The Commonplace Book App That Makes Thinking Feel Calm Again

In this video, I walk through the latest updates to Ember’s homepage—designed to turn your commonplace book into a calm, reflective space where you can linger with your thoughts instead of endlessly scrolling.

Transcript

Chapters
00:00 – Why I Built Ember (Commonplace Book + Journal)
00:32 – New Quote Navigation & Keyboard Controls
01:25 – The Digital Photo Frame Philosophy
02:20 – New Fireplace Animation & Stirring the Fire
03:10 – Interactive Floating Embers & Sparks
03:48 – Understanding the Warmth Legend (Mantle, Warm, Cooling)
04:23 – Moving Away from the Feed & Slow Thinking
05:26 – Try Ember & Wrap Up

Chapter 1: Why I Built Ember (Commonplace Book + Journal) [0:00]

For those of you who have been watching my channel, you know I’ve been building Ember. This is the app that is a commonplace book and a journal in one app. It allows you to think with your commonplace book.

The homepage has gotten some recent updates that I think are going to be super useful and super cool. First thing, it’s still one quote at a time. This is always going to be the case with the homepage of Ember. One quote at a time.

Chapter 2: New Quote Navigation & Keyboard Controls [0:32]

There are now controls here where you can manually change to the next quote as you’re reading through these quotes, letting them bubble up some ideas for you, or maybe inspire you and challenge you. You can pause so that you can just sit with an idea for a little bit. You can now go back if you wanted to look at a previous quote you didn’t get a chance to read, and you can always go back to today’s Spark once it changes over to a new quote. That will show up here for you.

These are also controlled by the keyboard on your computer. So instead of having to click these, I can use my left and right arrow keys to go back and forth.

Chapter 3: The Digital Photo Frame Philosophy [1:25]

The way I see it, it’s kind of like one of those digital frames that shows pictures and slowly transitions to the next one. As you look at those pictures, you’re instantly brought back into that moment, and you get to reminisce and think and reflect. You could spend an hour looking at those pictures. They’re all meaningful because they’re photos of you and your family, things you’ve accomplished or achieved, or whatever is important to you.

So I see this homepage as a kind of digital photo book, but of the quotes and ideas you’ve saved. All these ideas that are already important to you are now shuffling for you through this experience.

Chapter 4: New Fireplace Animation & Stirring the Fire [2:24]

Something else you may have noticed: I had these floating embers before, but now I have the logs and the fire at the bottom. This is a new little animation that I think adds to the experience.

But what’s cool is that when you want to, you can hover over this and click it to stir the fire. Stirring the fire is like poking a log and stoking the fire. It brings up new quotes and new ideas from your commonplace book. You can stir the fire either by clicking this link right here or by clicking the logs at the bottom.

Chapter 5: Interactive Floating Embers & Sparks [3:15]

Something else: I’ve turned the embers and sparks on the side into quotes from your commonplace book. If you hover over these, they show you a glimpse of the quote. If you click one, it becomes the center quote.

So if you happen to roll over one and you want to look at it and think about it, just click on it and it’ll switch to that quote so it’s front and center.

Chapter 6: Understanding the Warmth Legend (Mantle, Warm, Cooling) [3:55]

You’ll notice that some of them are bigger and some are brighter. There’s a legend down here. The bigger, brighter ones are on your mantle. The medium-size ones are warm, meaning they have reflections. You can use your journal to reflect on these ideas, and the more an idea shows up in your reflections, the warmer it gets.

Cooling ones are the ones you haven’t seen in a while. Those are the ones right here that are a little darker.

Chapter 7: Moving Away from the Feed & Slow Thinking [4:24]

We want to move away from the feed and have Ember be the new place we come to. You can do it on your phone. It can be a place you come to just have your ideas presented to you. You can let it play for you.

It’s slow changing on purpose. It’s not about “let me read this and move on.” I want it to leave enough space for you to read a quote maybe twice. Longer quotes get more time.

And of course, if you’ve already seen a quote, or you don’t want to think about it or reflect on it right now, just move on to the next one. But there is a reason behind the timing between when ideas show up and when they switch. I want this to be a calm space, a place to linger with an idea.

Chapter 8: Try Ember & Wrap Up [5:28]

If you haven’t checked out Ember, and you want to start thinking with your commonplace book, actually going deep with ideas instead of collecting ideas that go nowhere, try out Ember.

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