On folder hierarchies and social bookmarks
on
The Death of Folders?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Of course! Hierarchies suck for large amounts of data (when was the last time you went to ODP or Yahoo Directory to find something?)
That (folder hierarchies suck, search rules!) is one of the main hypothesis behind Simpy [1], a social bookmarking service with tagging and full-text search (think of it as a better and prettier delicious), so there is even a FAQ entry about it: http://www.simpy.com/simpy/FAQ.do#hierarchies
[1] Simpy's demo/demo account, to see the goodness of bookmarks without hierarchies
When you use a keyboard you have a number of keys + 10 fingers (most people). This allows for:
1) lots of "parallelization" (as you are hitting A with your left pinky, your right index finger is hovering right above H, your brain is already lining up the other fingers, and so on)
On the other hand, when you have a mouse, you cannot type (most of the work is really typing), you have to make a roughly 10 inch lateral move every time you want to do something with the mouse, and your functionality is limited: you have but 3-4 keys to press at the most.
I bought a few Windows laptops over the past years. I installed Linux on every single one of them. My purchases count towards those numbers, too, I suppose, but the reality is I don't do Windows - I just paid a higher price for my laptops because I couldn't get them without Windows.
Also, I can have multiple "Topics" with Simpy (create a Topic, add a few people to it, watch their links, optionally applying a query filter over them). I use this a lot to keep abreast of useful information that pertains to my work and interests.
Fantasy market, but fun to play and watch. The 2 leaders there, Delicious and Furl, are commercial (one has VC funding and the other is owned by a publically traded company). Simpy is the first independent service there, and I hope you can see why (demo/demo account). Yes, I'm a little biased, see my URL above.
"Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source"
I'm an open source developer, and have been involved with open source for 10 years now. However, I still find the above statement short sighted. Let me illustrate my point by providing some examples:
Google: not open source, we all use it
OSX : not open source, people love it (including open-source people)
Firefox: open source, we all love it, but 99% of us will never even see the source code behind it, let alone touch it.
Windows: not open source, some of us are forced to use it, most of us dislike it.
So, there is no rule. Just because something is not open source it's not immediately bad!
Oh, and while I'm at it, the following will show you the relative popularity and trend of mozilla.org (the link/URL/site) that, I imagine, is directly related to the popularity of Mozilla/Firefox (as well as Simpy):
In the long run? We're all dead in the long run, somebody once said. Apple is not sitting back, twiddling their thumbs and enjoying their iPod success. In this game being nimble counts A LOT (what was the last release of IE? Windows? Word? Any new main-stream MS product?). See also: Google.com:)
Re: hindsight - yes, that is exactly what Paul Graham talks about. All his essays are about things that sound like common sense.
On buying startups before they get big (GOOG)
on
Google Acquires Dodgeball
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Ah, interesting. If you've read Paul Graham's latest essay and last night's thread [1] on Slashdot, you'll find this paragraph from Paul'e essay rather interesting and timely:
"What companies should do is go out and discover startups when they're young, before VCs have puffed them up into something that costs hundreds of millions to acquire."
The timing of this is quite interesting. In one paragraph Paul Graham says:
"What companies should do is go out and discover startups when they're young, before VCs have puffed them up into something that costs hundreds of millions to acquire."
For those too lazy to click through to that blog entry, Kaffe, Classpath and other solutions already exist, and this is not the first.... although coming from Apache carries some weight.
I think that's also well-worth noting, as Apache is a pretty big and significant open source software player, and as such its migration to Subversion, which happened months ago, served as the "green light" for smaller projects's move to SVN.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course!
Hierarchies suck for large amounts of data (when was the last time you went to ODP or Yahoo Directory to find something?)
That (folder hierarchies suck, search rules!) is one of the main hypothesis behind Simpy [1], a social bookmarking service with tagging and full-text search (think of it as a better and prettier delicious), so there is even a FAQ entry about it:
http://www.simpy.com/simpy/FAQ.do#hierarchies
[1]
Simpy's demo/demo account, to see the goodness of bookmarks without hierarchies
See Jon Udell's
Simple single sign-on article from May 2005:
It points out a few simple solutions that will solve many people's problems.
Hide them where cr@ck3rz will least expect them - your blog!
You can think about it like this:
When you use a keyboard you have a number of keys + 10 fingers (most people). This allows for:
1) lots of "parallelization" (as you are hitting A with your left pinky, your right index finger is hovering right above H, your brain is already lining up the other fingers, and so on)
2) multi-finger/multi-key -> multi-function combinations
On the other hand, when you have a mouse, you cannot type (most of the work is really typing), you have to make a roughly 10 inch lateral move every time you want to do something with the mouse, and your functionality is limited: you have but 3-4 keys to press at the most.
I bought a few Windows laptops over the past years. I installed Linux on every single one of them. My purchases count towards those numbers, too, I suppose, but the reality is I don't do Windows - I just paid a higher price for my laptops because I couldn't get them without Windows.
Hate replying to myself, but Simpy has a few more cool features that Delicious lacks. Link History is one of them. For instance, here is http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkHistory.do?title=Sl ashdot%3A%20News%20for%20nerds%2C%20stuff%20that%2 0matters&href=http%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org%2F&v=1">Sl ashdot's link history.
Also, I can have multiple "Topics" with Simpy (create a Topic, add a few people to it, watch their links, optionally applying a query filter over them). I use this a lot to keep abreast of useful information that pertains to my work and interests.
Yeah, there is one:t ml?_mid=8976
http://buzz.research.yahoo.com/bk/market/market.h
Fantasy market, but fun to play and watch.
The 2 leaders there, Delicious and Furl, are commercial (one has VC funding and the other is owned by a publically traded company). Simpy is the first independent service there, and I hope you can see why (demo/demo account). Yes, I'm a little biased, see my URL above.
... or you can use a tool that has all of these:
1. tags
2. social aspect (folksonomy)
3. full-text search
4. private / public bookmarks
5. nice UI
Delicious has only 1 and 2.
If you'd like to have all 5, I suggest you look at Simpy - you can use the demo/demo account.
That looks like Google's idea of a Minime portal.
Would anyone sane really want to see a Star Wars episode on a small screen before seeing it on the big silver screen? No.
"Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source"
I'm an open source developer, and have been involved with open source for 10 years now. However, I still find the above statement short sighted.
Let me illustrate my point by providing some examples:
Google: not open source, we all use it
OSX : not open source, people love it (including open-source people)
Firefox: open source, we all love it, but 99% of us will never even see the source code behind it, let alone touch it.
Windows: not open source, some of us are forced to use it, most of us dislike it.
So, there is no rule. Just because something is not open source it's not immediately bad!
Shows how Firefox/Mozilla/Microsoft/Google(.org|.com) compare:
= 12516546
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149315&cid
I hear Orca-style, black-and-white cases for iPods are hot.
Oh, and while I'm at it, the following will show you the relative popularity and trend of mozilla.org (the link/URL/site) that, I imagine, is directly related to the popularity of Mozilla/Firefox (as well as Simpy):
t p://www.mozilla.org/
http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkHistory.do?href=ht
Try plugging in Microsoft's URL. It's not that popular.
I think that's completely made up.5 13459
To see some Alexa graphs for Firefox, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc. see what I posted earlier today:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149252&cid=12
Over on http://simpy.com/ I see this:
Netscape/Mozilla 29971 (36.3%)
Unknown 24985 (30.3%)
Explorer 22249 (26.9%)
Safari 2441 (3.0%)
Opera 1560 (1.9%)
Opera CEO's cross-Atlantic swimming trick didn't help the browser's market share. Safari appears stagnant. Mozilla % keeps growing slowly.
I agree. They are not that cool nor innovative. But they ride the hype/buzz wave pretty well.
This clearly shows Funnyfox success:? q=&url=funnyfox.org/
? &range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=funnyfox.org/#top
? &range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=mozilla.org#top
? &range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=microsoft.com#top
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
But that's still nothing compared to Mozilla.org:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
And yet, Mozilla.org is notihing compared to Microsoft.com:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
But, of course, Google.com tops them all:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
In the long run? We're all dead in the long run, somebody once said. Apple is not sitting back, twiddling their thumbs and enjoying their iPod success. In this game being nimble counts A LOT (what was the last release of IE? Windows? Word? Any new main-stream MS product?). See also: Google.com :)
Re: hindsight - yes, that is exactly what Paul Graham talks about. All his essays are about things that sound like common sense.
Ah, interesting. If you've read Paul Graham's latest essay and last night's thread [1] on Slashdot, you'll find this paragraph from Paul'e essay rather interesting and timely:
5 06957
"What companies should do is go out and discover startups when they're young, before VCs have puffed them up into something that costs hundreds of millions to acquire."
[1] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149177&cid=12
[2] http://simpy.com/ - 1-man mini Google
The timing of this is quite interesting. In one paragraph Paul Graham says:
"What companies should do is go out and discover startups when they're young, before VCs have puffed them up into something that costs hundreds of millions to acquire."
And what did Google do today? It bought a 2 people company.
What is Outsourcing?
Use your imagination... sad, but true.
For those too lazy to click through to that blog entry, Kaffe, Classpath and other solutions already exist, and this is not the first.... although coming from Apache carries some weight.
I think that's also well-worth noting, as Apache is a pretty big and significant open source software player, and as such its migration to Subversion, which happened months ago, served as the "green light" for smaller projects's move to SVN.
When is SourceForge making this move?