EntreList » iPhone

@IILWY - I am up for that! I’m not very …

Ryan — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:29:33 +0000

@IILWY - I am up for that! I’m not very good at blockles (Neil thrashed me last time), but I’ll give it a go.

@iPhone - I can’t believe how cheap they are, in the UK we basically get £150 off, for the same contract, and same term length (18 months). However £60 will go towards my MobileMe subscription, which I think is going to be pretty impressive, all I want is the syncing, however it will be good to use the apps for inspiration.

@EntreList - Maybe we should only stick a few select tags, wipe what’s currently there, and just make sure we only use tags that are going to be used often. E.g: EntreList, External (for twitter, facebook, IILWY, etc), Wakoopa, TheWineGod, VoiceTracker. Obviously the list would be added to as we start new and exciting projects. I have a few more ideas, but will think them over before plurking them out (sounds like an appropriate phrase!) on Entrelist.

Speaking of which, I’ll just give a short run down of what I am up to at the moment. ThinkRefresh is coming along nicely, I am working on a series called Rails 101, for beginning Rails development, however there will be a lot of non-Rails Ruby content. My boss is going on a trip abroad next week to source wine for TheWineGod, and I will be beginning the e-commerce system.

I have been making a central account manager for use within a set of applications (CMS, e-commerce, issue tracking, client login etc), and in doing so I decided to port out the authentication as a plugin for Rails called Authenticaterb (http://github.com/ryantownsend/authenticaterb) which is also coming along great. I’ll soon be releasing another plugin aimed at easy to implement spam filtering.

Some replies + IILWY meetup

Peter — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:45:20 +0000

@IILWY - What time would be good for everyone? I propose 8 pm CET (that’s 7 pm GMT).

@iPhone - Definitely getting one as soon as it gets out on July 11 Have to look into my current subscription, because it’s with a different carrier than the one Apple made an exclusive deal with.

@Plurk - Haven’t tried it yet. Any good?

@Entrelist - Maybe it would be a good idea to make ‘Recent Projects’ into a tag cloud, instead of a list. Also, I don’t think Entrelist is big enough to necessitate RSS feeds for the different ‘Projects’. The layout would look cleaner if these two changes were implemented. Finally, the quick post on the main page - when logged in - could use two things: (1) option to add a title - nice for the people who have EL in their RSS feeds (2) Make the text input field bigger, lets say twice as big? OK, those were my 2c

@Everyone - Peter and I were thinking of …

Neil — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:53:55 +0000

@Everyone - Peter and I were thinking of doing an ILLWY session this Sunday. I’m good all day at the moment, let’s see what works for everyone else (maybe some time in the evening?). Some highly-competitive Blockles and furious Draw would be great.

@iPhone. I’m so so so glad I didn’t buy a first gen now we know that the 3G will be aggressively subsidised. By doing this, Apple just made one of those moves which we always think the big cos should do, but they never seem to have the guts to carry out. I may even put in a pre-order on the O2 site today.

So, hands-up; who on EntreList won’t own an iPhone by the end of this year?

@EntreList - I may have asked a similar question before, but does anyone have any thoughts on this site? E.g. Do you have any suggestions for improving the layout? Is the input box big enough? Too many tags, maybe? Or, do you have any thoughts on the conversation?

Finally, we’ve been using the @SomeDude comment-directing convention on EntreList for a while now. Do you see any synergy with how Twitter handles the conversion to user profiles, and do you think there’s a place for this on EntreList?

Killer iPhone app?

Peter — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:15:34 +0000

@Everyone - Just a futuristic little idea of mine, inspired by cheap storage. Imagine carrying a voice recorder with you that’s on always. Preferably it’s really small and not encumbering, and connected to the Internet. So basically, you’re storing every conversation you’ll ever have - unless you choose to switch it off of course - for preservation, to search, and analyze later on (or to get really space-age: in realtime :D). I think the uses of this are very similar to storing e-mail/IM conversations. Some ideas:

*Search for conversations (by date or by voice keywords) and check who exactly said what (in an argument for instance)
*Analyze your speech patterns, to see if there are certain words you use too often (like: ‘like’)
*Just knowing how you talked and acted in the past
*Having in storage your conversations with people now deceased

Actually, when you think about it, this idea is not necessarily so futuristic as it sounds. The device doesn’t have to be supertiny to begin with. Let’s just start with the conversations you have on the phone. An application records what you’re saying and places it in a buffer on your phone. Then, it sends that data to a server for permanent storage, whenever it has a connection to the Internet (either through wireless or when connected to your computer). I think voice is like 1MB/min, judging by the average mp3 song, so I think this is a realistic scenario. Also because most people have 100-500 phone minutes per month.

I think there are many opportunities for a startup in this respect.

*Developing the app that does the recording and the sending
*Making algorithms to efficiently filter the recording
*Making voice-search based on keywords instead of only date/time
*Tagging the conversations with geo-spatial data, data on your conversation partner(s), or your own/automatic tags (business, social, etc.)
*Analysis of the conversations

Of course a lot of people will be freaked out when you tell them their words will be recorded. But I think this is mostly a temporary thing: storing e-mail/IM conversations is the most normal thing in the world, so why not storing voice? Anyways, if you have any suggestions for additions to these lists or if you think the idea sucks b*lls: shoot away!

@Everyone - Let’s put it this way; the …

Neil — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:41:55 +0000

@Everyone - Let’s put it this way; the guys at I’mInLikeWithYou have done some good things with multiplayer Tetris and Flash. Blockles rocks - it’s block rockin’. Peter pretty much blasted me, but I still enjoyed it, especially after I got used to the idea of having power-ups in Tetris.

The user experience was pretty smooth - as Peter has pointed out before, IILWY can be a bit much on the zany animation and sound effects front - but it all seemed to tie together nicely with Blockles.

@iPhone - I would love to get hacking on one using the Joe Hewitt interface library. It’ll be entirely different to anything I’ve done before. I’m also hoping the guy can work his magic on a webapp + Wii controller library, too.

@Blockles - 7pm is too early for me. I’ …

Peter — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:21:51 +0000

@Blockles - 7pm is too early for me. I’ll be home at 7:30 at the earliest, so I can only join you guys for certain at 8.

@iPhone - I’m going to look into hacking one. Especially since I don’t want a brand new 2-year subscription when I might bugger off to SV in the not-too-distant-future. I know you can get them in the US for about E250 (8GB) or E315 (16GB), without subscription (gotta love that exchange rate at the moment ;D). In the Netherlands you can only get the 8GB, starting from E569, boo!

@Neil - To develop for the web as experienced on desktops and notebooks has been the best bet until now, no doubt. However, I think it’s beyond question that things are starting to change: iPhones + iFund, Android, services like Loopt…I’m gonna download the iPhone SDK and have a look at it (trying so now, but Mail is acting funny :S).

@Blockles - Monday looks okay for me at …

Neil — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:16:09 +0000

@Blockles - Monday looks okay for me at the moment. Same time, 7pm CET?

@Peter - Shame about the delays on the iPhone. Do you know much about the pricing? When Apple + O2 launched in Ireland, they really, really skewed the pricing in comparison to the UK. If you want a quick laugh from a short post, check this out http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/03/04/02s-bum-deal-for-irish-iphone-customers/

As for Arrington’s article on the ‘future of social networking’, that’s the post that got me thinking about the iPhone again! I’ve been wanting to work on apps like that since the iPhone launched, but I’ve just been too focused on the bloomin’ desktop…

p.s. absolutely love your ‘SUA’ acronym - I’d never thought about calling it that, but I’m hoping it’ll catch on because it makes it sound so cool!

@Everyone - Too bad we didn’t play Bloc …

Peter — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:43:22 +0000

@Everyone - Too bad we didn’t play Blockles! Next week is fine with me. How about Monday?

@Neil - I don’t have an iPhone, in the Netherlands the official release has been postponed a couple of times. However, I think I’m going to get one anyways, there’s just too much cool stuff I’m missing out on:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/09/i-saw-the-future-of-social-networking-the-other-day/

@Neil - I hear ya concerning Stratford-Upon-Avon…Amsterdam also has a problem: it’s just too laid-back. It’s great to be a student here, going around the nice little place on your bike, but not so much for a high-tech entrepreneur. I think in your case it’s a great idea to utilize that there are no distractions in SUA: focus on developing your product to a certain point, but get the hell out of there after that!

Btw, I’ll check out Quotably tomorrow