drewp for 2007 May

[link] 2007-05-06T03:43:35 SHDH 17:

Worked on fantasyfamegame.com reporting/dashboard tools. Met the http://www.staticize.com/ guys and told them about some of their competitors: swivel, manyeyes, gapminder.

The only photo of me so far is this one of my left arm as I'm listening to Brad Templeton talk about how we should simplify system configuration via better organization of files and data:

http://flickr.com/photos/94571993@N00/485971692/

He says the config data will eventually demand a database like the Windows registry. I say it can stay in little files as RDF, which can be easily combined at any time for querying, exporting, etc. Otherwise, I completely agree with him that my system configuration ("program foo version 1.2 is currently installed", or "alter this one line of that config file") should be separate from the actual foo files. I really want to diff the configs of all my home machines and merge some of their pointless diffs away. Meanwhile, I can't even find out how to get ubuntu to tell me what program config files I modified and which ones are still at their defaults.

More photos:

http://flickr.com/photos/94571993@N00/486272683/ http://flickr.com/photos/tomicles/487124728/

[link] 2007-05-14T19:26:19 Social network overload management and sharing:

Reponse to http://www.bladam.com/main/entry/grouping-on-social-networks/

"Why can’t I rank my contacts’ importance on a scale from 1-10… 10 being I want to know their every feeling and action and 1 being I don’t want to be bugged by any notifications ‘bout them unless they’re getting married… and to a hot celebrity."

I can't see how that would help at all with anything, unless you or someone also assigned thresholds to each event anyone creates. Even then it sounds unworkable.

But, having the interface notice which items you're interested in, that sounds much better. The new metadata is collected passively, and it can be gently applied as a -sort- of the events for you to read. Read the most important ones first, as they get more boring you can stop. The right UI would be able to notice where you stop and ideally which items you skip over (i.e. they were sorted too high).

As to sharing, creating and picking groups is ok but obviously you have to do work before there's any reward, and if you want your sharing controls to get better, you have to put more work into them. Perhaps we can pull the same trick again: the system -watches- where I email/IM that picture at first, and then it can suggest which people I might like to share the picture with. Sharing is permanent, so I guess you have to get my ok before sending anything (as opposed to the importance-sorted event feed). But over time, the 'ok' UI ought to get quicker and quicker.

"This pic was taken from a phonecam during work hours. Look, here are some other phonecam pics from work, where you always showed them to this audience. Do the same thing again?" I glance at the sample past pictures and approve the new one's ACL.

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