Dave Enjoys » Google http://www.daveenjoys.com Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:23:19 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Is Asana The Task Management App We’ve All Been Waiting For? http://www.daveenjoys.com/2012/01/01/is-asana-the-task-management-app-weve-all-been-waiting-for/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2012/01/01/is-asana-the-task-management-app-weve-all-been-waiting-for/#comments Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:39:25 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=3109 For the last few months the buzz around Asana, a new task management application, has been increasing. But my Google Reader is pretty packed with blogs – oftentimes

hundreds of new stories in a single day – and task management posts are usually filed away [...]]]> For the last few months the buzz around Asana, a new task management application, has been increasing. But my Google Reader is pretty packed with blogs – oftentimes

Image representing Asana as depicted in CrunchBase

Image via CrunchBase

hundreds of new stories in a single day – and task management posts are usually filed away for review another day…when I eventually have time. I went back through most of my “for a later day” posts and found a number of task management related posts – including ones for Asana. I visited them all…expecting that none would offer the unique set of features I have been hoping for…but so far Asana is looking AMAZING. I’d like to take you along on my journey of exploration…

One’s initial visit to the Asana website shows an aesthetically pleasing design – but a little busy. Perhaps I’m different from most people[1], but I hate watching videos and prefer reading text.[2] The Asana homepage puts the emphasis on signing up or watching a video – bleck! Thankfully, if you scroll below the fold you’ll find “Learn More about Asana” and get a quicker view of the featureset.

Here is what impressed me at this point:

  • It is Free – For all intents and purposes, Asana is free. Sure they are interested in profiting from corporate sales, but for your general needs and for any small to medium sized business, Asana is free.
  • It is Team – A lot of great task management applications are out there, but many of them cost an arm and a leg or they don’t support teamwork…being weak in either of these areas really undermines the product…and those that are strong in these two areas then oftentimes demonstrate weakness in underlying features.
  • People Views - The ability to view what is going on by the person responsible is pretty sweet. Not entirely a new concept, and maybe just cooler b/c it is called “People Views” instead of “User Views” – it feels more Facebookey (umm, Facebookie, Facebookesque, someone help me out here!).
  • Calendar Sync – This is a pretty sweet feature, though it isn’t one I personally find essential.
  • Inbox Integration – One of the goals for Asana is to completely replace a diversity of workflows – ensuring data is recorded within Asana. Part of this involves automatically integrating email conversations into Asana threads. This is a simple feature many do, but Asana’s looks really slick.

Not to say that is all there is to see…there are numerous other neat features – those are just the ones that I really like – mainly b/c a lot of other task management applications are missing one or all of these features.

I do have one question at this juncture: Is thirty team members a firm number or does this reset for each workspace? I’m guessing it is the former, but hoping it is the latter. I suppose the latter option would open Asana up to abuse by its users – who could theoretically just create a new workspace whenever they ran out of users (but that would get extremely unwieldy). Reason I ask is b/c I’m involved in multiple venues – and thirty people is a lot when each venue can contain thirty, but not so many if thirty has to last over all my different venues.[3]

Next thing I did was explore their blog – from the beginning…and I was impressed. The frequency of posts is regular enough and the quality of the posts is quite deep. At the bottom of this article I’ve included links to additional reading, including a few by the folks at Asana. Take a read and you’ll quickly see that these posts reflect a depth of philosophy, clarity of communication, and quality of composition that exceed many technology blogs whose sole purpose is to cover technology – not sell a product.

One item that becomes very clear while reading the blog posts is that Asana is being utilized heavily by Asana – and this is always a good thing. Products suffer when the creators of the product do not have an investment in the product beyond monetary success. Asana will oftentimes provide its own most standing criteria for ongoing featureset.[4]

Okay, so I have some more stuff I like about Asana:

  • Company Culture – Some tech companies have really led the way in creating (again) a culture where the company cares about its employees. For a while employees were disposable assets – but some companies have moved back and forward at the same time – back in purely statistical financial analysis but forward in employee satisfaction, productivity, and longevity.[5] Asana seems to be following this tact with company-wide lunches and regular yoga sessions.
  • The Methods – It is obvious that David Allen‘s GTD methodology is widely utilized within Asana – but beyond this one sees numerous management innovations to streamline and increase productivity, reduce errors, allow rapid development, and so on. These models are impressive and could be copied elsewhere (and perhaps where copied from elsewhere).

On the other hand, and this is not uncommon in technology culture, I’m wondering how many hours the folks in Asana are putting in a week? In this post Jerry Phillips notes folks eating lunch and dinner together (at 7 p.m.) which makes me ask, “When did you start working?” Sure, sometimes long hours are required – especially in IT and especially during the startup phase – but this can become a dangerous, long-term practice…and usually does not involve overtime compensation for the employees.

Now, what about the team? The team behind a product is an important consideration. In general I like two types of teams: the teams where you don’t know anyone and the teams where you see everyone’s legacy. The teams I don’t like are ones with a lot of fluff and bravado without necessarily a lot of accomplishment or technical ability. So, I tend to prefer companies that are either lean, mean startup machines run by some guy in his basement or companies that have be-knighted geniuses on the workforce.

  • Dustin Moskovitz – “co-founder of Facebook” (yup, that is impressive), “CTO…VP of Engineering” (okay, that is much more impressive…not just an idea guy, this guy works with the tech…and Facebook has some pretty impressive tech). Last but not least, note that Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard[6] and didn’t major in the technical field yet excelled in it.[7]
  • Justin Rosenstein – Justin may not have been CTO or VP, but he did hold significant positions at both Facebook and Google – mecca[8] tech companies. Again, appears to have dropped out of college…not that I’m suggesting that is a good idea (I completed my degree and work for a higher ed institution), but it occasionally indicates someone just has such great ideas or ability for self-learning that they are able to “skip a step.”
  • Malcolm Handley – Worked for Google on several significant projects including Android, Google Earth, and Mobile Maps. All pretty sweet products.
  • Greg Slovacek – Again a Google guy – his work seems a little more from a niche, but this can be good as well – indicating a passion for deep understanding of particular topics and a willingness to slog through the mundane work it takes to make stuff happen.
  • Jerry Phillips – Okay, she gets a pass b/c she studied psychology and now is working in technology…I just think that is cool.
  • Jack Stahl – Stahl seems like an interesting character – and interesting characters oftentimes bring something unique and powerful to a team. Note Stahl attended Burning Man, and while that is kind of mainstream, its also like the outstream portion of mainstream…nothing I plan on attending. :) He also impressive technical experience from Yelp.
  • Avital Oliver – Wow. Look at this list: “started coding as a child”[9], “large-scale re-implementation of the Israeli Air Force tactical information system”[10], and “founded the School of Mathematics in Brooklyn, NY”[11]
  • Kris Rasmussen – Was “chief architect” at Aptana – an impressive company with impressive products. Don’t forget he co-founded RivalMap[12] and worked for numerous tech. companies including the (to some) tech mecca Microsoft.[13]
  • Theresa Singh – Okay, can we get Theresa to write some articles for us on Post Colonial Literature? That’d be sweet, thanks. :)
  • Yup, I’m getting tired of ooh’ing and ahh’ing over the team Asana has assembled…but there are still a lot more folks who stick out on the team: Donnie Thompson (gourmet chef), S. Alex Smith (machine learning at Facebook), Jackie Bavaro (Google and Microsoft[14]), David Braginsky (Facebook, Google, “numerous startups”), Andrew Watterson (Meebo), and Bella Kazwell (Gmail, Google+).[15]

Now, with such a great team I’ll admit I have some hesitation over Kenny Van Zant – but with the rest being so excellent – I imagine I am mistaken. Let me explain. My hesitation with Van Zant comes from his association with SolarWinds. I’ve used a number of their products – both free and trial – but always found them to be of that somewhat lumpy enterprise class that Asana is attempting to overcome. I also hate having to enter my contact information every time I want to download one of the products – free or trial…but I’m sure Van Zant is great and maybe he can put in a word to his friends at SolarWinds that the contact info. every download is annoying (maybe we could just create an account so we only have to enter the info. once…?) and provide some streamlining of the enterprise feature-set but sometimes clunky products (no, I haven’t actually used SolarWinds enough to give real feedback…I just know when I’ve tried them they haven’t been entirely intuitive or slim and I’ve found other options I like better).

Wow, this is a really long article…guess this is what happens when you can’t sleep from 4 a.m. till (now) 6:30 a.m. In any case, I’m going to sign off for the time being. I’m not 100% sold on Asana yet, I haven’t played with it enough – but I figured it might be helpful to compile the info. I’ve been compiling myself about Asana into one place…b/c I have OCD and do things like that. :P

The Problems:

Okay, so I’m working through Asana and I’m seeing a few issues. Here is what I’ve found so far:

  • Asana does not support recurring tasks – this is a killer for me! They are apparently working on it currently…
  • The new workspace setting is a bit buried, there seems to be plenty of real-estate on the lower left where it is nested to display it directly.
  • It isn’t clear that keyboard shortcuts such as new task work only when  one is already in an existing task.

Features I’d Like to See:

Here is my wishlist:

  • Support for recurring tasks. This functionality has been added, though they are doing a “roll-out” which will take several weeks.
  • Some form of chore assignment functionality similar to ChoreBuster.
  • A Windows desktop application that would feel similar to Notepad…I don’t like having to even open a browser.
  • Native Android application.
  • Granular Permissions for Workspaces so one can allow individuals to see one project but not another, without barring everyone from access to a project.

For those interested in some further reading…Here are some good articles/posts:

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  1. [1] Okay, okay, I know my friends are going to jovially reply, “Dave, of course you are, you are strange.” But what I mean here is, in this particular area am I strange? ↩
  2. [2] I think this has to do with my ADD, I have a hard time sitting still while videos meander about stuff I know or don’t care about when text allows me to jump in and out exactly as I desire. ↩
  3. [3] For example, I would want to do workspaces for work, for home, for church, for other projects…for any one of these thirty team members is enough – but if I have to have only thirty members between all the workspaces? Might be a little tight. ↩
  4. [4] For example, as I was reading Asana posts I thought to myself (and I don’t know what already exists at this juncture), “Boy, it seems great…but what if someone at Asana is slacking off? How do they track that?” I’m sure Asana will hit that bump (may have hit?) and will respond appropriately…this is the advantage of a company using their own software. ↩
  5. [5] Perhaps the tech industry innovated in part out of necessity. The technology sector requires specialists – the longer you stay at a job the better you are at it…picking up a n00b may save a few dollars, but there will be a huge learning curve and the lost experience and productivity are significant. ↩
  6. [6] I’m assuming since he only spent two years as an economics major. ↩
  7. [7] He was an economics major at Harvard…someone correct me if he had a technical background from elsewhere… ↩
  8. [8] Nope, not a spelling error, “pilgrimage” doesn’t connote the right sense here. ↩
  9. [9] This isn’t surprising, but it does indicate that technology runs in his blood…Something those who have it sometimes wish they could escape, but never can…the draw of tech. always calls them back when they attempt to pursue other ventures. ↩
  10. [10] This probably means he’s an algorithmic genius… ↩
  11. [11] Ummm…You don’t look this old dude. ↩
  12. [12] A company somewhat in the same arena as Asana. ↩
  13. [13] I think Microsoft is impressive, and a ‘mecca’ though I don’t know much about their corporate culture. Yeah, they have been a pain at times but they’ve moved in some really great directions over the last number of years with much more openness…though this whole Windows 8 / HTML5 push…I’m not sure about. ↩
  14. [14] Wait, is that allowed? Isn’t there some sort of “I will always be an enemy of (insert Google or Microsoft here) for as long as I am alive?” ↩
  15. [15] I apologize to those team members I didn’t mention explicitly – Stephanie Hornung, Tim Bavaro, Kenny Van Zant – I expect great things from you as well, I’m just not as personally familiar with your accomplishments. ↩
]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2012/01/01/is-asana-the-task-management-app-weve-all-been-waiting-for/feed/ 0 WordPress Adsense Plugins – An Overview. http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/12/04/wordpress-adsense-plugins-an-overview/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/12/04/wordpress-adsense-plugins-an-overview/#comments Mon, 05 Dec 2011 03:48:15 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=3011 WordPress’ plugin section and compiled all the most popular Adsense plugins. I’ve included the list below as well as [...]]]> I want to optimize my income from Google Adsense on my various WordPress based sites. How can I accomplish this most effectively? By using a WordPress plugin for Adsense of course! So, I went to WordPress’ plugin section and compiled all the most popular Adsense plugins.[1] I’ve included the list below as well as my commentary on the various plugins.
Plugin: Version: Updated: Rating: Downloads:
WPCustomAds 0.8.8 2011-7-5 5 Star * 1 644
Ad Inserter 1.1.2 2011-6-5 4.5 Star * 12 11,400
Adsense Insert 1.4 2011-11-23 4 Star * 14 9,197
Ad Squares Widget[2] 110709 2011-7-9 5 Star * 14 62,927
Adsense Made Easy 0.5.1 2011-9-20 5 Star * 4 10,562
Quick Adsense 1.9 2011-6-20 4 Star * 69 201,804
Ad Injection 1.2.0.7 2011-12-4 4 Star * 34 95,077
Easy Adsense Lite 5.07 2011-11-3 4 Star * 6 8,126
Adsense Manager 4.02 2011-9-23 3 Star * 96 334,944
Best Google Adsense 1.1.4 2011-11-22 3.5 Star * 13 29,333
Awesome Ads 1.0.4 2011-5-27 4 Star * 14 17,448
Awesome Google Adsense 1.0.4 2011-11-22 4 Star * 13 21,749
Simple Ads Manager 1.0.35 2011-7-18 3.5 Star * 24 25,610
Google Adsense Plugin 0.53 2011-11-23 5 Star * 2 621
Adsense Now! Lite 3.04 2011-11-12 4 Star * 5 3,160
Ads Manager WP/BB 1.5.2 2011-8-17 5 Star * 2 2,582
WP Ads Auto Post 1.2 2011-2-18 5 Star * 1 3,979
WP Random Ads 1.0 2011-9-10 5 Star * 3 740

As you can see there are a large number of options – and this is just a partial list. Lets take a closer look at a few of the best candidates:

  • Quick Adsense – This plugin has over 200,000 downloads and a 4 Star average review rating from sixty-nine reviews. It offers straightforward customization of where ads will be placed on a page but also requires you to generate individual code bits from Adsense for each slot.
  • Adsense Manager – While downloaded over 330,000 times it only has an average review of 3 Stars from ninety-six reviews. It doesn’t appear to be under ongoing development – althought the author did release an update to enable the plugin to work with the latest version of WordPress.
  • Ad Injection – The third most frequently downloaded adsense plugin with 95,000+ downloads and holding 4 Stars with thirty-four reviews. Appears powerful with a lot of customization options, but also a fairly intuitive user interface.
    • This is the plugin that is my most preferred at the moment.

 

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  1. [1] I think. If I missed one, let me know. ↩
  2. [2] See also Ad Codes widget. ↩
]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/12/04/wordpress-adsense-plugins-an-overview/feed/ 0 Thoughts on Google and Universities’ Book Digitization Project http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/09/15/thoughts-on-google-and-universities-book-digitization-project/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/09/15/thoughts-on-google-and-universities-book-digitization-project/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:58:32 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=2760 The Authors’ Guild is suing a number of well-known universities for copyright violations – partially associated with the universities’ attempts to determine “orphaned works” and to make them freely available to students. These are works for which the status of the copyright for any number of [...]]]>
Anti-copyright symbol

Image via Wikipedia

The Authors’ Guild is suing a number of well-known universities for copyright violations – partially associated with the universities’ attempts to determine “orphaned works” and to make them freely available to students. These are works for which the status of the copyright for any number of reasons (e.g. it is unclear whether the copyright was renewed, if the work was every copyrighted, to whom the copyright belongs, and so on) is unknown. These works are not going to be your best-sellers or your most recent books (generally) rather they will be niche volumes, many of which are out-of-print.

IMHO, I understand the Authors’ Guild to hand over the decision of what books are “orphaned” to the Universities – setting a precedent which it might later regret…but I also think the unavailability of orphaned works is a great shame. There are massive numbers of works not making any significant revenue for anyone and with uncertain copyright status which are currently unavailable…something should be done about this.

I’d suggest that the Authors’ Guild attempt to reach an agreement with Universities to establish an independent review panel. This review panel could consist of representatives from both educational and authoring/publishing concerns as well as various other independent observers which would determine the status of orphaned works and also provide a method for removing works are later found not to be orphaned from the digitization archives as necessary.

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]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/09/15/thoughts-on-google-and-universities-book-digitization-project/feed/ 0 A Social Search Engine Proposal. http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/08/31/a-social-search-engine-proposal/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/08/31/a-social-search-engine-proposal/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:17:42 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=2675 IMHO, the current state of search is depressing. This is not a new realization for me. It is seven or eight years ago now that I first imagined a social search engine which would not rely solely on algorithms to determine the relative importance of search results but that would consider both machine and [...]]]>
Nutch robots

Image via Wikipedia

Overview:

IMHO, the current state of search is depressing. This is not a new realization for me. It is seven or eight years ago now that I first imagined a social search engine which would not rely solely on algorithms to determine the relative importance of search results but that would consider both machine and end-user feedback. This was in the early days of Nutch and I began researching the possibility of utilizing Nutch as the underlying core engine for such an endeavor, I rounded up some small-term investment capital, and so on. Unfortunately, this was also at the high peak of my struggle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and my efforts eventually fell through.

Over the years I have watched as promising engine after promising engine has come along and in their turn failed to take the lead or even maintain their momentum. Years have passed and at each step of the way I have said, “It must just be around the corner…This is ages in technology time.” Even Google came out with SearchWiki, while not a perfect implementation it was a huge step in the right direction. For the last year or two I’ve been using Zakta and I’ve spent time on almost every other social search engine currently (or previously) available – yet I find that in the long-run they have all failed me.

So here I am so many years later longing for just such an engine. I’ve written on this blog about the topic before, but I will write again. In this post I will specifically propose the formation of an endeavor to create a social search engine, and I hope it will foster some interest in the community. I am not ready nor able to undertake such an endeavor myself – but I am interested in being part of such an endeavor.

Open Source: Ensuring Continuity

It is worth noting at this juncture that I’d intend for this project to be open source. Too many times I have lost the social search data I have accumulated because a specific engine has folded. My hope would be that the resultant project would be open source with commercial implementations and would provide a significant amount of data portability between engines, in case one engine should fold. We’ll talk more about the open source and portability aspects of the project later in this proposal.

What is Social Search?

Before we jump into a discussion about how to build a social search engine it is necessary first to define what is meant by social search. Unfortunately the term social search is used to delineate several different concepts which are very different from one another.

There are the real-time search engines which focus on aggregating information from various social media networks – and sometimes prioritizing links based on their popularity within a network. For example Topsy, the no-longer-real-time OneRiot, and the now-defunct Scoopler.

There are the engines which are focused on finding humans – e.g. allowing one to garner information about a person. Wink eventually became this sort of engine, Spokeo would be another example. They are essentially white pages on steroids.

Finally there is what I mean by social search – and I would use another term but there is no other term I am aware of which is so widely used to delineate this type of engine (and I want to ensure the widest possible audience). It is sometimes called a “human-powered search engine”[1] Google and Wikimedia may have come closest by terming it a “Wiki” (SearchWiki and Wikia), but it seems to me that there is a need for an entirely new term that better and more precisely defines the idea…perhaps one result of this proposal and its aftermath will be just such a term.[2]

Core Parameters

In this section I will delineate what I believe are the core required features for a social search engine. An engine which included these features I believe would be a 1.0 release. There is certainly room for numerous improvements, but this would define a baseline by which to measure the proposal’s progress. I am not infallible, and I am sure there are aspects of the baseline which should be edited, removed, or replaced – I am open to suggestions.

  • Web Crawler – The engine must include a robust web crawler which can index the web, not just a subset of sites (e.g. Nutch).
  • Interpretive Ability - The engine must be able to interpret a wide variety of file formats, minimizing the invisible web (e.g. Tika).
  • Engine - The engine must be able to quickly query the aggregated web index and return results in an efficient manner (e.g. Nutch).
  • Search Interface - The engine must include a powerful search interface for quickly and accurately returning relevant results (e.g. Solr).
  • Scalability – The engine must be scalable to sustain worldwide utilization (e.g. Hadoop).
  • Algorithms – In addition to the standard automated algorithms for page relevance the system must integrate human-based feedback including:
    • Positive and negative votes on a per page basis.
    • The ability to add and remove pages from query results.
    • Influence of votes based on a calculation of user trustworthiness (merit).
    • Promotion of results by administrative users.
  • Custom Results – The results must be customized for the user. While the aggregate influence of users affects the results, the individual user is also able to customize results. One should see a search page which reflects the results one has chosen and not the results one has removed.
    • Ability to annotate individual entries.
  • Portability – The engine should define a standard format for user data which can be exported and imported between engines. This should include customized query results, annotations, votes, removed and added pages, etc. This will be available to the user for export/import at any time. While additional data may be maintained by individual engines, the basic customizations should be portable.

I’m sure I’m missing some essentials – please share with me whatever essentials I have forgotten that come to your mind.

Starting from Zero?

It is not necessary for this project to begin from nothing, significant portions of the endeavor have already been undertaken toward creating an open source search engine – largely by Apache’s Nutch project. The available code should be utilized and with customization could integrate social search features. This would allow some of the most significant aspects of the project to be offloaded to already existing projects.

Additionally, it might be hoped that companies and individuals who have previously created endeavors in this direction would open source their code. For example, Wikia was built on Nutch and the code – including the distributed crawler (GRUB) and UI (Wikia) was released into the open source world.[3]

What We Need

Now the question becomes, “What do we need?” and more importantly, “Whom do we need?”

First off, we could use donated hosting. Perhaps one of the larger cloud-based hosting companies would consider offering us space for a period of time? I’m thinking here of someone like Rackspace, Amazon Web Services, or GoGrid.

Secondly, we’d need developers. I’m not a Java developer…though I’ve downloaded the code and am preparing to jump in. I also don’t have a ton of time – so depending on me to get the development done…well, it could take a while.

Thirdly, we’d need content curators…and I think this is key (and also one of the areas I love the most). We’d need people to edit the content and make the results awesome. These individuals would be “power users” whose influence on results would be more significant than the new user. With time individuals could increase their reputation, but this would seed us with a trusted core of individuals[4] who would ensure that the results returned would be high quality right from the get-go for new users[5]

Finally, we’d need some designers. I’m all for simplicity in search – but goodness knows most of us developers have very limited design abilities and an aesthetic touch here and there would be a huge boon to the endeavor.

Next Steps

At this juncture its all about gathering interest. Finding projects that have already begun the process, looking for old hidden open source code that may be of use, etc. Leave a comment if you’d like to be part of the discussion.

Appendixes

Current Open Source Search Engines

  • DataparkSearch – GNU GPL, diverged from mnGoSearch in 2003, coded in C and CGI.
  • Egothor – Open source, written in Java, currently under a complete from scratch rewrite for version 3.
  • Grubng – Open source, distributed crawler..
  • BeeSeek – Open source, P2P, focuses on user anonymity.
  • Yioop! (SearchQuarry) – GNU GPLv3, documentation is very informative.
  • Heritrix – Open source, by Archive.org for their web archives.
  • Seeks Project – AGPLv3, P2P, fairly impressive project which attempts to take social search into consideration.
  • OpenWebSpider – Open source, written in .NET, appears to be abandoned.
  • Ex-Crawler – Open source, Java, impressive, last updated released 2010.
  • Jumper Search – Open source, social search, website appears to be down, currently linking to SF.
  • Open Search Server – Open source.
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  1. [1] Or a human search engine, which becomes sadly entangled with engines meant for finding humans such as referenced previously. ↩
  2. [2] A few other terms which might be appropriate are collaborative search engine, though this would have to be prefaced with “active” to distinguish it from passive user feedback aggregation (e.g. how long a user stayed at a site); curation search engine (giving the idea of content curation, but this is sometimes thought of in terms of archival); or crowd-sourced search engine (though this centers too much on democracy, whereas such engines would probably benefit from a meritocracy). ↩
  3. [3] Unfortunately, I have been unable to find a copy of the Wikia UI code. ↩
  4. [4] Taking a page from early Ask Jeeves history. ↩
  5. [5] Obviously not necessarily in the long tail, but in the general topics. ↩
]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/08/31/a-social-search-engine-proposal/feed/ 0 Texty – Finally, Text Messaging Improves! http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/06/02/texty-finally-text-messaging-improves/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/06/02/texty-finally-text-messaging-improves/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:19:37 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=2369 I’ve never been a huge fan of text messaging. Maybe my fingers are too big or maybe I can type too fast on a computer keyboard – but text messaging has always been frustrating to me when it involves any sort of sustained or substantive [...]]]> I’ve never been a huge fan of text messaging. Maybe my fingers are too big or maybe I can type too fast on a computer keyboard – but text messaging has always been frustrating to me when it involves any sort of sustained or substantive conversation. In spite of its primitive nature in many ways it has been and continues to be a major means of communication and its influence seems to be expanding rather than contracting. Thankfully, Texty has come along as one of a number of innovative startups that are stretching what SMS is and does…and I was lucky enough to get in on the Texty closed beta and have been using Texty for perhaps 1-2 weeks.

What is Texty? I’m glad you asked. It consists of two components. One is an application that runs on your Android phone, the other is an extension that runs on your computer in the Google Chrome browser. These two components communicate with one another – transferring text messages sent to your phone to the computer and transferring messages from the computer back to your phone.

Now my wife (who is a SMS fiend!) can text me to her heart’s content and I can reply back in a timely fashion without ever touching my phone! Sure, you could do this before but usually this involved using a different number for text messages sent from the computer than your actual phone number – and this became confusing.

Texty is a great step forward and I won’t be surprised if Google snaps them up (just for intellectual property rights). What Texty is doing is something that should have been a standard feature long ago.

That said, Texty isn’t the perfect application. A few features I’d love to see that would take the application to the next level are:

  1. Provide me with a way to backup/store my SMS messages – both from Texty and the phone – to my computer or the cloud. I don’t like having tons of text threads open or to have all the previous days and weeks conversations showing when I’m texting someone – but I do like to have these in the archives (so to speak) for future reference.
  2. Right now if you read a message on your computer via Texty and then look at your phone it looks as if you have unread text messages. Texty needs to mark the messages that are read on the computer as read on the phone as well. The easiest way to do this is if I send a reply after receiving a text message in Texty, then obviously I’ve read the message that was sent previously. I’m sure some folks will disagree – so perhaps this could be an optional configuration.

Have you used Texty? What do you love/hate about Texty? What about SMS in general?

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]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2011/06/02/texty-finally-text-messaging-improves/feed/ 0 Interesting Selections from Amazon’s Free eBooks. http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/12/10/interesting-selections-from-amazons-free-ebooks/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/12/10/interesting-selections-from-amazons-free-ebooks/#comments Sat, 11 Dec 2010 05:58:44 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=1840 Cover of Last Light (Restoration, Book 1)

Here are the latest free ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle bestseller lists I thought worth downloading:

Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts (Jerry Bridges, Gerald Bridges). Last Light (Terri Blackstock). Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times (Jon Huntsman). The Root of [...]]]>
Cover of "Last Light (Restoration, Book 1...
Cover of Last Light (Restoration, Book 1)

Here are the latest free ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle bestseller lists I thought worth downloading:

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]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/12/10/interesting-selections-from-amazons-free-ebooks/feed/ 1 More Free Amazon eBooks. http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/12/02/more-free-amazon-ebooks/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/12/02/more-free-amazon-ebooks/#comments Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:48:45 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=1782 Image via Wikipedia

From the top free Amazon eBooks I’ve found the following interesting…hope you do too:

The Truth about Getting the Best from People by Martha I. Finney. Allies and Enemies: How the World Depends on Bacteria by Anne Maczulak. Understanding the Americans: A Handbook for Visitors to [...]]]>
lBook V3 e-book
Image via Wikipedia

From the top free Amazon eBooks I’ve found the following interesting…hope you do too:

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]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/12/02/more-free-amazon-ebooks/feed/ 0 Favorite Blogs. http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/29/favorite-blogs/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/29/favorite-blogs/#comments Sat, 30 Oct 2010 01:05:52 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=1608 What should I write about today? Hmmm…Maybe I’ll just hand out a list of some of my favorite places to read. Yes, this might be shooting myself in the foot b/c many of these sources are much better than I – but here ya go anyways:

The Art of Manliness – A general guide [...]]]> What should I write about today? Hmmm…Maybe I’ll just hand out a list of some of my favorite places to read. Yes, this might be shooting myself in the foot b/c many of these sources are much better than I – but here ya go anyways:

  • The Art of Manliness – A general guide to being a man. My favorites are posts that encourage the acquisition of manly knowledge – e.g. a basic understanding of the arts, significant literature, etc..
  • Zeology – A blog by that nifty company that makes the Zeo – a device that tracks and analyzes your sleeping patterns.
  • Lifehacker – Short articles covering just about everything related to life – with a slight techie focus.
  • MintLife – A blog by the company behind Mint – but focuses largely on beautiful infographics that provide insight into various aspects of our economy and society.
  • Dave Burke – A nice guy who writes a pretty sweet framework called Sueetie in .NET.
  • DownloadSquad – Ummm…they cover stuff, with a bit more of a tech. focus but pretty consumer oriented.
  • Google Public Policy – Google provides opinion on areas we usually don’t like companies providing an opinion.
  • Mashable – They cover web-stuff mainly, slight techie focus, mainly consumer.
  • TechCrunch – Covers the world of web startups, sometimes a little too much of the soap opera’s, but Arrington still holds the niche.
  • cnet news – A surprisingly robust source of diverse news mainly centering around technology.
  • ZDNet Healthcare (Dana Blankenhorn) – Dana is a great resources for keeping tabs on what is happening with IT and healthcare.
  • BetaNews – Wait…BetaNews does news? And its really usually in-depth and high quality? Sweet.

Tell me – what must read sources am I missing? I have several dozen other feeds I subscribe to but these are consistently my favorites.

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]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/29/favorite-blogs/feed/ 2 Zakta Search – Take Two. http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/13/zakta-search-take-two/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/13/zakta-search-take-two/#comments Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:29:06 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=1535 Image via CrunchBase

Back in June I wrote that I had abandoned Google for Zakta. With the announcement of Facebook and Bing‘s new partnership I figured I out to recap my enthrallment with Zakta.

Most people have never heard of Zakta – but for the last [...]]]>

Image representing Zakta as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Back in June I wrote that I had abandoned Google for Zakta. With the announcement of Facebook and Bing‘s new partnership I figured I out to recap my enthrallment with Zakta.

Most people have never heard of Zakta – but for the last several months they have been my engine of choice. What makes Zakta so special that it could drag me away from Google? Social Search. I mean real social search, not this weak stuff Facebook/Bing are offering.

Zakta offers a number of really awesome features but the one I really care about is the ability to edit my results. See, I spend all day every day working on computers – its my job. I am constantly searching for extremely arcane information. On more than one occasion I’ve driven even Google’s huge indexes to turn up empty. Unfortunately, its not all revolving around the same topic – so the arcane information I may need today won’t be utilized again for another five months or a year. This is where Zakta comes in handy. I can do a search for “rsFieldReference report item expressions can only refer to fields within the current dataset” or “You can only import binary registry files from within the registry editor” – delete the results that aren’t relevant, thumbs up and comment on the results that provide the answer – and then months later perform the same or a similar query and immediately know which links are going to be most helpful!

Zakta has something big in the wings – according to the site. I’m hoping they do, b/c I think it is only a matter of time before one of the “big guys” comes out with a social search engine – and then, if Zakta hasn’t already established itself well in the marketplace – well, it will be all over.

I have a bunch of ideas for how Zakta could “break-out” but my biggest / core idea centers on increasing the role trusted editors play in search results rankings for everyone – and in order to get good trusted editors give us some stock. ;) I’d love to be an editor…and help out in other ways…

Okay, that’s the end of my Zakta speel for now, expect to see more once Zakta releases there upcoming “big upgrade”.

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]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/13/zakta-search-take-two/feed/ 0 Cars That Drive Themselves? Google Has ‘Em. http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/09/cars-that-drive-themselves-google-has-em/ http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/09/cars-that-drive-themselves-google-has-em/#comments Sun, 10 Oct 2010 03:28:41 +0000 davemackey http://www.daveenjoys.com/?p=1525 Image via CrunchBase

Is it April 1st? No? Good! Then this article by Samuel Axon reporting that Google has been successfully testing artificial intelligence controlled vehicles isn’t a joke! Yes!

This has been an area I’ve really desired to see development in for some time – and until this news [...]]]>

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Is it April 1st? No? Good! Then this article by Samuel Axon reporting that Google has been successfully testing artificial intelligence controlled vehicles isn’t a joke! Yes!

This has been an area I’ve really desired to see development in for some time – and until this news was released while research was occurring it still seemed a distant reality. The extent of Google’s testing and success seems to indicate the day may be much more quickly approaching than we could have initially predicted.

What would be the benefits of AI controlled cars? How about:

  • A significant reduction in accidents. AI can utilize a number of sensors without fatigue, distraction, or other factors that cause humans to mess up and get into accidents. I’d guesstimate that we could eliminate 90% of accidents by moving to AI controlled vehicles.
  • A significant enhancement in fuel and time efficiency. The AI could determine (based on traffic patterns) the best routes and also could optimize speed / acceleration / etc. to optimize fuel utilization.
  • Imagine relaxing in your car! You’d find I’d suddenly become much more willing to travel. Instead of driving five hours to New York and back again I’d lounge in the car reading a book, watching a movie, or taking a nap!

This is huge news and I, for one, am exceptionally excited about it! Go Google!

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]]> http://www.daveenjoys.com/2010/10/09/cars-that-drive-themselves-google-has-em/feed/ 0