FAQ

  1. Why do you use Facebook Connect?
  2. How can I make sure my writing stays private?
  3. How are points calculated for a given day's writing?
  4. What do all the animals mean?
  5. How do I explore stats?
  6. How do I get my awesome ideas implemented?
  7. How do I force-save an entry?
  8. Any secret keyboard shortcuts I should know about?
  9. Can I format my entries in any special way?
  10. How do I save extra metadata with my entry?
  11. What kind of stats do you collect about my usage of the site?
  12. How do I share stats about my private writing?
  13. How do I export my entries?
  14. Why does it say I'm feeling a certain emotion on my stats page?
  15. What are the primordial & conceptual themes all about?
  16. Can I write my 750 words in full-screen mode?
  17. How can I support this site?
  18. Will you ever charge people to use this site?

★ Why do you use Facebook Connect?

It's simply a convenience to not have to build the whole account sign up, log in, and such. I use it for authentication only, and store your name and some other general information about you, but will not post anything to your Facebook Wall or anything like that. Everything is entirely private and I will not use the information for anything other than to log you in and generating aggregate stats about usage of the site. Once you click the link and sign in, you'll come back to this site and that's the last you'll hear about Facebook.

As of March 3rd, 2010, I also allow Google accounts and Yahoo accounts, if Facebook's not your cup of tea.

★ How can I make sure my writing stays private?

If you share your computer with someone else, and want to make sure you aren't accidentally still logged in to 750 Words when you leave the computer can add an additional "lock" to their words. This lock will require that you enter the secret word or phrase whenever you log in to the site or leave it unattended for 10 or more minutes. You can set your lock from the Settings & Stats page. There's currently no way to retrieve your password though, so be sure to select something that you won't forget.

★ How are points calculated for a given day's writing?

I have a fancy scoring algorithm. The point system is loosely based on how scoring works in bowling. A day is from 12:00am-11:59pm in the time zone that you've set in your settings. During that day, the goal is to write 750 words. That's all you really need to know but here's more if you want to know it all.

1 base point for writing between 100 and 750 words on a given day. 2 base points for writing 750 words or more. An extra point too if you write all 750 words without getting distracted. In addition to your base 1-3 points per day, if you scored 1 point (think spare), you also add the number of base points you got the previous day. If you score 2 or 3 base points (think strike), you also add on the base points from the previous 2 days. So, basically, if you are on a writing streak, and hitting 750 words 3 or more days in a row (think turkey) you'll get 6 points a day (2 + 2 + 2). If you always write but never get to 750, you'll get 2 points a day (1 + 1). Confusing enough? Just ignore it.

Once you get to 750 words, nothing you do to the entry (including getting distracted 83 more times and deleting the whole thing for fun) will change your points for the day.

★ What do all the animals mean?

Thanks to the help of Tag Savage, I've started to include little animal badges as rewards for accomplishing various feats on the site. For example, if you write for 5 days in a row, you get a penguin badge, like this:

There are birds associated with long streaks of writing. For writing quickly, or without distraction, many days in a row, you might get a hamster or a cheetah. And there are other ones out there too, for things like completing the One Month Challenge.

★ How do I explore stats?

I've begun to collect a page of interesting stats that I have compiled regarding usage of 750 Words, called the Explore page. The charts aren't in any particular order. I have this suspicion that there's a lot to learn about ourselves within the private words we write. Even though the words are private, it's possible to learn from them. Is it crazy to think that a community of private journaling strangers might be able to, through the act of writing privately and regularly, find something in common? Maybe a little. But in the meantime, I'm interested in finding new ways of surfacing the hidden, everything between the lines, while feeling content to possibly never again read the actual lines I've written. If you're doing this too, that might possibly resonate with you as well.

★ How do I get my awesome ideas implemented?

I'm only one person, and I'll be the first to admit that most of my ideas come from other people. I love hearing and talking about ideas, even fantastical ones that are impossible. It's entertaining to run with an idea. And every once in a while one of those ideas gets a life of its own and something new is created that never existed before. The place to share your ideas is on my 750 Words Get Satisfaction page. Also linked in the nav at the bottom under Feedback.

★ How do I force-save an entry?

Sure, everything you write on this site should be saved every 10 seconds or so. If that's too long to wait, you can hit Command-s on a Mac or Ctrl-s on a PC. A little green box should appear letting you know that the entry was saved all has resumed to be right in the world.

★ Any other keyboard shortcuts I should know about?

Other than command-s/ctrl-s to force-save (as mentioned above) I haven't added any new keyboard shortcuts. However, I plan to! One minor one to mention is that the tab key works as you'd expect to in a text editor by adding a tab rather than taking you to the next form element on the page. I'm open to ideas for keyboard shortcuts though, so if you have ideas, speak up!

★ Can I format my entries in any special way

Well, when you're writing an entry, I didn't want to add any controls to the page that would get in the way of just writing. However, if you are familiar with Markdown, all of the formatting options given there are supported (syntax cheat sheet). If you want to get extra advanced, the syntax of MultiMarkdown is also supported. Go crazy. This formatting will appear on your pages after midnight of the current day. You can get to them by clicking on days in the past on the Stats page, or the Archive pages for previous months.

★ How do I save extra metadata with my entry?

This is a super-secret feature that I implemented mostly for myself. But, I might as well tell you about it too. If for some reason you want to track things like how happy you are, how much sleep you got, how hung over you are, how many times you have fallen this year so far, or anything else, you can now do so from within your daily 750 words. All you need to do is put something like this on a line all by itself:

HAPPINESS: 8

or...

WATCHED: The Fantastic Mr. Fox

or...

TODO: Eat breakfast

You get the point. Every few minutes, a script will look for lines that begin with an ALLCAPS word, followed by a colon, and then have some text after it. The script will then store the number and the name of the tag in a separate table that you can then track over time. To prove that this is happening, you'll see a little section on your Entry Stats page with the metadata listed in the left column.

I haven't made the graphs for them yet, but here's an example to show you what it might possibly look like.

★ What kind of stats do you collect about my usage of the site?

I try to collect as much implicit information about you as I can without asking you to fill out a lot of forms. It's the accidental information that is often the most interesting, I think. That said, here's where I get information about you:

  1. Your behavior on the page: I watch how quickly you type, how many breaks you take, etc to draw some very general conclusions about how "focused" you are at the moment. I also time how long it takes to get to 750 words.
  2. Facebook: any general information that you've made public on Facebook is temporarily stored on my servers. For example, things like gender, age, and relationship status.
  3. Your IP Address: I use Google's Client Location Service to try to see if your IP Address can say anything about your general location. Right now I only use this in order to then try and see what the weather's like where you are. Who knows, maybe there's a correllation between the weather and the emotional content of your daily writings.

Note that I respect the privacy of all information collected, and will not make any information public that can be used to identify you. The primary use of this information is to generate stats for you, and to include them in general aggregates that are used on the Explore page.

★ How do I share stats about my private writing?

After you reach 750 words on a given day, the word count will be highlighted and the number of words will link directly to your entry's stats page. From there, you'll be given an option to share the stats page with others who use this site, and optionally post a link to Facebook or Twitter.

You will have the choice about what exactly to share, and can also optionally set some defaults for your entries to be shared automatically.

★ How do I export my entries?

If you go to the Statistics page you'll find a link to export your entries in the right column, by month.

★ Why does it say I'm feeling a certain emotion on my stats page?

I use a text-analysis system called the Regressive Imagery Dictionary to calculate the various emotional content of each day's entry. It is a pretty simple tool and isn't really all that trust-worthy, but then again sometimes it's right on. Take it with a grain of salt, and enjoy.

★ What are the primordial & conceptual themes all about?

These categories come from the same Regressive Imagery Dictionary that the emotional analysis comes from. They aren't all that final, or even accurate sometimes, because all it does is count the words that fall into the various categories. Take them as entertainment value. Or read deep meanings into them. It's up to you!

★ Can I write my 750 words in full-screen mode?

There isn't a way to make a browser go full screen by itself. But the good people at Barbarian Group have created a little app called Plainview that will let you do so. Check it out, it's actually pretty neat.

★ How can I support this site?

The best way to support this site is to use it and to contribute to ideas and suggestions on our Feedback page.

HOWEVER, this site does require time and money to run, and I do also accept donations to go towards that maintenance. If you feel compelled to help pay for server costs, I would be much appreciative of a donation of $10 or $20 bucks.


★ Will you ever charge people to use this site?

I do have some ideas for a pay version of this site eventually. But I will grandfather in people who are using the site before such a time, as they've had to deal with all the growing pains. Think lifetime free accounts. In any case, there will be lots of warning and time to prepare for such an eventuality.