Recent Posts

826

Living Room / Glad some sites are starting to copy the simplicity of micro-blogging services

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 09:18 PM »

http://www.readwrite...low_meets_tumblr.php

When asked if he would mind his startup being described as "a Tumblr for designers and developers," Forrst founder and developer Kyle Bragger said he wasn't sure, but that he probably wouldn't mind. After all, that is precisely what his product is - a community where users can share their links, pictures and text in a micro-blog format, with a little Stack Overflow-style Q&A thrown in. This budding startup has quickly gathered a unique and loyal community of designers and developers that are sharing thousands of posts and comments each day, and today I had to chance to chat with its founder.

Built on Inspiration - Damn, hopefully this means the age of interface and design is slowly turning into a revolution. I don't want to to hear anymore Ribbon is designed to make it easier for users. Let designers/developers credit the real well designed interfaces.

http://forrst.com/

827

Living Room / Re: The proper word is “dependent,” not addicted.

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 08:03 PM »

For the most part, these word plays seem pedantic until it's used politically against people.

Not saying that's the author's intent but judging by the educational slant at the end, he may be trying to prevent the act from being demonized.

828

Living Room / The proper word is “dependent,” not addicted.

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 07:09 PM »

High Tech Gadgets: Addiction, Dependency or Hype

Addiction is associated with individual choice to smoke, drink, and take drugs. It connotes personal weakness. Yet consider the spread of popular technologies as they have become habitual features of the culture. Think indoor plumbing, telephone, cars, planes, and television. They have become daily patterns in our lives. In short, Americans have become dependent on once “new” technologies. And that is normal. Addiction, however, is abnormal.

829

Living Room / Re: What the heck has happened to Google search?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 06:53 PM »

Google's MayDay Algorithmn:

http://searchenginel...g-tail-traffic-43054

I asked Google for more specifics and they told me that it was a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, which seems to imply that sites getting less traffic still have their pages indexed, but some of those pages are no longer ranking as highly as before. Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts “long tail” traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic.

Michael Martinez, May 28th, 2010 at 2:03 pm ET:

“The bottom line is, does it remove search engine spam?”

Almost certainly. But that is still just one escalation in an ever-escalating war between search engineering and search spamming.

My sites’ traffic is still up, but my Google referrals do seem to be down a little. The quality of linking content may indeed be a deciding factor in more ways than one. It seems I’m getting more referral traffic from non-search sites.

Is that because of this Google change or in spite of it?

Was informed by this via a 30 Day Challenge e-mail.

Excerpt:

We all know that Google is an ever changing beast with a
thousand heads. One minute they're telling us how to
utilize Page Rank, the next minute they're telling us not
to worry about Page Rank and concentrate on quality
content, the next minute they're telling us to concentrate
on page speed, and the minute after they're telling us
that page speed is important, but also not to forget
about... Yada, Yada, Yada...

Honestly, which way are you supposed to go?!

I think the only thing we can trust from Google is that
they'll always be looking for ways to weed out the crumby
sites with crappy content and get better at serving the
quality results for the user - and they're getting pretty
damn smart at it as well.

In a recent article on Google's blog they actually came out
and said that 70% of their search results aren't served
from the keywords people are typing in, but they're affected
by *synonyms*.

Yes, you did read that correctly - 70% - THAT'S HUGE!!

However, there is another issue...

Google have again just dropped another hammer blow by making a
*permanent* change to their algorithm, code named "May Day".

The "May Day" algorithm change has basically gone and wiped out
thousands of rankings for long-tail keyword pages, which has
hit quite a few of you hard.

But as always, we have a plan!

830

General Software Discussion / Quora invite request

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 06:02 PM »

Just posting this here in case I don't get one from Hacker News:

Quora is already Google Useful

Is the spare invite offer available for those who don't regularly contribute to Hacker News?

Damn, I'm not that confident with putting any real profile online though. I wonder if they would eventually open up for fake online personalities.

Btw my e-mail: piecesoffish at gmail

831

General Software Discussion / Re: If you think OpenOffice is a competitor to MS Office 2010, think again

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 05:56 PM »

Maybe I'm mistaken zridling but isn't Zoho a heavy desktop suite?

As a person who doesn't know spreadsheets, I just got the impression that Google was looking for light sharing and private wiki-doc hybrid while Zoho was gunning for the full Office suite.

I haven't tried Office Live though.

There's still also the question of privacy and downtime though and I think that's the major dilemma. Maybe I'm mistaken and that documents are like Surfulator and doesn't sync well with DropBox but if they did, then the real issue is mass sharing but even Dropbox' public folder isn't supposed to be Delicious for documents.

832

Living Room / Elastic Lists - The Possible Future of Semantic Search

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 05:50 PM »

Source: http://moritz.stefan...jects/elastic-lists/

Elastic lists allow to navigate large, multi-dimensional info spaces with just a few clicks, never letting you run into situations with zero results. They enhance traditional UI approaches for facet browsers by visualizing weight proportions, animated transitions, emphasis of characteristic values and sparkline visualizations

NY Times Article search demo: (Warning requires Javascript)

http://moritz.stefan...s/elastic-lists/NYT/

Forgot where I got the link:

http://thenoisychann...rch-now-open-source/

To me, it shows everything that can go wrong with faceted search. Try a search for [google] in that demo. If you have the reaction I did, you’ll hit immediate paradox of choice from all the options presented, many of which seem almost random.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of faceted search when implemented well. I’m just not sure this is the best example of a well done implementation?

That demo has issues, but I don’t think those damn elastic lists per se. Some of my criticisms: too many facet values as refinement options, lack of parallelism (e.g., locations aren’t hierarchical and some options should be children of others), lack of normalization of organizations (e.g., google and google inc.), and a confusing description facet (e.g., choices include “computer software” and “software”). In contrast, the Nobel Prize demo strikes me as a much better demo of elastic lists.

833

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Request: Please share your prioritization methods here

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 05:47 PM »

Oh, sorry for the misunderstanding.

I guess in this case the question would be, what general terms/questions you use to separate the pair and decide on. (unless you meant you just stick to the criteria of which is most important)

I'm actually a huge fan of paired comparison analysis but since I don't know how to make a macro,  I'm often stuck with this

Still my issue with it is that, in the end it's still just a pair and you're still just replacing numbers with pairs. I still dream of a full blown questionaire ala something like this

For example, even the Covey Matrix can branch off into 4 areas all revolving around the concept of importance.

If it just sticks to that question though, again, I apologize for misunderstanding.

834

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Request: Please share your prioritization methods here

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 04:05 PM »

While your post is pertaining more to how to narrow down wicked problems, raybeere, I think you captured many of the essence of why this needs to be a survey.

I apologize if I didn't go to this detail in the TS. It's just that I felt it would hold back and keep people from sharing their methods by being tl;dr.

The bottomline is this:

Personally, I find the other systems most useful in the way that they provoke me to think in different ways about my choices. Over time, incorporating new ways of looking at issues into my routine tends to be helpful. But if I try to follow the actual process, it trips me up. Every time.

...yet by this same token, you can't ignore the fact that most productivity users want to take and get something to work rather than the opposite and share so we could all compare and discuss and actually have a bigger more concrete pool to provoke and improve our prioritization methods.

I don't mean to single you out but since you provided the meat, I hope you don't interpret this as something meant to insult you:

Even after you wrote out that well thought out post, did you list your prioritization methods?

This isn't so much to point out how you didn't contribute as much as to highlight how even those who would realize the quality of subjectivity in prioritization would still be apt to keep their own methods to themselves.

Thus for those who feel the flaw of this thread, I hope you think that through.

For just like the military needs to ask some more questions...nay even create an argumentation template map, hopefully those who might be reluctant to share might also wonder:

"How else can people know how complicated each person's prioritization methods are if I and many others keep mine hidden away?"

"How many spare categories and additional process does all my Co-DC member have compared to mine?"

"How many people are actually blessed with methods that would improve my own?"

"What categories or techniques do they use and how complex or simple are they compared to my own?"

That said, I am being a hypocrite for keeping the specific categories I use but I fear such an insertion would miss the soul and necessity of this thread. Call me a cynic, but right now, I'd rather have the bolts and pieces on the table because we all threw our knowledge and research on the table.

Later on, all this talk about subjectivity and gut instinct, if enough people really want to gather around and attempt to merge them to save those unproductive people who can't form their methods some hope. Ok, let's do that.

But right now, as much as I would like to apologize for seemingly trying to emotionally blackmail everyone to empty what's in their pockets, desperation trumps incomplete criticism. The more things are on this topic, the more chances an unproductive person who stumbles upon this topic may upgrade their gut and maybe even switch it on to the "more useful objective criteria that needs to be given subjective values" setting from the "less" or "zero" or "supremely flawed criteria" settings.

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Living Room / Re: Cryp.sr Host-Proof Keyboard-Friendly List Manager

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 03:39 PM »

Yes, it's fundamentally flawed but equally interesting from a future possibility way.

Take these concepts from the comments under Hacker News:

http://news.ycombina....com/item?id=1226277

http://news.ycombina....com/item?id=1227111

   
1 point by NateLawson 80 days ago | link

There's no such thing as "host proof". There is software tamper resistance, which gives limited protection against the host and is often used for DRM. But this software does not use software tamper resistance. The author made up the term "host proof" to refer to the fact that the data is not stored on the client and is sent to the server encrypted. That's it.

This is Javascript "pgp -c" (passphrase-based encryption) but less secure.

With Javascript crypto, you implicitly trust the server. You are executing code downloaded from the server in order to encrypt your data to upload to the same server (or one run by the same entity if not the exact same box).

Instead of trusting the server to encrypt your data for you, you're trusting it to send you unmodified, non-buggy code to encrypt your data for you. Every time you connect to it. The one time it sends you a trojaned (or buggy) version of the code, your data is compromised.

I prefer to get my software once, audit it, and be sure I'm running the same thing every time. With Javascript crypto, every time you connect to the site is a crapshoot. Is it 0wned today? Maybe.

The comments section of a post I wrote has a discussion of Clipperz, a JS crypto library:

http://rdist.root.or...ypto-attacks-slides-...

http://news.ycombina....com/item?id=1227304

He actually talks about that in the post, if you read it. He's making a Firefox plugin to validate JS before it's run, it's a bit down near the end.

http://news.ycombina....com/item?id=1227397

It's incorrect that there is no such thing as host-proof assuming the meaning intended by cryp.sr, but you would be correct in being put off by a false sense of security this provides for users of the web based version of the interface.

I believe that's the point of the client library at http://github.com/cortesi/crypsr_client. The only things you're asked to trust is that encryption algorithm is good and that the host will delete the encrypted data long before the processor in your smart phone is fast enough to decrypt it in 30 milliseconds. If the host returns bad data, it simply won't decrypt and it will be trash.

The real problem with this service is that it's intended to be an easy to use secure means of sharing information from one to many, but to make true secure use of it everyone needs to download a dedicated trusted client and the problem becomes no different than it has always been and only marginally more user friendly than hosting the data yourself.

Refusing to trust or rely on SSL by using javascript based encryption is something I've experimented with a bit in the past. Without this you are still relying on SSL which only protects the information in transport anyway. If the server is compromised, then at the least all of the information already stored on the server is secure as each key is not on the server at all. At that point you just have to worry about whether the algorithm has flaws or if the person gaining unauthorized access has a couple supercomputer farms and many years on their hands.

It is true that if you rely on the host to provide you with the encryption algorithm then it is open to future compromise, but the data couldn't be retroactively compromised until the moment it's accessed again via a modified page. Due to this, using cryp.sr via a browser is less desirable than using the open source client until there's a trusted plugin or greasemonkey script.

or the checksum issue:

http://news.ycombina....com/item?id=1227209

It'd be neat if there were signed or invariant web documents. Perhaps naming things as their own checksum? This way, if it were ever changed (...) the document name would change and the reference would break. The client could check at retrieval time if the checksum matches the label?

836

Living Room / Re: The Password Encryption Education Thread

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 03:32 PM »

Just saw this old thread via searching AES-256 less secure than AES-128

...and the confusion further dissolves into confusion.

837

Living Room / Re: The Password Encryption Education Thread

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 10:03 AM »

Yeah, unless I'm mistaken, no one has really disputed AES-256 yet.

I could be wrong but from my brief lurking over the net, that seems to be THE encryption to trust.

But then, see this is where the whole discussion often flies by my head.

The guy pointed out 448-bit PLUS speed.

Maybe I'm missing the whole thing because I'm comparing personal applications like password managers but speed in the sense of encryption doesn't really give the feeling of slow. At least I assume lots of other things like javascript contribute more to speed than the encryption process.

Encryption like that is cumulative, so you can use both, or use 1 of them 2x. Technically, you could have a 2-bit encryption scheme and just run it again and again to get the same kind of security. Many schemes can have different bit lengths as well. e.g. You can have 512-bit AES as well.

AES is still a standard, and that won't change. Everyone will use it and support it. Most often, security is about money, and not about security.

-Renegade (June 17, 2010, 09:55 AM)

True but let's just say this was from the perspective of a casual user with no idea how to sink his teeth into understanding his choices.

For one thing, I would assume cumulative encryption is out of the window but what about things like the patented nature of AES?

Also could you clarify why the standard won't change? It can be disconcerting to find out that it didn't change because of the money rather than the level of security.

For a long time, I think few people could have envisioned some normal people worrying about the open-source-ness and license of an application yet here we are today where at least some people are trying to.

This security encryption thing could one day meet the same fate when the choice of available secure options increases.

838

Living Room / Re: The Password Encryption Education Thread

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 09:42 AM »

Yeah, for the most part that's the short version but imagine if users were faced with the gray area of BlowFish vs. AES?

Lots of applications still uses AES and when you combine Blowfish into an optional option... well there goes the confusion for the casual non-techie curious about which encryption is the best. (and that is if they don't give up and just take everything AES for granted as that's good enough for most non-enterprise security)

There's also this tad bit of adjective: not quite as secure AES-128 :in there.

839

Living Room / The Password Encryption Education Thread

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 09:27 AM »

http://news.ycombina....com/item?id=1231399

Someone asked:

Just curious, what's your objection to AES?

and the guy said:

jSCrypto uses AES-128 only, a 10-round cipher with a small keysize, to which there are a number of side-channel attacks available. AES is also a very slow performer due to its computationally demanding nature, and still it does not supply additional benefits from the large amount of work it puts into scrambling data - a perfect example of another case of this would be the good old DES standards, with its measly 56-bit (7 bytes) keys, which are computationally more demanding than newer, safer ciphers, yet still so easily broken.

In comparison to this, a cipher that is both fast and also secure would be f.e. Blowfish, a 16-round cipher supporting 448-bit (56 bytes) keys, while still, on 448-bit keys, operating about 25% faster than the not quite as secure AES-128 does with its 128-bit (16 bytes) keys. Blowfish is entirely free of patents, whereas most of the cipher modes of AES are patented.

The second most important factor in a cipher's security is its keysize. If the cipher withstands all cryptoanalysis on its full amount of rounds, the last resort is brute force, and with brute force every extra bit of keysize matters to the feasibility and practical possibility of breaking the data. 128 bits of AES is today broken with modern parallel means in ridiculously short times (read: hours). Every extra bit of key theoretically (but not always practically) doubles the work required; a 129-bit key is twice as large as a 128-bit key; a 130-bit key is four times larger than a 128-bit key; a 448-bit key is 320 times larger than a 128-bit key.

For the most part, I don't understand this but as a whole I interpreted it as DES < AES because of bloatedness despite lesser security while AES = Blowfish if it's system wasn't patented and in this case if it was higher like AES-256 but not AES-128 especially with Blowfish's speed but I could be wrong.

Not sure if DC has a thread for this already but as password managers and security in general becomes more popular, I thought I'd try to re-invigorate a discussion on this as it's too easy to stumble upon these encryption acronyms even if you're a total newb.

840

Living Room / Cryp.sr Host-Proof Keyboard-Friendly List Manager

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 08:50 AM »

I'm not really sure if what is making people twitter this is due to the service or the concept but I'll let mouser decide.

Personally, I think both are wonderful. The only flaw is the flaw with many online list managers, do you trust the longevity of the site and the memory capacity?

The in-built auto-generate password though is very nice. I think it can be a good medium between those that seek anonymity and those that seek to register but hate the e-mail confirmation thing.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a free forum host that supports this feature.

Link: http://corte.si/post...rypsr-evolution.html

A couple of months ago I launched cryp.sr - a minimal, proof-of-concept host-proof application that was little more than a text area with some crypto bolted to the back of it (more detail here). In the first few days after launch, nearly 1500 pads were created, and from the logs it looks like at least a few dozen people still use cryp.sr regularly today. This left me scratching my head somewhat - cryp.sr had no features at all, and its only redeeming quality was extreme simplicity. What exactly were people storing in their cryp.sr pads? Well, we can safely assume they weren't writing novels in a browser text area. In fact, we can take a pretty solid guess that most cryp.sr pads contain lists - most likely lists of login credentials and todo lists.

So, I thought, why not make cryp.sr a kick-ass host-proof list manager? I could give it all the things I've always missed in the innumerable online todo-lists I've tried: nested lists, VI-like keybindings, multi-level undo, Markdown for formatting. And that's exactly what I've done. Please try out the new cryp.sr, and let me know what you think. Since I'm now actually trying to make an app that users will find pleasant to use, I'm especially interested in feature requests and usability problems.

Definition of Host-Proof:

The goal of host-proof applications is simple: to design web applications in such a way that we don't have to trust the host. Data is encrypted and decrypted on the client-side, and the server only stores encrypted data. The server never sees encryption keys or cleartext data, and couldn't access the user's information even if it tried.

The host-proof idea is still in its infancy, but ultimately, we hope that host-proof techniques will let us combine the benefits of the cloud with strong, host-independent data security guarantees. The possibilities are incredibly enticing. We can imagine a cryptographic Facebook where you don't need to trust one company to aggregate the entire world's private data in the clear. We can imagine storing medical records and financial data in the cloud while still allowing people to maintain direct control over who uses the data and how. We can imagine a Gmail where everyone uses crypto by default, where decryption and encryption happens right in the browser. The technical obstacles that stand in the way of these dreams are immense, but if we can surmount them a better world lies beyond.

841

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Compendium Goes Beta (list of changes)

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 05:38 AM »

To be honest, I don't really know where to post this since it isn't exactly news so I'm posting it here as a sort of "Now you can slightly get more organized" using Compendium if you haven't switched to this new version yet.

This is the release notes btw and you may prefer heading straight for this as I'm omitting some things I didn't test like Movie Maps (think Movie annotations except offline and layered inside Compendium itself) - http://compendium.op...-notes-2.0-beta1.htm

*Links are now easier to modify - Used to be you have to right click on a line after selecting it. Now there's a toolbar that allows you to modify several settings at once.

Cons: As far as I know the curved link is the default and there's no setting to change this. (Used to be compendium's line is straight only. Now it added 4 new settings - short dash, long dash, curved, squared)

*Linked Files browser - Used to be when you drag a file into Compendium and leave it, you don't really have an overview of every file you put in and therefore may have no idea how to mass-remove some leftover files.

Cons: From what I can see, it's still just a list node that auto-detects the location of all the linked files and the number of times it has been read.

*Pre-Set Templates

Cons: The templates are extensive but unless you understand what the purpose of those templates are, you won't be getting any of it just from browsing the title of the templates.

*Button based location bar - This is totally new in Compendium.

Cons: It's not exactly a tab bar but in a way a tab bar would be too intrusive and the way this is set up would be great...if it functioned like a tab bar.

Instead this allows you to quickly switch back and spot what sub-map your nodes are located. I appreciate the change because Compendium used to have a problem with switching back from the previous location and switching back from the previous window. Still...I think an up button would have just as been good for that purpose if it means the location bar functioned like a tab bar.

*Cleaner more visual lay-out - For the most part, it's the same default look but many options have been simplified and additional cues have been added like when you select a node, there are 4 arrows indicating that it can be moved in any direction

Cons: For the most part, the look isn't to my taste but it's more of a personal issue. I really don't like seeing 4 arrows when selecting a node. Dropdown arrows are kind of annoying in that most of them only try to hide 2 additional menus. I can't spot the icon set change and it might have been removed.

Conclusion: For the most part it's not a necessary upgrade since there are still bugs. On the other hand, it may be worth it to test ride the new Compendium just because it might be more stable now although I didn't really test how good it is at importing and exporting and I don't really know HTML to test those features.

842

General Software Discussion / Re: If you think OpenOffice is a competitor to MS Office 2010, think again

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 05:07 AM »

Personally I don't know how anyone can recommend OpenOffice anymore.

When you narrow it down to it's very core, it's slow. Even other open-source applications like Gnumeric and AbiWord can be faster.

Then again, it's hard to recommend 2010 also except for the reason 40hz stated.

The sad part though is that despite what zridling said in the beginning, we're still talking about OpenOffice instead of the likes of Zoho or Google Docs.

In the end, OpenOffice has made it's mark. It's no longer obscure. It will always be that Netscape to MS Office. The question remains when the Fat Office suite will sing it's way to a sexier Fox.

843

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Request: Please share your prioritization methods here

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 17, 2010, 05:01 AM »

Source: http://www.triz-jour...1997/11/a/index.html



Compromise + Idealized Final Result (or how much does this task add to your ultimate goal in life)

844

Living Room / Re: Microsoft lashes out at Googler for making Windows vulnerability public

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 16, 2010, 05:23 PM »

Paul, I have read this entire thread several times, and what I get out of this is, "Ignore what the guy did, ignore Google, and focus on why Microsoft isn't fixing the problem!"  Am I right here?  Under the assumption that I am, I am going to ask you:  How can they fix it if they only recently learned of it?  If they don't respond, everyone and their brother will assume they knew about it for months and are just the same old "we will fix it when it becomes an issue" instead of being proactive.  Yes, this is an issue, but I agree with most others here that the "Hacker" who released it is the bigger problem and issue in this case.  Microsoft, I am sure, has people working feverishly on this, but there are others that MUST respond to this so all know that they were working in good faith (even if the extent of that is debatable) and the Google employee, with or without Google condoning his act, acted at best irresponsibly and at worst, maliciously.

-steeladept

Sorry steel, you are mistaken there.

If I ever gave you the impression that Google needs to be ignored, it is only in the context of separating who Google is from what Google done and that's only for those who have already fallen to the Google vs. Microsoft line of argument.

Again in the context of analogical hyperbole, it would be like having someone from either the Left or Right reveal a false flag operation to help reduce any modern day American pseudo-war, pseudo-imperialism efforts and then having their actions villified because it was illegal and risked the lives of many soldiers and then the entire public outcry is all about how that person (whichever his affiliation) become a case of Right vs. Left and which side was wrong or right.

My reply would then be tantamount to saying to those people: "We should lessen our focus on the illegality or affiliation the whistle blower represents and focus just as much on how even when it was revealled, our government remains vigilant in selling us propaganda and keeping us distracted from the core issue or even worse, force us to argue against our own biases rather than make us aware how even though several administrations have ended the war, they are still trying to create a new one even as they have not yet totally washed their hands of their previous bloody history."

As far "why isn't Microsoft fixing the problem?" that was a non-relevant issue to me as the original article didn't really hint to that one way or another. However, I don't really see why Microsoft wouldn't fix the problem. Even if they aren't focusing on security nowadays, news of this just makes them look worse especially after the statement has dilluted the point of how some people may be exasperated by their past history. To me, it's a clear necessity from all sides that they should fix the issue.  

845

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Mini-Review + Survey: GTD Over The Years – What Changed?

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 15, 2010, 05:55 PM »

Woah Evan. That was quick.

Oh, I just happened to browse David Allen's forum (I rarely visit there) and saw your review of the Implementation Guide and like I said above, it was well done and very clear and the talk to me button just won me over.

Welcome to this forum btw.

As far as new features, man... unfortunately I have no website design knowledge at all.

I hope the other guys here gives you some feedback because the whole... design and traffic and what a user might want and how realistically it can be implemented is more of their thing.

With no framework, my ideas can shoot from the more ego-feeding but ultimately useless GTD portfolio creator where users can easily fill a profile on how productive they've become with GTD and share it via Facebook and Twitter or even as a blog button for their site to the cliche idea of a social network to the more niche and unlikely ability to stack one's download que so visitors can test several of their preferred GTD applications quickly or have it so all their preferred web app links be easily copied to the clipboard for easy copy and paste reminder or even old style social media way of having a mini-Digg for GTD apps and news but again, I have no real idea which is possible to implement and which if implemented will make GTD users refer to the site more.

I say even as is now, your site looks good and if you continue filling it with the type of contents you're doing now, it's enough to get people interested; marketing and network exposure aside.

If there's one thing I think you can surely do to help traffic, it's to create a mini-site launch after you've updated your site with the new lay-out since that seems to be the fad right now.

I don't know how exactly you can do that effectively over the blogosphere, but the nice thing about DonationCoder's community is they are friendly enough that all you need to do is post the new updated site in the Announce your Software/Service/Product section (subheader for the General Software Discussion forum) and fad or not, they're inclined to give you a piece of their mind if they're interested in the topic.

 

846

Living Room / Picks/Shovels/Map/Gold and Marketing

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 14, 2010, 08:38 PM »

Comment under: http://ittybiz.com/t...itterati-douchebags/

I'm taking this guy's words out of context but I got a chuckle out of the post:

I totally agree with you Naomi. There is a map. It could be a wrinkly one with a coffee stain on it, or a sexy laminated job all folded up nice in the glove box, but there IS a map.

The problem is that the people that have the map are never going to really sell it, becuase they understand viral marketing all too well. If you give away the secret, then there is no more business model.

So, instead we sell picks and shovels to the people that are looking for gold, because that’s WAAAY easier then looking for the gold yourself… ahhh, but the map, the map. Where is the real damn map?

-Joshua Black
The Underdog Millionaire

It reminds me of the discussion of end-users and techies in another thread.

I admit the more it strays away from viral marketing, the harder it relates but it's like the story of every untalented guy who wants to penetrate through knowledge with just an internet connection and a bag of curiosity.

On a side note, there were some what if talks back then on what would replace fiat currency in the future as hard asset. Many gave the suggestion of replacing gold and silver with knowledge and time.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Create a Graveyard Folder (Diary users ignore this)

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 14, 2010, 05:47 PM »

I apologize if I had posted this before somewhere in here.

I think I haven't because at the time my thought was, this wasn't good enough as a separate concept to make someone productive but my recent post here as well as my own unsettling realization that there's probably nothing else new or innovative I can introduce to a productive system "conceptually" other than to learn how to develop a software that will auto-organize many of the manual tasks in different productivity systems, I might as well throw this out there.

Concept: Just a warning. This really won't make you productive at all. It's based on the premise that many systems try to emulate many things our PCs do but since I have yet to find an idea equivalent to the recycle bin, it seems I have to make my own term for what to call it relative to my productivity system.

All you do is just make a graveyard folder and you're done. If you have a specific software in mind, just create this category in it.

This isn't so much a place to put your finished tasks or inspire you by making it easier to search for things you've finished but instead is a place where you put those things you "dearly" don't want to drop but have to.

I'd call this Regrets folder if the term Graveyard didn't give me a much better image of closure.

For example, you've eaten an unhealthy and delicious fast food product before and one day, you realize there's just something you don't like about it anymore. Maybe something beyond the fact that it's unhealthy and you stopped eating it.

Fast forward to many years later and then you encounter this food again and once again you're tempted to eat it but all you can think of is that it's unhealthy. Well, setting aside the productive black belts, I'd like to think there are many of us whom unhealthy isn't enough of an anti-tantalizer.

But there's nothing to remind us of why we gave it up except for a vague concept at the tip of our memory and then instead of just eating it once or twice for nostalgia, we get hooked again even if deep down we have the "unhealthy" reason for why we gave this food product up.

For something specific to my Graveyard folder, here's two games I decided to stop drawing inspiration from in the off chance I ever get started with developing a game (one is copied and the other is my own self-written conclusion):

FF6:

http://www.gamefaqs....s/review/R69303.html

Despite the fantastic build up and despite the magnificent would-be end to the game, we're left with a poorly thought out ending. While character development hits a real peak at this point in the game, the main plot fizzles.

Once the story ended, they threw a jumbled mess at the back end to make sure we got everything.

There's actually nothing more to the main plot.

Xenogears:

It is and was a great game with a great videogame plot that had many people interpreting it's design

...but...

XenoSaga failed despite the hype. Focused too much on cinematic cutscenes but never garnered the success of FF7. Even the system is similar to Legaia in that, while, it makes for a great alternate hybrid to the Tales series fast feel, simply doesn't convert well in a general setting.

Even the robots were more appealling because few rpgs have giant robot battles and besides SRW, this was the 2nd best mecha rpg I've played. (Front Mission 3 being the 3rd)

...and here are two others from a software usage category:

*Not good enough in detecting failures*



#Cliche Finder#

http://cliche.theinfo.org/



#Critique Finder#

http://www.critters.org/critcheck.html

Incollector:

Seemingly abandoned or rarely updated for modern distroes

As you can see, some of these texts can be very basic while others can be as detailed as you want. The important thing is not to write or copy the detail that you would want to present to others but what you yourself felt sincerely at the time of your dissatisfaction.

The important thing is that you recall your emotions when you eventually get attracted to these things again. I've even used this to remind me of the friends I've lost, pushed away or stop contacting.

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The Getting Organized Experiment of 2009 / Re: Request: Please share your prioritization methods here

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 14, 2010, 02:55 PM »

I don't know where I got this or how I had this written down in my old notes but these sets of categories are sort of reverse prioritization categories: instead of prioritizing which task you need to do first, this prioritizes how much you need to drop or set aside a task.

Unsatisfactory -Tolerating-Longing-Graveyard

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Living Room / Re: Microsoft lashes out at Googler for making Windows vulnerability public

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 14, 2010, 02:49 PM »

err... sorry Stoic, you didn't really provide enough details to discuss.

For one thing, politics as the art of lying is very akin to equating technology with art. (or at least what little I understand of how you phrase it but apparently you seem to view technology as art as invalid while technology as science as valid so it's an easy analogy to show how confusing if not invalid your usage or focus on politics is. Not that modern politics isn't stereotyped as deceiving people but the art of lying...it's just...???)

The whole thing with peers, jury and Google... I mean no offense but to borrow Renegade's words, there's something way off base with your entire post except for the +1 for Eoin.

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Living Room / Re: Microsoft lashes out at Googler for making Windows vulnerability public

« Last post by Paul Keith on June 14, 2010, 02:06 PM »

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

Sorry about adding this semi-irrelevant quote. I originally wanted to add this in one of my earlier replies as a short succinct reply but I just couldn't remember the right quote until I eventually found it on PopUp Wisdom.

Set aside politics, set aside the idea that I'm trying to convince anyone, set aside the security issues and this is the only idea I want people to consider with my long replies. I know it's not exactly applicable to the thread especially the latter half of the quote but this is the shortest version I can think of as to why I hold my stance.