Tag Archives: livejournal

App Store, Blogging, cluefulness, constructivism, Crazy Predictions, digital lifestyle, Empowerment, enthusiasm, Facebook, fun, gadgets, geek crowd, geekness, happiness, iPhone, iPod touch, joie de vivre, location-specific, microblogging, naïve, naïveté, online privacy, participatory culture, PDAs, performance, personal life, playfulness, pleasure, podcasting, qualitative research, ramblings, smartphones, sophistication, tagging, Touch devices, trusting people, Twitter, wishful thinking, wishlists, workflow

Crazy App Idea: Happy Meter

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I keep getting ideas for apps I’d like to see on Apple’s App Store for iPod touch and iPhone. This one may sound a bit weird but I think it could be fun. An app where you can record your mood and optionally broadcast it to friends. It could become rather sophisticated, actually. And I think it can have interesting consequences.

The idea mostly comes from Philippe Lemay, a psychologist friend of mine and fellow PDA fan. Haven’t talked to him in a while but I was just thinking about something he did, a number of years ago (in the mid-1990s). As part of an academic project, Philippe helped develop a PDA-based research program whereby subjects would record different things about their state of mind at intervals during the day. Apart from the neatness of the data gathering technique, this whole concept stayed with me. As a non-psychologist, I personally get the strong impression that recording your moods frequently during the day can actually be a very useful thing to do in terms of mental health.

And I really like the PDA angle. Since I think of the App Store as transforming Apple’s touch devices into full-fledged PDAs, the connection is rather strong between Philippe’s work at that time and the current state of App Store development.

Since that project of Philippe’s, a number of things have been going on which might help refine the “happy meter” concept.

One is that “lifecasting” became rather big, especially among certain groups of Netizens (typically younger people, but also many members of geek culture). Though the lifecasting concept applies mostly to video streams, there are connections with many other trends in online culture. The connection with vidcasting specifically (and podcasting generally) is rather obvious. But there are other connections. For instance, with mo-, photo-, or microblogging. Or even with all the “mood” apps on Facebook.

Speaking of Facebook as a platform, I think it meshes especially well with touch devices.

So, “happy meter” could be part of a broader app which does other things: updating Facebook status, posting tweets, broadcasting location, sending personal blogposts, listing scores in a Brain Age type game, etc.

Yet I think the “happy meter” could be useful on its own, as a way to track your own mood. “Turns out, my mood was improving pretty quickly on that day.” “Sounds like I didn’t let things affect me too much despite all sorts of things I was going through.”

As a mood-tracker, the “happy meter” should be extremely efficient. Because it’s easy, I’m thinking of sliders. One main slider for general mood and different sliders for different moods and emotions. It would also be possible to extend the “entry form” on occasion, when the user wants to record more data about their mental state.

Of course, everything would be save automatically and “sent to the cloud” on occasion. There could be a way to selectively broadcast some slider values. The app could conceivably send reminders to the user to update their mood at regular intervals. It could even serve as a “break reminder” feature. Though there are limitations on OSX iPhone in terms of interapplication communication, it’d be even neater if the app were able to record other things happening on the touch device at the same time, such as music which is playing or some apps which have been used.

Now, very obviously, there are lots of privacy issues involved. But what social networking services have taught us is that users can have pretty sophisticated notions of privacy management, if they’re given the chance. For instance, adept Facebook users may seem to indiscrimately post just about everything about themselves but are often very clear about what they want to “let out,” in context. So, clearly, every type of broadcasting should be controlled by the user. No opt-out here.

I know this all sounds crazy. And it all might be a very bad idea. But the thing about letting my mind wander is that it helps me remain happy.

blog comments, Facebook, Google, Moodle, social networking, WordPress.com, YouTube

How Can Google Beat Facebook?

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It might not be so hard:

As I see it, the biggest shortcoming of social-networking sites is their inability to play well with others. Between MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Tribe, Pownce, and the numerous also-rans, it seems as if maintaining an active presence at all of these sites could erode into becoming a full-time job. If Google can somehow create a means for all of these services to work together, and seamlessly interact with the Google family, then perhaps this is the killer app that people don’t even realize they’ve been waiting for. Google gives social networking another go | Media Sphere – Josh Wolf blogs about the new information age – CNET Blogs

Some might take issue at Wolf’s presumption. Many of us have realised in 1997 that the “killer app” for social networking services is for them to work together. But the point is incredibly important and needs to be made again and again.

Social Networking Services work when people connect through it. The most intricate “network effect” you can think of. For connections to work, existing social relationships and potential social relationships need to be represented in the SNS as easily as possible. What’s more, investing effort and time in building one’s network relates quite directly with the prospective life of SNS. Faced with the eventuality of losing all connections in a snap because everybody has gone to “the next thing,” the typical SNS user is wary. Given the impression that SNS links can survive the jump to “the next one” (say, via a simple “import” function), the typical SNS user is likely to use the SNS to its fullest potential. This is probably one of several reasons for the success of Facebook. And Google can certainly put something together which benefits from this principle.

Yeah, yeah, Wolf  was referring more specifically to the “synchronisation” of activities on different SNS or SNS-like systems. That’s an important aspect of the overall “SNS interoperability” issue. Especially if SNS are important parts of people’s lives. But I prefer to think about the whole picture.

Another thing which has been mentioned is the connection Google could make between SNS and its other tools. One approach would be to build more “social networking features” (beyond sharing) into its existing services. The other could be to integrate Google tools into SNS (say, top-notch Facebook applications). Taken together, these two approaches would greatly benefit both Google and the field of social networking in general.

All in all, what I could easily see would be a way for me to bring all my SNS “content” to a Google SNS, including existing links. From a Google SNS, I would be able to use different “social-enabled” tools from Google like the new Gmail, an improved version of Google Documents, and the Blogger blogging platform. Eventually, most of my online activities would be facilitated by Google but I would still be able to use non-Google tools as I wish.

There’s a few tools I’m already thinking about, which could make sense in this “Google-enabled social platform.” For one, the “ultimate social bookmarking tool” for which I’ve been building feature wishlists. Then, there’s the obvious need for diverse applications which can use a centralised online storage system. Or the browser integration possible with something like, I don’t know, the Google toolbar… 😉

Given my interest in educational technology, I can’t help but think about online systems for course management (like Moodle and Sakai). Probably too specific, but Google could do a wonderful job at it.

Many people are certainly thinking about advertisement, revenue-sharing, p2p for media files, and other Google-friendly concepts. These aren’t that important for me.

I can’t say that I have a very clear image of what Google’s involvement in the “social networking sphere” will look like. But I can easily start listing Google products and features which are desperately calling for integration in a social context: Scholar, Web History, Docs, Reader, Browser Sync, Gcal, Gmail, Notebook, News, Mobile, YouTube, Ride Finder, Blog Comments, Music Trends, University Search, MeasureMap, Groups, Alerts, Bookmarks…

Sometimes, I really wonder why a company like Google can’t “get its act together” in making everything it does fit in a simple platform. They have the experts, the money, the users. They just need to make it happen.

Ah, well…

Blogging, blogging tools, WordPress, WordPress.com

Blogging Tools Redux

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Was just looking for another blogging tool to help me blog from my XP machine (as opposed to my former iBook). Yes, again. Turns out Microsoft just started a beta test for their own blog client, “Windows Live Writer”

Writer Zone: Introducing Windows Live Writer

(It was listed on WordPress.org along other blogging tools.)

That tool is really meant for non-coders. Most, if not all, blog editors are meant to be somewhat WYSIWYG. Microsoft’s WLW follows that principle quite directly and emphasizes ease of editing, not advanced features. As such, it’s somewhat similar to Apple’s iWeb but, as CNET writers and readers keep pointing out, with a wider range of publishing options.

Of course, there’s a range of blogging tools out there. Several of them are free or quite inexpensive. Most of them do support several APIs. In fact, WordPress is supported by a good proportion of blogging tools. Didn’t realize it until today but the open-source LiveJournal editor Semagic does support WordPress if you change server settings (doh!). Other standalone blog editors (free of charge) like Qumana, JBlogEditor, Blog Writer, and Post2Blog Express all seem rather decent. Browser-based solutions like Flock and Performancing work for some people but kind of defeat the purpose of a blogging. And Mozilla-based browsers don’t support “spell as you type” underlining, unlike Safari.

So far, ecto has been my favourite. It’s inexpensive, cross-platform, seems stable, easy to use. As a blog client, ecto not only lets you publish new blog posts but really helps maintaining multiple blogs. Fortunately, ecto does have multilingual “spell as you type” underlining. The main thing missing for me is on-the-fly WordPress categories. It seems that WordPress.com’s web-based editor is the only tool which allows for such a feature. But ecto is scriptable and accepts Technorati tags (which WordPress.com’s categories doubles). A del.icio.us-like tagging function would work well too. Another feature it could have is an integration with your browsers’ histories so you can easily enter links instead of copy/pasting them. Maybe in ecto 3!