|
I've always heard that you should leave the world better than I found it... here's a token effort to improve the products I know and love.
|
Tuesday
2/16/2010 2:50:31 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Photoshop's Save to Web feature gets used a lot around here.
One piece of inconvenience though is how it handles the save location. Photoshop always wants to save to the working directory, which means that if you're working on several projects at once, you have to constantly change the directory paths to the correct location. Every time.
Instead, it would be awesomely nice if Photoshop also offered a quick way to save to the same directory as the PSD.
As an extension to this, the option to specify several working directories, which you could quickly pick from, would be fantastic.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
6/20/2007 9:05:19 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
I've been playing with GCal more lately, and got an idea to use it for some programming projects. Currently it has;
A great interface, easy for anyone to use
Built in calendar security, with the ability for the Calendar owner to choose who can edit and who can view the calendar. So admin tasks can be shared.
It also has an XML feed for calendars, but unfortunately the XML feed is not structured very usefully for easy programming. Here is an example feed, for the Devonport Seido Karate Club;
http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/qljbmgkrg6lct8fl81rahl41rs%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic
As you can see it's a direct summary of the whole calendar. You can see in there that there are recurring events and exceptions; so the process of figuring out what's happening this week takes a bit of work.
It would be wonderful if Google Calendar offered a means to request an XML stream that contained only individual events, sorted by time, and that when you request the stream, you have to specify a Time or Date range.
Then, it would be quite easy to build simple, dumb website widgets that simply take that XML and transform it using XSL into something pretty for display. Think of the applications...
- For a restaurant or store website, display today's hours open and closed.
- For a school, all the upcoming events for this week, sent as an email on Sunday.
|
|
|
|
Friday
9/29/2006 11:25:47 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
This is a totally great tool. Google rocks. Google Calendar is a purely web-based calendar with all of the capabilities you'd expect--event creation, recurring events, overlapping events, and so on.
The web-based UI is very slick and easy to use, much like Google has done with Gmail. The great innovations in Google Calendar, I think, are;
- Far better UI than other online calendars; with draggable event creation like you have in Microsoft Outlook. Easy, fast, and intuitive.
- Multiple calendars with merged viewing. Your calendar view is really a composition of all of the calendars you've created and/or subscribed to. So, you can have your personal calendar, your family calendar, your karate calendar, your band performance calendar, all overlaid into one.
Improvements?
The main improvements I can think of are;
- SMS text notification for special events, and event changes at-the-last minute.
- The ability of a Calendar owner to send email notices to the subscribers of his/her calendar. Without getting their email address; and only for users who have agreed to receive event emails from that calendar.
- Special event types. When you create an event, it would be nice to be able to give it a "type" identification, like "birthday", "wedding", "anniversary", "meeting", and so on. This is because certain types of events can have behavior. For example, a meeting cancellation during the day of the meeting could SMS-text me to let me know. Events such as birthdays can show in the title "21st Birthday", which it calculates from the date of birth. Great for large and widely distributed families and friends. And of course, types also go to icons and style of the events, which makes the calendar a quicker read.
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/22/2006 4:20:08 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Creative Commons and online video sharing services seem to be a marriage made in heaven. Flicker supports it, why not YouTube?
Basic capabilities should include;
- Editorial options;
- The option to specify the license type, e.g.;
- Traditional copyright
- Public domain
- Creative commons
- The ability to describe the details of that license
- For copyright, this would be date range, and owner
- For creative commons, this would be the owner and the specific nature of the license.
- User options;
- The ability to perform an advance search for videos using specific creative commons criteria. For example, "find me comedy videos that I can use commercially..."
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/22/2006 4:09:16 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
My new camera has me playing with YouTube. A lot. YouTube is a great service for video uploading, and seems slightly better known (and reportedly easier to publish to?) than Google Video. It's a fairly new concept, and in the early stages of evolution... but one of the capabilities I hope to see soon is editorial collaboration.
Here's the scenario. I go to a local festival. I see a martial arts demonstration, and I video it. I upload it to YouTube. And, I let the sensei at the performing dojo know so that he and the dojo can share in the event. Cool. But, now what? The information I can provide about the video is actually rather limited. Though I'm fascinated by the martial arts, the particular style in question is something I have zero expertise regarding. I can't even title the video clips properly.
Here, some basic collaborative features make sense...
- Allow Editing By User. I'd like to have the sensei setup a YouTube account, and then I'd like to authorize him as an editor on these specific clips. In general, assigned editors should be able to do anything except (perhaps) delete the clip, or change the copyright.
- Assign Ownership To User. In some cases, it makes sense to just assign the clip over to another user, so that they can take full editorial control. This would also be very useful to me because (argh!) I managed to create two different user accounts, and I'd really like to merge them into one. With this feature, I can clean up after my own mess.
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/22/2006 9:11:34 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
WinZip has great shell integration, but the Move to archive operation requires a few more mouse clicks than it probably should.
What I'd like to be able to do is this;
- Find the directory or file(s) I want to archive in Windows Explorer, and select them.
- Right-click to bring up the context menu. Select WinZip / Add to Zip file... from the menu.
- As I click, hold down the SHIFT key, which signifies Move, rather than Copy.
- When the WinZip "Add" dialog appears, have it auto-select the Action as "Move (and replace) files".
To remain consistent with Windows conventions, if the CTRL key were depressed, WinZip should auto-select "Add (and replace) files", which is also the default behavior when no modifier keys are depressed.
CTRL+SHIFT together could be used for "Update (and add) files", or "Freshen". Unfortunately the ALT key is not a possibility, because pressing the ALT key causes the context menu to disappear.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
5/17/2006 3:10:00 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
The ability to quickly view the directory containing a file is of tremendous use. This could be provided either on the right-click menu, or as a hotkey, or both.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
5/17/2006 3:07:57 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
The ability to rename a file in the Copernic main window would be immensely helpful. Often times, I find myself using Copernic like a "super Explorer".
This leads thought in an interesting direction; perhaps Copernic's main window should be a set of Explorer extensions rather than a separate app. It tries to offer many of the same capabilities as Explorer, and is in many senses re-inventing the wheel.
|
|
|
|
Wednesday
5/17/2006 2:49:00 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Copernic is an excellent desktop search program. I haven't done a feature-for-feature comparison with Google Desktop, but I like the way Copernic integrates and presents. Like any program, it has a few minor tweaks that would increase its value immensely...
- Filename searching. Copernic does a great job of letting you control which files are searched, which are ignored, how they are searched, and so on. This makes sense for searching of file contents, but sometimes you just want to do a quick global search for filenames. When you exclude a file from content processing, Copernic also excludes the filename. It would also be nice if Copernic would recognize a construction of, e.g. *.cs as being a filename search (by default). This could be done easily by making "search filenames only" an option in the Copernic main window. And if you lead a query with a *, then Copernic could default this setting to true.
- Right-click shell integration. If you use your computer a lot, you have a lot of programs. And a lot of programs means a lot of fine-tuning configuration for Copernic. You'll want to include/exclude directories and file types easily from Copernic's index. It would be very efficient to add these capabilities to the right-click Explorer menus. For a directory, this would be "Exclude directory (and subdirs)", or "Include directory (and subdirs)". For files, it would be the ability to control how various file types are indexed, whether they're indexed, and so on. These settings could also be exposed through a property sheet.
|
|
|
|
Tuesday
5/16/2006 1:42:36 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
It would really help if MindManager supported pasting an image from the clipboard. Currently, this facility seems very limited; you can generally paste images that are stored on the clipboard as files, meaning one of these formats;
- FileDrop
- FileNameW
- FileName
These paste fine, and create a new node containing the specified image. However, Mind Manager seems to ignore raw images, including;
- System.Drawing.Bitmap
- Bitmap
- DeviceIndependentBitmap
This is a big problem any time you want to paste a node from something like a screen capture app.
|
|
|
|
Monday
5/15/2006 3:31:41 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
VS.NET 2003 does not detect when an Embedded Resource file is changed, and consequently it decides not to recompile the source code in that Assembly. Frustrating because often it means that changes to SQL or XSL which you have embedded in your app don't get picked up on recompile, and you waste time trying to figure out why the program isn't working properly.
The workaround in a normal application is that you have to checkout a .cs file and add some spaces to it, so that VS detects a change. Annoying, but at least it's consistent and predictable. What would you do if you had a resource-only assembly?
It seems to me that when I tell VS.NET to recompile... it should recompile!
|
|
|
|
Saturday
5/13/2006 1:58:30 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
It would be nice if FF had an option to show a [X] close box on the currently active tab. I do a lot of drag-and-drop from FireFox into other applications, like MindManager, and therefire FireFox's own [X] is way off the right side of the screen.
Right-click Close Tab can be used, but it's extra work. And Ctrl-F4 isn't always available, especially when I'm working with my TabletPC.
|
|
|
|
Saturday
5/13/2006 12:54:29 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
I love my Stylistic. The only thing I can possibly think of for an improvement is a built-in kickstand. Some kind of sturdy wire brace that's actually inset into the back of the device, and can be popped out easily to provide a stable stand for viewing at an angle.
The plastic stand works ok, but it doesn't allow the Stylistic to go lower than roughly 45 degrees. Often times, I want the stylistic positioned at a 15-20 degrees angle to the table--nearly flat, but not quite. This is great for having the Fujitsu right in front of you. Trying to tuck something under the back edge like a book just doesn't do the job right. Also the plastic stand is a separate device, which requires you to carry and store it separately, and to setup/takedown each time you use it. An integrated stand would eliminate all that hassle.
|
|
|
|
Saturday
5/13/2006 12:21:36 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
I use Mind Manager extensively in my work. There's just nothing better for capturing the details of a project spec. From my TabletPC, I use Mind Manager in Pen mode which is great, except that Mind Manager changes the toolbars to a special Pen-mode styling.
There are several problems with this; the Pen-mode toolbars actually suppress some much-needed features, like filtering, and access to MultiMaps. Worse, all that functionality is lost essentially just to make the buttons a bit bigger.
Some people may like the bigger buttons, but heavy users like me need that suppressed functionality instead. Why not make it an option? "Use regular toolbars in Pen mode".
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/12/2006 5:33:20 PM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
The default warning that FireFox gives when there are multiple tabs open, and you try to close the application - is great. It's saved me many a lost Url... I"m still not fully used to the tabbed idea yet and in IE you're constantly closing the browser windows you've finished with. My left hand is like a crab claw from hitting Alt+F4 so often.
One thing that could improve FireFox in this area is that the alert should only appear if there is more than one tab with content. Blank tabs, specifically should be excluded. Why is this important? Because many people configure their browser to start with a blank page, and in FireFox, you can configure other applications to open in a new tab. So I get a blank tab, and then a non-blank tab, quite frequently. For alert purposes, that's not really two tabs... FireFox should check the Urls of the tabs to figure out which ones are real.
|
|
|
|
Thursday
5/11/2006 11:43:46 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
FireFox is a fantastic browser. It has its quirks, and a few instabilities, but in general, a big A+.
One feature I'd love to see is the ability to drag and drop link contents from the current webpage to the Windows Explorer (i.e. the desktop, or an open Explorer window). A normal drag allows you to create a bookmark, but it would be great if you could use the CTRL or SHIFT keys to initiate a download of the link target content to the specified location. The current right-click, Save Link As, and then browse to the desired location, just isn't as smooth.
|
|
|
|
Friday
5/6/2005 7:51:11 AM
(CST)
-
Michael Wells
Third-Party Call Connection [3PCC] is a sleek little concept that all application developers should know about. Simply put, the idea is that a computer program can initiate a phone call on behalf of a caller, and save them the hassle of looking up phone numbers and pressing buttons.
For example, if you're an Outlook user, rather than having to manually dial a contact's number, you could just click on it to place the call. Or if you're viewing your corporate directory on your Intranet, you could simply click Bob Smith's name and be connected to him.
The inverse is also true; on your public website, your company could put a small "Call Me" box on the page, and when a user enters their phone number and clicks the button, a call can automatically be placed from your sales department to the entered number -- toll-free calling without an 800 number.
|
Copyright © 2003-2013, Michael Wells. All Rights Reserved.
|