Today we will release a small update to improve and build upon last month’s changes. These changes include:

Data Views: Entries, items and category data pages are now all directly accessible from under the user name in the header. New items and entries can now be added from the category pages, and new categories can be added from the category list view.

Global Quick Add: The global quick add is now available on data pages as well as display pages.

m.daytum.com: We have adjusted the recent entries interface so that the entire entry button will re-add the entry. The category adding functionality has been moved out of this button and to the right underneath the entry delete button.

Most Entries Display: A new display has been added to show the item with the most entries.

Today the site has been updated with Categories, numerous interface improvements, several feature additions and changes to the Plus plan pricing:

Categories: Until now, Daytum has relied on “counters” to manage and group items and their entries. Every item existed in a single counter, and every display used just one counter as its data source.

Counters have now become “Categories,” and items can be assigned multiple categories. For instance, “Running” may be categorized as “Exercise” as well as “Cardio”, so that it might be displayed in a cumulative “Exercise” display, as well as with other similarly categorized items in a “Cardio” panel.

New Display Options: We have added several new options to the display panels. Timespan allows a display to restrict the time-range of entries shown. Sort provides the option of re-arranging the sort order of a display either alphabetically or by amount. Displays can also be set to display data grouped by category or by item.

Timeline: We have added a new timeline chart display. This bar chart displays 6 weeks of entries by day, and can be navigated by rollover to reveal item or category totals on day-by-day basis.

New Data Views: The data-set pages have been sub-divided into parent pages for all your items and categories, individual pages for every item and category, as well as a feed view of your entries on a day-by-day basis.

Quick Add Field: We have borrowed from the mobile site, and added a global entry field to the top of the display page. This global quick add allows rapid entry of items (in the ITEM : AMOUNT format) without having to locate them in a display or the data view.

Daytum Plus: Premium account pricing has been reduced to $4/month.

We hope you enjoy these additions… Ryan and Nicholas.

While Spring has arrived in New York, we’ve been engineering and refining a couple major changes that we hope to have polished in a few more weeks. The most comprehensive and far-reaching change is to the way that data is structured on the site. Currently, each entry relates to one item which resides within a counter. To record an ice cream, I might enter it in my food counter, but if I’m interested in keeping tabs on desserts as well, or in separating my meals, each entry would have to be duplicated in a separate counter.

This straightforward approach has been great, but we realize that it’s not flexible enough… and we would like our API to be able to handle both more detailed and less detailed entries. To accomplish this, we will be migrating all of the current counters into “categories”.

Once we update the site, each existing item will be categorized with the name of its current counter, and all displays will be driven by categories rather than counters. You will then be able to add additional categories to an item so that our hypothetical ICE CREAM might be classified further as FOOD, DESSERT as well as DINNER. Displays will also be able to show single or multiple categories. We hope that this system will allow for finer slicing of your data, and may ultimately require fewer entries.

There are also several interface changes associated with this update which we believe strike a fair balance between sophistication and simplicity. It will also include many feature requests including date filtering of displays, display filtering of counters and tagging (aka, categories). Additionally, this lays the groundwork for the following update – our eagerly anticipated API.

If you’ve been enjoying using m.daytum.com site and would like to introduce the utility of the entry field to your desktop – we suggest you try making this widget for your Mac OS X dashboard:

1. Visit m.daytum.com with the Safari browser.

2. Log in, and go to your ADD page.

3. Adjust the width of your browser to the size you would like the widget to have.

3. In the toolbar, to the left of the bookmark button is an icon of a pair of scissors. Click this icon, and draw a rectangle around the entry area (as shown above), then click ADD.

The Daytum widget will now be added to your dashboard and your entry field will only be one keystroke away. To learn more about using the mobile entry field, please visit the mobile how-to page.

UPDATE: To create the dashboard widget using Safari 4, use the following directions:

1. Visit m.daytum.com with the Safari browser.

2. Log in, and go to your ADD page.

3. Adjust the width of your browser to the size you would like the widget to have.

4. Under the File menu, select “Open in Dashboard” and select the entry area (as shown above), then click ADD.

Today we are thrilled to introduce the newest means of recording entries on Daytum: m.daytum.com

The mobile version of the site has been optimized for use on iPhones and is fully compatible with the Android OS. The DISPLAY view has been resized to fit into a single column with larger controls and the same quick-add functionality you will recognize from the standard site.

Once you have logged into the mobile site, you will be taken to the ADD page, which is where the real utility begins. This page features an entry field with date options, and a list of your most recent entries. Users can simply start typing the name of the item they wish to update, and the form will auto-complete against existing entries. After selecting the correct COUNTER : ITEM, add an amount to record and submit. Your entry will then appear below the field and can be re-entered by clicking on the item in the history, or deleted by clicking the trash next to its name.

For more detailed instructions, please visit the updated How-To page for mobile submissions.

We hope that you enjoy the new site interface, and makes recording  your data even easier!

I would first like to thank all of our meticulous and enthusiastic beta testers. Ryan and I are truly grateful for your dedication to using and critiquing and sharing our project over the last six months.

We are very pleased today to announce that Daytum is now open to the public and upgraded with a new account option called Daytum Plus that offers pages, increased data limits and privacy for $5 a month. The video below demonstrates some of these new features.

Members of Daytum Plus will be able to create up to six pages with eight panels each and twenty-four counters. They may also make individual panels private, or hide sets of panels by including them on a private page. Additionally, all the activity for an account may be set to private so that entries do not appear on the home page or the user’s activity page. To upgrade to Daytum Plus, visit the new Account link next to the Settings at the top of your page.

All users can now download their entries as a CSV from the Account page. We have also included date options in the quick add, added new colors to the settings page, and will be making announcements about work for the iPhone and our API in the coming weeks. We really can’t wait to bring more of our ideas and your suggestions to fruition.

Thanks again, Nicholas and Ryan.

With the enthusiastic and informative response from our users with regards to our pricing (thank you again), we would love your input on what features we should develop next. We are finishing the testing and documentation of the public build of the site, and your responses here can help us direct our energies in the coming weeks.

Please vote in the comments for one of the following items, and we will tabulate your requests on the Daytum Feature Request panel.

- iPhone Application

- API

- Mobile Optimized Site

- Maps: geotag entries and display maps

- Search

- External Embedding of Panels

- Filter the Display of Counters: select items to show or hide from a counter in your display or compare items from multiple counters into a single display

- Date Filtering of Displays: select a date range to use for the display of a counter

- Social Features

- Timers

As this weekend comes to an end, we note the completion of six months of beta testing. It’s been a remarkable few months, filled with extraordinary interest in our concept and enthusiasm from our users. Ryan and I are now more dedicated than ever to bringing your suggestions and our ideas to the site. Since the beginning of the year we have laid the groundwork for ending the beta period and hope to have it open to the public shortly.

With the public launch, we will be introducing “Daytum Plus”, a premium account option that will include two highly requested features immediately, and more in the coming months. It is our hope that enough users will be interested in this subscription plan to cover our growing expenses and to allow us to improve the site at an improved pace.

For $5 a month, Daytum Plus subscribers will gain the following functionality:

1. More Data and Displays: The ability to create up to sixteen counters (instead of the current limit of six), and organize their displays among as many as six pages with up to eight displays per page.

2. Privacy Options: The ability to choose privacy settings at three different levels of their account. A page may be set as private to hide all displays on the page from public view or a single panel may be set as private to hide it from public view within a public page, and a dataset may be set to private to hide its entries and activity from public view.

All of our users will also share the benefits of a dedicated mobile site, an iPhone application as well as geo-tagging of entries and maps in the coming months.

We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments or via email: feedback@daytum.com.

We made a few major changes to the site today that we hope will go unnoticed. In preparation for adding more users to the site, we’ve tackled some large server improvements that will give us the headroom to provide more accounts, additional features and offer increased recording and displaying quotas.

In addition, today’s deploy contains fixes for a few ongoing issues:

1. Mislabeling of Graphs: A problem that sometimes caused stacked line graphs to be mis-labeled and spark bars to be positioned incorrectly has been addressed.

2. Decimal Displays of Integers: The “.0″ or “POINT ZERO” that has been following whole numbers in displays has been eliminated.

3. Average Day Calculation: The means by which average daily entries are calculated has been adjusted to be determined based on whole days, rather than simply the time elapsed between the present and the first entry. This adjustment will eliminate unexpectedly large results in the first day of calculations.

In the spirit of the new year and annual reporting, we have some last minute announcements to make before entering 2009!

First and foremost, we wanted to make sure that everyone who wished to track the new year received an invitation before the end of 2008. As of today, everyone who requested an account has been sent an invitation, so if you did not get yours, it may be trapped in the ether or caught in a spam box… let us know if you’ve been eagerly awaiting an invite and it never arrived.

We’ve also added a few new displays and a new display option:

1. Item with Last Entry: A straightforward display that will simply return the name of the item with the most recent entry. If you recorded 1 pizza for lunch, the display will display “pizza”, if you record the titles of movies you watch, it will show the last title viewed.

2. Entry: Latest / Largest / Smallest: These displays will return various entry amounts. You may choose to display the most recent entry amount, the largest or the smallest. We can think of numerous uses for these displays and know that you will too.

3. Toggle Item List Visibility: A new option is now available for all the displays that list all entries and their amounts after the total or average or other quantity. You can now decide whether to turn this list on or off.

Have a very happy new year, and we look forward to fulfilling many more of your requests in 2009!