Messages

51

General Software Discussion / Re: They're Still Standing or On Passion in Programming or The Soultron Lesson

« on: January 27, 2013, 05:47 PM »

I might have missed your reply in that post. I'm actually more of a hierarchies/tree guy and I would never defend tags over trees in isolation. Perhaps you could better explain where you got that impression or link back to the reply you wrote?

I perfectly know about the missing "market value" of these criteria, hence my search for people who are like those I cited in my intro post here

-clean

Marketing is not market value though. There are of course branches and departments nowadays but the heyday of marketing has been art value (product identity) meets people (customers/clients) using research (research/math/stats) in a never ending recycling package that works in harmony with the product.

People who're in search for excellence, notwithstanding the financial outcome.

-clean

See that's just not how excellent people work. People search financial outcome and become excellent provided the finances were good enough to supply and maintain their body and their tools. (Peace of mind also works.)

Here and then, I try to be a cynic, as I've got to know that being cynic is the way of the world, but then, I cherish the gifted heroes who do put their heart in what they do, and thus, it's not a coincidence that almost all of those artists I cited are young or very young: The drama of human existence being that for adult life, financial considerations MUST take over since without shifting your priorities, you won't be able to take care of your family: Society makes whores, and there's nothing that could ever be done about it, cf. these "free love" communities of "1968" that failed because of the "big shots" attracting the females, as in any traditional society formation, and the "neglected" men jumping out from an idea of "equal society" ( I don't bring links to sources here, but there's plenty of them).

-clean

There are certainly exceptions but most gifted passionate artists turn out to be young ALSO because they are the ultimate whores.

The olympics being one of the best example of this excellence where in boys as early as possible are indoctrinated into a particular activity of excellence to hone their passion on a particular sports even without being given an opportunity to have a choice outside of it.

Especially when the media, the tournament rankings and the top of the top niche communities know you, these boys end up having zero choice except to continue on with that path until their excellence allows them to step away from the rat race.

I conceived and propammed "Manuscript" in a way of endless improvement, implementing lots of high-brow features totally unknown at the time (and some of them, even today), and then, I got 5 "sales", for the crippled (I limited the number of possible items there) versions, and I thought by myself, "are these people buying my light version in order to steal my ideas, to do "re-engineering"? Which is to say, I didn't take the smallest "satisfaction" from these 5 sales, but they made me fearful, more fearful that I'd had ever been. (Thus my current emphesis on "legal" questions, since I'm fearing that some of my ideas in "Manuscript" could be - or have already been, without my knowlege? - could be patented by the U.S. Patent Office, so that in my own future pim prog, I would be a "criminal" to use my own ideas from 1995.)

Unfortunately, I choose another subject in university, beyond "IT" / programming, and I'm too old now in order to really learn programming from scratch. I've to admit that I feel some envy on being informed, by somebody like Neville, by his editor's price, and the number he claims to have sold this editor, when then making my multiplication. But then, I've never envied, in my whole life, people who did something really good, something really "completed": I CHERISH mastering, but I've got lots a probs with cold reasoning.

My "music" examples were about people who "went the extra mile", and who didn't mind if the financial outcome was on par - hence my departure with Vidgen in that competition and the same Vidgen later on, trying to "collect". Some months ago, I tried to convince "kinook", the people / man behind Ultra Recall, that "doing better" was to give him real financial benefits, when in fact, I don't really know about this.

Truths is, the "financial returns" aspect in programming doesn't interst me that much: As soon as you can make your living / survive with programming, you've got all your chances

TO MAKE PROGRAMMING AN ART.

-clean

Unfortunately art like life isn't fair too.

The reason some people can drop the financial outcome is because others (in society, in an economy, government, culture) are filling enough of their financial needs to live.

If artists have to hunt for food, they would have less time to do art.

That holds true too for a decent outliner. A decent outliner who can't outlaw the law and protect itself is not as decent as it claims to be. See my previous example.

You need threats to create excellence and you need threats to that excellence to better hone your outliner to be decent enough "against the unfair world".

A programmer who can't see the dangers of losing data won't develop better backup features or cross-platform or online sync.

This is just the tip of the iceberg too. Any artist have a responsibility to their art, to better know what would threaten their art.

It is not that this responsibility disappears but in a more developed country, institutions form structure that shield you from one vulnerability and over time expose you to their vulnerability. You simply can't hone and create great ideas without being under fire. You can only have someone do the menial work for the artist so the artist can fully offer his greatness to the world. That's how it has always been in the real world of the underdogs.

Those destined to fulfill great software are not born to conceive solutions, they are born to receive greater problems and conceive greater methods to survive against those problems. Over time, some slick salesman or marketing manager or opportunistic youngster will paint it as solutions but in truth there is no true solution that is ever attempted in this world that solves. It all starts with problems and greater problems and one time or the other someone builds a "solution" built to withstand all the incoming threats until it too passes away in myths, hero worship, brand personalities, etc.

Everything else is just Hollywood and lesser hollywood known as "His" "story" i.e. the story of the descendants of the winner.

And Paul, you're of my kind: We're some some people who try to be helpful to this world. We're one of a kind, when most people deciced to be nourrish their family. I can't even blame them, but then, I've got the right to be deeply disappointed with the way of this world I so much would like to improve. And to hell with cynics on outlinersoftware.com.

-clean

Thanks for the compliment but I'm not your kind.

I haven't given my soul to learning how to code, I haven't had any "fast assimilation" of anything. Software, hardware, etc.

Maybe the length of my posts give that illusion but even a slow turtle can't be compared to a moss covered rock. One of them will move on, the other will always be stuck.

You're also mistaken by saying I want to help the world. I can't even help myself.

I don't work towards helping the world. I work to survive and at times I receive a form of vanity or a form of psychological irrationality in which I'll do one of the following thanks to my cognitive blindness and bias:

- Discuss and then maybe get trapped into the illusion of arguing with someone because I want to communicate

- Want to communicate because someone is wrong on the internet

- Desire confirmation bias because I wasn't passionate enough in helping myself secure and realize the validity of my own ideas

- Desire contradicting opinions because I want someone to do all the work at pointing all the holes in my opinion

- Post a thread in a forum I've registered to because I'm too lazy to register to a new forum

- Share something because the act can fill me with dopamine

- Help someone because being registered to a group blinds my brain into forming an ingroup fallacy where I have to reciprocate my desire back to the group

The lists and the reasons go on and on and truth be told, I don't know any of this stuff besides what's often written in pop psychology but I know enough of myself to know that I don't spend the entire days of my life maximizing and optimizing a way to help the world, help part of the world, help my country, help part of my country, help people in my region. I don't even spend seconds thinking how to help the woman I love the most.

I'm just not that person and I apologize for whatever it is I wrote that gave you that false idea.

52

Living Room / 2nd Comic Book Thread (Just a link share)

« on: January 27, 2013, 12:52 PM »

I have no idea what kind of search I got to lead to this site but it does not appear to be that well known.

http://whatthingsdo.com/

Example Image: (Incomplete, Just click on the First Link for the Full Comic)

I can't seem to load the image from DC or IMGUR so TinyPic it is:

Spoiler

53

Living Room / Male Comic Book Character in Female Poses

« on: January 27, 2013, 11:25 AM »

How to fix every Strong Female Character pose in superhero comics: replace the character with Hawkeye doing the same thing." -Gingerhaze

A blog with Clint "Hawkeye" Barton being placed in the same provocative, female poses that are featured in superhero comics.

http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/

IMO it does not fix the issue because of the more modern metrosexual male hero being like classic gay Batman and Robin parodies but still interesting.

54

General Software Discussion / Re: POSTING 101

« on: January 27, 2013, 10:09 AM »

I am not even sure I would do it as a single forum post.

Perhaps it would work better as a locked thread, with the first post serving as a table of contents and each how-to as a separate post within the thread.

If I did it that way, it would have to be locked, to prevent misc. non-tutorial posts from cluttering the thread.

Another alternative would be a single stand alone page, linked to in the first post of a thread, and the thread remaining open for comments, suggestions, and questions.

-app103 (January 27, 2013, 09:16 AM)

Suggestion: auto-pm for new users with an archived copy in the personal area of someone's account.

55

General Software Discussion / Re: They're Still Standing or On Passion in Programming or The Soultron Lesson

« on: January 27, 2013, 09:57 AM »

In outlinersoftware.com there, they do endless discussions about the perfect outliner, but then, nobody anywhere does any real work in order to attain it, and I wrote so much on this subject in the past, I simply don't have the guts anymore to do it again.

-clean

Ahh...but see there's where you are mistaken.

You don't have to write the guts anymore. That's out there, what you lack is the boobs (of the concept) to attract the right mix of contributors to your vision.

It's crass but it's true.

This is what separates software visions from software production. Even if vision can do, it also has to teach the producer how to "create something out of nothing".

This is why Steve Jobs can still have something to offer despite marketing having become both an overpaid corporate job and something every one person with money can apply. You can't replicate human vision because human vision is not just some motivated idea with a motivated coder, it's a platform that convinces people to do even greater things on it. (or worse things/or hate it for being a vision instead of just a sw/hw)

To create an analogy between music and software, the passionate musician still needs the internet or shop seller to create an access point and every shop has a different immediate early bird user who are crucial in producing first passionate identity for a software.

Any decent software who introduces it in a shop where the audience cares less for the product is bound to receive insufficient traction or any attention at all.

For example, I bet regardless of how slick the product is, if a software was given a better title like Manuscript in DC...there will be only a few user using it compared to FARRO (Find and Run Robot Outliner).

Given enough great quality, there will still be users but not enough users and "modders" who will see Manuscript like they would see the Twitter API.

Continuing on is the deceptive road. This is where the likes of Steve Jobs differ from the average "marketing = attention".

Software, like music, means it's one thing to just use the internet to upload music, it's another thing to provide vanity. Vanity for some coder to drop all that they are doing to "serve" FARRO. Vanity for the maker of Manuscript to write a long forum post on Surfulator. Vanity for skwire to pay attention to a thread and spend time on a software. Vanity for the music lover to just listen and view music and follow the band without all the "shoulds" which allows a band to last a generation or two.

That vanity simply does not come from recruiting a programmer to make real a concept you want. Someone as good as skwire will only go so far on the software before he starts thinking about the name and the icons and the mascot of the software and fans of skwire won't help him push those softwares up but neither will critics. Only competing ideas that tugs on skwire's vanity would.

For example, limiting only to DC regulars, you can never make a programmer you hired fulfill your vision of a decent outliner unless you can fulfill their vision along with your vision without creating bloat.

...but, like music, that's not the end. Decent sound alone does not make for decent music. Decent sound is produced by decent lyrics, decent emotional return, decent context of where to hear the sound and decent appreciation of how much you access, payed and vainly feel you've connected with the artist...and it only works if the artist can continue stimulating and diversifying you with their songs.

If they simply created one of the best music in history, not only will that music not be popular compared to crappier music but if the rest of their music and followers have bad taste in music...it's all a flash in the pan.

What this means is that...say you got skwire to be your recruit and skwire gets all your needs and gets all his needs and it's time to play the music.

Unless you have a human lyric analyzer like IainB for that outliner, you will never be able to get the "clipping of statistics" versus "plain clipping". Even IainB does not code for you, you need to hire him and listen to him simply so that skwire will have a more numerical outline workflow different from your average outliner.

...but neither are enough because one is biased (skwire) and another is neutral (IainB). You need another polarizing figure and a disagreeing figure to "create" magic.

You need a band who (hypothetically) can turn my hypothetical model of IainB's and skwire's special bullet points from this design:

Name of Clipped Page
(You have clipped 50% of this webpage)
[Clip page] - (click to reveal)
Dates involved: 1711 (link new timeline)
Locations involved: Great Britain (add another location)
Search events: South Sea Bubble

Notes:
-Write on DC
--Posted

and convert it with my hypothetical of TaoPhoenix's and App's interface model of:

Name of Clipped Page
(Clipped: 50%) [green button] (shows only honest highlights) [red button] (shows lies)

[Click to reveal dishonest outline of clip]

Spoiler

-Great Britain created an artificial economic situation that led an economic depression tag: Artificial

[Click to reveal honest outline of clip]

Spoiler

-EU allowances for delivery in December sank to a record 4.79 euros ($6.37) a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange on 2013-01-21T12:11:25Z

[Set TaoTags: Caring for dogs]

[Show Tao Notes]

Spoiler

Economic depression increases: (clip) Skinny dogs nose through the piles looking for scraps.

Read more: http://world.time.co...looms/#ixzz2JBpZ58Mk

[Proposed To-Do]
[Hard]Send your dog to another country
[Medium]Train your dog to be more conservative and walk him less
[Easy]Stack up on foods

Notice how those two interfaces while essentially having the same mechanic and dynamic changes in aesthetic simply by adding some of TaoPhoenix' view with that of App's philosophy of pure, honest, simple software. It's not always advanced functionality that's lacking in decent outliners but advanced visions of empathy, passion, utilization and "human building" (as opposed to machine learning).

Imagine how much more the interface can morph if you add Carol Haynes' vision, mouser's vision, Stephen[insertnumber]'s vision, kalos' vision, wraith808's vision, Renegade's vision, 40hz's vision, etc. (sorry for the users who weren't mentioned like tomos who I had in the back of my mind as a first name choice but for some reason my mind blanked out when I actually started to write)

You don't have to insert all these people's feature suggestions as it will bloat it up and change the focus of your guts but, again, I apologize for being crass but if you're a male dog lover: the boobs of a female dog lover looks different from the boobs of a female dog hater,

...however if you just keep dating a female dog lover instead of say a wolf dog lover. Your decent outliner can never evolve differently enough to meet your vision of outlining as you evolve and communicate more with people who have the same yet different vision for an outliner unless you can hire a programmer who just happens to have more of a hunger and knowledge than you do at pushing your vision.

It's the same with music. Unless it's great different music like say Aussie themed music rather than great American music, music stops being decent and we'll all just be trapped hearing the same annoying genre songs regardless of how great they are. Every song needs to go through a stage of rock and roll as well as tranquility as well as classical symphony. Similarly, every decent software needs to have a little bit of rebellious design within it's guts and you can only get those by having the vision to create boobs to produce the common weal out of different entities as opposed to the reverse where the common weal have become a community and they all get together to create a software. It just won't change things. People in outlinersoftware.com or people in DC who are simply sold by the cash and guts will more often try to satisfice your guts while hoping they can get more of your cash.

If you want to create better but different (undervisionized) software, you need to be able to add boobs to the guts of your concept. It doesn't mean if it's hardware or software or a piece of paper like money or constitution. Any man can lament underproduction until they see the super production of wage slavery of outsourcing and factory work during the industrial age but what makes decent different outliners happen as it was envisioned or as it came from missing opportunity remains in the end the ability of boobs to magnetize both men and women of different visions and different needs to compromise and work together on something that turned out to be something not there.

P.S. Btw for those thinking I just want to be crass or apathetic or misogynist and I could have chosen a better analogy, I apologize but I simply can't think of any other concept that matches the same attributes as an analogy.

See the similar thing between boobs and outliners is that they can sometimes be in basics just fats. A guy can create boobs by being fat and getting manboobs. An outliner user can create a different outline simply by turning it into a PIM and adding the fat of tags and indexing of files without any creativity.

Both concepts though while simple attract vanities, philosophies and a who's who of people. Yes, in the shallowest of misogyny, it just attracts a man to a woman but in real social interactions...sometimes it's the woman who wear fake bras, sometimes it's the man who sees more rather than less with an A cup. It's also just not related to sex. There's breastfeeding, there's how the larger ones get in the way of athletics and hurt the spine, there's it's influence in the fictional depiction of comic book characters.

It has a harmonizing effect on par with say...the Founding Fathers of different principles and philosophies and different timelines coming together that differentiates itself from the hollow networking and recruiting of coders, marketers, salespeople. It's just a necessary coming together to create and send out both great undervisionized music and decent undervisionized outliners.

Maybe if I have a high charisma or this post was short then I could have dodged the analogy for an example but, as most of you know, I don't. It just fits the criteria of what I wanted to show. As with most of my posts, I pick the closest short word analogy I can think of at a moment's notice and unfortunately it just happens to be a word strongly associated with NSFW.

56

General Software Discussion / Re: They're Still Standing or On Passion in Programming or The Soultron Lesson

« on: January 26, 2013, 06:02 PM »

clean, just a suggestion but I think you are better off reframing the thread into a coding request for someone who will continue with manuscript.

Some people like skwire who tend to respond from a "feature request" PoV may not read to the last part and realize this is a recruitment thread because it's way below in your post.

Others may not quite follow the relation between decent outliner, music and manuscript. Not because of the presentation but because it's three different concepts. Sound, outline, drafting.

A clearer prototype or mock-up presentation of Manuscript would better clear up what decent outliners are. You also have to consider that outliners are not clippers too often. When you merge those two, you have to expect people to understand what type of outlining/clipping functionality and interface you really mean when you say decent.

Surfulator could be decent to someone who has no idea of it but the way you can't search or stumble on it accidentally by doing a search for FF Add-ons always held it back from the same potential testing base that services like Evernote provided.

You also did not explain what makes Zoot special conceptually.

Still...even with all this, DC may not be the right forum to do such recruiting. Maybe Hacker News or Stack Overflow or AskReddit could be your prime site but DC has no history of developing such a concept.

It's also worth mentioning that to many common users, OneNote and hardware like the Samsung Galaxy Note are what's known as decent outliners to them.

Ignoring the mentioning of how your decent outliner would differ from these programs will confuse your intended audience even if they understand the entire thread. Remember nowadays notes can be voice notes so keep in mind that when music is used as an analogy, you have to make sure you meant it as an analogy of passion and not that one of the features of a decent outliner is music/voice/Siri-capability.

57

General Software Discussion / Re: POSTING 101

« on: January 26, 2013, 04:07 PM »

good idea app - a lot of people have trouble with attaching images.
I never actually knew about the picture button 40 mentions. I always used the 'Link inline image'
(which I find very obscure use of language: I dont even know what 'inline' means here; and I'm not linking, I'm uploading )

-tomos (January 26, 2013, 03:27 PM)

I think that's intentional on mouser's side.

The forum is not really image host friendly as it might not scale well or the image might disappear. Also mass loading slows down too I think.

The image button is just there because it's a traditional toolbar template for most post editor so it's like killing two bird with one stone.

Those who know what they know still have what they want.
Those new to forums can apply the "recommended" way of doing the same function.

Inline means "inside" "line". It's the less powerful cousin of the word "embed" and the opposite of outline. It just means inside a bunch of letters, there's something inside like outline means outside a bunch of letters there are headers, sub-headers, chapters, etc. On occasions it can even be simply a synonym for inside depending on the knowledge of the reader on that particular function.

Embed would mean you can see the object once you inserted it as an attachment. Inline is like the red underline when you misspell a word. There's a "hint" to a greater feature (like [nobbc]) but no one really knows what it really all means unless you know what it should mean but at least it's inside of the text so it does not actually load anything and slow things down when editing.

Embedding an image would instantly show the image not only in the post editor but in the preview. See blog editors.

It's actually the word Link that makes things wrong IMO.

Not so confusing as to be unusable but whoever wrote it did not consider that the user sees the word attach and it should be Set Inline Attachments or Set Attached Image InPost.

Not really clearer but truer to the meaning and not requiring the reader to split the dual meaning of web link versus any other link.

I will say though, how can you not understand inline but know [nobbc]?! That's like the mother of confusing and elusive and redundant bbc code.  

58

Living Room / (From Slashdot) Is the Computer Revolution Coming to a Close?

« on: January 26, 2013, 04:56 AM »

http://hardware.slas...lose?sdsrc=popbyskid

http://krugman.blogs...2/26/is-growth-over/



Notable keywords in the comments:

Augmented Reality

Not Really for Software

Without a World of Microsoft, the innovation would not have reached towards the unwashed masses

Criticism of the above: OpenGL, MS Bloatware, "The Internet is a Fad", PDA

My comment:

Ironically I disagree with the trend. I view the next revolution as being Tim Ferris baby boomers.

Those who read the "someone hired someone to do a job for them" thread already heard the first shot.

Humans are inherently selfish and our greatest skills have always been domesticating animals. Now that most animals have either need to become extinct or sanctuarized, we've set our sights on ourselves.

We will be the next revolution. The maid or virtual assistant revolution where workplace philosophies found in Google would flow towards everyday living and the maid service will create a new form of outsourcing meets machine learning operator meets industrial revolution wage slavery all combine into Tech Maids that knows how to work all the gadgets, buy all the gadgets, work on the coding, life coach you through all the system settings for everyday life.

IT and HR will merge into Human TMs (Human Trademarkers for the monopolizing of Tech Maids) which is kind of like establishing a job where the family doctor is only for the family or the plumber is only working for members of a certain union.  

59

General Software Discussion / Re: POSTING 101

« on: January 26, 2013, 04:32 AM »

Probably when mouser is on or nearing 12 nn or 12 midnight. (As it commonly is across the web).

I have one weird experience recently where it send me that message but a single click refresh and the forum was instantly back on.

If you were being sarcastic, I apologize for missing it.

60

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« on: January 25, 2013, 04:34 PM »

something that shocked many in the Linux community who though the dawn of the Nix order would soon come to pass...

-40hz

Wait...something actually shocked the Linux community?! 

61

General Software Discussion / Re: POSTING 101

« on: January 25, 2013, 04:27 PM »

This may be a little bit overboard depending on what you are practicing and if you know this already, I apologize.

Some software I think like Latex and it's WYSIWYM cousin Lyx, holds this concept of never use bold, italics, underline until you have typed all your text.

Some novel writing concepts also hold this minimum, no working/editing on your header and chapters until you have written out all the stories and filled all the section.

For images, you can slow down the necessity of worrying about the anchor by creating a placemark instead. If you can Ascii art it, I guess it helps but mostly instead of [ Invalid Attachment ] you can type in:

[mood: warm]

Every prolonged bloody war gets to a point where a dad must appreciate the birth of their only child before the sunset drops hours after the red hot noon.

[face: bearded] Athalaxix the warlord:

How goes the siege?

[face: young] ???:

It goes...ACK!!! [spurt: blood]

It's not really advisable but if you really have a hard time grasping the attach and the browse box, placemarking without attaching an image helps disassociating yourself from the task and hones you in on how everything in a forum editor is essentially an anchor concept.

For example, you attach an image from browse (which opens your machine) and so once you are in the link inline image box stage instead of thinking this attach thing goes here or image 1 should be in attach 1, you already have a concept that attach 1 should replace placeholder x.

For example [face: young] will be deleted for an image.

When you start getting this consistent world view of forum editors, everything churns in a singular pattern of placemark -> attach.

Insert quote button once clicked attaches a placemark of the quote.

Titles above posts once clicked attaches a jump towards the post you are talking about.

Example, Hey, IainB, could you please supply me with a How-To for the Click to Reveal/Hide box in your Reply #4 here?  I can't seem to figure it out by myself.

Try clicking the blue link in that sentence and see where it loads differently from when you did it.

When you can do that, concepts like tables, permalinks, attaching images versus pasting image urls...they all start to function the same mechanically i.e. they are all one and the same. Clicking a button like SP and writing

Spoiler

has the same role as typing [url] or writing

. It's all anchoring something inside and it's all replacing what's inside and turning it into what you want it to be turned.

There are no real differences. The boxes are all the same. The anchors all hook something.

plus image is image hooked and pulling anchor to the center while image is in turn hooked to [ Invalid Attachment ].

Sometimes (apparently not in the case of spoilers), you can even cheat because when you quote someone's post, the editor is forced to unhide the newly born image and roll back to all the formatting that you see when you or that person is typing. Like if you quote my text here now, you'll see in the posting window how things were written. Where things were messed up. Where things formatted correctly. It's like you have an editor for the thing I wrote even if you didn't type it.

62

General Software Discussion / WindowsAndroid - What Microsoft should have been developing instead of Win8

« on: January 25, 2013, 03:51 PM »

(Same as previous thread, from Slashdot)

Direct Download Link: http://androidfileho...=9390288116658471029

Which Android: Android 4.0

What is it?: .exe early release for an Android emulator for win7, 8 and vista (I didn't read XP but the site tag says windows system)

A commentor also said:

AndroVM is better, runs on GNU/Linux and already supports hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering of Android games when the game installer is not huge (less than 100 MB in size).

I haven't really tried either but from a conceptual standpoint I think the next gen OS should be virtual spaces + desktop environment.

Imagine if you can just flip between lightweight mode, Win7 interface mode, Safe mode restart, Sandbox mode and Win8 interface mode by swiping or mousing towards a spot zone (or whatever the term Linux DE's call that edge into expo or scale mode).

It's something the Linux OS won't provide: A dedicated multi-desktop space for MS Office (LibreOffice in their case) where with a touch of a button/hotkey/voice command/gesture you can batch smart move the same programs but auto-close or hide others based on context.

It would be slick too and distinguish the Windows OS from others. Instead of opening programs, you would be flipping between virtual spaces each with it's own home folder structure but instead of a home folder - a single home folder can host a Document space, a Music space, a Note space...each with their own wallpaper, their own unique interface and their own unique auto-OS settings.

Example, for Process Tamer to work you have to set it and do a bunch of click. If MS can create a OS where your desk space has an option to automatically become uglier (removing effects) the more the process is bogged down...it's a feature that Linux DEs simply won't attempt even if they could. It would be too redundant. Just a command switch could change DE loads but for the burgeoning tablet market it's a slick alternative to seeing the force close pop-up in Android.

Instead there seems to be this ignorance of how much cooler and more in-demand a tablet emulator is than a tablet OS/tablet DE. Such a waste IMO because it's in the emulator that you can best see the difference between how much users really have a demand for a marketplace software like Google Play and what other tablet features are in-demand vs. simply tolerated because there's no choice. Plus MS seems to be ignoring how the tablet is like a moving window in real world usage and not a static screen.

63

General Software Discussion / BitTorrent Sync Sign-up Link

« on: January 25, 2013, 03:20 PM »

Sign-up form: http://labs.bittorre...nnouncement%2B012413

Description:http://blog.bittorre...rent-sync-pre-alpha/

Not my cup of tea (alpha cloud sync) but this was on Slashdot.

We like it when things work together. So we’ve been working on a new distributed syncing product to help manage personal files between multiple computers.

Today, BitTorrent Sync is in a pre-Alpha stage. And we’re hoping that users like you can help us build something sick. If you’re comfortable using early, incomplete software, and if you’re committed to helping us figure out a better way to sync, we want to hear from you.

We’re opening up enrollment in our pre-Alpha program to a limited number of testers. If you’re interested, check out the Labs page, fill out an application, and we’ll get you started.

Billed as the Dropbox meets Bittorrent, the recent comments said it just supposedly syncs the from phone to PC:

This PC mag article [pcmag.com] has a bit more info. Apparently the "unlimited storage" means whatever your phone or PC can hold.

So it looks like what it's doing is syncing files between your devices... or backing up your phone to your PC (if you wanna look at it that way), via the internet and using BT protocol... so you don't have to plug a USB cable from your phone to PC.

-Spy Handler

Sign-up Form: http://labs.bittorre...nnouncement%2B012413

64

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« on: January 25, 2013, 12:06 PM »

  Man, if I could like a post, I would like Carol's above. Bravo!!!    

On a side note, no, I am not running XP but on a handful of systems that are too old to justify loading Win7/Win8 on. I am in the minority that actually enjoys Windows 8 and I am running Windows 7 on my other systems. Like Carol, I have had ZERO issues with 64 bit versions of Windows since XP 64. The issues with XP 64 were developer/hardware manufacturer buy-in and as such the drivers sucked. Likewise, I would NEVER go back to any OS based on the 9x code-base. Microsoft releasing Windows XP and eliminating the antiquated OSes was the best move they could have made for the industry.

-Josh (January 25, 2013, 11:09 AM)

Yeah DC seriously lacks a like button.  

65

General Software Discussion / Re: Who is still runnig XP?

« on: January 25, 2013, 10:55 AM »

Distrust of Win7, 8, etc. There may be no DRM but I just don't buy into features of newer versions of Windows. (They are not exciting unlike new Linux DE features)

I miss the speedy-ness and simplicity of Win98 and if I could be sure I could troubleshoot and install all future software on it, I'd pick it too over WinXP. (Hate that default too many windows up and down arrow and you have x number of windows thing in XP. Hate the Mac look of Win7. Hate the Tablet look of Win8.)

66

Living Room / [Reddit] I couldn't learn Erlang so I invented it

« on: January 24, 2013, 02:40 PM »

http://www.reddit.co..._cos_it_didnt_exist/

Direct: http://erlang.org/pi...-January/071949.html

*Sigh* If only I understood half of what's being said but the Reddit commentors seem to like this so I thought some of you might like it too (especially hoping f0dder would reply to this like he replied to the cleanest source code thread)

Would also be nice if mouser or others could make a specific surprise coding school revolving around this text:

IDE's and revision control systems have just made matters worse - now you
have all the
old versions of the mess as well as the mess itself, and the IDE means you
can't even see the mess.

The best IDE in the world is your BRAIN - it's a zillion times better than
these
clicky things.

This made my life though:

Suppose you're starting off.

You can choose between twenty odd languages (all of them good for one
reason or another)
what took me 40 years to learn, you must try to understand in 2-3 years,
this is just not possible.

What languages should a beginner learn, what languages should a school
teach?

Now we get to the paradox of choice - because there are so many
alternatives it becomes
impossible to choose.

Old timers say "choose the language appropriate to the problem" when you
know 20 odd
languages (with varying degrees of proficiency) this is easy to say - but
If you know
two languages Java and C then this isn't much help.

There are literally problems where the solution in a CLP language is a few
lines
and is thousands of lines in C.

What would I recommend learning?

    - C
    - Prolog
    - Erlang (I'm biased)
    - Smalltalk
    - Javascript
    - Hakell / ML /OCaml
    - LISP/Scheme/Clojure

A couple of years should be enough (PER LANGUAGE).

Notice there is no quick fix here - if you want a quick fix go buy "learn
PHP in ten minutes"
and spend the next twenty years googling for "how do I compute the length
of a string"

THANK GOD. I have no idea how to Google this but FINALLY a definitive computer language step by step on which language to forever offer your life to.

No more learn Python first or C++ is too complicated or skip towards LISP or reading the constant, it's not the coding language.

Now if only there was a "reinvent a wheel" guide for a total newbie without going through Hello World and instantly jumping to why certain programs require speed or what plugin sets should be learned immediately for sole coding or just a zero jargon list.

Side Note: If someone knows the answer to this, was there a successor to OO programming and if not, how come?

I guess what I had in mind was a Lambda without being a Lambda (and no, I have no idea what a Lambda is even with Wikipedia but I know it's a symbol).

I guess inside of my head, I look at GUI functions and widget creations and I wonder why they couldn't be relowered into mini-programming languages rather than mini-plugins in order to serve as better GUI/mock up like objects instead of the common puzzle structure of programming. Is it simply because of the problem solving based history of coding to begin with or has it been tried and no one can just agree on a syntax for beginners?

It's sad because even for non-coders and non-mathematicians, the world is getting so complicated that you have to learn the mechanical syntax of home\favorties\emotion widget on an Android tablet to the desktop syntax of desktop managers to the reading syntax of books. I mean they are not legitimate syntax but combined as a whole, they can sometimes be more complicated than markdown and function as objects orienting other objects especially when something breaks like a HD has no cable or usb slot or you forgot to put a book in the e-reader or you forgot to put the metadata in Calibre or you forgot to search for a keyword in the Kindle Store or you forgot a pdf because you were too busy reading a book.

To know all the qualities of a higher language from the process of life and living and less from the process of being in front of a coding editor just seems like one of the few big missed opportunities in personal productivity systems. Like of course, simplicity makes it more applicable to life but proper indentation of clothes versus gadgets is far more superior mental advice IMO than just the mere advice to find a box to serve as separator of items.

67

General Software Discussion / Re: On data storage and applications going cloud (Surfulater, Mindjet et al.)

« on: January 24, 2013, 03:54 AM »

Paul, again, most of the time, I clip the whole text of a web page but then quickly bold important passages, or do it later on. It's not so much about cutting out legit material there (but cutting out all the "crap" around), but of FACILITATING FURTHER ACCESS upon that same material: You read a text, you form some thoughts about it or simply find some passages more important than others, and so you bold them or whatever, the point being, your second reading, months later perhaps, will not start from scratch on then, but will concrentrate on your "highlighted" passages, and also, these are quickly recognizable - now for simply downloaded web pages: you'll start from zero, and even will have some crap around your text. I think it RIDICULOUS that these pim's do their own, sub-standard "browsers" (e.g. in MI, in UR...), but don't think about processing nor of clearly distinguishing of bits within these "original" downloaded pages. All this is so poor here, and in direct comparison, the pdf "system" is much more practical indeed. This being said, I hate the pdf format, too, for its numerous limitations. But downloaded "original" web pages are worse than anything - and totally useless; as said, in years, I never "lost" anything by my way of doing it.

-helmut85

We're directly comparing the same things in different ways.

You're directly comparing present web clipping with present PDF "system". (Although I admit I don't know what you mean by system here as it's all about editing the format. I'm not familiar with any system outside of opening a PDF in a viewer or an editor)

The picture you should consider is directly comparing future full webpage clippers with the present PDF system.

What do YOU do (rhetorical question here), with your "downloaded original web pages" - you all must read them a second time, before doing any clipping. That's what I'm after here: The original web pages becomes a hindrance as soon as you quickly have read it once: After this primal vision, it should become something more accessible than the original web page is. Pdf is much better here, and my system of downloading plain text, then re-format it to my means, is best... if you have just a few pictures, tables, formulas that is - hence the ubiquity of pdf in sciences, and rightly so.

-helmut85

The system is too slow for me. I also have sensitive and easily tired eyes.

I don't clip something I have read. That's either bookmark or copy-paste into a text editor. Any type of picture, tables, formulas (though I admit I rarely do this) are screenshot and set besides the .txt.

When I clip I plan to either read it on the software or use the clipping process (highlighting to Diigo then reading from library) as an incentive to read.

PDF is much much worse since PDF editors can be more bulky than browsers. To copy one line, you must switch from hand tool to select tool or at least some variant of that. To truly edit it, you must have an idea of how to edit it.

In contrast web clippers are much clearer. If you selection - clip, you know why you're doing it already instead of just getting the text. (Maybe the text lay-out is much more readable, maybe the imagery of the lay-out helps better with data retention.) If you highlight, you know the limitations of the actual highlighter. (Diigo will make it easy to just read the highlights in the library, Scrapbook + can have different colors for different emotions/priorities, Surfulater's data will be delegated to metadata so not all highlights need to be highlights.)

It's just more seamless even when you're stuck clip-consuming it in the traditional way.

An example amoung thousands: You download rulings. You quickly bold the passages appearing important for your current context. Then you clip, from this whole text body, some passages - probable, you'll do this after some days, i.e. after having downloaded another 80 or 120 rulings in your case, i.e. you won't do this after really knowing what's decisive here, hence your need to read, and to "highlight passages within", many more such rulings. So what I'm doing here then, I trigger my clipping macros on some passages within these bold text blocks (or even between them if in the meantime it occured to me that my initial emphasis was partly misplaced), and I paste them, together with the origin, url, name of item and such, into the target texts.

-helmut85

What you're describing is more the traditional way of doing things.

It's not bad, but it does not work for anyone who are on the victim side of unproductivity.

I can't highlight for highlight's sake. My brain is not smart enough to create the association in the future.

It's like if there's a fire and there's time to visit a webclip of what to do in a fire articles with PC, that highlighting style blinds me.

Only it does not have to be as urgent as a fire. Coding philosophies, basic keyboard shortcut purposes, what to read and why to read something... all those overwhelm me. I need those data as visible to me as possible and I need those highlights to still be copy pasted in a different interface - to-do list, different PIM, cloud service...it's not a double backup or a reference file. It's about a rotation of data consumption.

Much like opening a spreadsheet for one related issue and opening a word processor for a related manual and opening a text editor for the ReadMe that's in that format. As much as possible I cannot afford a scenario where data is just clipped and reminded. I need as big of a holistic structure or else I'd forgot my previous data associations.

I also need these lay-out things such as aesthetic that sometimes can only be captured in full webpages because again, my memory fails me. The monotony of text too often discourage me to associating and connecting datas. (I can barely finish a PDF nowadays. I can read a couple of pages but returning to it is like a task of separating what's in front of me to what I'm currently reading.)

the real prob being that both force you to begin at zero with its respective content then.

-helmut85

I don't use UltraRecall but see here's the thing. I can't start at a bookmarked content or else I have to start at zero or it paralyzes me into not reading the content.

Different people have different way of taking things in and as you said, it's all about education but I would raise you this: It's not about an educated stance, it's dispelling myths of what a proper stance is.

Do you realize that in the end, it's again about the "accessibility of information"? Let's say you read all these things, and stored all these things. Then, in order to really have them available, in their bits, for your work, I have to browse 100 rulings for these important passages (remember this was done by first reading, so perhaps my reading time there was about 120 p.c. of yours at the same time) - whilst you will read all these 100 rulings again, which makes more than double reading time, since your second reading will be slowed down by your fear to not have "got" all the important passages here (when, in my work flow, it's probably time for underlining sub-passages now), and then, as I do, you'll export your clips.

-helmut85

See, this is what smart people don't realize about dumb people like me...it's not about the accessibility but the utilization of data.

I mentioned this elsewhere here with regards to the subject of a personal productivity system, a decent person (even a failing grade person in school) can consume many underrated data provided they have the access and the desire to consume that access.

A dumb person have a hard time still utilizing it. It's more towards the genre of personal productivity systems but this is brought up because it's a much simpler analogy.

Multiple highlights can be hard to test as it's very user based and the data might as well be liquid.

A single entry to-do list like 'reformat OS quickly' can work for you but it cannot work for me.

Then the common personal productivity systems changed this issue into it not being your next action or it not being S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely)

They don't really understand how tough this is for a person who can't even remember a conversation in the radio as a future reference or who jots down notes but can't even return to those notes which creates more overhead.

It's very hard to empathize with someone who can only desire to clean install an Operating System so long as they download an iso rather than burning an iso or just picking up a CD.

For webpages this is more complicated. I cannot have a web clipped Wikihow page tampering or organized with a longer article on the same subject. Even when the accessibility of say just moving the mouse so that the Wikihow page is no longer visible, it traps my mind into thinking this next data have to be treated with the same light hearted mood as the Wikihow page.

Aesthetic, Dynamic and Mechanic

The more capable a user, the more they underrate Aesthetic.

The more studious-receptive a user is to a given subject, the more they can forgive the Dynamic.

Now an average person (most likely someone who does not need a personal productivity system or can tweak their own) can access past recorded data where the aesthetic, dynamic and mechanic are on close to an equal scale. If they have partners or positive relationships, it's even possible to cheat as that workflow produce rational sense by giving birth to irrational scenarios for the conscious mind to feed upon.

Now a dumb person who has no one to defer to for his data (maybe they won't understand why data so simple that it can bookmark needs to be referred to by this person as a clipping) must access data in a broken highly volatile scale of aesthetic first for motivation and aesthetic last for memory retention or data context/data location retention.

The difference between a nitpicked aesthetic and a necessary aesthetic is that if you just like a webpage to look a certain way you have to push the scale of liking it very high at the beginning and just keep being reminded of that.

Necessary aesthetic is almost nil.

The beauty may help but it's how regularly you type the url of a storage site without bookmarking it or it's how regular you think to yourself, this data is clipped here not because it's a web clipper but it's the first thing that came to mind and I recall my other data on this topic is here too.

At this point, the obvious cliche of just describing or re-describing accessibility ends here.

The dynamic of data must be extremely exportable to your head. Everything from why you are doing this to silliness such as how the window pops up will be crucial to how you do something.

This is the utility portion of the data. Every data, even if you don't want to utilize it, must have utility to a dumb person or that apathy sets up the apathy to the next data.

At this point, I would assume you still get it but maybe the confusion comes from why you think a dumb person should scale so much of that information into utilization if they are just going to skip a text. Maybe you think it's just a form of appetizer or lack of knowledge.

I'll leave you to interpret that on your own because it's not like I have studied the issue.

The last part is what I think you are ignoring the most because it is the most irrational. Just keep in mind, I'm not describing how Surfulater should be in the future to compensate this need but am attempting to paint you a picture where you're two mountains back when you ask me whether I realize or do not realize accessibility of information.

See, for someone who is capable, mechanic is not contingent with information. You don't fix a car by reading a book.

You read a book then fix a car.

Same thing with the fire analogy. You don't try to learn how to prevent a fire when there's actually a fire.

You create a space. You take advantage of that space. Then you consume the data.

For my lifestyle it just does not work that way. It does not matter whether I'm living my lifestyle or I've gone out of my lifestyle. It's just very hard to simulate mechanic.

It's irrational I know but I consider the reception of some services to be proof of how those irrationality can exist in all people but some have better adaptation than others.

Keep in mind that I'm not talking about the mechanics of software or information capture but the mechanics of information itself.

To give you a hint (but not a direct example) of this irrationality.

Why would you clip this?

Shouldn't you guys be writing a blog (or 2) or something?

...and how by clipping it would you understand that it's not as deep a subject as you first explained it?

For an average person, they can answer why they would clip this without needing to clip this and the answer can move between shades of reminders and reference. i.e. the mechanic of information is to fulfill the mechanic of reminders and reference.

When you access information like this, sometimes the text, the table data, the formula image is fine. It could be better but it's fine.

A dumb person (or at least who I am) the text, the table data, the formula image must rise up beyond utility and beyond...back to aesthetics.

Every data does not have to be this way but every information must have a particular peculiarity to it that makes it not simply about accessibility of information. Aesthetic simply replace reminders. Mechanic of information is replaced by dynamic of information. Finally, mechanic is irrationally fulfilled by being able to unlearn the information. i.e. when a highlighted sentence stops being a sentence then and only then does it start being accessible information.

Again, just to re-emphasize, it does not have any thing specifically to do with the features and direction of Surfulater and full web clippers but rather simply to simulate throwing back your question at you.

Do you realize that even before information becomes information or gets gathered as information or gets read as information there are things that can trigger information without being words? There are singular 'word' that can convey information beyond what information can do? (So much so that there's a scam book called Power of Words that's being sold on Amazon if the reviewers are to be believed)

Do you know that there are certain concepts that can only be described in their native language?

Just a reply written by someone with a communication problem can confuse you and you have an educated stance.

As you have remarked, you can read and understand the English words but some things seem to mix around each other.

Imagine how difficult it can be, even at just a monotonous level, to decipher and realize information that are sarcasm, posters that are trolling, posters that send back confusing feedback like you are throwing an ad hoc, multiple contradicting instructions...and then...and then...have a mechanic that can remember this situation even when you have no real research background nor know how to instigate a study without the backing of a university or without the safety of a group.

There's just no comparison to the  access of information that you are describing. It's like every switching of the tab or every wrongly highlighted word can act as an advertisement while watching the television.

It's like every accessed information must not be backed up but be auto-recalled up to consciousness.

It's like every consumption of information can suddenly be filled by paranoia at a certain time so it has to be a different type of storage system.

It's just...I don't know how to put it any other way...but that different people consume and absorb and read information differently and when you add that a dumb person is inherently less capable and said dumb person happens to have a communication problem that's not exactly speaking in un-decipherable jargon...consuming information just becomes different. Some traditional methods help. Some traditional methods don't. Some traditional access of information can go for as much as being so irrational yet works wonders for that person.

Ok, in one single situation your way of doing things would appear acceptable: When you download pages without even reading them first in the slightest possible way. But then, is it sensible to do this?

-helmut85

It's tough to answer your question here because I have not revealed my way of doing things so hopefully the added detail above will better narrow this question as to what way you are thinking of when you say this.

See, it's one thing to say one did not read but there are different ways of "not reading".

Speed readers do not read so they can read fast but unless you're familiar with some of the theory, it does not make sense. To me, it does not make sense either but it's a form of phonetics dodging I think. It's really hard to explain. The most common explanation I've read is how speed reading makes novel reading "not fun".

My way is more dependent on how I downloaded it. Was it from Scrapbook+, I'll read it a different way. Was it from a RSS reader? What's the topic of the RSS reader? Was it from .mht, then why do I want to associate this information with the Opera browser. There's really no fine line difference between how I bookmark links with how I download web pages.

It all comes back to expected utility, the time I am clipping the text, the potential interruption I may have...I know these all sound redundant because we all plan how to read and consume and access information but that's why I wrote what I wrote above. You don't really want to keep assuming we're consuming information the same way.

Something as simple as not reading text could mean to you simply as not reading text.

To me, it can be the equivalent of seeing the header in DC and not reading that topic but instead of bookmarking it or archiving it, I clipped it.

Another variation could be that I don't read the sentence, I read the singular words or set of words and then highlight from there. i.e. what's the emotional state this set of words are doing to me and a) do I just copy paste it to PopUp Wisdom or b) I just highlight it in Diigo and then there's the c) d) e) f) and it will increase if I ever buy Surfulater.

There's some irony here, too: There's a pim user fraction who says, I'm happy with plain text. I'm reverting web pages to plain text, whilst many people probably fear loss of information when they don't "get" the formatted text of the web page in its original form. And then, I need formatting capabilities in my pim or whatever. So, "do your own formatting". Once more, most of the time, I get the text in whole, then "highlight" by formatting means. It's rare that I just clip a paragraph or so, because indeed I fear my changing clipping considerations. And indeed, it's very probable you need some ruling for a certain aspect now, but for another aspect in the future, so it's sensible to download it in full, then clip parts from this whole text body - but even then, it's of utmost utility to have important passages "highlighted", from which you'll clip again and again.

-helmut85

Yep. All I can say to that is we humans are interesting.  

And in general, please bear in mind that you choose at any given moment. Ok, it's the whole page you download, but from a site containing perhaps 150 pages or more, i.e. even when you try to NOT "choose beforehand" in order to preserve the material in its entirety, your choice will have made upon which pages you download in full, and which you didn't download.

-helmut85

Sadly as I have not found a software that can provide that option, I can't even make that choice.

I have to keep compromising and it's not easy.

The one positive is while in PDFs sometimes you can't drop the afterword or the prologue or the chapter, webpages can be cheated that way by using multiple tools which provide multiple views.

But the real point is, try to not bloat your own data warehouse, with irrelevant material, even when technically, you're able to cope with it: Your mind, too, will have to cope with it, and if you have too much "dead data" within your material, it'll outgrow the available processing time of your mind.

-helmut85

Not from a software development outcome.

It's why I brought up the Opera lite and Opera bloat issue.

The data was not bloating and slowing Opera enough that they needed to fix it but to many of their users, it was an issue.

Since neither side really were invested to see it through, no one really get that the unmentioned information they were sending out was that there is a market for Google Chrome.

Google Chrome came, it was not Opera lite and it was not as lightweight as Opera bloated but first impressions last and Chrome became one of the fastest piece of software (not just browser) to be adopted by not only the general multi-browser users but websites, Linux users, etc. (Some of that was helped by Google's marketing but most of that was just being Opera lite plus extensions no different from Firefox just being ad-less Opera as an IE counterpart when it once again took advantage of replacing irrational dead data with non-data that the masses wanted i.e. no ads, no e-mail program, no rss reader, cloud sync, tab moving animations that give the illusion of speed, lightweight when it has less tabs.)

As far as dead data...let's just say it's why a recent theme with some of these Sherlock books is how Sherlock did not bother to learn to know that the Earth revolved around the sun. (This being the prime example.)

...but as the critical review states:

The unconscious mind is not under your control

but then it gets replied with:

It may be naive to presuppose the unconscious can be controlled but it in fact, in certain contexts can, over time.

As an example, when I was younger, the thought of speaking before a group or approaching an attractive group evoked an immediate anxiety response which I sought to avoid. However, today, such actions cause no apprehension ion me whatsoever. Clearly, my sense of dread was immediate, not subject to forethought, and not a matter of choice. It arouse automatically.

I have over time "moved the needle" in numerous other ways.

I believe the fallacy in your argument is that you have taken a very mysterious part of the brain and created a maxim out of what is essentially a nominalization. Can you show me the unconscious? Dissect it?

Of course not. It is an abstract concept--real in whatever way it is but certainly to say that it can not be controlled to any degree is presumptious.

It's a never ending debate and one that I would rather not raise in this thread nor this forum. I saw how apathetic some people can be to something they hold of value like the United States Constitution, no way can this irrationality of dead data help this forum even if we were both interested in discussing it. The power of irrationality requires multiple invested users to acknowledge it in order for two side to understand what irrationality's notability is about.

It's just a context people are not ready to hear as a general conversation and it's not like I have any reference except for my experiences as a human being. I've experienced irrational data that can be resurrectors of dead data and I've experienced the opposite. The trick is to communicate with people for as long a period before they say or express "Duh!" or "you are intentionally adding verbosity and turning my own wording against me by making it obtuse."

As a notable topic for this thread, it's why I based the personal productivity system that I'm writing but it has no room for web clipping software that isn't my own or your own.

Web clipping is all about the irrational and the rational of the developer. not us and how they create a process to open and insert the irrational and the rational of their potential and current customers. When they don't provide this structure, even when we just talk we're not getting anywhere until we each can provide an equally skilled prototype that acts differently and gets different receptions...and then we discuss again and then prototest again regardless if we're just interested in discussing a hypothetical. Any legitimate dead data for the brain discussion is simply a socratic-like assumption against assumption way of discussion.

And as I said elsewhere, finding data after months is greatly helped by tree organization, in which data has got some "attributed position", from a visual pov. Trees are so much more practical than relational db's only are, for non-standardized data. Just have 50,000 items in an UR db, and then imagine the tree was missing but you had to exclusively rely upon the prog's (very good) search function.

-helmut85

Sorry, you won't get any agreement from me in this subject.

I know where you're getting at but it does not scale well to someone who constantly loses backups of his data or forgets to import backup of his data when he is overwhelmed.

I do suspect that your relational db does not involve the relational db known as the brain and so that might create the confusion.  I will say however that if you were demanding me to be more concise rather than to be more clear, I would have simply written I don't agree but I don't disagree. I use Workflowy for the same mechanical purpose but I don't solely nor heavily rely on Workflowy as my system.

All the worse then that there'll be never a REALLY good pim, i.e. that UR and all its competitors will remain with their innumerable faults and missings and flaws. And don't count on Neville to change this - I'd be the happiest person alive if that happened, but Neville won't do it, it's as simple as that.

-helmut85

I disagree. Maybe to us, there won't be but to many, they don't realize it but when writers praise Scrivener...they are praising it as a REALLY good pim instead of a word processor or any other label based on what they like. I would assume the same goes for Notemap and lawyers.

It's that paradox. A really good PIM is not really a PIM anymore.

EDIT : It just occured to me that I never tried to download web pages into a pim, but when you do, you will probably never get them out and into another pim, so even when downloading them, having them in a special format or special application, then just linking to them, seems to be preferable independently of the number you tend to download... And that would be .mht for just some pages, in my case, or WebResearch for pages in numbers, in your case - that'd be my advice at least if you cannot leave this web page collecting habit behind you. Stay flexible. Don't join the crowd "I've got some data within this prog and that I otherwise don't touch anymore" - I read lots of such admissions, and it's evident these people did something wrong, at some point.

-helmut85

Yup, yup and yup.  

It's not just PIM, it's all software ESPECIALLY if you're not a coder and can troubleshoot or develop a comparable software. It's just a question of when do we realize it for our needs.

When does it set in and when does it set out.

For an example of setting out, if I mentioned the gamification of information, can a software dev or software conceptualist move away from this or have they even considered it before?

It's just a never-ending quicksand until a person realizes what he realizes or realizes that he has realized enough and will do great work rather than just do work from that point forward.

68

General Software Discussion / Re: On data storage and applications going cloud (Surfulater, Mindjet et al.)

« on: January 23, 2013, 12:01 PM »

I acknowledge I shouldn't perhaps have posted these "political" things here, in "sw", but in the "general" part of the forum, but then, I also wanted to explain the mutual reverberations between scraping sw (Surfulater, WebResearch) and pim's, AND then the web in general and content in general - at the end of the day, we're speaking of external content here, and even when we speak about simple pim's here, we're speaking of their ability to handle content original belonging to third parties, so it's all some mix-up where everything I'm discussing belongs to something else within this lot.

-helmut85

I can't speak for mouser but this is not illegal, just discouraged to keep decorum in the non-Basement civil. Especially if it can keep people from registering and joining the community.

Especially because as this forum ages, sometimes mouser can be extremely civil but we as "fans of mouser" are less civil to anyone who tries to create a polarizing argumentative stance on DC, politics or mouser as an admin.

Thank you, Paul, that was my point in this respect. In fact, whenever you clip bits only, any such pim will be more or less apt (and certainly will with some external macro boosting, whilst those two "specialist" offerings are there in order to render whole page pages (much?) better than the task is executed by your ordinary pim. On the other hand, if it's not about whole web pages, I don't see the interest of these "specialists", since as pim's, both ain't as good as the best pims out there are.

-helmut85

Thank you too. It's rare that people acknowledge each other's posts nowadays.
(Or at least it seems this way from my own life experiences.)

Lately it just feels like the key to talk to someone is to talk over someone and have them talk over you. (With the occasional oh I so and so agree or you know this subject is like this subject too that breaks up the monotony on any agreeable discussions so long as there's no indifference between whom I'm talking with.)

As far as PIMs go, it does not function as pristine as this in reality. There's still SO MUCH lacking in PIMs it's crazy. Just the move from web to tablet to desktop to browser extensions have little rhyme and logic so far as most applications go.

For example, I have not found any PIM (Surfulater included) that can replicate the web bookmarking services of Diigo and Licorize when you are accessing the list instead of just adding an article and skimming it.

These two services raise web clipping to a different layer despite not being web clippers.

From an interface standpoint, you can only replicate a MakaGiga link inside Makagiga, a Basket Notepads link inside Basket Notepads, a OneNote Link inside Onenote and a Thinkery.me link inside Thinkery.me. In the past, the yellow notepad style of Diigo was unique to the service too but nowadays it's more of a white text highlighting service when you go to it's library so it's not even a linear upwards route of innovation and improvement for everyone.

These services do cheat by not clipping the full page but they cheat also because I would assume they lack the manpower or desire to push those data back into the desktop like Dropbox and lack Surfulater's capability to fully clip the web back to the desktop. (This is where Surfulater is ahead.)

There's really a whole world out there that PIMs are not able to take advantage of yet. In fact, I often wonder how come a non-coder like me can find more diverse interface ideas than the actual PIM makers and one does not have to look long and hard. Browser extensions and PIM services are vastly different in interfaces too at a quick glance even when you are not thinking or musing about a new interface.

When you actually narrow this down to features rather than mere aesthetics this is where the world opens up. Many programs are still not apt and some of the top PIMs still fail at providing both a minimal and advanced interface, easy readable export (rather than backups of their files) and most importantly true single file products. (Like a .doc or .txt can be easily synced to Dropbox without needing the program because it's not profile data but a basic file.)

You can count on one finger the programs that can come close to having all those requirements. Especially for the web clipping world, no real service out there has really understood the vast potential for full page web clippers and only Evernote has really gone into creating a Moleskine product, a readability product and a printer product and that's the hardware route that was first established by services like RTM that had barebones easy to load lists which worked well on mobile. The true fully loaded offline non-Wikipedia database has not yet been truly released to the masses to consume.

(Some phone apps can barely provide a decent editable online to offline thesaurus service much less web clipping.)

Paul, as for pains with pdf's, you should know that most sciences today have lots of their stuff in pdf format, and certainly more than 90 p.c. of their "web-available" / "available by electronic means" stuff in this format, hence the interest of pim's able to index pdf's, hence the plethora of alternative pdf "editors" and other pdf-handling sw, allowing for annotating, bookmarking, etc., so your claim (if I understand well) that pdf is a receding format, is not only totally unfounded, but the opposite is true.

-helmut85

You misunderstood.

It's not the format but the process that I consider archaic.

Even Google has allowed for real time collaboration of word processor files with Google Doc so the same old non-real time/non-smooth mechanical process that pdf editing plays by only exist because of the format and not because it excels the annotating and bookmarking of the format.

I created this analogy so that you would understood too why full web clipping has a unique future over partial web clipping.

PDF editing has a present now because it can provide a full feature of editing a PDF.

Surfulater and other full web clippers will have a future when the day comes when it's not about developing a full web clipper for Surfulater but developing a:

"pim's able to index Full web-clipped files, hence the plethora of alternative Surfulater "editors" and other Surfulater-handling sw, allowing for annotating, bookmarking, etc."

To repeat the sentence that preceded my mentioning of pdfs:

It's not about being erroneous so much as it's being ahead.

There's so many directions this can go too which is why sometimes my post get unnecessarily long just to provide an example for each idea or sub-idea as the points of the recipient spirals around different shades of context and connotations.

Paul, with lots of your writings, I have a recurrent problem, and please believe me that my stance isn't a denigrating one, neither a condescending one: I mix up lots of aspects, but then try to have a minimum of discernment there, by numbering / grouping. In your texts, every idea stays mixed up with every else, and so, most of the time, for perhaps about 80 p.c. of your text bodies, I just simply don't get what you try to express, and as said, this is a recurrent problem I have with these texts of yours. I'm not a native speaker, as we all know, but then, I get your English words, but I don't get the possible meaning behind them, and very often, I have the impression (as a non-native speaker, as said) that your sentence construction is in the way, so perhaps, after posting, could you re-read your texts, and then partially revise (as I do, and be it just for typos, in my case)? I repeat myself here: My "criticising" your texts has the only objective to "get" better texts from yours I'd then better and more fully understand, since I suppose up to now I don't get many good ideas buried in them, and staying buried even when I try to read you, and that's a pity.

-helmut85

Oh it's a common complaint about me. Don't worry, I don't find it denigrating that you do not understand as much as I find it denigrating when people who do not understand will either not mention it or stop at the sentence they do not understand without providing any hints or clues.

For example, when I thanked you, I legitimately thanked you because it seemed like you actually took a word I said and applied it.

In this latter reply, you didn't do that because you simply said I did not revise my text (I often do more so it's tiring to hear accusations of these when you don't even address a word I wrote where as the reason my post seems mixed up was because I was trying to deal with your own long post.)

It's very easy to compare to my eyes. I look at the keywords of your OP and I look at the keywords of my reply and many words you wrote are mentioned by the reply that followed.

I looked at your reply and many of the keywords I wrote are not mentioned at all and instead the focus on how I should revise it with numbers (which wasn't possible because I was replying to "your" numbers) and so now as a reply I have to unnecessarily lengthen my reply just to play with your trails and crumbs and write a reply worthy of having understood it's holistic entirety and with a worthy feedback that leaves no stone unturned as to how I read your post, where I felt you were branching off and where I felt you were writing a different subject and where I felt I disagree and agree. It's just something a person like me with a communication problem can't afford to under-read.

Don't worry about it though. Anyone who's a regular at this forum knows I openly admit that I have a communication problem.

At least you can give me a hint when my interpretation of your words are correct. Many don't.

You must see that when Ath does apply condescendance to us both, giving us advice to write in blogs, insteads, i.e. telling us to be silent here, it's, for one, that most people in "chat rooms" prefer short postings between they then can jump as a bee or other insect would between many different flowers, and also because they don't want to think a lot: Here, it's spare time, it's not meant for getting new insights except when they come very easy - but it's also because the effort of reading some people doesn't seem rewarding enough - a question of formatting texts, of inserting sub-headers, of trying to offer "one-bit-at-a-time", and so on. And when, in your case, there's also a debatable sentence structure and ideas not developed one after another but thrown together, and then perhaps discussions by fractions of them, these discussions thrown together again, and introducing new sub-ideas, then "re-opened" many lines below... well, we can't blame people refusing to read us when we wouldn't like to read ourselves in the end, can we?

-helmut85

Nah, you are overthinking it. You'll get used to it.

Here's how the pattern goes, when you write a long forum...people will tell you to write a blog. When you write a blog, people will tell you that no one will read it because they don't understand or that you should write a thesis instead.

This is sort of like a "Web Tradition in Implementing Sarcasm".

As a foreigner I experience the phenomena well and above it's usual statement like the one that was written here so these things come off like cliches or uncreative memes at this point. Believe me, I experience it so much, I experienced interpreting and receiving the interpretations in multiple ways. Serious, sarcastic, funny, aggressive, pot shot...even the follow-up replies sometimes you'll get the faux kind "if you know about it already then maybe you should fix it" to the brutal "well then you should have learned and listened and changed it instead of being a stubborn idiot" to true kind variations of these, true sarcastic with no ill will (not even friendly ill will) variations to just forum specific and hive culture specific ways of saying the same keywords with the same meaning whenever you reply back. Even your interpretation, I considered it and have moved on past it.

For example, you say, "we can't blame people refusing to read us when we wouldn't like to read ourselves in the end". Are you kidding me?! I love reading my post, your post, other longform writers' post. That's why I use these apps to begin with!  

You're just reading this once, I sometimes have to go to the edit section to replace one word or edit in whole paragraphs that lead to delayed edits where the repliers are missing entire paragraphs sometimes just because I tried to edit too much. Then after that, months and years go by, and I reread and reorganize my Scrapbook Plus files, my Diigo highlights, my .txt edits of the words, my Wunderlist Notes that have whole text articles, my Opera sessions/notes, my Tabs inside TabClouds, my Taboo (especially as the service died but thankfully the backups they take images of the web and put it in a zip), I even recently synced with Pocket using DailySocial and I recently signed up to Byliner. It's a whole process with me as far as reading goes. That's why I often don't reply to forums at all for lengths of periods.

...then I constantly move around these files especially as I test run my personal productivity system against these kinds of load. Others like and are fine with using Zemanta, I dream of a Zemanta for my personal files when I'm notetaking and something like Zemanta is highly unproductive for me compared to my own notes (when I can find them).

I reread every words carefully to see if there's a short sentence I could put into PopUp Wisdom or I have an old post that I can connect with my new post or there's a post that I forgot to move to Thinkery.me as my preferred review site for my written posts. (For example, it can scrape DC forum posts except for the one in the basement)

Compare the length and depth of my reply to you in this forum to this old blog post when I was blogging and that was a blog reply blog post (with each bolded line being a section), not a real "think about this idea I'm writing about" blog post.

Believe me, I can't have written that long reply to you if I did not read and reread your post and read and reread my reply. Even with the numbers, you really made a heavy subject and the only reason I can type the reply: "IMO you're better off deleting this" is because I followed all that you wrote irregardless of the length.

DC as a community is close to my heart. I don't care which user it is, I would never in my whole life ever write a reply to any users here that I don't want to consume myself or I don't want others to figure out. Whenever I reply here, I don't just consider wanting to read the thread (including/excluding my post), I consider whether I should put a pic here or experiment with colors or experiment with sections and other variants of this and I also consider the speaker, my knowledge of the user, the topic, the things they might want or need to hear based on their post and I try to really present it up. I'm probably the only person here who might get warned for not adding anything to a topic I made and just quoting a link (cause I was trying to be concise) and then be at risk for being warned that I posted a thread that's too long and too quote heavy and that I shouldn't quote an entire webpage I'm linking when I didn't. (I just happen to quote some webpage and sometimes quote some comments because sometimes I read and open all those too with their 20 pages and other annoying loading of new comments/unpopular comments.)

So it should partly be a prob in your writing, as in my writing conception, there's certainly some flaws, too.

-helmut85

No. It's fully my problem. Everyone whom I connected in DC knows this. (Not this as in I write too long but this as in I openly acknowledge and work at fixing and editing my posts all the time regardless whether they believe me or not.)

Seriously, don't sweat and hesitate to put ALL the reason or blame or insult all on me. I don't consider that rude/negative/other adjectives and I openly cherish it because sometimes it's the only clue I have to fixing my communication problems. Those are the things that can't hurt or anger or sadden or insult me: being proven wrong, being talked with rather than talked to, being given hints as to what the user understands or don't understand. Things become un-problematic to me when communications return to being communications. Every next reply gets shorter. Every point gets moved on and clearly defined as still being up for discussions. Every examples gets scrutinized. Every ignorance has a chance of creating new enlightenment. It's just a very rare thing to receive in the web.

69

Living Room / [Old] - June 18, 2009 25 Virtual Learning Experiences Online (Rare Book Room)

« on: January 23, 2013, 08:47 AM »

Big List: http://www.aceonline...-experiences-online/



Main Site: http://www.rarebookroom.org/

Image taken from:

The Little Moralists: http://www.rarebookr...ol/hasthj/index.html

Ironically, nowadays, the odds of reading books like these come from badly torrent pdf files instead of any place else. The timelessness of large fonts, zero wasted space and type written letters that feel more like they are marked into the paper instead of smoothly printed out all give these the type of sheen that most digital works fail to provide.

70

General Software Discussion / Re: Tiny addin to the massive NOTE TAKING Thread

« on: January 23, 2013, 03:53 AM »

Thanks but there are gaps in your post.

(I apologize if this comes off rude but it's written like an ad for NoteTabPro)

Zemanta -> Live Writer description. That makes sense.

Zotero, QuoteURLText, CopyShortUrl, ScreenshotCaptor... again all makes sense.

Then it starts breaking:

Sticky pad. What else can I say?

umm...like why do you need Jarte when you have StickyPad?

Jarte is a brilliant replacement for windows WordPad with very valuable additional attributes for file management.

so...umm...do you use NoteTab Pro as a primary brain...pad?

A html editor? (Aren't you already using Windows Live Writer if it's just for writing and not coding?)

...and how do you manage files with Jarte?

Don't get me wrong. NoteTabPro is extremely powerful but it's power also means that it can create a different writing (not coding) workflow from someone who uses Jarte or Stickypad. It's very weird for someone to create a set of simple programs and then to segway into an advanced program like NoteTabPro without explaining the synergy between NoteTabPro's advanced features to the rest of the list.

In fact, any one of those programs except NoteTabPro don't need any explanations. You can find out that Jarte is a Wordpad replacement for example by just downloading Jarte. NoteTabPro not at all. It is a full featured Wiki, has a Clipbook, Mathematical Expressions and 
a different Find and Replace.

If there's one software that you needed to explain your usage, it's NoteTabPro.

71

General Software Discussion / Is it possible to keep a thoughtful internet discussion on the desktop?

« on: January 23, 2013, 03:29 AM »

Just a modified title from this post: http://dottech.org/9...-the-internet-comic/

I guess it can also be considered an off-shoot of this thread.

as well as an extension of this comment:

Kraal January 21, 2013 at 8:16 AM
One time a long time ago, I had an amazing discussion with someone over the internet about what love really was. It was on the site Gaia online, in a guild’s(or whatever version of that gaia had) forum. Our posts were well thought out, and the discussion went for quite a bit until we both finally reached the point where all we could do was agree with or accept the others points.

I wish that I had saved the discussion before I stopped using Gaia, because it was alot of fun.

So yes, it is possible to have a thoughtful discussion on the internet. You just need to be careful of who you start one with.

The biggest hurdle has always been how to take archiving of discussions seriously.

Web gardens and forum admins certainly don't like it. (You can't clip/access any content that requires a login to access.)

It's not feasible without a dedicated developer. (Each site can have different ways of filtering the comments and some comments can be multi-paged and multi-threaded.)

Very few screenshot programs have capabilities to capture multiple images together (capturing one thread image for example and then not scaling forward and then re-capturing the next segments and then merging it with off-site comments such as social media comments in one big image)

People don't treat discussions like image/pic management and when they do, cloud developers often market these as public cool discussions for people to see instead of a private affair. (Fanfiction groups have more privacy and categorical respect than internet discussions.)

Very few great internet discussions have been moved over that is not a copy paste from a web archive. (A wiki that quotes an internet discussion tends to have an offline image to slowly read so it's very specific and not something that you can click with one button, tag well and refer to as reference)

Quoting machines like PopUp Wisdom can't handle long quotes while comment saving extensions like Comment Save only save what you typed. Flash card programs too like only a two layer conversation.

Most web services fix this by keeping your own private messages and most people just meticulously copy paste the discussions if they need to. This helps the PIM software business because they can then sell the idea of a place where text can be kept and tagged and other software can sell Diaries that keep up with dates but you can't develop an "I'm not sure if I want to keep this" mindset for random threads, you are not really motivated to make connections just e-mail lists, you can't "analyze" your own communication style, anytime there's an argument with a cliche comeback from either you or the poster...we're born to emotionally ignore the pattern and when I do think back on the pattern (say replies that type 'language barrier' or 'communication problems') there's no real tagging interface that can instantly alert you to compare two of the same words from past discussions.

The worst thing of it all is that argument mappers are the worst. They are good (great for me) to piece by piece clip and find out a person's tangible points but they are not good for resharing to create camaraderie between a hive and a user. No one likes to view those images. No one likes to admit they are being hypocritical. Not everyone treats a subject in the same seriousness. Light conversations and attempts at concision can still be ignored.

It's a pincer.

On one hand the software has to be about reminding you to keep great conversations often and regularly. On the other hand, the software has to curate it for it's users own needs in a manner rivaling that of a PIM or a Web Clipper but with neither of their features stomping on the general review and recalling of those previous conversations.

72

General Software Discussion / Re: PicPick vs FastStone Capture vs Screenshot Captor vs Jet Screenshot

« on: January 23, 2013, 02:45 AM »

For those who don't want to click the link, this is why Screenshot Captor fell so far below:

One of the issues I have with this software is that although on its website it is stated that it allows for “the easy and automatic or on-demand uploading of screenshots to a wide variety of image hosting services (imageshack, flickr, ftp, etc.)”, on further inspection the downloading of additional software is required in order for this functionality to be utilized. Additionally the user interface comes across as being more cluttered and less user-friendly than that of PicPick and FastStone Capture.

73

General Software Discussion / Re: On data storage and applications going cloud (Surfulater, Mindjet et al.)

« on: January 23, 2013, 02:28 AM »

I think the "Of course Surfulater can also grab entire webpages was what lead to helmut85 saying it was for web collectors.

You both have the same conclusions: "but you typically get too much extraneous content and bloat the database."

Only helmut85 thinks if you remove that option/stop developing that feature you can better streamline Surfulater into doing a better job of "retaining selected content from web pages".

The quote was more directed at me as a form of "ok, let me summarize my post in one sentence and treat it as a reply to your post without actually responding to the content of your post".

I recently had an issue in the Basement following a similar frustrating theme and I think for the good of a long thread, it's much better to not treat it as any direct linkage to the original long thread. It does not hold anywhere close to being a summary, a description of the poster's remarks nor is it very close emotion wise to what the poster desires.

There's nothing to be gleamed from the vague implications of that sentence. It's in a similar route to the old Opera lite vs. Opera bloat thread.

One side will say it's just an option and you don't have to use it.
The other side will say they still want a lite version of Opera.

This type of discussions does not go anywhere because neither side is implementing the request of the other side until Google Chrome got released and stole most of the "in-between-the-lines" points of the Lite crowd and from there on, Opera just continued working with features that the developers were comfortable in releasing such as Widgets, Unite, Modified Keyboards, Speed Dial extensions, etc.

The features really don't matter. It's the speed and the robustness and the expectations from web clippers that these types of statements imply when they say it's for web page collectors.

Btw had I bought Surfulater, I think I would have used it for collecting webpages rather than specific content. The program is not as light weight as a text editor to satisfy my need for specific content. I'm also one of those who can't use OneNote properly as a notetaker and Evernote as a clipper. I just have too many other apps opened at one time to really trust that I want those applications opened for light text that I can copy paste out of anyway. Not so much that it slows down my PC if I open Surfulater but enough that it would bury me in info confusion.

74

General Software Discussion / Re: On data storage and applications going cloud (Surfulater, Mindjet et al.)

« on: January 22, 2013, 10:16 AM »

So this is rather theoretic situation not really to be feared.

-helmut85

It's not theoretic.

It is at heart somewhat of the old dream of the advanced clipboard managers.

OneNote, RedNotebook, Makagiga, Knowsy Notes, ConnectedText...even the online version of Netvibes have this at heart.

But there is another aspect to my concept which I have overlooked to communicate: It's annotations in general. For pdf's, many people don't use the ubiquitous Acrobat Reader but (free or paid) alternative pdf readers / editors that allow for annotations, very simple ones or more sophisticated ones, according to their needs.

But what about downloaded, original web pages, then?

-helmut85

Send to Kindle for the rich guys.

For the others, it depends on the HTML but for straightforward attachments, this is where Sticky Notes Software claim to be the best.

I personally worry less about how the annotations are made (I dislike both the PDF and paper way of doing it) and worry more about how the thing would create a holistic PersonalBrain but one with more room for notes. (I prefer Compendium).

Once you figure out the latter, the former follows.

So my system is about "neatness", "standardization", "visual relief", but its main advantage is, it allows for my just re-reading the formatted passages when re-reading these web pages in work context, just as many people do with their downloaded pdf's. Now you with downloaded web pages: It's simply totally uneconomical, and the fact that out of 20 people, perhaps 19 do it this way, doesn't change this truth.

-helmut85

Does not work that way.

Out of 20 out of 20 people, they think they don't need a full webpage until they lost a copy.

They just don't realize it until they lose it but it's only 1 out of 20 that would really read that much to lose a critical data piece from a web clipper like Surfulator.

If you do not believe me, compare this to the resurgence in e-reader bookstores.

When my Kobo broke, I thought that I was just losing the hardware but because the experience honed in me the idea of mass sending the e-books inside, even when I could still restore the e-books (it works fine except load the books or sync with the software) I could not get used to reorganizing these sets of e-books in Calibre or manually.

My tolerance level has simply disappeared but I did not have this tolerance before I got an e-ink reader. Not even when I was viewing 1 or 2 e-books via a tablet e-reader software and I was using the first version of Kobo which was so slow at just flipping through the libraries of books.

Everyone has these tolerance levels but they just don't realize it until it hits them like a tornado destroying the habitat that you created outside of nature. What you view as collectors are in fact a sub-breed for the non-collectors to exist. It is like a torrent sharing ecology in which in order to have the poorer person torrent a bunch of books or download a game, first you have to have a selfish sub-breed that simply collects and shares and in turn replaces your rss feed with a curating feed until corps like Valve make idiots out of the sharing community by motivating some to say that Steam convinced them to stop pirating cause now the games are cheap...blah, blah, blah.

This is the evolution of the audience for these software and the difference they have over Evernote and plain webclippers. You have to be hit by the internet or you have to be hit by the fact that most webclipping social curation sites are online or you have to be hit by the fact that you need to quickly store manuals instead of just copies of receipts because you're not even average at remembering troubleshooting software links. You have to be hit by lots of things to understand a "gift".

I'm one of those people who can backup to text files and forgot those text files or even be reluctant to reload Scrapbook Plus files out of an irrational fear for a lack of a one click restore and merge button that's as friendly as logging changes as online sites like Dropbox do, for example.

It's hitting that one range that really widens your eyes. Until then it's like saying I don't need an Antivirus, I'm careful with my PC or I'd rather be able to learn Linux cause it has a legal way to slipstream LiveCDs until something breaks in Linux that does not have a .exe where as Windows has it.

It's so peculiar because it's so interfacey. Lack of one button...even a complete webpage is gone. Lack of full webpage image design...the desire to read the text is gone. Lack of torrent under government pressure then no bridge towards UseNet.  

Something that full web clippers have over bare bones text clippers with some images will never understand is this accidental clipping of a sites primary web design imagery into our brain that simply can't be replicated by mere data unless you work at the web clipper like it's a full time PIM but that's where most people don't. That's what's creating the 19 out of 20 illusion.

That illusion can be broken but it has to eventually get to a point where content producers meet content archivers meet curators and sharers who are willing to perform a new database of absorbing web information and go beyond what pay services like HyperInk do for blogs.

...and it can only march on so long as these remnants like Surfulator continue marching on when there are other services like Instagram that can do less and earn more or these services like Quora make it harder and harder to just capture the public web.

Hence my assertion that sw like Surfulater et al. is for "web page collectors", but of not much help in real work. I say this under the provision that these progs, just as pim's, don't have special annotation functionality for the web pages they store; if I'm erroneous about this, I'd be happy to be informed about these in order to then partially review my stance; partially because the problem of lacking neatness would probably persist even with such pdf-editor-like annotation functionality.

-helmut85

It's not about being erroneous so much as it's being ahead. The PDF editors way are phased out. They are an archaic way of doing things that only work out because PDF is such a tricky thing to edit to begin with.

The landscape now is all about combining the feel of Google Docs collaboration but into a full blown personal webpage that's not so much preserved as extended.

So far as special annotation functionality...PIMs have these for awhile but it's web clipping they lack and a polished overall professional output.

Just look at how Knowsy Notes can deal with csv creation. Just look at how dotEpub can convert webpages into e-books.

What's not being brought to the casual user is that type of conversion without requiring any editor knowledge.

What's worse is that some of the actual experiments are web services and not personal files.

(For pages with lots of such data, I do an .mht "in case of". We all know that "downloading tables" from html is a pain anyway if ever you need lots of the original data, but if you do, and frequently, there is special sw available for this task.)

-helmut85

...and that's one of the crux of it.

If you can't work towards preserve, then these things will always require some kind of software or only fulfill one kind of need.

The more a software can just preserve, the more things can be built off of those preservations.

75

General Software Discussion / Weird Google Docs Story Builder Site

« on: January 20, 2013, 09:40 AM »

Can't believe I have not encountered this before.

I have no idea what the purpose is but: http://docsstorybuil...r.appspot.com/BV85oj