Phillip Keller has 5 reasons he thinks bookmarking sites are the wrong tool when it comes to helping you recall valuable information:
I think he’s going about it all wrong, and here’s why:
1) Phillip suggests that “Deciding which web site will be valuable in the future is a very very hard task.” and he’s totally right, but it’s also the wrong task to be attempting. The question you need to ask is not “will it be valuable in the future”. The question you need to ask is “Do I consider this interesting/useful right now?” I haven’t a clue if it’ll be useful in the future but I bookmark everything I find interesting “right now”.
Phillip also “…can’t decide how [he] should tag (categorize) [his] bookmarks.” The answer is “simply”. He’s got 3000+ tags for 3444+ bookmarks. With tags like “alter” and “100″ and “base”… when the fuck are you going to say “oh hey, I need a page about / having to do with “alter” or “100″?! You’re not. Even something notable like “bbc” is useless unless it’s actually an article about the bbc, but it his case they’re just articles that happen to be on the bbc site. One about the first face transplant he’s tagged with “health face transplant medicine science news bbc via:slashdot“ Which seem like useful things except they’re terrible for recall.
Tags that are too narrow leave you with too many items you need to browse through in your list of tags. Tags that are too large don’t help much, unless combined with other tags. For example I tag a lot of things with “software” which is broad, but not huge. I’m never going to use “software” by itself because it’ll get me too many results but i will use “software+osx” when I’m looking for a mac app I’ve bookmarked. If i really want to narrow it down i can say “software+osx+writing” and find all the mac software to facilitate writing.
If you’re spending any time thinking about what bookmarks to use it means you’re going to have to spend time thinking about what bookmarks you might have been thinking about when you chose tags for that thing you want. If you can’t remember the page well enough to grab it quickly in google how the hell do you expect to remember what you were thinking about when bookmarking that thing you can’t remember. Pick brain-dead stupid tags that require no thought to recall. Inkscape isn’t “vector illustration svg” no. What is it? “software” What does it do? It makes “graphics”. If you’re like me and use 3 operating systems then knowing what it’ll run on is important too so it’s also “osx windows linux”. None of these require thought. When I need “that cool open source app vector illustration app” I don’t have to think because any moron could figure out that it’s “software” + “graphics” and if I actually want to install it right now I’ll add what OS i happen to be on. http://del.icio.us/masukomi/software+graphics+osx Even though those are all broad and simplistic tags their combination gets me a list of only 7 items, one of which is Inkscape.
2) You tear links out of it’s context. He’s referring to the descriptive snippet you associate with a link. And if that was the end of it that would be true. Except it isn’t. Del.icio.us doesn’t just index your descriptions for searching it also indexes the pages you linked to. So you can search for a concept / keyword was on one of the pages that you bookmarked but wasn’t in the descriptive text. And yes, the search on del.icio.us is painfully slow but it’s pretty speedy in the beta for the upcoming version, but that could just be because there’s hardly anyone using it.
3) “It takes too much time” That’s something that can only be determined on a person by person basis, but I look at it this way. Even if it takes me ten seconds to bookmark something, and I never use it again, how much time to I save by having important reference information quickly available? Especially since the really good ones seem to unfindable on google when you really need them. I find the time saved far outweighs the time spent bookmarking things i don’t use later. AND that’s ignoring the fact that they may be useful for friends of mine with similar reference needs who know i bookmark everything interesting.
4)”It didn’t work for Phillip” A great reason for him to not use it but not one that means it’s the wrong tool, just not a tool that necessarily works with his thinking patterns.
5)Whether or not Social Bookmarking improves any time soon is irrelevant to the question of is it the wrong tool now. And I say that it isn’t IF you know how to use it.
I just put together a new unit testing presentation for the folks at work and you. Although it may need to be edited here and there for your coworkers… maybe mine too…. Anyway, Unit Testing 101 (v2) requires Firefox and I recommend you move your mouse up to the top edge and click on the icon to the left of the slider where you’ll get a menu of all the chapters and slides. Yes, there are a lot of slides, but it’s Takahashi method so they go really fast. As always feedback is not only welcomed, but encouraged..
I recently met a couple of pretty cool people who, as it turns out, are Jewish. After hanging with them last night something struck me. When speaking with someone who is truly Jewish, not just Jewish if they have to think about it you’ll hear them say “because I’m a Jew”, “and there I am, a Jew”, or similar phrases to describe some situation they found themselves in. I thought back to all the times I’ve heard these utterances from all the Jews I’ve know, including my father, and I realized that there’s a weight to it that goes far beyond what deity they happen to believe in. Saying “I’m a Jew” and meaning it down to your bones comes with the unspoken weight of thousands of years of being shat upon by every other race, and triumphing over it, and surviving through it. It reminds me of that quote from The Matrix when Morpheus was giving his speech in the temple:
I stand before you unafraid. Because I believe something you do not? No. But because I remember. I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me, but because of the path that lies behind me.
What’s even more amazing is how this seems to be woven into the core of being Jewish. When they mention it they’re not trying to say “so there!” or point out how hard they’ve had it, but there’s a different quality to the phrase that comes from that. When a Christian says it it feels either totally superficial or that they’re trying to point out how you’re going to go to hell, or how much better they are than you because of how often they pray. Almost none of the Christians I’ve met have any sense of that quiet strength when they mention their faith in passing. It makes me wish I was brought up knowing more about my fathers faith.
I think the media someone chooses to consume says a lot about them. I’m posting this partially because I can and partially so that my friends will know what’s available for them to borrow. I just finished updating Delicious Library with my recently purchased books and the rest of my DVD collection. Then I exported it all to HTML with DeliciWeb. The result is a not horrendously ugly listing of what I have. I’ve read and watched all but a handful of these so if you have want an opinion on any of them just holler. On a related note… Who has my copy of Blade Runner? I totally wanted to watch that this weekend. P.S. I’m psyched that there’s a 2.0 version of Delicious Library coming out with decent HTML export but WTF guys it’s been years since you’ve added anything noteworthy. The big things I’m hoping for are the ability to track what I’ve borrowed (but not have it recorded as part of my library), HTML export, and some sort of networking with other users. P.P.S Yes, I have CDs, no I am not sticking any of the in DL because i have a tendency to loose the CDs promptly after ripping them. Combine that with the fact that I just haven’t bought physical disks in years and it’s not worth the effort. I hear DL 2 will incorporate some sort of iTunes integration. Maybe that’ll be reason enough for me to start using iTunes, although I still can’t find a Linux client that can connect to it with zeroconf/rendezvour/bonjour/whatever they’re calling it today and that just bewilders me. P.P.P.S… This listing makes me feel a little sad for all the books I used to have but don’t anymore. Hundreds of them… Once I get my stuff out of storage my collection will blossom a bit more again, but then where will I put it all…
When most people encounter the idea of combining pasta with tofu they generally respond with “why?” or “eww!” I’m a huge fan of tofu and if I hadn’t actually tried this I would be raising one eyebrow at it. But it’s good. It’s so good that people who never buy tofu go back for extra tofu bits for their pasta with every helping. I’m not kidding. It’s not mind-blowing or anything but it’s a tasty change and great when you have vegetarian guests. The idea is pretty simple. We’re going to make your traditional pasta withred-sauce and meatballs except we’re replacing the meatballs with crisp tofu slices.
Ingredients:
Instructions:
One block of tofu will probably end up covering 2 1/2 fry pans. So, grab some friends and hang out in the kitchen while you fry it up and they look at you like a crazy person for suggesting they eat tofu on their pasta. I’d guess maybe 5 minutes per pan, but I’ve never timed it. You want to keep it warm but remember that it’s freaking hot when if first comes off of the fry pan. Top your pasta with it in exactly the same way you’d use meatballs. I’d recommend a good vodka sauce. There are three brands I’ve seen in the supermarket lately and so far the Barilla that comes with two bottles is the best, although they don’t label it as a vodka sauce. You have to read the ingredients and look for vodka but I think it’s the most normal looking one of the three they offer. I wouldn’t recommend this with white sauce.
Tips:
Brewer’s yeast contains essential B vitamins including biotin, minerals including zinc, and high quality proteins. These assist in the control of shedding and promote a healthy skin and hair coat. Brewer’s yeast has been fed to pets to control fleas as it seems to create an odor from the inside out that is unpleasant to fleas. This has not been confirmed through research. It has also been said the brewer’s yeast will stimulate the immune system. -PetEducation.com
Credits: I honestly haven’t a clue where I got the idea for this. I’m not sure if I thought this up, or if it was Miller, or maybe I read it somewhere…
S5 Halloween Theme A while ago Eric Meyer designed a really nice standards compliant HTML based presentation tool called S5, and has been improving it ever since. The only complaint I have about it is that the default theme was so ugly that I just avoided using it (bad first impression) even though it is all CSS based and thus easy to make it look however you want if you’ve got any CSS skills. Well, I need to put together a new presentation on unit testing (much to my dismay no-one seems to have a clue what mock objects are) and the latest version of S5 just has WAY too many cool features to pass up. There are presenters notes, info that’ll only be displayed when you do a handout, and much more. The handout functionality was especially nice because now I can make the displayed visuals nice and terse but have printouts include all the discussions I’d be having during the presentation. I’ve taken a look at the latest version (1.2a), fixed a JavaScript bug in Mac Firefox, and given it a Halloween theme that looks like this: So, if you’d like an HTML based presentation tool check out S5. If you’d like one with a Halloween theme, you can grab my copy here. Please note it is based on an alpha version so there may be other bugs hiding in there, and I haven’t tested this in anything other than Firefox on the mac but it should work elsewhere. If S5 has progressed to a final 1.2 or beyond you should be able to just drop the ui folder from mine into the latest version to get the Halloween theme.
This morning I received a rather unexpected invite to a Meetup over at the Middlesex Lounge from the people at Bug Labs. They were getting people together to discuss their new product, a modular and open source hardware platform. I figure since they were nice enough to buy us drinks I could return the favor by giving them my thoughts. For me the idea keeps coming back to Gumstix. Gumstix has been making these tiny tiny computers that are essentially stripped down motherboards that you could run really stripped down versions of linux on. They’re pretty cool, but you really have to be willing to code with minimal support from existing …. anything, which makes them way too much of a time investment for me to want to bother with. So, while the idea of a mini computer that I could hack to do whatever I wanted is tempting, I’ve got too many other projects to screw around with a Gumstix. Bug Labs is taking a different approach. They’ve built a hardware base that you can, literally, snap things like a camera, gps, touch sensitive screen, etc., given it an OS, thrown on Java (standard edition, not hobble me moble edition), built an eclipse plugin that gives you a development environment that heavily leverages OSGI, built a “Virtual Bug” so that you can test out your code without having to shuttle it to the hardware every time you make a change. The example the kept using is that, when released, you should be able to snap in the video camera, and screen, and code up a working “security system” within a few minutes. Basically just take the API that comes with the camera, write something that detects changes and snaps a pic, and then displays those pics on the screen. I’m not sure if they’ll actually have code that detects changes in the video stream or if you’d have to hack that yourself but the point is that you could, and the framework will be robust enough, and each hardware module will come with a decent enough API, that you won’t have to muck about with all the low level stuff, you’ll be able to just have fun thinking up, and quickly implementing, new ways to use it. They’re strategy isn’t just limited to the hardware though. They’re putting together a site, and enough built in code on the hardware base, that you’ll be able to plug it in to your computer, and drag apps that other people have written, onto the hardware you plugged in and have it install and be ready to go. It sounds like they’re going to try and really focus on the community and have new hardware modules, and probably core software come from the community instead of the company, which I think is probably the best approach they could take. Another nifty thing is that if someone requests some new hardware module, and enough other people (probably around 200ish) are willing to commit their credit cards to buying the new module, Bug Labs will go off and build it. I would absolutely be willing to plunk down money for an effing bar code scanner, but Delicious Monster has already shown us that you can hack a passable one via a video camera (that’s what Delicious Library uses if you don’t have a bar code scanner). I think it’s a great idea. I’m probably exactly the target market they’re looking for. I’d be willing to plunk down $200+ dollars for a cool platform with a nice dev environment that’ll let me make cool things. I doubt I’d be willing to part with more than $300 though (for the base unit), not when i can get a whole laptop for $500. The problem I think they may have, judging by some of the questions asked, is that people will give it bad reviews because it doesn’t have support for their favorite language built in, and doesn’t come with a web browser. These type of suggestions / questions really bug me (no pun intended). It’s like listen people… this is NOT a consumer device. This is, unquestionably, a device for geeks. And when I say geeks I mean programmers. And when I say programmers I mean people who know that AJAX isn’t a language. You want to write webapps for / with this device? Great, stick a web server on it and query it from your desktop. It’s not a PDA. Maybe someone will come up with an idea that leverages the hardware to address some vertical market, maybe inventory management tools in warehouses, who knows. I know Bug Labs is hoping someone will but they don’t seem to be betting the company on that. So, Bug == potential coolness. But don’t hold your breath as it’s going to be end of this year, beginning of next before you can buy one, which makes me wonder why they’re doing these meet-ups now… I think whatever buzz they generate will be long gone by the time it can actually be converted into sales.
