Each week, everyone emails in a few photos and a sentence or two, and Dearest sends the group a private Sunday digest with everyone’s updates. The catch is, you only receive the digest if you contribute that week.
It is meant for families, old friends, grandparents, siblings, or any small group that wants to stay close without another app or endless notifications.
It’s my way to be social and know what’s going on in my friends lives without social media.
So far I only have my friends using it but I love it.
> The catch is, you only receive the digest if you contribute that week.
I love the idea, but is there a risk that folks would drop off one by one and over time forget that the thing existed?
As someone who'd be at risk of forgetting, I'd find it nice to be periodically reminded about such a digest. Maybe get an abridged version once in a while or something like that.
It’s only been out for two weeks. You do get reminders that you are going to miss this weeks digest or that others have submitted etc. but your idea is great!
I’m working on
https://creditcardchecklist.com
It lets you keep track of your credit cards and which perks you have used and when the annual fee is going to hit. I often forget to use up the perk before it expires. You don’t even need an account buts you get notified if you make one. Also it’s free!
I also am working on https://trypixie.com - a way to employee your kids legally. It gets money into their Roth and saves you taxable income all while teaching them about working.
It technically has one, but the only way to use it was to tap on some various links until you managed to get to a Google search page. It was never intended for actual use outside of Nintendo's curated pages.
I miss when social media was mostly about my friends’ lives. It actually helped us stay in touch.
So much of social media now feels built around whatever is trending that week, not the relationships you actually want to keep up with.
That’s why I’m building Dearest (https://dearest.co) : a private, email-based Sunday photo digest for families and friends. Everyone sends a photo and a short update by Saturday night, and contributors get the group’s digest on Sunday morning. Hopefully this keeps us social and in touch.
I love it. As a physician, I see so many cases of elderly patients who have fallen and not been found for hours if not days.
In elder care, I am building https://statphone.com - one emergency number that rings multiple family members simultaneously and breaks through DND. Would love to chat/collaborate.
It gives you dedicated phone numbers you can share with the people and places that may need to reach you urgently. When someone calls one, it can ring multiple people at once, break through Do Not Disturb, and if no one answers, escalate to others.
For example, we give one to our kid’s school. It rings both of us at the same time so someone alway picks up.
Or we can give one to my dad’s doctor. It rings me and my sister first, and if we do not pick up, it rolls to my wife and brother in law.
No matter what number they call from, it shows up clearly as something like “Dad Emergency” or “Kids School” on our phones.
If no one answers, it uses its own voicemail, transcribes it, and sends it to everyone. We can still see who actually called via text or the dashboard.
At first we built it for ourselves, but figured it might be useful to other families too.
PS- recently someone brought to our attention that this could be useful for patients on transplant list. This will be worthwhile if we even help one transplant patient!
I actually don't know if Google Voice has that capability unless you hack it by having each phone logged into the same account.
The biggest benefit for me with StatPhone is the incoming callerID is the StatPhone number. So even if the kid's school is calling from a random number, on your phone it shows the StatPhone number and you know its a call pertains to your child.
Also grouped escalation, so if my father calls in an emergency, the kids get called first and then the in laws and our uncle.
Can you clarify how Statphone deals with the problem of random spam calls hitting the number by chance and ringing everyone? I assume that’s how most spam operates these days, just brute force on number permutations. I love the idea!
Unfortunately if a spammer called the StatPhone number, it would dial everyone. I thought about blocking or automatically categorizing but then you may miss an important call from an unknown number.
Most spammers are actually operating off of known lists, usually made off of some data leak.
I haven’t encountered that issue yet. I don’t have a great solution for that case.
How do escalations work for statphone? If the first group doesn't respond to the call, does it escalate to the second group while the call is in progress still? What happens if the caller hangs up? Very cool idea btw!
If the first group doesn't pick up, it starts calling the second group, but first group continues to ring.
If the caller hangs up, all ringing is stopped.
The cool thing is if it encounters the native phone's voicemail, it hangs up and continues to ring so doesn't think it was a picked up call.
We do have our own voicemail that will eventually answer (user defined timing), which then transcribes and sends the voicemail+transcription to all the group members.
I did and a few CPAs. Surprisingly my customers have been CPAs buying to offer to their clients.
Pixie is more like quickbooks or any other record keeping software. We don’t employ the children, their parents do. And as long as the kids are doing legitimate work, it’s fair and actually the irs has a page on it.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
Thank you for kind words.
Really appreciate this. You’re exactly who I had in mind.
On the subscription concern, totally fair. Everything in Pixie is exportable, so you always have your documentation. The underlying rule is longstanding. Pixie just helps systematize compliance. I’m building it assuming families will use it for 10+ years, so durability matters.
Great point on task based work. I can build that in if there’s demand. It makes a lot of sense for kid jobs.
On expat eligibility, I’ll look into it more closely. The key requirement is US taxable earned income, but living abroad can add complexity.
Each week, everyone emails in a few photos and a sentence or two, and Dearest sends the group a private Sunday digest with everyone’s updates. The catch is, you only receive the digest if you contribute that week.
It is meant for families, old friends, grandparents, siblings, or any small group that wants to stay close without another app or endless notifications.
It’s my way to be social and know what’s going on in my friends lives without social media.
So far I only have my friends using it but I love it.
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