own server. I didn’t see why it could have just been backed up to Apple’s Cloud service. Why would they prefer to do, aside from money maybe?

So I resisted upgrading.

Then Day One moved to my pet peeve– subscriptions. Aside from extra photos I could see absolutely no reason to pay that never ending fee. Had it been a little less I may have as a journal is rather special.

(I have a newer version but just don’t use and decided not to do so.)

Then they quit grandfathering in one of the newer versions!

I really started looking around in earnest. I think I’ve written one or two entries in a year and hesitated to do even that! I’ve always kept a journal,

Now this?

What I have been using instead primarily is Agenda. The only shortfall I see is it is not password protected.

The UI is gorgeous and I encourage anyone artistic to check it out. You can attach your entries to dates. You can doodle, draw, add images. You can link to reminders etc from within the app.

I’ve only scratched the surface too. Plus you can expand on a more traditional approach that you might have for a journal. Agenda is rather open-ended. I use it for all sorts of stuff and it has stayed pretty well organized.

The developers are exceptional and go out of their way to help you. You recommend features and the next thing you know they incorporate or explain why they may not do so.

The pricing model is indicative of nothing but respect for the consumer. It’s free to use. They add features for a year and you can upgrade if and when you want.

Another note app someone recently mentioned is Awesome Notes. While they may be small, the app has been around for quite some time and it’s just a neat lil app worth checking out.

While I hate to see all this happen to Day One, I dare say the handwriting has been on the wall. They just do not seem to care much for their clientele. I suppose I’ll start exporting too.