Blog Yellek

The guys over at Geeks and God have a new podcast series up on podcasting and one of the episodes deals with sermon podcasts. One of the issues I have with Christian podcasting is that I can never find the good stuff. There are thousands of churches out there that are just putting their sermon audio out there as a podcast and the Geeks and God guys explain very well why this isn’t very effective, basically because the podcasts aren’t very targeted and don’t really work for people who don’t have a connection to the church involved. Thus they are ineffective as outreach tools.

Churches doing or considering podcasting would do well to have a listen to this, I think it has some good insights.

OK I give up. There are a bunch of features I have been carrying around in my head for a killer task tracking application for a while now, hoping one day to be able to implement it. I now realise that I am unlikely to ever get the time to develop this software and that I really want these features now so here they are, free for anyone to implement. If you want to give me credit or even some renumeration then I’m not going to say no but that is not a requirement for using these ideas. Here is my list:

1. Predecessors and Successors. Mostly what I want is to reduce my list of outstanding tasks to only those that I can work on at the moment so the whole list doesn’t freak me out so much. By filtering out tasks that have unfulfilled prerequisites I can reduce the list to those tasks that I need to get done so as to allow the successor tasks to be achieved.
2. The ability to split tasks. Often when doing GTD you realise that the task you have set down is not granular enough and that you need to split it into sub tasks in order to make them next actions. I want the ability to easily split a task and for all of the predecessor and successor information with other tasks to adjust accordingly.
3. Resources Rather than Contexts. GTD, because it was envisaged for paper based tracking systems, allows tasks to be placed into a single context, the idea being that you look at all of the tasks that can be done in any context you are in and do those. This is a way of reducing the task list. I find that I have tasks that can be done in multiple contexts. I can make phone calls anywhere I have a phone which is everywhere these days, not just in a specific context. In thinking about this I realised that tasks depend on resources and that contexts have resources available. Resources can be something you will need to do a task, such as a phone or an internet connection; a person; a specific place or something less tangible such as work time or personal time. Contexts have a set of resources associated with them. It is the match between resources required and resources available that determines what tasks you can do in a context. For example on the bus on the way in to work I have a phone, personal time and an iPod but I don’t have a privacy resource. Resources could be modeled using tags but there would need to be a way to filter for tasks containing multiple tags to represent the contexts.
4. Task Urgency Value. GTD abhors the use of task priority to determine which tasks to do next but it also introduces the idea of a tickler file for tasks that need to be done on certain days. This doesn’t allow enough flexibility for me because I have some tasks that have a hard date and some tasks that can be more flexible. For example I have a meeting every Monday that I need to have prepared for by that date but if it has been more than a week since I have vacuumed my floors one more day won’t hurt too much. My idea is this: introduce a task urgency value which gets calculated based on the date when something ought to be done and how hard that date is. Urgency should be calculated using some sort of mathematical function like an exponential function so that the closer the date the higher the urgency gets. Urgency would increase slower for softer target dates and faster for harder target dates. In this way tasks that need doing first would automatically bubble to the top.
5. Task Templates. In life there are situations that occur that will cause the same set of tasks to occur over and over again. For example my checklist for things I need to bring to my life group meeting. I would like the ability to have that list of tasks to be added to my task contexts automatically using a template prepared earlier. This would save me time and make sure that everything is covered.
6. Repeating Tasks. I want the ability to have a task or a group of tasks via a template repeat. For example tasks around the house need to be done periodically so if I have cleaned the bathroom for this week then I want a new task to remind me to it again in a week’s time. Fly Lady has built a business on this very concept. The new task shouldn’t be added until the first task is completed. Ideally this should be combined with task urgency values to allow some flexibility as to when tasks are completed. Update: There is an application called Sciral Consistency that does this. it doesn’t integrate with anything (such as RememberTheMilk) but they are on the right track.
7. Add Tasks From Everywhere. I want to be able to add tasks from everywhere and have them pop up in a holding area ready for me to review and categorise them. I want to be able to tag sites in del.icio.us with special tags to remind me to follow up (RSS?). I want to be able to SMS, email and IM tasks (Imified?). I want to be able to add tasks somehow from my phone and my PDA.
8. Get Task Lists From Everywhere. I want to be able to get my task list from any device I have, my PDA, my phone and any PC I happen to be on.
9. Wait List Tasks. I want to be able to delegate a task to someone and have it disappear from my active task lists but I then want it to pop up again to remind me to follow up that person automatically. A threshold based on task urgency value might be appropriate or, more simply, a number of days before a due date.

Any or all of these ideas could be implemented independently although some of them obviously have synergies between them.

So how about it? Can anyone pick these features up and run with them?

For more information I can be contacted either via the comments or via the temporary email address (20 emails only) taskideas.20.yellek@spamgourmet.com.

In recent times housing affordability in Australia has sunk to record lows and, despite the recent slow down in the property market in some of the major capitals, it shows no signs of improving in the foreseeable future. Since the early 1980’s the proportion of dwellings that are privately rented has risen from around 19 percent to around 27 percent today. Median rents have also risen from $123 in 1996 to $190 last year. Financial commentators are now questioning the financial wisdom in even buying a house in comparison to other investments. It appears as if the Great Australian Dream is under attack. Given the changing landscape of the Australian rental market it seems odd to me that the Australian real estate industry still treats tenants as second class citizens rather than as the valuable customers they are.

For example my current real estate agent, Ray White Real Estate Rose Park, refuses to conduct housing inspections at any other time than Friday mornings. This means that tenants must either take time off work to be present at the inspection or forgo any right to privacy when an inspector is present. The reason for this is the margins of the real estate agency not wanting to pay penalty rates to staff to inspect at more meaningful times. The residential tenancy act vaguely says only that inspections have to be notified in advance with no grounds for a tenant to object that the time is unreasonable. In the face of the power given to the property manager the tenant has little recourse but to buckle under and submit.

The crying shame of all of this is that the attitude shown by property managers creates the sort of environment that they are seeking to avoid in looking after the interests of landlords. By treating the tenants as second class they create the indifference to looking after properties and even hostility towards landlords. What then ensues are the properties being maintained to the minimum standards possible to meet inspection criteria which leads to a policeman role for the property manager which drives the problem on in a vicious circle. All landlords see is the bottom line and not the creeping maintenance issues that will eventually cost them money. This state of affairs hardly leads to building solid communities which in turn attacks the social fabric.

Wouldn’t it be better if the tenants were treated as customers? We are, after all, paying thousands of dollars a year for a service provided to us by the landlord and their agent. If we turned the power games that some property mangers played on their heads and started talking about customer service what sort of communities would we build? If we started looking for ways to retain tenants by good customer service instead of being the policeman always suspicious of their motives wouldn’t it lead to less rental turnover and greater profit for the landlord?

I know it is a forlorn dream to expect this to happen any time soon. I for one have given up and bought a house. I have given my three week’s notice and I am moving out to a place of sanctuary where no property manager ever has the right to tread.

I just had a quick look at the Zoho Chat application and I can’t for the life of me think what it might be useful for. I’m generally a fan of Zoho applications, Zoho Creator is fabulous, but the chat application seems less than useful.

The major flaw is that it doesn’t interoperate with any other chat services. I have ID’s on Yahoo, ICQ, AIM and MSN because of various groups of friends but I don’t see the value in asking someone to join Zoho Chat just so they can talk to me. Zoho chat is just too obscure to generate a relevant critical mass of users to chat with.

Zoho chat does offer the possibility of adding a chat widget to a web site which the aforementioned chat services do not but if you compare that to Meebo and the MeeboMe Widget it doesn’t really stack up. Meebo does interoperate with all of the popular chat services and offers a lot more features than Zoho chat.

The only redeeming feature of Zoho chat is possible future integration with the Zoho online office suite. Users collaborating on a document being able to use instant messaging to communicate from within the document would be an advantage but only a limited one.

All in all just go straight to Meebo rather than using Zoho Chat.

Classic quote from MeLo last night:

“You can’t have adventures without scary bits, that’s what makes them adventures!”

Last weekend I ran in the 36th annual City to Bay run along with 23,000 other people and the results have just been released today. I completed the 12km course from the city of Adelaide to Glenelg, which has the major benefit of being flat and ever so slightly downhill. Last year I managed to run the course in 1:13:20. This year I managed to break 6 minutes a kilometre and ran 1:10:26, a nice improvement. The only downer is that a work colleague managed to run a time about 40 seconds faster than me, incentive for next year I think.

Joel Spolsky has an interesting piece up over at Joel on Software comparing the development of the web with the development of computer software from mainframes to PC’s. It’s an interesting article and well worth a read. One of the points he makes is about how a new web framework is needed to iron out the differences between the browsers and remove incompatibility problems from the minds of web developers:

Somebody is going to write a compelling SDK that you can use to make powerful Ajax applications with common user interface elements that work together. And whichever SDK wins the most developer mindshare will have the same kind of competitive stronghold as Microsoft had with their Windows API.

Great idea. Except that Google has already done such a thing. It’s called Google Web Toolkit and it is available now. Sure it’s early days for GWT but it offers exactly the sorts of capabilities that Joel is talking about:

Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don’t speak browser quirks as a second language. Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatibilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript’s lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile.

GWT lets you avoid many of these headaches while offering your users the same dynamic, standards-compliant experience. You write your front end in the Java programming language, and the GWT compiler converts your Java classes to browser-compliant JavaScript and HTML.

So when Joel uses Google as his example of a company that is going to be blindsided by the new web application framework:

But then, while you’re sitting on your googlechair in the googleplex sipping googleccinos and feeling smuggy smug smug smug, new versions of the browsers come out that support cached, compiled JavaScript. And suddenly NewSDK is really fast.

And while you’re not paying attention, everybody starts writing NewSDK apps, and they’re really good, and suddenly businesses ONLY want NewSDK apps, and all those old-school Plain Ajax apps look pathetic and won’t cut and paste and mash and sync and play drums nicely with one another. And Gmail becomes a legacy. The WordPerfect of Email. And you’ll tell your children how excited you were to get 2GB to store email, and they’ll laugh at you. Their nail polish has more than 2GB.

I think that he misses the point. Google isn’t going to be blindsided by the new web framework, it’s developing the new web framework. It’s GWT and it’s here now.

Update: Joel Spolsky has replied to the many people who emailed him about his post suggesting web frameworks, stating his criteria for one of them to be his “NewSDK”. The reply is in the middle of his Princeton, Philadelphia and Boston Trip Report (3rd last paragraph)

I listen to podcasts a lot. In the car, on the way to and from work and even at home when I have to do something mindless like cleaning. With all the podcasts on my list though there are those that I will always listen to as soon as they come out, those that I wait for each week because I know that I will enjoy every minute. Here then are 10 of my favorite podcasts (in no particular order):

1. The Spiel. Talking about boardgames these guys just deliver every single fortnight. They are funny and informative with consistently good content. Their show is segment based with each segment focusing on specific games as well as a news and notes and a feedback segment. This is my favorite podcast and comes highly recommended. The Spiel also has some really interesting contests including some really hard puzzles to solve.
2. The Java Posse. This long running technology podcast about the Java programming language alternates between news and interviews. It keeps me up to date and entertained so I can do my job. My gut feel is that this cast isn’t as interesting and fresh as it used to be but it still makes my must listen to list.
3. The Two Chris’s. This political podcast is taken from a segment on the morning program my local ABC radio station and features Christopher Pyne and Chris Schatt who debate the issues of the day from Liberal and Labor perspecives respectively. I find this a really good way to keep up to date with the Australian political landscape both nationally and in South Australia.
4. The Dice Tower. Though a little less consistent in quality than The Spiel The Dice Tower still offers quality boardgame listening with top ten lists and contributions from a number of greater or lesser celebrities in the boardgame world. They also have some good contests. Lately they have been replaying some of their older episodes in between their fortnightly new material.
5. This Week in Tech. The one word that I would use to describe this cast is slick. Professionally produced TWiT is like a PC magazine built for radio. The content tends to be lighter as Leo Laporte and guests discuss the week’s technology news.
6. Joyce Meyer Radio Podcast. One of the two Christian podcasts on my list the Joyce Meyer Radio Podcast serializes messages from prominent Christian speaker Joyce Meyer. Produced every weekday you get to hear sections of messages that Joyce preaches at various conferences and gatherings around the world as well as a few interviews. The content is really good but I find the advertising intrusive so I generally skip it. I find that if I skip the first 30 seconds of each podcast and then skip to the end when Joyce stops speaking I get the best results.
7. Geeks and God. These guys talk on some serious technical topics aimed at helping churches and ministries with technology. The content, however, is relevant to a wider audience. Their series on Drupal was fantastic. Currently on a long break I am looking forward to when these guys return.
8. Garrets Games and Geekiness. Hosted by Doug Garrett and his wife Shelley this boardgame podcast covers games that Doug has played in various locations as well as a number of really good roundtable discussions and interviews. I like the conversational style of this cast and Doug certainly manages to get some interesting guests.
9. On Board Games. A relatively new boardgame podcast hosted by Scott Nicholson (of Boardgames With Scott fame), Donald Dennis and Eric Dewey. The podcast uses a segment based format with one segment devoted to a boardgaming topic of interest referencing various gamers and then a number of game reviews. The game reviews use a “stop light” system (red, yellow, green) which I find really useful.
10. Have Games Will Travel. A long running boardgame and role playing game podcast hosted by Paul Tevis. Paul covers some interesting topics and ventures into the role playing game world in a way that is most entertaining and informative. Paul uses his experiences in improv theatre to relate to being a GM of a role playing game and manages to discuss some really interesting psychology around social contracts in gaming as a result.