Brandon Paddock's Blog

# re: Seattle MindCamp

The one thing that has not taken off with the speed and efficiency, as I would have hoped is tags. Tags can revolutionize the entire way we think about our data. Here are a couple of scenarios that I hope you people think about:

Outlook 12: The convenience it would be to have people in your address book with tags. Sending mass emails would be great. You can send emails to everyone with the friends tag, everyone with the Microsoft tag, people on the football team. Whatever it may be. Similar functionality could also be applied to MSN Messenger. With teenagers having hundreds of friends on their user lists, why not let them go one-step beyond sorting users alphabetically.

MSN Spaces: More integration with the office suite. Blogger, made by Google, has an extension that turns Microsoft Word into a word processor for your blog. Why doesn’t MSN Spaces have this? You just need these two teams to sit down one afternoon and bang out an extension.

One Note: The power of blogs is the fact that you can share. One note is fantastic for notes, why not incorporate spaces into one note so you can post the notes you have taken on a blog of some sort.

A revision to the RSS specification: This goes directly to Dave Weiner, include the support for tagging. Also, work on another specification, with full public documentation, which all the RSS readers could use to sync up between computers, and over the internet. With people subscribing to more and more feeds, on more and more different machines we need some way to synchronize all this information up. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use a search engine, find a feed you like, subscribe to it at a public computer, then come home to see it added to your RSS reader, with the proper tag applied?

Beyond rigid folder structures. Virtual folders are windows secret innovation that is not getting attention. People can use the concept today. Take an RSS reader that I have been trying to find someone to build. You have 1500 feeds (I am talking to you Scoble); each one of them has a multitude of tags available. When you first open up this RSS reader you do not see any feeds at all, all you see are tags. You click on a tag; it now shows you the feeds with the associated tags, as well as tags that other feeds are sharing.

Take this example: you have 100 feeds, 25 of them have the tag Microsoft, and 5 of those 25 feeds have the tag RSS Team. Now you open up your RSS reader, click on the Microsoft tag, you see all 25 feeds alone with a Tag on top that says RSS Team. You click RSS team and now that list of 25 is reduced to 5. Whittle down the data is what I am trying to say. Data right now is overlapping so much, and becoming too difficult to manage with a folder hierarchy. A tag based RSS reader would be a breakthrough that I am waiting for someone (Nick Bradbury, Bret Simons, and Dave AKA Carnage 4 Life) to code up. An online interface is crucial as well, letting me read, subscribe to, and check feeds on the go no matter what machine I am using.

A social bookmaking engine with relevance. Delicious is great, but let us take it one-step further. I want to have a list of bookmarks that is synced with my browser, now when I log in I want to see a compatibility list with other users. If John has all the bookmarks, I have then he has 100% relevance. If Nancy has half of the bookmarks, I have then she has 50% relevance. The thing is I want to be able to discover new bookmarks by seeing who has similar interests to me. Private messaging should be enabled and even search by zip code so people can get together and talk about their passions weather it be technology or cooking. Let us also have profiles with out common interests and maybe friendships, even relationships, may develop. MySpace seems to have the right formula, so does Face Book, but they are missing one key feature. You make a profile and that’s it, it’s doubtful you ever change it. With you selecting new bookmarks daily, then your relevance changes to different people. Everyone can see it now too.

For those of us without GPS systems in our cars, we do have cell fones. I want to be able to go online, find directions on how to get from point A to point B then click send SMS where I get a text message with all the directions I want to read. Saves some paper, and makes it more convenient. I have a friend coming over; I can give him directions so easily with this system. Send out directions to a mass gathering (hint party, us college kids love those)

Death to fixed width websites. The wide screen revolution is upon us. It is estimated that 80% of computer monitors shipping in 2009 will be wide screen. Yet we still have all of our websites formatted to take advantage of 1024x768. Everyone always says that the user statistically does not check up on content past the first page. The answer is obvious, just make more content available on the front page! Dynamic width websites enable the XGA people to be happy and the 24-inch wide screen WUXGA people happy as well. Nothing irritates me more than maximizing my browser window and seeing a strip of data I have to scroll thru to read. I use 1600x1200 for a reason!

I hope netflix will support HD-DVD and blue ray from day 1.

Memeorandium is an amazing service; it scans the blogsphere for the most linked to items. Why not port this over to an RSS reader; you have 150 cooking RSS feeds, have your RSS reader scan the articles and see which HTML link is being the most linked to. Think of it as Memeorandum on a personal level, not in the entire blogsphere.

Make this, and you will please a lot, and I mean many college students. Microsoft are you listening. Make a bibliography wizard for word! I can add as many ever items as I want, it will give me fields to input all the data I have to. It lets me preview to make sure I entered in all my sources, then boom I click a button and it is cleaned up, hanging indent, properly spaced, spelling order. Anything to save me time will make me happy. It boggles me that this hasn’t been invented yet.

Another Office Extension idea that leverages the power of collaboration. Why not make an extension that after I finish typing a document I can send it to all of my friends and ask them to proof read it for me. They proof read it, make their changes, and even leave comments. Next time I open up that document in word a nice interface on the side opens up that lets me click which users who have edited my document. One by one, I can see which user made what changes and apply my friends advice to my writing. This is also helpful for business people, journalists. Sharing a document with an editor and collaborating on it, all in the while saving paper, saving emails, you write a 15 page paper you aren’t going to read the whole thing, just see what changes person A, B, C made and where they are.

Contrary to belief, adding more features to a program does not make it better. I would love to see an IM client out there, that supports all the major protocols, and has the cleanest, simplest UI. Instant Messaging is about messaging period, no webcam, no voice chat; we want to send each other messages and pictures, no more no less. Google Talk is a step in the right direction of what a UI should look like. How many of you seriously use all the features in your messaging client? They just add up space to the buddy list and the IM box.

Will someone in the outlook team copy gmails conversation feature. No use in crying, that feature, for those of us who still have conversations via email, is a god send.

Why hasn’t anyone created a Flickr screen saver yet? Personally, I hate screen savers but it seems like something so gimmicky that many users would want it.

All I could think of right now. I need some rest. 11/3/2005 1:26 PM | Stefan Constantinescu

# re: Seattle MindCamp

I would really love if you could get Dare (person who made RSS Bandit) to contact me, or just even read my proposal! I really want to make that RSS Reader a reality!

Not a money thing, I am just disappointed that no reader out on the market now satisfies my needs, think I'm on to something too. 11/3/2005 7:15 PM | Stefan Constantinescu