2 posts tagged “social”

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Goals, Secrets, and Privacy

Oct 4, 2007
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My mom and I were talking recently and she told me about the 101 Goals in 1001 Days project.

The project, started I think, at triplux.com is intriguing both as a personal challenge and as a study of Web 2.0 in action. Participants are asked to make a list of 101 Goals that they want to complete over the next two and three-quarters years. From the Day Zero site:

Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).

In addition to setting out the above guidelines, the site provides examples of others goals as well as a place to list your own, thereby adding in the all-too-necessary web 2.0 interactivity.

So, and as anyone who reads this site must be expecting by now, I made my own list.

And here's where the trouble started. I am very willing, perhaps too willing, to put aspects of my life online. I have several blogs or places on the web where I write, draw, post photos, whatever, and I do all these freely and without worrying about my privacy. And, of course, I love the social aspect of this particular challenge as I believe public goals are actually much easier to keep.

Unfortunately, my list is private. There are some things on my list that I do not feel I can share, either because they relate to my job, or they name other people (something I rarely do on any of my webspaces), or because they are just things I do not want other people to know.

What to do.

My original list is valuable to me in that each of the goals represented are...well, remember that scene in Fight Club where Tyler Durden is driving like an idiot and there are two members of Project Mayhem just trapped in the back seat? Tyler says something like "If you were to die right now what would you regret not doing?" And the two guys snap back with answers immediately and our poor protaganist is stuck without one. Yeah, well that's my list. Things that are imperative for me to do before I die.

Which does not make for good, light-hearted, fun blogging. Trust me.

So I decided that tonight, I'm going to make a second list. A list of small things. Things that I have always wanted to do and just have not made the time to put in the minimal effort needed. Things that will probably take far less than 1001 days. Hell, it won't even be 101, just a list of things. Call it a list of alternates. Fun things that did not quite make the main list but that I do not mind having on the list.

I'll post it here as soon as I have it finished.

Digital Kit: Function Specific Browsers

Mar 28, 2007
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Call it Web 2.1 or something more clever, but there are some cool things happening to browsers, all based on the Mozilla platform.

Songbird is a media player / broswer that lets you keep control of your library while browsing music specific sites and downloading directly from them. When you load a site into the browser, if there are any media files embedded in the site, Songbird will open a pane and give the user a list of files available for download. Alternately, the user can play the songs directly from the website or from their library. Or a CD. Or wherever.

I've been using xt for a few months now and like having a music specific browser. I know that I can do many of the same functions using Firefox extensions, but it is a bit easier, to me, to just have a separate program that I can switch to when I want to do anything music and / or web related.

By the same token, I've been using Flock for several months, and while it is mainly a web browser, it is geared towards blogging with drag and drop Flickr access as well as a built in feed reader (I know, I can set all these things up in Firefox). Flock is highly integrated with all the new, funky, social aspects of web browsing as well, featuring bookmark synching and other features. Vox is not fully supported yet or I would find it more useful, however it is forthcoming according to the FAQ.

Today I came across one more new element in this idea of Function Specific browsing and that is the MAB project, or Mozilla Amazon Browser, which functions as an extension of Firefox or as a standalone program. The idea behind MAB is that browsing across six main Amazon sites takes a lot of time and returns a lot of un-needed information. The MAB lets the user see results listed in the main pane and has a preview screen to the right that displays whichever result is clicked on, thus negating the need to use the browser's back button if the result is not the one, or the only one you the user had wanted to see.

I am beginning to really like the idea of having seperate browsers for different functions. One for music, one for blogging, one for Amazon, one for who knows what else. Perhaps it's just me and my overly organized psyche, but I find that having a different goto for different projects or ideas to be an effective helper for getting things done. When I want to blog something, I go to Flock and I get something written. That doesn't happen when I open my regular browser and get slapped with e-mail notifications and RSS feeds. Similarly, using Songbird negates my having to use Firefox and iTunes and to constantly be switching between them (Foxytunes helps, but only so much). I'm not sure how the MAB will work out but it looks promising and is fun to play with, so I think it has good prospects.

And I may change my mind about the whole thing tomorrow and decide that it is just easier to have everything in one program, but that, I think is the beauty of the whole thing .

(Note - I thought about adding Democracy to the list but decided not to based on the idea that Democracy does not actually act as a browser; search is limited to a few sites that the Democracy team has chosen. Having said that, it is still a great program and worth checking out.)