Tyler Garrett

This one is about seeing your reach. New analytics show not just who showed up, but who actually read — and where their attention landed, down to a heatmap on the page. Add QR codes on every link, a community leaderboard, and a scarcity twist on collecting short names, and there's a lot to dig into.

Heatmaps: where attention actually lands

Open any post's analytics (Studio → the 📊 on a post) and you'll see a heatmap of where readers' cursors clustered on the page. It's the difference between guessing and seeing: which passage held people, where they hovered, where they drifted off. A 'heat ink' slider lets you turn the intensity up or down.

It's built to stay fast and stay private. Cursor positions are bucketed into a fixed grid the moment they arrive, so the data size is bounded no matter how much traffic a post gets — and we never store raw mouse trails, only the aggregate. Bots are filtered out.

Reads, not just views

A page load isn't a read, so now we count both. A view becomes a 'read' once someone actually spends time — ten seconds or more — or scrolls deep into the piece. That gives you a real read-through rate, the average time people spend, and how far down they get. You can finally tell a glance from a genuine read.

Alongside that: where readers came from (referrers and countries) and what they're on (devices and browsers). The whole picture, per post.

QR codes on everything

Every link now carries a QR code — your space address, each short name you've collected, your short links, and every post (right on its analytics page). They sit as a small icon to keep things tidy; click to enlarge to a scannable size, then download a print-ready PNG. Put one on a flyer, a sticker, a slide. Your collected short domains finally have an in-real-life on-ramp.

Short names are now rationed

Collecting is more of a game now. Every name has a rarity by length — Legendary at one character, Epic at two, Rare at three — and you can only claim so many of each per month: one Legendary, two Epic, three Rare. A meter in Studio shows what you've spent and when it resets. Rearranging names you already hold is always free; only fresh grabs count against the limit.

Unlockables

Studio has a row of unlockables now — First flag, Rare find, Full set, Collector, Landlord — that light up as your collection grows. The locked ones show exactly what to chase, so there's always a next thing to come back for.

A community leaderboard

j7.is/leaderboard (the 🏆 in the menu) ranks everyone by pure writing math: most posts, longest single post, biggest average word count, and most words total across everything published. Climb it the honest way — write more, write longer, write denser.

See where your images are used

Open any image in your library and it now lists every post that uses it — yours and other people's — as clickable links, so you can trace where a photo ended up across j7. (And yes, the image viewer's close button actually closes it now.)

Easier on the eyes

Reading text is now a classic serif at a comfortable size, with bold, properly-sized headings — much kinder on a phone and from across the room. The crisp pixel font stays where it belongs: menus, buttons, and window chrome.

All of it is live today. Go check your heatmaps, grab a QR for your favorite link, and see where you land on the board.

This one is about your name and your reach. You can now collect short addresses like a set of cards, switch which one is your front door, see what is catching fire across all of j7, and open private rooms for the conversations that should not be in the lobby. A lot shipped at once — here is the whole tour.

Your name is a collection now

Your address used to be whatever your GitHub handle turned into, and that was that. Now it is yours to shape. Open Studio and you will find a new section — Subdomains, your collection. Change your URL, hold extra names, and rearrange which one is home, all without losing the links you have already shared.

Changed your mind on a handle? Rename it. The old address does not die — it quietly becomes a redirect to the new one, so anything you posted or texted with the old link still lands exactly where it should.

Short names are rare — and worth chasing

Every name now has a rarity, scored by length. Six characters and up are Common. Three is Rare. Two is Epic. And a single character — t, x, 7 — is Legendary, because there are only thirty-six of those on the entire platform. Type a name in Studio and watch its tier light up the moment it is free.

One default, the rest redirect

Pick the address you want to be your front door and star it. Everything else you hold points there. Some days you want the long, proper handle on your business card and the one-letter link in a text message — now that is a single click, not a migration.

Fire and funny, now across all of j7

The fire and funny reactions used to live inside each space. Now j7.is/fire and j7.is/funny rank the posts catching fire across every space on the platform — one global board the whole community can discover and pile onto. Your space still keeps its own local board, with a one-tap jump to the global one.

Rooms

The chat used to be a single room. Now there is a second, black button next to it: Rooms. Open it to see the channels you are in, jump into one by name, or start your own — public for anyone with the name, or private with an invite list. Same quick chat, as many rooms as you need.

The Lobby is one room — and now it says so

People kept asking: is this chat global? Per page? Per person? Fair question. The main room is now clearly the j7 Lobby — one room, everyone on j7 — with a banner that says exactly that. No more guessing who is on the other end.

Your account lives in the Apple menu

Your username is off the top-right corner. Click the Apple in the menu bar — like a real Mac — and you will find your Studio, Change URL, and Sign out. A cleaner bar, and a more obvious home for the account things.

Short links, minus the confusion

Making a short link no longer asks you to choose between domains. It just uses the subdomain you are on, and says so. You can edit a link's code after the fact too — and if you do, we offer to keep the old code alive as a redirect, so a link you already shared never 404s.

All of it is live today. Go claim a name you will be proud of — and if you manage to snag a Legendary one, you earned it.

Okay, it happened. My bite isn't great, not surprised, boom it happened so fast. I need to practice passing the guard so this doesn't happen in the future. Today is the day I chipped my tooth, not my first bump in BJJ, but the first one that made me go "hmm maybe i need a mouth guard."

we gotta work on how you pass the guard

— jeff

Watching the video, it happens so fast, and I sacrificed that space, and should have been a bit stickier with that leg. It's not that simple, there's a lot to learn here!

Your instructor owes your a nice dinner.

— Dentist

A handful of changes shipped to j7 this week. They all point at one idea: writing and publishing should never make you think twice, and never make you nervous about losing work. Write without fear, a place to write, without fear of doing everything right. Without having to recreate the wheel..

Your work saves itself

There is no Publish button anymore. The moment you start, your post is live, and every change saves on its own — you will see "All changes saved" as you write. If the connection blinks or you close the tab, your draft is kept safely on your device and restored right where you left off.

Reuse any image you have uploaded

Every image you upload now lives in a library on your space. Setting a cover or dropping a picture into a post lets you pick from anything you have used before — no hunting for the same file, no uploading it twice.

Reactions that make sense

Up and down are now one or the other — never both — and tapping your vote again takes it back. Fire and laugh stay as quick, independent reactions.

Edit in one click

When you are signed in and reading your own post, an Edit link sits right at the top — straight into the editor, with no detour through the dashboard.

All of it is in service of keeping j7 quiet and frictionless: your name and your writing, online, without the busywork. More soon.

The triangle choke is a submission that my instructor is great at doing, and it becomes one of the hardest to get out of. Until today. While fighting on my back with my older brother dominating me, I learned this is one of those chokes that you just have to get used to if you're on your back a lot and have long legs.

The triangle choke has a few details and hip movements you don't think about

While performing a triangle choke, I'm learning it's a lot about hip placement, and an angle you want to create around your opponents neck. Less to do with getting a good bite, but rather to do with the right bite.

Escaping the triangle choke happens before it starts.

My instructor taught me, you know it's coming, their thigh jumps up and essentially puts pressure on your head/neck. Here' you want to grab their leg, and this straightens their leg out, they are unable to create the bite. I was able to perform this while sparing. It worked great.