Working on Dream Diary software... any input would be great

I’ll keep this as short as I can: I’ve starting writing a dream diary (and although I cringe, I must add: blog-like) application. I was just really looking for any input you guys have about features, or specific fields you have about your dreams that you think other people would benefit from.

I have an outline of my idea(s) on my blog, at https://blog.andrewfreiday.com/2006/04/29/jdream-video-preview/.
So far I’m calling it jDream. I posted a small video of what I’ve got so far. What you don’t see in the video, but will be in it soon: commenting on entries, multiple user accounts, RSS feeds, tagging dreams with keywords.

If there’s at least a little bit of interest in it, I’ll finish it up, and let people download it to have on their own websites. If there’s even more interest, then I’d like to make a large community website where everyone can post their dreams, share, comment, etc. – I know at least one site like this already exists, but I’d really like to improve, both in functionality and useability, and… well… aesthetics.

I’m not trying to promote myself or my website… don’t click if you don’t want to… I was doing the project for myself but I thought there might be a demand for it? (Especially for a larger, community-based system?)

Thanks guys and gals, I’m very excited to hear back from any or all of you!

I took a look at this but couldn’t figure out what to do with the files in the zip file. Maybe you should include some instructions on your webpage as to what file to open first and what to do (how to use the software) - remember, not all online dream journal users are necessarily computer geeks! :razz:

In the zip file is an AVI movie of me just going through the program. You should be able to open it in Windows Media Player, or iTunes, or Winamp, or whatever your media player of choice is. Edit: I uploaded it to YouTube, so you should be able to watch it without having to download anything. Please check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDtirf9MrCI

I’ll see if I can get a working copy up for people to look at, the last thing I want to do is discourage people for thinking it’s too hard to use. If I end up doing a public, community system of it, it will be as easy to use as any other blog-like system. I’m just interested to see if there’s an interest, or better yet, demand for it.

Well, I did watch the video you supplied, and it does look nice and simple, user-friendly. I don’t know whether there would be any demand for it, however, since I know dreamjournal.net already does a very similar thing with more features (and they will apparently be going through a major upgrade soon in addition).

Personally I wouldn’t use it, but that’s only because I’ve just put a lot of effort into making my own website for my dream journal. Keep advertising your idea around some more, because I think it looks good and quite professional. The main issue here is, as you’ve said, finding an interest.

Well I do VERY much appreciate the input.

I suppose that I may just continue it as a personal project and see what happens. If dreamjournal.net is doing an upgrade then there’s probably no point in making my own “competitor” site.

Shame… every good idea I think I have for a fun, community project is already taken, heh.

Anyways, thank you again!

I looks a lot like WordPress. I see you’re using PHP as a base. This looks like a fine system, Andrew, I think you shouldn’t drop it. :smile: If you need someone to help with beta testing and debugging, I volunteer.

Excellent! Every little bit of motivation helps. :happy:

It does look a lot like WordPress, because, well, WordPress is so fantastically great. That would be my ultimate goal, but I’m still quite a bit away from being compared to WordPress’ functionality.

What I’d like to do is submit this thing to SourceForge (sourceforge.net) as an Open Source project and see what response I get. Make it’s own site with a wiki and all that jazz. We’ll see. I have a pretty open week, so I can get a lot more done. Maybe post another preview of some additional functionality.

Oh wow, I was making my own diary software and then I came across this thread! :mrgreen: I’m sure yours will be better than mine though. :tongue:

It doesn’t matter whose is better… it always helps to have someone to share ideas and functionality with.

I’m a fairly good programmer, so if you need any help let me know. :smile:

I’ve been using a private LiveJournal with custom tags to keep track of dreams. I usually tag the entries “dream” and occasionally a sub-tag and it’s been working PRETTY well, although I would like a few more database-type ways of searching through.

I’ll definetly give this program a try. I like the idea of setting up a SourceForge project. I’d pitch in a bit of time here and there to help with graphics and css.

That’d be excellent. I’ll definitely keep that in mind. As far as as the SourceForge part, I’m just waiting for my registration to go through. Then I’ll start putting it together, and I’ll release what I’ve got of the source code first chance I get.

I got quite a bit more done yesterday. I got a really neat tagging system done. You’ll be able to tag individual dreams, and then browse other dreams by tag, which others have similar tags, and tag clouds (like: del.icio.us/tag/). I also got commenting ready, which is really self-explantory. No registration required, which is always nice.

Anyways, I’m going to try and get more done tonight, then I’ll post another video.

I LOVE del.icio.us! My other favorite web-app!

Aha, excellent!

Well, my ultimate goal would be to take all of the best features from these “Web 2.0” sites and use them for jDream.

I’d like to see a basic art program built in so you can draw illustrations on the spot and insert them into the post without notepad. I like to illustrate objects from dreams on occasion. Being able to just scribble diagrams on a canvas in a post would be a good thing.

Interesting, ok, I never thought of that. I should definitely be able to accept uploads from the computer and insert them into posts. So, if you want to draw something in Paint and upload it, that’d be easy. As for integrating some sort of drawing-program right into the browser… hm… a bit more difficult probably, but I’ll certainly look into it.

It might not make the first release, but I’ll certainly add image uploading ability into it in the mean time.

Thanks again for the input, it’s very much appreciated. That’s something I NEVER would’ve thought of. If there’s anything else, don’t hesitate to suggest it! :happy:

without having watched the video, I have a few suggestions…

an option for recording your identity in the dream with Myself as the default and also a Someone Else section you can fill out, much as you can Moods in LiveJournal. (in this case, though you’d have just either the one option of Yourself or else just write in your identity yourself.)

likewise, a space for describing degrees of dissassociation, for example, watching dream as a movie, just a floating viewpoint, as a person.

if possible, I wonder if you could also sub-divide each day/night into separate units, i.e. dreams, so that each dream might have its own set of differeng

make it possible to sub-divide each date into smaller units. within each day, one or more dreams, the options of which you can fill out separately.

I don’t know the capabilities of the language, but for writing the post you could use a Java applet to draw an image, then when you “save” it, it exports it and inserts the image where your cursor is in the post. It doesn’t have to be in the new post text window, but rather to the side so you can draw then click a button like “insert this drawing into the post”. This is to intentionally avoid photoshop or ms paint.

That’s actually pretty close to what I was thinking as soon as you suggested the idea: let the user draw a picture, submit it. Then, when posting a dream, they can insert the (earlier) submitted picture anywhere into their dream using BB-like code (something like [DRAWING=1] would insert the first drawing they made for that dream.

Just a thought. That stuff is easy. I’ll probably have to look for a Java applet for the actual drawing part of it. That’s definitely not something I want to bother writing myself.

Edit: for what it’s worth, I immediately added it to my TODO list for the project. :smile:

OK, interesting ideas. I’ll cover them one by one, to see if you or anyone else has any follow-up suggestions:

  1. That’s pretty generic. It’s not something typical from dream-to-dream, at least not as far as I experience at night. Generally that’s just something you could describe as part of the dream.

  2. Again, not really sure. I have a way to rate dream “clarity”, this may or may not be similar. If there’s a way I can exemplify that with one word that’s a bit more generic, then it most certainly could be something one could rate on a scale. Maybe a drop-down that says something like “Perspective” with options like “First Person”, “Third Person”, “Other Person”, etc.

3/4. As per the video, you can add an entryfor a single 24 hour day (based on date), and add individual dreams for that span to that entry.

Again, the suggestions are very much appreciated! Keep it coming!

ok… so, I’m just updating on the status of this thing… I got commenting and tagging up, and it seems pretty stable. So, I did a new video. It’s only about two and a half minutes long, and it shows me making an entry, populating it with tagged dreams, then it shows how dreams can be organized by tags. As well, I comment and show how easy it is to manage them.

Anyways, I posted it to YouTube again (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN7zze4oQ0M), but if you want a decent quality one, you can download it from my blog: https://blog.andrewfreiday.com/2006/05/04/jdream-preview-2/.

Thanks again guys, looking forward to hearing some more!