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.

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.

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.

Recently I have been looking at ways to provide updates to my Blog when I am out and about. Given the scarcity of updates round here lately I really want to make the best use of any dead time I have to do blog updates. Given that I have the eBuddy messaging client installed on my phone I thought I would investigate using a messaging client for blog updates. I am currently typing this entry into an AIM window to a bot provided by IMified. Setting up was really easy, all I did was to add IMified as an AIM buddy and it created an account for me. Sending messages to the bot provides web links for me to update my account. Widgets can be added to update various web services including Wordpress and Google Calendar. The bot asks you to add text in successive messages by prompting you for the headings/body/time etc. We’ll see how this goes but it looks promising so far.

One of my colleagues Bill Malkin recently sent out in email 18 really good tips on how to organize a user group meeting. I asked his permission to re-post them here for your edification:

After a year and a bit of organizing the IT Architecture SIG, I thought I’d
pass on a few tips to those considering organizing presentations themselves.
These are tips that don’t seem to be mentioned in the usual presentation
skills courses. We all learn by our mistakes so below are basically a list
of mistakes I have made in the past 15 months.

Make sure you:

1. 1. Find out when the entrance to the venue gets locked. (Sometimes there are even a series of locked entrances and lifts.) Most importantly, don’t get yourself locked out of the venue when looking to see if there are any more attendees. You will only find that the event succeeds better without you anyway.
2. Put your mobile phone number on a sign at the entrance in case all else fails. It’s very lonely out there in the cold feeling rejected by your peers. This can only be remedied by a warm and sincere hug.
3. Find out whether people can get out of the venue when the presentation finishes. This is not really a problem as the attendees have the opportunity to wander around inside the building discovering all sorts of interesting things.
4. Ask where the toilets are, if they are locked and, if they are, how they are unlocked. Nobody likes to see their attendees in tears.
5. Find out where to buy reasonably priced food, ie pizza, and what quantity and types. (I buy one party-sized pizza per eight attendees. The first one must be Vegetarian, the second Hawaiian, and the third probably Meat-Lovers. This is never enough though but it’s all we can afford. It’s heart-breaking.)
6. Find out where to buy the drinks and what quantity and types. (I buy a bottle of wine and three stubbies for every eight attendees. The first two bottles of wine must be red, the third white, and so on. (The fully-documented algorithm is available on request.) The venues always seem to be able to supply free tea, coffee, soft drinks, etc. However, I always buy a bottle of Lift just in case. Lift seems to be very popular. People seem to either love or hate Coke so that’s no good. Aim for the lowest common denominator so that people are offended equally.)
7. Work out how to get the drinks and food to the venue. Walking through the city with a shopping trolley full of food, beer and wine certainly attracts a lot of interest. So far I haven’t been mugged although it does seem to bring out the neanderthal in a man. (Yes, neanderthals were actually very fond of beer. They used to eat yeast and hops and then it brewed in their stomachs. Homo Erectus didn’t introduce wine until much later. The only reason they learnt to stand erect was so that the wine didn’t spill. The intake of too much wine however reverts us back to quadrupeds.)
8. Work out how to keep the beer cold until people start turning up. The fridge at each venue is either hard to find or full. The contents of the fridge also tells you a lot about a venue. It’s obvious that Excom Education runs classes for IT students for instance, as the fridge is absolutely full of Coke.
9. Have cash on you when the pizzas turn up. When ordering you can often purchase on credit card, but if you haven’t done this, the pizza delivery guy only takes cash. When all else fails, they usually know where the nearest ATM is and you only need to tip them about $5 to get a lift there and back. You can’t get a receipt for that though.
10. Work out how to get the left over drinks and food home again. The good old shopping trolley again. Bus drivers always comment.
11. Understand that it’s OK to run out of food but not drinks. Which is good as the food is very expensive compared to the drinks. (Again, distressing, but we IT Architects are nothing if not survivors.)
12. Understand the importance of (a) getting receipts, and (b) not losing the damn things. They are as good as cash even though losing a $50 receipt doesn’t feel as bad as losing a $50 note. I suppose the difference is that you know who ended up with the $50 note.
13. Only buy bottles of wine and beer with screw tops. (This is very hard to remember when you are agonising over which wines to buy. Thankfully, Coopers Pale Ale is relatively cheap and popular, and shows you are a true patriot. Thankfully too it’s also drinkable. I used to live in Queensland. Have any of you tried XXXX?)
14. Are aware that these venues never have wine glasses but people are happy with ordinary glasses, even plastic cups, but not really keen on mugs. (It’s probably good not to have proper wine glasses as people appear a lot more down to earth and approachable when they are drinking from plastic cups.)
15. Are aware that, once people start eating, drinking and talking, it’s hard to get them to sit down and ready for the speaker. However, it is very rude to try and rush them. Different conversations take varying lengths of time to properly wind up. When some people start moving towards the seats the others will follow. Only then is verbal abuse most appropriate and enjoyable.
16. Know that the main reason people attend a presentation is because of their interest in the topic and/or speaker. (Pretty obvious.)
17. Realise that, however, the main reasons people actually enjoy the presentation are the opportunity of meeting colleagues and newcomers, the opportunity to discuss topics of common interest, being able to just relax, and being able to actually have time to enjoy, and be proud of, being in the profession.
18. Understand that the less interaction there is between the presenter and the audience, the shorter the presentation should be. No matter how good the presentation is, if it goes too long you can actually see the event dying right in front of your eyes. Thankfully we haven’t killed or even maimed any of our events so far.

Over the past 15 months all of our speakers have been excellent, and it has
been great to see attendees, many of whom having turned up looking pretty
stressed and tired, leaving reinvigorated and happy. Some of this positive
effect can be attributed to the speaker, some to the (albeit, basic) food
and drinks, some to Allan English (Excom Education) and I running around
making sure things are going somewhat smoothly, but most of all because,
quite simply, we are all social animals and we continually need to socialise
in order to gain further direction, ideas and inspiration. Congratulations
are therefore in order to the attendees for doing this so well for each
other. (Oh yes, and thanks Allan!)

Well that’s about all I wanted to say except that I look forward to seeing
you again at the next presentation!

Kind regards
Bill

PS If anyone has any further tips or comments, or are willing to confess to
any embarrassing blunders they have made, I (and many others) would be very keen to hear them!

PPS Hopefully you can tell the difference between my serious pieces of
advice above and my tongue-in-cheek advice. If you take any of my advice and
it doesn’t turn out very well then it must have been tongue-in-cheek. You
should’ve taken the other advice.

Disclaimer: I don’t drink and don’t condone drinking to excess but many people do enjoy a social drink responsibly.

David Sacks writes an interesting article over at TechCrunch on The New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter. In the article he argues that it is the “bread” of the social network that will make the new portals successful and not the “Peanut Butter” of the applications that are layered over the top. The announcement this week of Facebook opening up their API to widget developers is a way for them to give access to their “bread” whilst allowing other condiment vendors access which in turn drives the adoption of more bread.

I believe, though, that another thing is needed to make the new portals wildly successful: adoption. Myspace and Facebook have achieved remarkable penetration in terms of market share in the social networking arena but they have a long way to go to reach the penetration of services like Google. Both of them have created a user base and a prominence amongst the web2.0 crowd but the web2.0 crowd is not the whole ball game.

Facebook and Myspace bootstrapped themselves initially by concentrating on a particular demographic: Facebook inside colleges and universities and myspace in the music industry. This allowed them to spread virally inside these demographics until they reached second stage prominence with the techno savvy. The challenge for these services now is to go beyond the technically savvy to the general internet population.

Going back to the analogy, say you open a chain of bread shops that also offer a tasty range of sandwich toppings. You start in a neighborhood, build success and reputation and then expand into other neighborhoods, even a whole city. The challenge comes when you want to take your bread shop chain nationally or internationally. The word of mouth advertising that you have been able to generate to date isn’t necessarily going to help you break into new markets where the social connections between the markets you are successful in and the new markets are few and far between. Also you are relying on a critical mass of people within the new “neighborhood” to support your new shop so it can be successful.

From the perspective of someone who thinks of himself as somewhat web2.0 savvy amongst a group of friends who are not, this represents an issue. Yes Facebook or Myspace would offer me value but only if there are enough other people I know who are also involved. Facebook and Myspace need to offer me enough to make me want to join up without necessarily having the rich network that provides the real value and then offer me ways to encourage my friendship network to join. Until then I will stay with the individual services that offer me value like Geni.

Digg and Netscape.com are both popular internet news sites that base the content of their front pages primarily on electronic votes cast by users on stories that other users have submitted. Back in June 2006 when the newly designed Netscape.com launched there was a lot of controversy about the new site’s relationship to Digg. Was it a Digg clone? What were the moral implications of Netscape head Jason Calacanis offering to pay the top users on Digg to work for him on Netscape? Would the huge Netscape.com traffic numbers convert to the sort of participation that Digg was enjoying?
Now that the dust has settled nearly a year after the launch of both sites what do they both have to offer to potential users and which one is better? Read on for my perspective on the answers. (more…)