#lazyweb

A Random Idea Around Small-Group Collaboration

I use CloudApp a lot, and recently saw mention of Dropmark. That got me to thinking of a relatively simple, WordPress-powered application for small-group-collaboration which I thought I’d throw out here in case anyone wanted to build it.

  • A WordPress installation, with a group of people who all have accounts
  • A small Mac/Windows app that lived on your desktop/menu-bar/somewhere easy to get at. Let’s call it… Guppy.
  • All users download a copy of Guppy and configure it to point to the same WordPress install.
  • Guppy now sits on their computer, waiting for them to interact with it.
  • When they drop files on this copy of Guppy, it does some magic
    • Images will be uploaded and inserted into a Post, or set as a gallery (if there’s more than one),
    • Text files will be uploaded and rendered as pre-formatted text,
    • Other will be uploaded and attached to a Post,
  • Double-clicking/clicking Guppy would open a small window where they could type in some text (and perhaps also drop files into that window and have them appear as “objects” within their text)
  • Right-clicking Guppy would allow you to change options, jump to the configured website (like you didn’t already have it open in a browser tab!), create a new instance of Guppy, maybe some other stuff.
  • All of this content is published as Posts on the connected WordPress install, and is automatically formatted beautifully (perhaps via an optional theme that’s geared heavily towards collaboration?). Comments are enabled, so you can discuss things on that site, right there while you’re looking at it.

In essence this is just a streamlined, simplified, beautiful WordPress client. There is nothing stopping someone from creating this today. There you go internet, 1 more free idea.

Twitter’s Missing Features

I’ve been sketching some random thoughts and plans for a new Twitter client, and rather than restrict it to my notebooks and condemn it to the fate of so many other ideas of mine that never see realization, I’m putting my wish-list for what a decent Twitter client should allow me to do here. Feel free to roll these into another client and let me know so that I can just use it, rather than have to build it 🙂

Read the full list after the break

Idea: Amazon Music Exploration Application

Music is important to me. Not because I have any musical talent (at all), or because I work in the music industry (or ever have) or even have friends who are musicians (although I do have a couple). Music is important to me because I listen to it almost every waking hour, and need it to concentrate while I’m working.

According to iTunes, I have just under 6,000 “items” in my music library. That’s 16.5 days of music, playing 24/7. I like to find new music, and have pretty eclectic musical tastes (literally everything from The Corrs to korn appears in my library). I’d like a tool that helps me do a few things: (more…)