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351

Living Room / You Selfish E-books! (Contains the F word)

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 21, 2011, 04:28 AM »

Nothing new but it's a good story: http://elf.dreamwidth.org/459611.html (I'll let mouser decide if he wants to link this post back to the e-book thread)

When he finished a page, he'd tear it out and burn it. Throw it away, if he didn't have a campfire. (It's paper. It's biodegradable.) No need to re-read; this is casual entertainment only. No need to keep the book around, and it's not worth the effort to carry it to the next town.

I winced when I first heard this. I winced when I thought about it later. It still makes me twitch. The idea of reading a book, and tearing out the pages as you go, slowly turning it into wastepaper... shudder. (He also says that Gideon pocket bibles make tolerable rolling papers in a pinch.) Even admitting that no, it wasn't any worse than leaving a book on a park bench (to get soaked in the next rainstorm), it was hard to think about--why would you read a book and destroy it, so nobody else could read it later? That's so wasteful. So ... so selfish, to take someone else's largesse, by which you got this cheap book, and destroy it.

But that's what ebook publishers want us to do.

Read it. Read it again if you want. Download & read it later, on a different device. But don't pass it on. As soon as you're done with it--forever-and-truly done, never going to read that book again (and really, how many times am I going to re-read Harlequin romances)... destroy it. Delete that file, blank that space on the memory card.

Ebooks--by everyone except Baen and a tiny handful of other indie authors or groups--insist on blocking this basic aspect of book utility. Aside from the issues of poverty and class schisms, in which shiny fun things land in the laps of the wealthy (or the not-entirely-impoverished) and never leave, this changes one of the simplest, most essential aspects of literature:

Books are social! Ebooks are selfish!

My history includes a long stretch of poverty. People in poverty cope by pooling resources, by trimming waste any way they can, by coordinating efforts and use of limited items. Greed is not considered an awful vice in poor communities--everyone reacts differently to the invisible squeeze of poverty. But waste is. Parsimony is, where it moves from "frugality" into "stinginess." Having more than your neighbors is not wrong, but being unwilling to share what you have--especially when it costs you nothing--is downright sinful.

This should be a MINOR GODDAMN TECH ISSUE. Here, I agree to delete all copies on my hard drive; plz transfer ownership of this ebook in my library to [username]. Yeah, that involves the honor system, but so does any sale of a non-DRM'd ebook. For DRM'd ebooks, even easier: please remove my access to this book; I'll send an email with a coupon to the new owner and they can activate it.

There is NO REASON we can't share ebooks ... except that publishers want to limit ebooks to 1 purchase = 1 reader.

That's vile. Can you imagine telling children, "when you're done reading that book, dear, throw it in the trash?" What kind of ethics are ebooks designed to encourage?

Yes, I know: ebooks don't wear out. You can make a thousand copies as easily as one. If everyone got their ebooks free from friends, authors would never get paid. We must protect the authors getting paid.

Fuck that. No. We must protect the practice and culture of literature; authors getting paid is part of, but incidental to, that. I fully agree that, if authors don't get paid, that culture is gonna get really sparse, really fast; I don't agree that "pay the authors" is the primary concern of the literary community. Communities; there's more than one.

Authors got paid when paperbacks got handed around so many times the covers wore off and the corners got rounded and the spines were white crinkles on a black strip that used to have a title but nobody can read it anymore. Authors got paid when a private school loaned a book out, week after week after week. Authors got paid when textbooks were shared by four students at once. Authors got paid, somehow, when I came home from the White Elephant sale with three bags of books for $5 each, and promptly handed out four of those books to other people. Or at least, authors got paid enough that nobody declared any of these practices illegal and immoral.

...and here's an old post from Calvin@ http://www.williamai...atespace-vs-lulucom/

I found these comments in the Lulu forum.

“Have we all gone mad? I don’t know about most of you, but I initially signed up with Lulu to have printed copies of MY literary creation in the form of a book. I don’t want my printer to be my business partner, my publisher, my content adviser nor accountant for what’s inside or on the cover of what I created.

Here is what CreateSpace said, in an email, in answer to my question about printing a cover without the ISBN.
 ” Thank you for contacting CreateSpace in regard to the barcode we place on all of our books. The manufacturing-related barcode and additional information found on the last page within books serves as identifiers and are added as part of our printing process. For these reasons, we do not remove this barcode from our books. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this information may present. ”

Notice that the reply says “our books”. By placing that ISBN on the book, they now consider it theirs – not mine.

Why is it that only one place in the entire US is the only place to get an ISBN, should you want one? ( Remember back when Network Solutions was the ONLY place you could register an Internet Domain name? ) This is clearly a monopoly and a violation of anti-trust laws. The $275 that Bowker charges for 10 ISBN (plus that annual fee, don’t forget) is nothing short of extortion.
 ISBN’s in Canada (and every other country) are FREE.

And why is it that Lulu can sell me a single ISBN for less than I can buy one myself? How is Lulu (and CreateSpace, for that matter) able to give me an ISBN for free, just for giving them the publishing rights? What benefit is that to me as a writer? Unless I WANT them to handle the marketing. And, how many of you, selling you books through Lulu and CreateSpace, are making the kind of money that you think an author should? Ready to retire, are you?

Most people on this forum don’t realize that once an ISBN is attached to their book ( whether here on Lulu, or CreateSpace, or wherever ) you are stuck with that ISBN, unless you change the title and re-publish it.
 Also, and maybe more importantly, many REAL book publishers, not Print On Demand houses posing as publishers, won’t touch a book that already has an ISBN because of the hassle in making the changes to the original needed for them to effectively market it.

I use Lulu for printing, not because I want a publishing agent, or someone else to have my distribution rights.

"The barcodes added to Publisher Grade and Standard books are for the manufacturing process"

This is misleading crap. As soon as Lulu or any other printer puts that code on your book, they will forever be listed as the publisher. Read the terms and conditions. It has nothing to do with the manufacturing process. We’ve all had books printed by Lulu in years past with no barcode. It has everything to do with the publishing-distribution rights. Besides, if we as writers want to print a book for ourselves, to keep, give away or sell through our own channels, why does it need a n ISBN or even a barcode for that matter? I have sold some of the books I’ve created in area stores. None – let me repeat, NONE of those stores ever refused to sell my book because it didn’t have a barcode. These stores have other things in their stock, like gifts, jewelry, musical instruments, that do not have an ISBN or a barcode, that they have no trouble selling. Some items even have a handwritten price tag.

Both the ISBN and bar code are unnecessary, unless you specifically want your printer, be it Lulu or whoever, to also be your publisher. All of you “power posters” should know better. As writers, we should all look for a printer who will print our books the way we want them printed.”

Here's what DonationCoder's Iphigenie 40hz has to say about Baen Books:

Baen 'gets it'.

Baen Books (www.baen.com), a publisher of science fiction, will provide its books to fans who are blind, paralysed, or dyslexic, or are amputees, in electronic form free of charge, effective immediately.

Baen Books is making this offer in recognition of Veterans Day, and all our disabled military veterans. Many Baen authors are veterans themselves, using a military setting as the setting of their tales. Right now convalescing vets might welcome an exciting, fast-action tale to pass the time.

Jim Baen, founder of Baen Books, who passed on June 28, 2006, decided to "provide each challenged reader with a permanent pass" to the regular e-publication of Baen’s new books. His successor, publisher Toni Weisskopf, is implementing his idea with this program.

Since 1999, Baen has published its new books as ebooks each month, in several formats, with no Digital Rights Management, through WebScriptions (www.webscriptions.net), for a small fee. Now, this service will be available at no cost to the disabled, who must apply for this privilege.

Applications will be processed by ReadAssist (www.readassist.org), a volunteer group devoted to helping disabled readers find the books they want in the form they need, and join the community of fandom. The application form has been set up by ReadAssist, and can be found through either WebScriptions or ReadAssist.

If you'd like to volunteer to help ReadAssist, please contact them at their website: [email protected].

352

Living Room / Re: Stallman on Android

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 21, 2011, 03:58 AM »

On another note, it seems fishy that Google wouldn't release Android 3.0 code because it was "buggy".

That's kind of what RMS is alluding to in this one.

I'm far from a die hard FOSS user either and I've never agreed with Stallman when his extreme views applies to things that still aren't mature enough especially for casual users to follow his philosophy. I also dislike it when he never attacks the philosophical stance of such FOSSers against Opera because it's closed source and then turns around and supports Firefox.

In this case though, what I read from RMS is that he's not just talking about whether Android is free software or not. He's showing how the attempts of OS is being hijacked without trying to sound sensationalist and he's running down the process as to how Google has been improving upon the Mozilla model. Unfortunately the theme is too similar to his previous rants and people are so loyal to Google already that it's going to fall on deaf ears. That's understandable though. FOSS-ers not getting his point though? I fear that says more about the flimsiness of the open source philosophy post-fad.

353

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Looking for people willing to do a simple exercise

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 07:45 PM »

Yep. Subjot's a micro-blogging site so I had to put aside my bias for opting against acronyms. I apologize for not considering people who may not know what CTA means.

I'm also using the term loosely. Not as a marketing concept for those who google for what call to action means.

354

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Looking for people willing to do a simple exercise

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 07:33 PM »

Someone from subjot expressed difficulty with the exercise above and they haven't confirmed whether my guess as to why they felt the exercise was complex is indeed accurate but I thought for the sake of the lurkers, I'd share that post here:

The #1 dilemma is always how to get a CTA from the general internet populace. This especially applies to someone like me who's a poor communicator and has no academic background. Worse, if CTAs are vast then it feels too open ended.

This leads to dilemma #2: Online surveys asking for people's experiences are not very effective since you can't control the situation and you also can't guarantee that no one is subconsciously lying.

Dilemma #3 makes this worse: Everyone has a different way of applying productivity. Especially personal productivity. Yet that's the element I'm trying to gather here. Global personal productivity experience. At least within the space of who ever wants to participate.

Then there's dilemma #4: What exactly is exposure therapy "specifically". I'm not sure people get that either. I'm not an expert but this reads obvious to me but I can't be sure that people have the same interpretation as me. The easiest instruction then is an open instruction. After all, the important key is not the system. People would obviously feel strongly for each of their preferred systems. The key can't be the ERP either. It's very scenario-centric and yet productivity (esp. systems) aren't. Some have pure paper planners and some have software and some have mixed.

355

General Software Discussion / Mother****ing placeholder text mother****er (Warning: Image contains bad words)

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 01:29 PM »

http://slipsum.com/ via: Noah's cool! jot

Coincidentally the image wouldn't make for a bad wallpaper.

356

Living Room / Stallman on Android

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 01:17 PM »

vs.

Full article: http://www.guardian....ee-software-stallman

Linux aside, the software of Android versions 1 and 2 was mostly developed by Google; Google released it under the Apache 2.0 license, which is a lax free software license without copyleft.

The version of Linux included in Android is not entirely free software, since it contains non-free "binary blobs" (just like Torvalds' version of Linux), some of which are really used in some Android devices. Android platforms use other non-free firmware, too, and non-free libraries. Aside from those, the source code of Android versions 1 and 2, as released by Google, is free software – but this code is insufficient to run the device. Some of the applications that generally come with Android are non-free, too.

"Android contains Linux, but it isn't Linux". If we avoid starting from the confusion, the situation is simple: Android contains Linux, but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different.

Google said it withheld the 3.0 source code because it was buggy, and that people should wait for the next release. That may be good advice for people who simply want to run the Android system, but the users should be the ones to decide this.

tl;dr: He's right but I doubt even FOSS supporters would care.

In many ways, this may start a trend where Open Source supporters become more and more hypocritical. Stallman does go to his usual extremes but I think his point is slowly being lost as companies start converting more people into ideology funded developers. Sort of like modding communities only this time, certain groups have wisened up on how to convert the communities into something that feeds the platform rather than an isolated game where sequels especially game engine changes forces disparity between each modder/developer's loyalty.

P.S. I'm not really a developer or even a modder so the terms I'm using above could definitely be wrong.

357

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Looking for people willing to do a simple exercise

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 09:40 AM »

(Both quotes from Wikipedia:)

Exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy intended to treat anxiety disorders and involves the exposure to the feared object or context without any danger in order to overcome their anxiety.[1][2] Procedurally it is similar to the fear extinction paradigm in rodent work.[3][4] Numerous studies have demonstrated its effectiveness in the treatment of anxiety disorders such as PTSD and specific phobias.[5]

Exposure-based therapy may be effective in preventing the progression from acute stress disorder to post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a report in the June 2008 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.[6]

It is also very closely related to exposure and response prevention, a method widely used for the treatment of obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is a treatment method available from behavioral psychologists and cognitive-behavioral therapists for a variety of anxiety disorders, especially Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It is an example of an Exposure Therapy.

The method is predicated on the idea that a therapeutic effect is achieved as subjects confront their fears and discontinue their escape response.[1] The behavioral process is called Pavlovian extinction or respondent extinction [2] An example would be of a person who repeatedly checks light switches to make sure they're turned off. They would carry out a program of exposure to their feared stimulus (leaving lights switched on) while refusing to engage in any safety behaviors. It differs from Exposure Therapy for phobia in that the resolution to refrain from the avoidance response is to be maintained at all times and not just during specific practice sessions. Thus, not only does the subject experience habituation to the feared stimulus, they also practice a fear-incompatible behavioral response to the stimulus. While this type of therapy typically causes some short-term anxiety, this facilitates long-term reduction in obsessive and compulsive symptoms.[3]

Recent results (Lovell et al., see below) indicate that ERP can be carried out effectively with minimal face-to-face contact between the therapist and the subject.[4]

Exercise:

Replace the definition of productivity on your systems/software with your interpretation of ERP above and measure if you've become more productive/just as productive or less productive. (You don't have to gather data for everything, even 1 or 2 examples on your task list would suffice.)

358

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA ~ Show List of Shortcuts overlaid on Desktop

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 09:15 AM »

The outstanding question is how can i best support a large user repository of application-specific help data in the best way.

-mouser (September 16, 2011, 08:36 AM)

Not sure of the direction you are considering but here's another thought.  Provide the ability of importing hotkey lists in csv or some other format.  Interested and willing members familiar with a specific program could send in a list of those hotkeys in the preferred format.  Users could pick and choose which list they would need from a repository of sorts.  These could be standard program default hotkey lists or maybe user suggestions. Saves you or even the user from tracking down hotkey lists.  It also becomes a community project. Similar to the All Hotkeys Site.
Any way you or others go, I think this would be a great program.

-bob99 (September 18, 2011, 09:48 AM)

May not be quite what you are looking for but:

http://devcheatsheet.com/

...for those who don't know.

359

Living Room / Re: it's not Star Trek, it's Cosmic Journey

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 09:11 AM »

I think eventually the ai design can better be designed as a stealth shooter rather than a space shooter or even a stealth space shooter.

Part of the difficulty I would assume is that players expect a space shooter but to me I love this game because it feels more like Pac-Man than Galaga. I think if the site hints to something like that it would gain even more interest.

360

Living Room / Re: it's not Star Trek, it's Cosmic Journey

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 20, 2011, 12:08 AM »

At first, I hated the 3d asteroids until I realize you can destroy them for items. 

Love the fact that enemies can chase you and not disappear off screen. 

361

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Cyborganize now has video

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 18, 2011, 06:57 PM »

Cyborganize was something I saw in outlinersoftware forum and at the time, even though the person answered my questions - it seems I just couldn't get it. We also didn't quite align on what GTD meant.

The site finally has a full walkthrough-like video and even though I still don't get it, it's actually sharable now because of the more direct video. Even though this may still be vague, I highly recommend this if not only because it is more ambitious than most productivity systems post-GTD.

Page not recommended for AutoFocus/Do It Tomorrow fans though.

Actually the requirement for the system is a bit steeper than normal. Wordpress on your own server, emacs org mode, category and blog post making... all more seamless than it seems but at the same time philosophically very debatable in what it is trying to achieve.

http://www.cyborganize.org/productivity/

There's also a support forum and the developer is very willing to answer the questions.

http://groups.google...om/group/cyborganize

Oh and this is a bit narcissistic but here's his reply to me and you could see here where we may disagree with our interpretations of GTD. Normally not a problem but in this case because it's a deep system, there's some wondering on my part whether the person does know GTD or just using the buzz words interpretation. To be fair though, I was the one who stopped replying. Both in that I was too lazy to sign up to the group and also because I feel I get the process but at the same time, I feel the GTD terms were wrong but obviously I'm not an authority on the subject. (Also I feel guilty because the system I was writing had some similarities and yet it seems we're so different in our premise for why we are stating stuff - it just seemed as long as we differ on our perspectives, the discussion would be running on circles, talking over what GTD means and debating the true value of having a blog.)

http://groups.google...ead/2550c8ce95f7393f

Edit #2: Might as well add this post anyway. https://www.donation....msg213481#msg213481

I'm not sure if the author would consider this a worthy free version of Brainstorm (a paid program necessary for the system) but I feel skwire's Organize Text is much clearer at explaining the beauty of list splitting at the cost of text files but you would have to ask the author directly if my guess is correct.

362

Post New Requests Here / Pomodoro + To Do List Prioritizer

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 18, 2011, 03:20 PM »

Here's my attempt to suggest a more complicated coding snack for skwire to chew on. (In reference to the other thread.)

Since Pomodorium turns out to be shareware, I decided to post this request anyway.

I think one thing I realized with the gaming aspect of productivity tools is that often times it makes you even more bored to play the game since it shifts the flow around.

(For those who don't want to bother playing Pomodorium, the game aspect mainly involves getting gold from doing Pomodoroes, using those golds to buy equipments and potions to clear out cities full of monsters and then finally moving on to the next city.)

One concept I wanted to shift away from Pomodorium's concept is the buying mechanics.

Instead of gold, I wonder if calculating the avg. pomodoro per day could determine the task at hand sort of like a stoplight.

I'm not sure the idea was warranted of a productivity program and really the idea was more of an experimental curiosity on my part on whether it can improve on the classic model of a pomodoro timer.

The basics of the interface are this:

This is how Pomodorium initially looks when opened:

Pomodorium
25:00	Go (switches to Stop when pressed)
poms (total pomodoro)	avg/d: (number)	gold:
Health
Exp:
Level:
Cities free:

The tweak on the concept would be:

25:00	Go	avg/d: (number)	red/green/yellow stoplight icon	tasks checked off per day
Task screen

P.S. Pomodorium has sound effects when Go is pressed as well as when gold is gained.

The task screen would be like how speed readers work: Shorter tasks show bigger fonts, longer tasks show smaller font.

The twist is that the screen is blank/or the texts blurred/made transparent when the timer is on. That is, only when you stop the timer or pass the time will a task show up in the task screen.

This is actually for two reasons:

1) To give the user the idea that he doesn't necessarily need to do the task on the screen to start the timer.

but more importantly...

#2 To prey on the procrastination of the user. This way if the user wants to procrastinate on the task on screen, this doesn't mean he mentally "defeats" himself by feeling like he's procrastinating just because he dropped the ball on a task.

This is the first effect I want to test. Does a big shiny green timer button that engages the brain stir procrastinating people to actually do more tasks just not the one in front of them?

Here's the game-based idea:

The stop lights are based on the avg/pomodoro per day. Actually pomodoro is much stricter than this but in here we'll just assume that users are playing a loose version.

For this one, one thing I wanted to find out is if whether pomodoro flow increases or reduces the activity of the users so the idea is, the more you increase your avg/pomodoro per day: the more the program would show the more difficult tasks to do.

...but with a twist.

If you exceed a certain average, the stoplight will then treat this as an "over-fatigued" state and would then advice on tasks relating to rising off a computer or going outside.

It basically goes: easy, intermediate, hard, GET OUT!

The sad part is that I can't really do a survey on this and the program is really just like a personal experience test which, again, is why I didn't originally want to post this. I'm getting redundant I know but seeing as skwire is active lately, may as well throw this out there. I would also prefer this to be cross-platform like how Pomodorium is based on Adobe Air and is based on flash but I could also work with a Windows version or even better a portable version.

As far as how the tasks are actually inserted, I'll leave that to you guys but Pomodorium does have a menu where one can customize the monsters. It's a bit clunky but just throwing out the thought that a menu is possible but if it's too complicated, import text file would work great too.

363

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Finally! More game-based productivity tools

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 18, 2011, 02:40 PM »

Ugh...just want to update and say, Pomodorium is just a trial.

I honestly would have preferred if this was clearer in the program but if you don't check the help file, you'll clear three maps before realizing it is shareware. The good news is that it seems the timer itself has no limits.

For those who want to head straight to the buy link, here's the direct url: http://www.pomodoriu....com/p/activate.html

364

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 16, 2011, 08:45 AM »

So Mozilla is releasing something called open badges:



Think this may affect both Donationware and Fairware?

http://blog.mozilla....11/09/15/openbadges/

http://openbadges.org/

365

Living Room / Re: What's Your Internet Speed/Reliability SATISFACTION?

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 16, 2011, 02:36 AM »

And speaking of the developed world, I've had much better luck in the developing and 3rd world for Internet speeds. By a wide margin. Just my own observations though.

-Renegade (June 27, 2011, 12:07 PM)

Can you elaborate on this sentence? This seems interesting. Do you mean the general net speed was faster or were the better plans simply cheaper?

366

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 16, 2011, 02:19 AM »

Every startup tends to have an invite process nowadays but when Dropbox was released, there was no migrating period. Not only was it one of the true cloud apps that simply fit in with a user's work flow due to integration with some file managers but it was an example that both addressed your original question:

is it better to try to have flexible software that adapts to the user (assuming they know what they want), or to have software that implements a really good way of doing things and have the user adapt to that?

...and yet depending on your needs and the features you used, the overall concept is solid enough to either fall as part of your first or second statement. Something that can't be quite done for concepts like gmail unless you bring up such things as certain features. But if you're bringing up certain features, it makes using the sum of the whole a pretty flawed example because then you are bringing into place a scenario where an application slowly and incrementally updated itself in order to become the "as well received" concept that it is.

That is tantamount to talking about the recurring reminders of a task manager rather than the actual concept of a task manager that would either be a flexible software that adapts to the user or a software that implements a really good way of doing things that have the users adopting. You don't really have to sell yourself short on your point. I thought your original questions were pretty clear and I'm known for being poor at communicating. All around the place is not my style though unless that's where the points was going.

You can't expect a reply that doesn't go all over the place when you expect me to both provide some better example and yet at the same time hint that I am trying to break down your example. It's also flawed to self-rate what you feel is a topic that is hijacking a thread and a topic that isn't. At the very least, only the OP can decide that or a mod interjecting. (though this does not mean the mod has the right to decide, only that they have the power.) We're all biased towards continuing the trail of posts that interests us so of course given the chances of a conversation being stopped, we would rarely personally admit to hijacking a thread especially if it's our posts that are being brought up.

Just my last 2 cents: I think asking for realistic is very impractical and somewhat arrogant. Not from a developers' point of view (since the realistic idea will get tested eventually) but from a conceptual point of view, you can't assume there's a theoretically better way of working already and that this theoretically better way will not match up to people's desired ways of working. It's begging for a chicken or egg scenario and it would be much more problematic than answering your first two questions.

367

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA ~ Show List of Shortcuts overlaid on Desktop

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 16, 2011, 01:54 AM »

All the suggestions regarding Post-It Note apps are forgetting one of the main requests from tomos' original request and that is he wants context-sensitive text (based on which app has focus, I'd assume).  I don't know of any note app that will do that.

-skwire (September 15, 2011, 08:00 PM)

Wasn't this one of the features that made app choose Notezilla?

Attach sticky notes to docs & websites

Stick notes to documents, web pages, programs or any other window. When ever
you open the document or web page, the attached sticky note appear automatically.

Features Highlighted:

Attach notes to any document, website, program or window

Use hotkey to attach sticky note to the current document

368

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 03:45 PM »

(while you argue from a more generalist perspective, the actual points you're making exactly mirror how you describe your personal experience)

-JavaJones

It's impossible to avoid this. After all, it is one of the issues you're raising and counter-raising. Does Gmail fit your premise?

To avoid personal experiences would be to insult your counter-points. After all, had my non-personal views been enough, you wouldn't have also countered with your personal views of how Gmail just works. Once it's gotten to that level, part of respecting your viewpoints is to also share my more personal experiences especially since I've already raised the more general points prior to your counter-points.

To me the simple fact that you kept using Gmail "despite" not being into its UI and mail organization metaphor means it is *at least* not so bad you had to switch, and does enough other things right to be worth keeping.

...and this is why personal details are necessary sometimes. This is one example of an impression I wanted to avoid and there's no debunking this unless personal experiences are brought up.

If it wasn't clear in my previous post, I didn't continue to use Gmail. Maybe I should have been clearer and said I opted for Yahoo after trialing gmail just like I tried hotmail. Gmail though had several aspects that would later bring me back. Most of that is not due to the interface but things like Google Reader.

Granted in a situation like with Gmail there are many factors affecting adoption, but many that you point out only became relevant later in its life, or were - I think - secondary to its core functionality and appeal. I maintain that if the underlying mail handling metaphor were unworkable for people, they would leave.

...and this is once again why it was important to share personal experiences. To avoid directions like this.

Not only that, a good fit is different from whether something is unworkable for people or not. It goes back to the mechanics-dynamics issue. Of course any product should get the mechanics down and that means it should work for many people. It doesn't mean they would consider it a great fit though.

So I still feel strongly that Gmail is a good example of what I'm talking about and nothing you've brought up really makes me think otherwise.

As I tend to say, you are entitled to your opinion. I just brought up my points to highlight where I disagree. I'm often one of the worst at communicating those points but I mostly share my observations and if I notice a flaw I bring it up.

You don't need to use Gmail to have a Google Account and use Docs for example, but you chose to for some reason.

err... I kind of did because everyone needs webmail unless they know how to work things like Outlook or have a company e-mail that they have to use.

Especially back then when a Twitter or Facebook account can't be used to register to new services.

Not only that, Gmail today has prioritized inboxes and with the death of Syphir which has become TaskForceApp - that's kind of the only service that exists out there that auto-organizes incoming e-mails somewhat.

ou say something like " in terms of the questions you've raised, Gmail didn't suddenly answer it so it's a poor example", when in fact it absolutely did. Gmail started from day 1 with a novel approach to organizing mail. *That* is the point I'm getting at - they came up with a new idea and put it out there and it's hard in my view to argue that their mail organizing system did not at least contribute to Gmail's success.

In order for this to be valid, it would have to assume a static scenario. A single incident like say Dropbox where once it was released and people found out about it, if they liked it, they used it.

This doesn't mean Dropbox wasn't also a gradual process but see Dropbox as a concept is closer to a static scenario which applies somewhat correctly to the philosophical nature of your first two questions.

On the other hand, Gmail simply isn't. Maybe the tech crowd pushed for that impression because of all the buzz but that's like saying Firefox suddenly appeared one day. It didn't.

Firefox was Phoenix first and even though for many middle adopters it may seem like it came from nowhere, fact is - both to early adopters and later adopters they would know that it was a gradual easing up on using Firefox. Be it from the popularity of open source or from an Adblock extension, Firefox didn't became a one night success.

Gmail is the same. It may not have a name change but like FB, it was incubating itself within closed invite-only beta.

Remember you weren't originally arguing for Gmail's newness as an idea.

This was the questions you were raising:

One thing I always wonder about with this kind of thing: is it better to try to have flexible software that adapts to the user (assuming they know what they want), or to have software that implements a really good way of doing things and have the user adapt to that?

You can't suddenly go from the above and suddenly switch it to an argument of whether Gmail is a good or bad gamble. Both of our points replying to the above quoted subject would lose it's context if it were applied this way.

You almost seem to be arguing its success was *in spite* of its biggest stand-out feature.

I'm not. For one thing, we were not originally discussing Gmail's success. Why would I then shift topics? I'm only adding to your impression of Gmail with my own impression, observation and experiences. Not because I'm arguing for anything about Gmail but simply to expand on what I early felt about how Gmail might be a poor example.

That just seems like a willful desire to avoid seeing labels-and-search as the breakthrough it was for email at the time, simply (I gather) because you personally don't like it.

Sorry, you lost me. Why would I avoid seeing labels and search as the breakthrough it was? More importantly, why would I even bring this point up? It has only mildly to do with this:

One thing I always wonder about with this kind of thing: is it better to try to have flexible software that adapts to the user (assuming they know what they want), or to have software that implements a really good way of doing things and have the user adapt to that?

...more importantly it would go against the context of my post as to how I feel Gmail is a poor example.

To address something even in willfully desiring to avoid it would be to admit that Gmail is a good example.

Not only that, it's simply a stance I never took in this thread.

Rather than trying to tear down my Gmail example, why not come up with some better ones?

For mainly two things:

1) This isn't the main topic of the thread so I'm keeping it light.

2) I still did brought up some counter-analogies though I didn't expand on it due to point 1.

3) Because I wasn't trying to tear down your Gmail example, just merely pointing out some basic observable flaw from my perspective. If by simply doing this could be interpreted as tearing down your example, imagine how you would react if I claim "my example is better. Discuss this! Discuss this!".

You seem to be open to the idea that novel approaches to task management that enforce rules on a user *may* in fact be better than highly flexible systems that give no direction. So let's focus on that.

I would if I was a developer or if I felt the conversation could lead me to improving a system.

I just don't think the premise can lead to anything. For one thing, this isn't the main topic of the thread so it's borderline thread hijacking to discuss it here.

The second is that, as I know more about programming (not the howto, but the process and the ideal), the more I realize how important implementation is. Sure, from time to time, I would chime in with what I observe as seemingly clear flaws that aren't brought up but my main goal is to produce something helpful. Not to win over my point.

This 2nd point also happens to coincide with the core question of productivity. We have people doing mostly to-do apps because they have felt that the argument was won a long time ago. Sure the question can be re-raised but fundamentally it's not just important to raise a better example, it's important to be able to produce a better example. Ones that would legitimately push people away from the conceptual into the actual. Kinda like how Gmail's appearance, while not sudden, made many adopters (especially casual ones who can't develop an e-mail prototype) forget what their preferred e-mail design is and simply switched to the more mature product especially as the alternatives are few and far between and Gmail constantly grew. Not literally forget but mentally act like they forget and that this was the service and design they want to adopt for near eternity...unless the service starts sucking or an alternative totally blows the service out of the water with a new but also implemented, rather than conceptual, idea.

Just to lay it much more clearly and succinctly, I don't really have a problem with conceptual discussions. After all I am participating in this conversation. I just feel that if I were to sink further into this conversation, I should be able to contribute more into the actual goal of producing a better system or software. I currently can't and a big reason why I can't is that the conceptual discussion if went down further would eventually lead to a need for providing an example and I'm not the most charismatic at getting my coding requests to be done for me so we could verify which are the good sounding examples and which are the truly good examples.

369

General Software Discussion / Have all UI designers gone insane? (Warning: very short post)

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 02:55 PM »

Full quote:

Have all UI designers gone insane? Ribbons, Windows 8, obsession with touch and gestures, a few aspects of KDE4, Unity, Gnome3...

Thankfully a mix of KDE's Plasma Desktop and some good GTK2 apps is pretty sane (if space-consuming and unusual) for now. Source

Short quote. No idea what Plasma Desktop is. Just got too much of a chuckle to not share a topic here.

If thread disappoints, hopefully this link: If Programming Languages were religion makes up for it. Source also from Subjot but diff. user.

370

Finished Programs / Re: Finished Coding Snack: Organize Text

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 01:39 PM »

Well, my post is directed at my understanding of GTD. If you are not familiar w/ GTD, then that's where the misunderstanding comes from.

If you are familiar with GTD however but still misunderstood, maybe you can point out which section of my post confused you and I'll do my best to expand on it.

371

Finished Programs / Re: Finished Coding Snack: Organize Text

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 11:41 AM »

I know necro-posting is looked down upon but it finally dawned on me how radical Text Targets is. (Note that I haven't downloaded the program so I'm not sure I get this correctly.)

This thing, in concept, would arguably be the fastest GTD Weekly Review processor for any .txt GTD softwae set-up that was ever invented.

You could literally quick capture every task in Anuran, mass-export the archives via AnuVu..., send the text to this program...create several .txts like @Work, or @PC, or Someday/Maybe and then line by line send these tasks in one full scroll without ever having to be overloaded by all the tasks in front of you. Wow!

Consider my head blown. This is the first app that made me regret not using GTD anymore.

372

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA ~ Show List of Shortcuts overlaid on Desktop

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 06:37 AM »

Sounds like something that widgets are for. I haven't really tried Samurize but weren't they the Lifehacker poster child for these kinds of needs?

373

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 06:31 AM »

I disagree with the statement that this is what we're discussing but as far as why the situation sucks?

I think that's easier to answer. It sucks because to do lists are an unnatural way of doing things. Most people who ever need a massive lists of items under their to-do lists are not only often part of corporate settings, they are often part of group settings where they are not responsible for a perfect active to-do list.

To compound this problem, most productivity guides who rely on to-do lists are written in a way to sell, not to help. In addition to this, most quality to-do lists are much more complicated but many rely on simpler designs. The supply for this is so bad that a productivity system based on Outlook can gain vast positive reviews.

Of course all this is trying to encompass a general concept of why the situation suck. In this thread for example, I would assume the OP finds the situation problematic simply because many to-do lists shy away from rich text editing and not many applications are cross-gadget.

374

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 02:55 AM »

Sure, just like how people want a task manager that keeps track of everything in their lives for them, prioritizes it automatically, and is easy and quick to use, not taking up noticeable time in their day just for task management. So yeah, Gmail worked in a way that people wanted when you consider it at a very high level, which is almost meaningless (but at least establishes the goals), but in terms of actual in-use functionality it was a somewhat radical departure, a gamble, and one that really worked. There has to be some lessons to learn there, don't you think?

-JavaJones (September 15, 2011, 01:25 AM)

I think from a philosophical perspective, everything has a lesson. The problem is, certain examples, may not be the best for discovering those lessons.

For example, not everyone uses task managers. Most people use e-mails.

Most people who use e-mails would want to use them for e-mails. Most people who use task managers may not want to use task managers to manage tasks. Maybe they want to feel more comfortable putting colored icons to prioritize their tasks. Maybe they are just desperate for something to randomly and omnipotently help schedule their tasks.

These issues aren't semantics for the questions you've raised. Especially since e-mail is a settled concept. It's goal is to ease up communication. Productivity on the other hand is up in the air. Everything from task management to prioritization is an open concept with no clear hard idea to separate the well placed reminders put in by productive users from ways random prioritization might help unproductive users who can't work well with dated reminders.

I didn't say it was flexibility or quality, it was in fact a new way of organizing and finding mail. Most of additional, integrated services and "openID"-type authentication management came later. While Google had a good brand, many also saw them as solely a search company and wondered why they were doing mail, not to mention many were hesitant to use a "beta" product (that remained in beta for years).

Flexibility and quality here are just my way of shortening this: "is it better to try to have flexible software that adapts to the user (assuming they know what they want), or to have software that implements a really good way of doing things and have the user adapt to that?" - I just assumed it would be clear enough since the keywords are still there and it's just a modification on my part to make my posts shorter. I apologize for the confusion.

As far as Gmail goes, well that's the thing... it wasn't a one night success. It was a gradual process that's why there are as much criticisms as there are positives. Any type of gradual process destroys both the questions you've raised because the question assumes a more static scenario where as Google and it's end users were each playing a game of "should I/shouldn't I use this?".

There are indeed a couple of reasons that Gmail caught on that have nothing to do with its UI or how it handles mail (large amount of free space, ability to use POP and IMAP out of the box for free) *but* if the mail handling ideas and UI had not actually ended up being a good fit for most people, they would *not* have stuck with it, especially as competitors began to mirror Gmail's *other* main stand-out features (e.g. large free storage space).

I doubt that. For one thing the competitors only tried to mainly fight back with larger storage when Gmail was not only providing enough but Gmail had evolved further and they were playing catch-up in such a way that they didn't consider the wants of their current users. I might have stuck out with Yahoo Mail for example since I prefer Yahoo's folders to labels and the archive thing still confuses me up till today but Yahoo went on to create a slower newer version of Yahoo that turned me off. Worse, there's no Yahoo Docs or Yahoo Reader for me to play around with. I also have to tolerate the newer Yahoo search design. Also at the time, Yahoo had the more annoying sign-up process. I forgot what it was but this was before Gmail required SMS verification.

As far as good fit for the people. Good fit is not just about "good way of doing things that people would adopt to". A bit of that involves modern capabilities. Had other webmail services provided straight up equal upgrades or there was no blogosphere that licked up everything Google and Twitter brings up, then using Gmail as an example for fit might be more valid. The problem is there was alot of external and internal factors manipulating that fit. Even a program that's a great fit for many users but has no Windows XP or 7 version and is stuck with win95 would slowly lose it's userbase.

Not only that, as Apple can attest, there are enough people running around when it comes to software. (Apple products never "just works" for me.) There are still people switching to something other than Gmail. There are just many users, who once they switched, aren't bothered to look at any alternatives unless Gmail starts becoming horrible.

Gmail has only continued to grow in user numbers, despite best efforts by Microsoft, Yahoo, and others, who are now providing large(r) amounts of free space, as many or more integrated services (Windows Live has tons, as does Yahoo with the YID), etc. Why is that?

See, my last sentence above. Although obviously there's a lot more to the details that I don't know. If businesses discovered the straight up answer to this question, there would be no competition among businesses. Adoption is always a deeper subject and one that goes beyond the two questions you raised.

I would argue it is in large part because Gmail "just works", it established a new way of doing things and because it actually was an improvement, people adapted to it and many love it. I've heard countless Gmail users say how much they love how Gmail works, not once have I heard that about Hotmail or Yahoo, and both work in traditional folder-oriented ways and have much slower, more limited search functions.

Well you're entitled to that opinion but Gmail didn't work for me earlier on. I know tons of people liked it but I know tons of Apple fans too and yet I'm not one of them.

Your last point is exactly mine: it did things differently. Sure there were lots of other smaller reasons, like the ability to use it as a "file locker", but the vast majority of users did not take advantage of that, probably weren't even aware of it. The UI is the one, glaring stand-out aspect of it that no one else duplicates and is, I believe, a big part of the reason for their success.

As with the above, the ui really didn't do anything for me. Also there wasn't much of a choice other than Gmail then as Yahoo and Hotmail were either turning me off or were slow to adopt.

Plus the issue with these additional features are not so much for the current users as much as it further increased the curiosity for the product to the point that people just register for it, find they want Google Docs and are now too bored to switch to something that requires multiple accounts.

Hmm, and you think that's what happened with Gmail? Google wasn't doing anything with mail at all and suddenly Gmail came out of the blue with a totally different way of handling it. How does that fit into the picture you've painted of product development?

I don't really know what exactly happened with Gmail. I mean if I knew, it would be much easier to create a Google model for business. I'm just simply talking about startups in general and aligning it with the two questions you've raised.

For one thing, at the time, Gmail didn't just come out of the blue for everyone. There was an invite model that was slowly building up hype. This was a time when I mostly ignored Gmail. Then there was a little of a buzz from people getting invites. Google was starting to be seen as a service that got products correctly due to their success with search. It was like the underdogs finally catching up to the man and showing them how many innovative things you can do to multiple "thought of as impenetrable" services. (and anyone who is familiar with major open source products knows how big "underdog" adoption can have)

I'm not a heavy e-mail user though and even prior to this I only know of Yahoo mail with some trials of hotmail and I particularly didn't care for webmail other than well..."it's e-mail, you have to have a service to send e-mails." and I mostly used e-mails to register for forums.

What made me really stick with it was that my account wouldn't get deleted due to inactivity. There really was nothing Gmail did on it's own that appealed to me. It was just like an annoying tick that "itches" everytime I whiffed up the buzz. (Thankfully I have outgrown that w/ things like Windows 7)
 
As more Google related news started appearing, it just became a matter of annoyance to be constantly bombarded by news without knowing what it is. What eventually made me stick with Gmail though was due to Google Reader. Google Docs was also not a bad word processor as I hated installing MS Office until OneNote. (although sadly the Ribbon has invaded things by then) I'm not the target demographics though but just saying in terms of the questions you've raised, Gmail didn't suddenly answer it so it's a poor example. Interface is another tricky thing to nail down. If you're wowed or many of your friends are there or you found the product first and it works well enough, it could seem unfathomable that it wasn't as great a concept as you thought it was.

I apologize if many of my counter points appear to be looking down on your own impressions. I know less than anyone here but from the outside looking in, I'm just sharing my impression as to why Gmail appears off as an example based on my own experiences and my observation of how software gets adopted. Gmail to me is like using Evernote to try to clue in on both questions. It would fail simply because Evernote didn't just grow "more powerful". Instead Evernote "degraded" and "alienated" it's users in order to get the wider adoption. An adoption that was below being a flexible software and below implementing a good way. An adoption that was propelled by emerging technologies like cloud syncing and for Gmail, webmail stabilization. (No more wondering if I should delete this e-mail, no more worrying if I can leave this account inactive and lose my contacts, no more secret payed jargon like POP, one account that logs me into different services.)

Edit:

Ok, I'm reading something basic about Game Design so maybe a shorter way to illustrate this would be to compare the Mechanics-Dynamics and Aesthetics in relation to the two questions JavaJones raised as well as how it goes with e-mails.

I don't really know game design so I'm just throwing up words based on my own interpretation.

Gmail:
-Mechanics: e-mail (makes users adopt)
-Dynamics: e-mail w/ search, e-mail that lasts long, webmail (doesn't make user adopt)
-Aesthetics: labels, themes, filters, stars (flexible - allows users to adopt)

Task managers:
-Mechanics: Unresolved (productivity enhancing? task speed-up? bulk organization? scheduler?)
-Dynamics: Unresolved (life coaching connector? check box to cocaine simulator? colored priority addictiveness? to-do print template? Leave it at your home software but don't worry about it's content during office hours suite?)
-Aesthetics: Lists, graphs, etc. (good way of doing things that make users adopt except when freeform is allowed)

The 1st is a settled concept. (Users don't have to calculate their needs between using webmail and Outlook)

The 2nd needs to still be separated with freeform vs. non-freeform variations.

375

General Software Discussion / Re: A unified solution for note taking and task management

« Last post by Paul Keith on September 15, 2011, 12:51 AM »

@kfitting, thanks for the reply. I'm just glad my post added something. I still haven't figured out how to reduce the length of my post and my lack of activity makes me  wary of whether I'm saying something that people here would want to read.

Gmail did work in a way that people wanted. People wanted a webmail service that did a better job of storing their e-mails and didn't make e-mail checking like a race towards not getting it deleted after a couple of months of inactivity.

The overall product was unorthodox but what made it catch on was neither flexibility nor quality. It was partially branding. It was partially that Google made the gmail account more and more into the first OpenID with hard to resist companion tools such as Google Docs and Google Reader. It was also because their competitors declined and constantly changed the interface of their own system in ways that alienated their users. It was even because there was a lot of continued hooks to it. Pre-Dropbox, it had the first casual online storage due to a Firefox extension. It arguably filtered spam better. It had a GTD-like mentality with Archiving which made some people even switch to it just to see how it's done.

That's a lot of active developments over time to build it's userbase. When you have that consistency, you're pretty much bound to dodge the question of what's the better concept. It's why the startup mentality is to release fast and to release early. Do that enough times and you end up with not so much a flexible software but a seemingly flexible software due to the development team becoming more flexible thanks to the feedback of their current user base. Follow that trail enough times and you get a better sense of doing things for your userbase that you are less required to develop something good and simply develop something that would wow your users that they think came from you but in reality came from their gathered up feedback.

This doesn't mean the question isn't important to answer but I think Gmail is just a poor example to use as far as setting up a clue as to which question is the right answer.