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As I create my studies map, marking links and technologies to know, practice and get some knowledge, I think about what should I do? What should I create as I study this APIs, languages, etc?
And every now and then one thing comes to my mind: contact management. Today it's so hard to maintain accurate and up-to-date information on your contacts that I sense a real lack of an easy-to-use, complete and extensible application.
This is only me? There's someone out there that feel the same?
My first appointments to the final application, the "app should enable":
1. data grabbing from social networks (as many as possible);
2. control over data modified on these social networks and enable the user to decide if the update should or not be applied;
3. a history of applied updates, easily accessible at contact profile;
4. import and export data in various formats, including to cellphones, smartphones, Palms and the likes;
5. desktop offline option, using AIR, GoogleGears, SilverLight, anything.
Well, someone to weight in with ideas or is this kind of application dead on its conception? There's something out there that really does this?
Labels: internet business, opensource, simplicity, usability, user-centric
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UPDATE: TechCrunch reveal that Google will launch their Open Social approach on Thursday. More important, Michael Arrington's post explain better what will be this approach. Right on time!
Today, a co-worker saw my web-site and I felt ashamed about this blog. There's a lot of things to talk about, a lot of insights and readings to share. What a great incentive to come back, not be ashamed of my own employees!
The reality is that work, when done right, gives you the time of your life for (almost) anything you want to do. I have a lot of interests competing for my attention and I'm not a good time-organizer. So, this was to present my excuses about being away for so long and to introduce one of the subjects I want to discuss here.
Although widely discussed, time management and projects management (not work-related only) are still lacking something. Or maybe I have to study harder to understand how can I be more productive. Which is, for what I'm concerned, a great lack of all systems out there: they're not really easy to implement/stick with.
I'm not talking about changing habits - yeah, that's hard. But when you try to read "Getting Things Done" or "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" - for instance - you get stuck in an ocean of "why you have to do this", lame examples of how you can succeed and things like that.
Here I have to say that I do not finished "GTD" (nor the "7 habits"); although I really think it's great, I lost the will to apply the method by the first half of the book. I keep saying to myself "I'll try it again, I have to, it works for so many". But the main point is still there. Theres any stupid-proof method to get things done?
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Another thing that keeps annoying me is how my life isn't organized. Well, call me a librarian or a standard nerd, but I like to have my friends addresses just in one place. If this "one place" is somewhere that I can access through my cellphone, my e-mail app, my web-browser (and my web-mail) and from another devices/platforms, or it's something that will sync with then all, I don't care. I just want a simple way to have my data synchronized between apps, gadjets and even computers. And I'm talking about something as trivial as our "address book".
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All of this comes from some thoughts that are burning my head for a some time:
1. I want to use web-apps. Really! I'm connected almost all time. I develop them since 1996.
2. But when I'm not connected, I want to be able to access my data and use my apps, even in a simpler way.
3. My data is MINE. What the HECK? Let me export it, even if it isn't in a perfect way; let me get ALL MY data when I want to. I have to make backups, I have to access it offline - or maybe I have to change service. Yes, face it, your web app maybe isn't as great as you think - or maybe someone just made something better. Or I was in a bad mood when your server was down. So, give me what is already mine.
4. Besides finding old friends, checking possible future employees (or girlfriends ;) and other personnel-related tasks, social network should evolve to allow you to use your friend's information to decide what is relevant to you. I'll extend this in a post sometime latter this week, but imagine a social-relevant Digg. I'm talking about something like that - what matters to my network matters a lot more to me than what matters to a lot of unknown people. Complicated? I hope not.
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There's some technology - which I'm not already familiarized with - such as Adobe AIR (and MS SilverLight, maybe Prism?), Google Gears and the recently announced efforts of Google to build APIs and leverage the data under its hook to developers. This all will be targeted at this weblog now and then, as well as all web-related technologies, ColdFusion, Java and a lot more.
I hope it'll be fun for us all and I'm really glad to come back here. Let's see if I can stick with this.
Labels: adobe, coldfusion, google, high-tech, internet business, mashups, microsoft, simplicity, usability, user-centric
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There's a (hoax) history about the spatial run at the Cold War times, telling that while the US spent millions of dollars to develop a pen to use in space, the Russians just get... pencil.
Although it's a hoax, it's a good history. Something similar happens with CAPTCHA systems these days. They're somewhat hard to implement and a bad choice for people that wants to have some interaction with their readers.
BUT, in the link above from the Hackszine.com, there's another - simple&smart - solution. Just to put a false e-mail field (hidden by some CSS code or just a hidden field at all) and, if it comes filled, then you know a robot tried to post it.
It has some flaws, of course. Bot-code could be adapted; if you use CSS or Javascript to hide the field it would display in browsers that don't support these features, etc. But it's, again, simple and smart enough for most of the common situations. And sure it's simpler to the user, who hasn't to prove he's a human being - the work comes back to the bot programmer, who has to implement "intelligence" in it's bot.
Labels: captcha, simplicity, usability
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