http://www.49Sparks.com en-us ℗ & © 2006-2008 49Sparks http://s3.amazonaws.com/49sparks_images/49sparksfeed150x150.gifhttp://www.49sparks.com/ 49Sparks - Thoughts, Observations and Opinions from Chris Ritke 2009-01-05T19:17:08PST 49Sparks Server this post at gominimal and realized 2 things:

1. I don't do it on the Thingy sites
2. It's really easy to do

It's just this:

<input type=checkbox id=thisid> <label for=thisid>Click this label!</label>

and you get this:

Click this label!

Duh. Just added it. Now that's so much better. Thanks gominimal!
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=36 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=36 2009-01-04T09:47:25PST
Time to move on
Ok, so it's time to move on. I've been waiting for an upgrade to the Mac Mini for about a year now, there are rumors that it's going to happen at Mac World next week. So I'm going to wait and see what happens for sure. But the Mac Mini is glued to my desk. I can't pop it into my backpack, can't take it over to the bed or couch to do some reading away from my desk. And I really need to do that - I'm at my desk almost all the time. Ugh. My laptop is always all connected up to my extra monitor, USB hub, power and all that other stuff - and the battery is basically dead since I never unplug it. And it's a huge 15' - albeit a Vaio - they're great - but it's just really big.

Netbooks!
So now these netbooks are all the rage. There's a ton of them out there - but there are 2 that have caught my eye: the Acer Aspire One and the Asus Eee. They both seem to be pretty cool. Both somewhere around $350 - with 1GB RAM and a 160GB drive. And apparently around 6h of battery power with the 6 cell versions. Wow, cool! But the thing that worries me is the 1.6 GHz Atom processor. How will it handle Hulu videos? I've seen a few comments on Amazon where people say that it's quite snappy - even with Hi Def video. Hm. There's a video that shows a guy running Dreamweaver, Word, playing an MP3 and watching a video all at the same time and it really looks like it's just eating it all up with no problem. Then there's another guy who says it started crapping out at about 3 apps. Hm. That's what would really bum me out. Well, as one person put it: It's a netbook silly! It's for surfing the web - not encoding videos.

So now what?
I'm going to wait and see what happens next week. But I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get a netbook. I don't know why I should pay so much money for a Mac Mini that'll look real nice, probably go like crazy and run OSX instead of XP (f*** Vista!) - but I'll admit that I really like XP - I'm so used to it - everything I need runs on it... hm. Ah yes. It's tough.

Update1: I just clicked *buy* on a black Asus Eee but it was sold out by the time I got through all the credit card/ship to stuff.

Update2 (10 minutes later!): I just bought a black Asus Eee for $308. $308. Holy moly.
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=34 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=34 2008-12-30T18:25:48PST Patrick's post on ProjectThingy - because he really hit the nail on the head regarding what ProjectThingy is about. It really is a new twist on a boring old thing: Project management/collaboration. So instead of going to some site to collaborate on Projects, with ProjectThingy you just copy and paste some html into a page on your site and presto: project collaboration right there.

Back in the old days...
... I built one of the first project collaboration tools called WebProject. It was a wild ride - and ended in the sale of the company. Since then, I'll bet a couple hundred project collaboration tools have been built. And as Patrick says: it's all getting sort of boring. But project management was sort of boring back then as well: there were the entrenched players in the desktop space; and the software was really good. It did just about everything anybody could ask for - at least from what people were thinking back then. It did everything well except the collaboration part. Because back then you had project managers who took care of everything. And that was fine. But then all of a sudden it wasn't just fine anymore.

A new twist
So being able to embed a project collaboration tool is not a huge innovation like Gantt charts or network diagrams or putting it online and enabling collaboration. It's a small step. But I think it's going in the right direction. We'll see!
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=33 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=33 2008-12-23T12:08:36PST uploadthingy. That really makes me happy. What else is there to say. Gotta get busy with finding the next 100. And finishing up the next thingy.
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=32 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=32 2008-12-19T15:23:11PST
The problem
But oh yes, it can also be a distraction. And I mean big time. Take Twitter, for example. I've used Twitterific and then Twitterfox. They're both cool little apps. But if they're on your desktop in plain site they just keep nagging you with those little numbers that are saying: 'hey you! click me - there's new stuff!!!'. Or the feed reader. Or email. I use Gmail and Google Reader. And they're in tabs in Firefox. Problem is, the tabs show the title of the page - and the title includes the number of unread messages. So again, there's those numbers that are begging you to click over and read the new stuff. All the time. And that's distracting you from your work. Constantly. At least that's what it does to me.

Why has this become a problem all of a sudden?
Because of all that screen real estate on your desk. I have three monitors - one for my mac and two for my PC. One is even a 24'. So there's tons of room to spread it all out and keep it all in plain sight. I didn't have that problem before. Because I just had one screen - whatever I was working on was on top and everything else ended up being hidden from view.

What to do?
I suggest putting all of this stuff behind the windows that you're working on. Yup, that's right, Hide it. So you can concentrate on what you're doing - get into the flow and get stuff done. And when it's time for a break, click over to your little goodies and enjoy reading, watching, responding. And when you're done, hide it again. It's working for me. Well, most of the time anyway.
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=22 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=22 2008-12-19T07:38:14PST Hacker News for the longest time - just clicking on links and reading. I was pretty amazed how much good stuff was coming through - stuff that I found really interesting. But for me it was just a feed like any other one.

Then I started this blog (again)
Yep. Then I decided to start writing stuff on this blog. But just writing a blog isn't really fun if you don't interact with other blogs. So I started commenting. Started taking a stand. And it has been a blast.

Hacker News Karma
And so I also started commenting on stuff at Hacker News. Just here and there - and only when I really feel like I have something to say - and I'm really passionate about it. So maybe only once a day - or even less. And then I saw this number in the upper right corner of the page. My Karma. It's just a stupid number. But after a while it started to interest me. I have no idea why. And today I hit 100. Not a whole lot, the leader board starts at around 1600 or so. But still.

Soooo....
... again. That karma number is just a number. I don't think it does anything (except being able to down-vote stuff when you have enough points) - but I keep looking at it and wanting it to go up. Silly. Why is it that it means something to me, even though it doesn't really mean anything? Weird. This requires some more thought.

What do you think?
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=31 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=31 2008-12-17T09:19:57PST rel=nofollow business for a long while now. I mean a looong time, like a few years. Why is it that people don't want to give you search engine juice for your link back to your blog when you post a comment?

Ok, now I get it, sorta
So I guess it's all about endorsement. When you link to a site in a blog post (or in a blog roll etc etc) you're endorsing that site. You're saying 'hey, check this out, I like it'. Now when somebody comes along and posts a comment that links back to their site, it's not you that is endorsing their site. It's them. And it's good for other people to be able to see what the commenters are all about by checking out their blogs. But it's not about you endorsing their site. Ergo: rel=nofollow.

Duh.
I don't know why it sometimes takes me so long to figure stuff out. I was just staring at the trees outside when it hit me. Crazy.

Uh - so now what?
Just came across this little tidbit on Jem's blog (scroll down to the bottom): there are of course people who are against nofollow. It would be interesting to find out what percentage does one or the other. But that would be way too much work. So I don't know. I think I'll just not do rel=nofollow for now. Ah yes - so much for me taking a stand today.
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=27 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=27 2008-12-15T09:26:25PST Creating Usable Links and Buttons. Andrew Maier's discussion of when to use links vs buttons really makes sense. His post got me thinking about Blinks.

Blinks
I've been starting to think about the notion of a 'blink': a sort of button-link mix that looks like this: [link] - for those cases where you're navigating to a different view: not a normal view of data but rather to an area where you will be manipulating or adding data. Or also when you're performing an action such as deleting an item. Blinks are 'lightweight' - they don't weigh down the page as buttons do.

Now I must admit that I didn't come up with this. They're not all over the place, but I've seen them here and there. I also read something about them a while back, just can't remember where. Too bad the word 'blink' is already associated with that horrible <blink> tag that will probably get you flogged by some sort of Internet police if you use it.
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=25 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=25 2008-12-11T07:48:21PST post on Hacker News asking 'What would you tell your younger self?'. My comment was: 'take more risks. don't worry about failing.'. It took me about 5 seconds to come up with that. Not a lot fo time for a response to such a deep question. Hmmmm. Now let me think about this for a bit.

Risk of failing
Life is full of risks. The main problem with taking risks is that you might end up failing. And failing is hard. And it's even harder to tell other people about your failures. What will they think? What happens if they find out? Will they lose their respect for you?

So what?
Right. So what. It's actually even more than that. It's 'yeah cool! I've learned something!'. So there. If somebody respects you less for having made mistakes - having failed - well, then I would say then they're not worth listening to. Listen to yourself. Listen to the people that embrace your failure and give you tips on how to do it better the next time. Because then you're prepared for taking your next risk. And then you might succeed. And that'll be pretty darn cool.

Soooo....
I'm taking more risks. And I'm learning. It always bugs the heck out of me to hear about people that get really sick or get into a bad accident and come out of it realizing how precious life is. And start doing crazy stuff. Taking risks. Enjoying life. I've decided that I'm not going to wait for that. It took me a while to figure that out. Too bad it wasn't sooner.
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=23 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=23 2008-12-08T17:56:50PST
So have you ever noticed mushrooms in the wild? Like when you're going for a walk? I have noticed them, but never really looked. I did today - I got down on my knees to take a look. And they're really cool. You should try it. Check out what I found (gotta work on the focus a bit!):















It really is amazing when you take the time to look at things. I mean really look. And not just at mushrooms.
]]> http://www.49sparks.com/?b=29 http://www.49sparks.com/?b=29 2008-12-06T07:57:54PST