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First is his refusal to take money from lobbyists and political action committees, a policy that the Democratic National Committee just adopted across the board:

“The DNC and the Obama Campaign are unified and working together to elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. Our presumptive nominee has pledged not to take donations from Washington lobbyists and from today going forward the DNC makes that pledge as well,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “Senator Obama has promised to change the way things are done in Washington and this step is a sure sign of his commitment. The American people’s priorities will set the agenda in an Obama Administration, not the special interests.” link

Second is the number of people who’ve contributed to Obama’s campaign. It’s ordinary people - people like you and me, who donate reasonable amounts of money to make a small difference. I’ve made several donations to match first-time donors’:

Here’s what Sue T. in Los Angeles, CA had to say:

Barack is a force. I’m over 60 and didn’t think we would ever see a president as mean spirited as Nixon ever again — but then there was George W. Barack will bring a new way for us to think about the White House — and a new way for the White House to think about us. I can’t wait.

This is a direct message to me from another Obama supporter. Megan G. in San Francisco also made a donation that was matched by my last donation. It’s a simple feature to implement in a donation website, but a great way to connect people and help them feel like they’re a part of the campaign.

The graphic above read 14,000 earlier today, and now it’s over 20,000 (and may be higher still by the time you see it - it’s updated regularly).

Third, and somewhat tangentially, I like the way the Obama campaign has marketed itself. Style and design matter, and BarackObama.com is one of the best websites I’ve used (not to mention the best campaign website by far).

There are also tons of policy reasons I’m enthusiastic about the Obama campaign, as well as historic reasons. I’m looking forward to the upcoming debates between Obama and McCain.

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The new version is absolutely gorgeous, like Camino, but is a little less cartoonish and truer to the Firefox I know and love. Buttons, checkboxes, and form fields look the way they’re supposed to on a Mac, and the toolbars and tab bar look great. There’s even a souped-up autocomplete when you start to type a URL in the address bar.

I’ve heard that FF3rc2 is not completely stable, though, so I decided to rename FF2 to Firefox2.app and install FF3rc2 without removing FF2. This leaves me the option of switching back easily whenever I want, but it didn’t migrate my bookmarks.

Here’s what I did to move my bookmarks:

1. Open Finder and navigate to:

   

   

   (of course, the username and xxxxxx.default will vary, but the latter was the only folder in Profiles)

2. Copy the newest backup file to your desktop or some other easy-to-browse-to location
3. In Firefox 3, go to Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks and hit the star button, and select Import HTML:

   

4. Select the HTML file you copied in step 2

That’s it - bookmarks in both places. Note that this is a one-time import, not a sync, and is probably not necessary (though I wouldn’t know) if you overwrite FF2 with FF3.

I should also mention that the bookmarking system in Firefox 3 is quite different, but in this post I’ll limit myself to the import issue.

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I have developed a new orientation sensor game for Nokia N95, N95 8Gb and N82, that I think will interest you and your audience at geektronica.com.

The game is called “Marble Maze”, and the basic idea is from a classical game, in which you have a board with labyrinth and holes, and you try to guide a metal ball into the goal without dropping into a hole. The thing about N95 and N82 is that those phones have orientation sensor, that enables this kind of idea taken from physical world, to be implemented in the phone.

Check out a Youtube video of the game play with N95:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G3puULvn_E[/youtube]

Another with N82 (with rubber ball):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_C_pz3F8TY[/youtube]

Some features of the game include:

• Use of orientation sensor data of the device to control the game play
• 40 different fields
• Create and save your own fields (and share with friends)
• 3 different balls, with different bounce and friction (metal, rubber and pingpong balls)
• Saving of record times for each field
• Tactile feedback, you can feel the ball hit the walls

You can get the game (or read more about it) here.

Great way to take advantage of the built-in sensors - reminds of me of the slap-Mac hack.

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NPR has an amazing story on the revival of baroque music in Bolivia, which I heard this morning on the way to work. As soon as the story started, I recognized a familiar tune from The Mission. Sure enough, the story revealed that this piece was one of many that have been restored from 17th-century manuscripts from Jesuit missions in Bolivia.

The Mission is a story of the tragic clash between the peaceful Guaraní natives, Portuguese colonizers, and Spanish Jesuit missionaries. The musical abilities of the Guaraní are pointed out as evidence that they are, in fact, human and worthy of respect.

Few situations in human history are as complex and conflicted as the situation between colonials and the people they colonized (both militarily and religiously). The Mission is a must-see for feeling the tensions and the beauty in this situation, and this NPR story is a great way to convince yourself to see it. The music is beautiful.

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I’ve used a Nalgene religiously since 2000, and have consumed probably 2,500 gallons of water using it. In fact, I rarely use a drinking glass. I wash my Nalgene about once a week (see this post for bacteria info, including petri dish photos). If anyone was going to suffer ill health effects from using a Nalgene, it’d be me. No damage to any organs or appendages so far, though. I replace my bottle when the label wears off, and I’m on my third now (actually, my 2nd Nalgene was fine, but I had to replace it after leaving it on a plane).

Today we were in Whole Foods, for some reason, and I bought a Sigg bottle (this one) to see how it compares. I like the way it feels (it’s is one of the few anodized/texturized Sigg bottles), but the mouth is not wide enough to hold ice. I’m big on icewater, so the ice-unfriendliness may be a dealbreaker.

Anyway, Nalgene announced a few weeks ago that they’re phasing out the polycarbonate that traditional Nalgene bottles are made of, in favor of another material, Eastman’s “Tritan” copolyester, which does not contain bisphenol A. I don’t know how this material compares in terms of feel, taste, or durability to polycarbonate, but these bottles will probably become widely available next month. Here’s the press release.

So, if you’re afraid of bisphenol A, you’ll have plenty of alternatives from Nalgene.

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I’ve been a longtime Airset user. I beta-tested the mobile application on my Motorola V551 back in the day, and I still use the calendar feature.

Periodically, I explore the other features of the site, but I only actively use the calendar since I can access it from anywhere and subscribe to its iCal feeds and receive SMS notifications. It’s a great solution.

Unfortunately for Airset, it’s also one that is duplicated by Google Calendar. I’ve continued to use Airset because I find its interface attractive and find its service more reliable (anecdotally, I think Google Calendar is less consistent than Airset in sending timely SMS notifications). I’m sure Google Calendar has a much larger user base simply because they tap into Google’s existing user base from Gmail and other Google web applications, but Airset’s calendar remains a good product.

The problem is that it remains the same product it was when I began using it in 2006. Since then, the pace of development in the web application space has increased exponentially. The core features, e.g. the calendar, have not seen any major improvements.

Interestingly, Airset has continued to grow its feature set, but in ways that absolutely baffle me. Music playlists? File management? Photo albums? Website publishing? Yes, these features are useful to group administrators who don’t have the time or inclination to use other services, but they are mediocre at best compared to what’s available elsewhere. One-stop-shopping might keep users on board, but it will not make your service catch on virally the way a must-have tool like Remember the Milk did.

My advice, then, is to stop adding new applications that will be useful to relatively few of your users. Focus on your core offering, and rather than making your service bigger, make it better. Add features, not new products. Increase usability, and stop adding mediocre features that no one will use. Offer an API and connect to other platforms such as Ning, Facebook, and Netvibes. Stop the widget junk in the dashboard before it gets worse.

I like Airset and want to see it thrive. The SMS and group management offerings are some of the best out there, and position Airset will to lead innovation in the web groupware space (but for the love of geek, stop calling it “webtop computing”).

Warm regards,

Geektronica

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Right now, I use the following modules on my Netvibes page:

• Twitter (2 different accounts)
• Seattle Times news (via RSS widget)
• Remember the Milk (3 different widgets for different smart lists)
• Weather forecasts
• Pandora web radio

Most cutting-edge web2.0 services - such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Gmail, Flickr, and so forth - have custom Netvibes modules. Even if they don’t, you can paste widget HTML or a URL into a blank module of the appropriate type, and it’ll be added to your page. You can easily resize and drag/drop the widget right where you want it.

For the past year, I’ve been checking a certain job search results page. It’s a pain to remember to check it manually, so I set the results page (with search query in the URL) as a Netvibes module. If a new job opens up, I’ll see it on my Netvibes start page. I’ recently removed this module since it was no longer relevant, but am finding new uses for similar widgets every day. There’s also an iPhone version.

The latest release of Netvibes, going by the name Ginger, also has some Ning-like social networking features that I’m not taking advantage of. If you’re feeling social networked out, try the Netvibes modules for your various sites, and see if you can get it all working in one easy dashboard. It’s also possible to customize your Ginger theme. New features are announced regularly on the Netvibes blog.

Netvibes is the brainchild of Tariq Krim and Florent Frémont, and was founded waaaay back in 2005, when, even in the early days of web2.0, the Ajaxed start-page-o-sphere was pretty crowded. Netvibes has continued to innovate, though, and remains, in my book, the best of the available web2.0 start pages. Check it out.

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You can do just about anything you want in RTM, but certain types of planning and organizing are a bit awkward, and go beyond its intended usage as a to-do list (though, I must add, it remains one of the best web applications in existence). For example, it’s often helpful to see a project as a series of ordered steps, but RTM does not support task ordering or nesting.

I’ll put up a full review with recommendations once I feel more comfortable with my implementation of GTD with OmniFocus, but for now I’m still hunting for usage and optimization tips. While looking for a way to get SMS notifications (which I did not find), I came across this discussion on the OmniGroup forums, which raised a question I’ve never thought of before: How much should your GTD system interrupt you with reminders?

Since I use Outlook and Remember the Milk, I have several ways to ensure that I get reminders of important tasks and appointments. David Allen recommends only putting the “hard landscape” on your calendar - that is, only real appointments that you will actually keep should go on the calendar; tasks you can do more or less any time soon - as soon as possible - should be kept elsewhere so they don’t clutter the calendar.

I tend to date my Remember the Milk tasks with the time I should start them by, building in enough time so I can complete them by the date they’re actually due. Ideally I’d specify a start date and a completion date, but RTM only has one date field.

Of course, when certain tasks aren’t actually urgent, a problem quickly develops with this system: a large backlog of overdue tasks, few of which are really overdue. The ones that really are due get buried among the others, and the system loses its effectiveness. I get SMS reminders at the exact time I specify for each task, but this is useless if I can’t actually complete the task when I get the reminder.

This leads me to recall perhaps my best GTD insight yet: An organizational system is not a motivational system. Knowing what you should be doing is not the same as wanting to do it, much less actually getting it done. This occurred to me almost a year ago, but not until today did I see how my own GTD methodology fails to take its truth into consideration.

I’ve tried to compensate for this in RTM and Outlook by using invasive reminders - SMS messages sent to my phone, or popup reminders on my desktop PC. But it doesn’t really work for things I don’t want to do in the first place. For appointments that I have no choice but to keep, it works great - the “hard landscape of the day” is what reminders were meant for. They are intended only to remind, not to motivate.

In the aforementioned discussion thread on the OmniGroup forums, the creator of the thread suggests that OmniFocus build in more nagging reminders - completely configurable, of course - in order to remind him what he needs to be working on. The other forum members quickly denounce this suggestion, saying, in effect,

Instead, they say, you should review your system regularly and make a decision about what you should be working on. You don’t need nagging reminders - in fact, using such reminders (except for hard-landscape appointments) is a clear sign that your GTD system is not working.

This was a tough realization for me. Perhaps I should give up looking for ways to bug myself, and work on developing the habit of reviewing my tasks and projects more regularly.

OmniFocus is designed to give you complete control of what you’re looking at, with filters, a “focus” button that hides everything except the project you’re working on, saved views (called Perspectives), and more. It goes far beyond RTM’s Smart Lists feature, so if you want to see 10-minute tasks due yesterday in project X that you can do while on the phone (@phone), you can, and you can save this view - and create a keyboard shortcut for it - very easily.

The discussion thread contains a bit of argument about whether software should a) work the way users really work, or b) require the user to learn new, more effective behaviors. Most of the comments fall in the latter camp, arguing that software developers shouldn’t facilitate bad habits by adding unhelpful (if tempting) features such as nag-me reminders.

What do you think?

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This morning I read on BoingBoing that, according to this NY Times article, the poorest of the poor in Haiti can no longer afford basic food staples, and are staving off hunger pangs by eating a mixture of mud, sugar, and oil:

In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.” link

Sponsor a child through Compassion (search for Haiti in the country field)

More information about people resorting to geophagy (eating dirt) in Haiti

How could we not be outraged by such affronts to human dignity? When do we stop for a minute in our comfortable lives and refuse to ignore such suffering any longer? The NY Times article points out that hungry people tend to overthrow their governments, and food riots are increasingly common in a world of rapidly rising food prices.

But riots by those affected by these crises will not solve them. Allow me to quote from a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Vietnam War in 1967:

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another (Yes), for love is God. (Yes) And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
…
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. link (emphasis added)

Indeed. So here is my challenge to my readers and fellow bloggers: As of today, there are 67 Haitian children in need of sponsorship on Compassion’s website. I think we can get that number down to zero within a week. It’s $32 a month, which is less than we spent on food and coffee at Zoka last time we went. Go to the Compassion child search page, and select Haiti from the dropdown menu, then pick a child to sponsor.

Then, blog about this and ask people to help. Thanks.

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