links for 2008-03-29
March 29, 2008
Micromanaging yourself
March 28, 2008
Lately, in the vein of a project I’m working on with Sri, I’ve been thinking a lot about analytics as it relates to personal growth and development.
Enterprises have used dashboards because, as the cliche goes, knowledge and information is power. And the credibility and confidence to make the right decisions. (ignore the fact that sometimes organizations who solely base decisions on metrics suffer from analysis paralysis).
When one thinks of the littered landscape of widgets- it’s essentially a personal dashboard (In fact, that’s what Apple’s widget platform is called). It presents the user information about some current or future situation: What’s the weather like on wednesday? What’s in my Netflix queue next? What are my tasks like?
Increasingly, there seems to be an overlap between this level of quick-reach access to information(widgetization), personal growth and development (personal optimization), and this super
This productivity heatmapping link made it to Digg a few days back.
It was similar to something I’ve looked at recently: My google SEARCH history. Wow, such fascinating (if somewhat creepy) stuff! I can check by times of the day, days of the week, and even see a calendar view.
If you look at my daily search activity, there seems to be a HUGE number of web hits on Mondays, and it straight lines down to Friday. This is, as far as I am concerned, inexplicable as of now. I have no idea why I’d be googling more on Mondays– I can’t even definitively say that it has something to do with my class schedule because this graph is generated over the course of me using google web search history, more than a year ago now probably. Fascinating, eh?
Today, Pete sent me a link to Microsoft’s the Future of Personal Health Care presented at MIX. Notice the emphasis on the exchange of information in a variety of visually rich media between the “user” and the people she interacts with.
links for 2008-03-24
March 24, 2008
links for 2008-03-21
March 21, 2008
links for 2008-03-19
March 19, 2008
The ultimate killer widget
March 17, 2008
What’s the deal? Everyone’s all hype about widgets lately.
While showering, I took a second to dream about what the ultimate killer widget would be if designed for yours truly.
First of all, none of this web app widget stuff. I already have enough tabs open in my firefox, thank you. I’d much rather prefer that a client Dashboard widget.
Now, on to the widget itself. So generally, I like the way they are thinking over at Wundrbar. Here are the elements I think it should have:
- A command line interface: There can be no doubt, that command lines are awesome. No, I am no vi fiend like some of my friends from undergrad, but I do appreciate the quickness of adding stuff to a google calendar through Quicksilver (although it is a little buggy and I always have to check it to make sure after being burned for missing an appointment)
- Creates entries into a robust Personal Information Manager: Ok, so I haven’t settled on one really, but that’s because I still haven’t found anything that compares to Microsoft OneNote for the Mac. I guess Journler, which is what I use right now, will have to do.
- Cross checks calendar and contacts. I should be able to type in my shorthand (which I’d gladly help train the widget for) and reference nicknames and contacts. Lunch with Bob, Wednesday @ Bake For Me. (Since I didn’t specify what time, it should figure out that I meant Noon, since my calendar is free then during “lunchtime”. Figure out how far Bake For Me is from my destination and allow for travel time… So make the appointment for 12:10pm and send Bob a note!
- Know my habits. If I have an appointment at 3pm-4pm at school on Thursday, and I want to fly out from O’hare immediately following, it should have the smarts to know that I’m going to take the subway from Clark and Lake– and build in the buffer time. It has all the information there, why not do the extra time calculation?
There are more requests, but I won’t bore you with them now. Maybe soon, I’ll whip something up if time permits.
links for 2008-03-17
March 17, 2008
Online confessions
March 16, 2008
Confession on Good Friday
flickr:felber
Recently, I blogged about how designers might embrace the coming move (I think exodus might be too strong a word) towards virtuality. I mentioned that this might be a good stage to understand people, their interactions (and ultimately their motivations and emotions) for design purposes. Additionally, it is a ripe environment for rapid digital prototyping.
Whether or not the 3rd dimension is the gateway to all-out virtuality is debatable, in my opinion. I hold the view that richer interactions through social media (Facebook is launching IM) is the precursor that will make people embrace virtuality in lieu of the physicality they’re accustomed to. In many cases, this shift is happening because it’s more convenient to be sitting in your living room on your couch and “prototyping your life”. In other cases, it is happening because it is possible to overcome an awkward social encumbrance.
For instance, this article about people confessing their sins online.
Is there nothing sacred? Or better yet.. How long until we all will be worshipping at the altar of pixels?