#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own Mailchimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */
Every programmer, developer, or coder, dreams of creating something useful. Something which at least works. Something that serves people and brings some benefits. I was looking for a long time to apps or websites to see some deep technology to take my own work further. That was until I saw one unique service which is called Minute of Life.
When I was looking at it as a coder, I didn’t see anything special. I can say it’s just a clean, simple piece of code. I could not find anything extraordinary till I got into it.
Sometimes we look but don’t see the meaning. Sometimes our minds are blocked by the speed of life. Somehow a new breath can open your eyes to simple things. This simple looking service is actually only the tip of the iceberg. When you understand what they are trying to do, it’s just amazing.
They let you put your messaging into time. Your message is a letter and time is the envelope. Everybody know that you cannot turn time back, but what if I could say something to the future? What would it be? And much more interesting is the next question, who would want to receive it? My thoughts, my things, my happiness, my anger, my emotions… who cares about them? Thinking about this simple idea, I have to think about these questions.
After few days, I got the final answer – that it’s only the people who care about me. It’s my parents, my wife, and my friend Mikey. Hmm, who else? Absolutely nobody. When I share on social channels anything, I actually get too many likes, and what of it? Do they really care? What do people actually do in social network? Of course! I forgot! People want to be cared for or show their life as much better than it actually is… When I look at all these more deeply, I lose my perspective as a developer. I was getting closer to where the emotions have gone. Why do I need to be happy about a smiley on an instant messaging app, or why do I need to see photos of food of someone who I’ve seen once in my life. Seriously?
I have many things to say to my future kids, I want to remind my wife how much I love her after 5 years. (God knows, maybe I won’t even be alive). I want to say to my parents how I appreciate them, I want to remind Mikey, how he still annoys me… because they really care. After a lot of thinking to myself, I realized that life is moving too fast, and the internet, virtual things, apps, websites even go faster. They just push us to be involved more deeply in all these things.
Minute of Life makes you stop and breathe deeply, it doesn’t push you to hurry. It gives you the opportunity to build a bridge of time between you and your loved ones. It shows the importance of communication while not wasting it’s worth. YES! It can sound too philosophic or sophisticated, but I want to taste a sit-down meal, rather than fast food. I want to spend my minutes to create my message rather then sending a million worthless messages to everyone. I don’t want to have 5000 friends in social network. I do not want to get thousands of meaningless pieces of mail. I don’t want to get heart smileys on my instant messaging apps. I want to see a message from my own people when I least expect it.
Yes, you can code anything! Stronger, cooler, more technological, more logical, more more more. But you never can insert soul into it. Minute of Life opened a two sided idea in me. First of all, it showed me the beautiful engagement of technology, availability and value. Second, it underlines and separates itself from the other services in interpersonal messaging. This is the strongest part of it.
Basically, you come to the site, you create your message in the media editor where you can upload your photos, videos or record yourself. Then you choose the recipient (someone you really care about), then you set the date and time (this is necessary because your message will be available for viewing at this time) and you simply send it.
You can say that I’m wrong, but the programming is not the main point! The main point is the idea. And I see that this is the one of the coolest ideas I ever seen. How do people react to this service? That depends on who cares, who can see the real value.
Everyone’s eyes are on the next big thing. If there will be good supporters behind this idea, supporters with vision, I am sure it is going to take off. It’s just waiting for it’s time. I am the developer, I can judge their codes, but I cannot judge the idea. It works for me, and there are billions just like me who want to be really cared for by people who are really important to them.
Written by James Callahan – CEO of Star Root LLC, he has special interest in startup trends.