Windows Live Calendar

Windows Live looks good. Somehow they got the design just right. Consumers looking to communicate with others and manage their lives have options from 2 fronts:

1. Email / Chat services such as Hotmail, Yahoo, and Google that have been adding more and more social functions so that you can do things with your Contact List.

2. Social sites such as Facebook that have added more and more direct communication functions such as Email and Chat.

Microsoft obviously has a tremendous amount of leverage (the 90% of computer owners who are Windows users) in attempting to tie your Internal World with your Outreaching to others. Yet, it stumbles. Despite the nice layout, the Live experience suffers from Things That Don't Work, Continued Confusion About Names and Relations to Other MS Products, and from insufficient integration with the Rest of the Web.

I will examine the new version of Hotmail / Live over the next week.

Here is the first, Thing that Doesn't Work: the new Calendar's Birthday calendar. It is supposed to populate itself with the dates of your Contact's birthdays. That's a great idea. It merges one product (a Calendar) with info pulled from an existing source (a Contact List). It's one of the things that only a big software company like MS could offer. And yet it's one of the things that only MS would botch: it doesn't work. Go ahead and enter birth dates for any of your contacts. They won't show up in the Birthday Calendar. :(

More to follow....

Cooking is Fun

Cooking is Fun is a web site to share recipes and create shopping lists. The idea is to make a pursuit of cooking fun. The site features a large database of ingredients, the ability to add ingredients, predictive text.. and other Ajax features. A user can store recipes in a 'binder' and then take collective action on the binder: create a shopping list that is grouped by Grocery section, and printing a branded Packet of recipes.

The structure of a recipe is as follows:
I. Basic Info
Name, Output, Footnotes

II. Ingredient Groups
A group is something like "for the salsa."
A group contains items.
Items belong to a category such as Protein, Produce, Spices...

III. Preparation
Segments. Such as "for the sauce.."

***
That is the 'kernel' of the site. The search and social aspect comes from tagging of a recipe and scoring of other members' recipes. Tagging is provided for.. but the scoring will be handled by the Facebook API. Cooking is Fun will use Facebook Connect to integrate with the popular networking site.

It will be fun. I know this has been dry text... but the service itself will be a hoot. The demo version is now active. The next phase of development will involve Facebook integration, leading into a Beta Launch.

Here is the demo URL: http://cooking.phamper.com

* The default title is "Cooking with Sherry is Fun." When a user logs in, the name 'Sherry' is replaced with the user's first name. *

Hometown Throwdown

I made this Facebook App in April 2008.



Facebook only allows One hometown in user's profile. With Hometown Throwdown you not only get to save multiple hometowns, you get to select a rap star name and "throwdown" a story (or rap) about the place, choosing its display colors. You can Judge your friends' throwdowns, from 1 (knit cap) to 5 (bomb diggity). Plus, you can view all throwdowns per a Town or per a MC.

Features

Facebook user data, Ajax, Jscript Color Selector, Rap Star Name Generator, Notifications of 'Being Served,' News Stories of Votes Given and Received.

Platforms

Facebook

Hipster Approval

I made this Widget in May 2008.

Description

Show that you care what hipsters think--and that they DO approve of you (or your page). At install, user must take a short quiz to gain approval. In Facebook, user's music favorites are 'analyzed' and receive comment. Upon passing, user gets a Google Map listing dive bars in her area.

Features

Google Maps; Facebook user data: regional network, music; RSS feeds from Cool Tool and Pitchfork; Quiz, Javascript validation, FB News Feed.

Platforms

Facebook
Google Gadgets

Eeyore or Tigger?

I made this widget to honor "Last Lecture" Professor Randy Pausch. In his speech, he said each of us must decide whether we are an Eeyore or a Tigger. It's the second Facebook Application I produced and the most popular.

The stats have been constant since Dr. Pausch passed away: 67% say Tigger; 22%, Eeyore; 10+% undecided.

Which are you?

The SmartSeller

The SmartSeller is a shopping cart program developed by Neil McCorrison and me in 2000. I handled the UI and requirements; Neil did the code, in Mivascript, which was then a viable programming language. We based the 'cart' on the then market leader, Miva Market.



Our program was superior in several ways: it was web-based, it allowed for more categorization of products, it offered several ways to calculate shipping costs.... and there was continual work on the program into 2004. I was successful in leading Neil to implement several changes so that the program could provide for a businesses' web site (with domain support), and that it could be used by a "no-tech" businessperson as well as a web developer.


In 2001, I found a way to forward shopping cart orders to fax machines (using Ureach.com). I then made a revised version of The SmartSeller for restaurants, because I'd heard from many of them that they do not have a computer near the kitchen but do take fax orders. I was able to sign up a few restaurants, and tried to leverage that to create a Food Ordering site as part of a portal for Charleston, South Carolina. (inCharleston.net)


I am proud to have been an early integrator with Paypal.com; to have helped many small businesses get going online with a stable system; and to have worked with Neil, who is an outstanding developer and one of the good guys.

You can see the marketing web site for The SmartSeller via The Way Back Machine. (due to a problem at my old host, the web site was lost. If you would like the code for TSS, send me a note).

See also: inCharleston.net via The Way Back Machine

Wazitat Means Where is it At, yo!

Wazitat is a web service I made to help people organize and to share their stuff. I came up with the idea in August 2007 when I moved from Hoboken to Manhattan, but was leaving some things in the basement. I realized I also had things at other locations throughout the many states.


And a hurricane hit the Gulf again, reminding me of the importance to know where your things are at, to re-allocate and share resources, and to reconcile with insurance agents.

LINKS
Wazitat Web Site
Wazitat Flash Demo

The general structure of Wazitat is:
Things belong to a space, spaces belong to a room, rooms belong to a place.

Wazitat was always meant to be a social application, perhaps even a parody of a network. I.E. "Gary declared you have his blue sweater. Click to confirm or deny."
"Your son, Matt, said that you have an attic and that it contains his yearbook. Click to confirm that you have an attic...."


But as I finished the first release, I realized how much more powerful Wazitat could be if tied into a network such as Facebook. FB offers a terrific API which provides for photos, notes, and connections, and events and a marketplace. Ideally, you could search your network to borrow an item, and to arrange for a move.

I began a FB version of Wazitat but did not finish due to lack of resources and incentive. It was mid August 2008, and I was pounding away at code each day... I asked myself: am I prepared to be responsibile for the movement of goods throughout the country? I let the domains expire and have shelved the project...but I might make a FB app that handles one of the specific functions such as "Arrange a Move."


Developing Wazitat was a great way to learn Jquery, and Facebook's platform. It also forced me to grapple with philosophical issues such as: Do things derive meaning from how they are used, or is meaning a condition for action? I also had to mediate upon and work through a strategy for the integration of virtual and real worlds. I'm sure that my findings and practice will be helpful to me.

Technology: PHP, Mysql, Jquery / Javascript / Prototype

The Bit Tracker 2000

The Bit Tracker 2000 is a web service for comedians to track their bits over time. It allows for multiple versions of a bit, and the recording of scores and notes per each instance. The BT2000 allows comics to schedule sets (within shows), prepare set lists, print out cheat sheets and study guides, and record feedback.

url is Bittracker2000.com
or TheBitTracker.com

You may create a free account, or preview the screenshots and list of features.


Technology: PHP, Mysql, Jquery / Javascript

Earlier Posts (at The Freewheeler)
May 14, 2008
July 1, 2008

Google Search: Bottom's Up

(first published Nov 11, 2008 in The Freewheeler blog)

I suggest Google put its Page of Results navigation (as seen here)

At both the TOP and the BOTTOM of each result page. Google tends to put such navigation only on the bottom. For example, I was in Google Calendar and chose to view calendar details/settings. Within the setting page, I couldn't find a way to exit -- and return to the calendar. The link "Return to Calendar" is at the bottom.

It would be convenient to have the option of jumping through results pages without having to scroll through each page. It would also give the results pages more consistency:

The text input field resides at both the top and the bottom. Actually, different versions of the search input appear in the top versus the bottom.

The top just has the simple search input field:

The bottom has search tips, filtering options and language tools:

Another issue, which I discussed in an earlier post, is the ambiguity of what the links "Web" "Images" "Maps" do. Are they links to other Google products/services (nouns), or search result filters (i.e. "show me results within Images."). If you experiment, you will find inconsistent results. For example, if I click "Gmail" it doesn't search my gmail for "gold" (search term), but if I click "Maps" it does. And how does the set of links above the Google logo differ from the set of links below the logo?

Trader Joes Checkout Line

Trader Joes is an awesome store for many reasons. One of them is the way checkout is handled. The clerk takes your cart and empties it for you. That makes sense, and it removes that awkward discomfort of positioning yourself behind or in front of your cart as you strain to remove the objects. That's how it's done at "legacy" super markets. Most of the major chains have remodeled their stores over the past 5 years.

Many of these stores are very pleasant places... and yet the checkout lines remain narrow passageways where the shopper is left to remove the items and place onto the conveyor belt. It's got to change. Thanks, Trader Joes, for showing the way. And also, for those 3 sample coffees I had last week.

Google Calendar: Time Zone Snag - No Absolute Time

(first published Feb 14, 2009 in The Freewheeler blog)

Google Calendar is terrific. But a major problem I've found is a Time Zone is set not to the Event, but to the Google Calendar User. Thus, any event that user creates, is set to his user setting timezone.



So, if I live in Los Angeles but schedule an 8pm Monday London event, it will show up as a 3am Tuesday event to Londoners. As long as my user setting is PST, I have to do this: set the event for 1pm. In Google Calendar, a user can have more than one calendar. Each calendar can have its own setting for Time Zone.

Thus, I thought a bad but working solution would be to temporarily set a calendar to time zone London. But, that setting just dictates the Display of the time, not the absolute date time start. The absolute is still based on the user's time zone.



The issue is all the more confounding because the Calendar gives much weight to an Event's Location field. It wants specific information so that it can map it and offer directions or other services. Yet it's not interested in the time?

Here I create a 9am New York City event. But to Google, it's a 9 am PST start -- 12 pm in NYC and 5pm in London.


Here's how it's published, in London Time:

The solution is: Google should let viewers / subscribers to a calendar set a timezone for "Viewing"-- thus all events are translated into a time relative to that user's view. In that case, if I'm looking at a 5pm New York event as a Californian (PST) I see it as 2pm.

The absolute time should be defined by the manager per event. When entering the time there should simply be a field to enter the time zone, which Google could 'predict' once location is entered (that would also require an alteration in the Form inputs so that Location is entered before Time).

Suggested:

As it is, Google Calendar cannot be accurately deployed by a manager of an entity that crosses time zones (sports teams, performers) or has subscribers across multiple time zones.

Oh Google! Yours is such an awesome, awesome company, and yet snags like these make me think you might spend just a wee bit too much time drinking your own Kool-Aid and not actually engineering for humans.

Phamper Presents a Magic Trick

My pal Bill Chott told me a version of this trick, and I've used it to explain some basics about data and how I--as Phamper--can figure out a situation. * Flash required