Archive for June, 2006
SolutionWatch posted a great review of 25 TODO lists. I’ve tried Remember the milk but for some reason it didn’t click with me. The one I find interesting is Rough Underbelly (those Web 2.0 names, sigh…). Unlike other lists, you assign either 1, 2, 5, or 10 points for each task depending on its importance (the following list is from Printable CEO):
You then maintain the list as any common to-do list but the points done each day are tallied automatically and can be displayed as a chart.
I think it’s a great idea especially for people whose time is somewhat flexible and some measure of productivity is important: especially when there is a big difference between “Check data on slide X” and “Set-up a structure for a presentation”.
One suggestion for improvement would be custom legends (e.g. 2 points=”My Action X”) because having to maintain mental mapping of actions to points can get bothersome and kind of defeats the original purpose of Printable CEO.
June 23rd, 2006
Via ichris.ws comes a link to a to-do list with a twist: Joe’s Goals. Instead of adding things you need to do, you add stuff you try to avoid and keep a score:
You get 1 point for completing a “do” and -1 for completing a “don’t” and get to share the daily score with your friends (not sure I’d want to though 
On a more conventional note, for work I’m a heavy user of a very simple Backpack by 37signals.
Update: Seems there’s already slightly more complex version of Joe’s Goals as a Win/Mac application: Sciral Consistency
June 14th, 2006
In my earlier post I argued why Google Spreadsheets is not a threat to Excel in any way or form. Now that I had chance to try it out myself, I’m more convinced than ever.
It’s actually barely usable for any serious kind of work (which is where most of the cash in Excel cash cow comes from):
- No autofill - I unsuccessfully tried to drag a range (1, 2, 3 for example) down to fill out, say, 20-30 consecutive numbers. No luck. Ctrl-D/Ctrl-R shortcuts for copying right/down do work though.
- No charts - Much less important than other things I’ve mentioned, but still a significant omission (Excel charts are not perfect by any measure though)
- No offline access - One of great points mentioned by Ian Landsman
In my humble opinion, this is a case of just too much blogosphere hype with little real substance.
Update: iRows seems to be more useful, though less sleek than Google Spreadsheets: autofill, charts are included. And it supports collaborative editing to boot.
June 8th, 2006
Vinny Carpenter takes a quick look at the just-launched Google Spreadsheets. Although some people think this is an Excel challenger. I, however, don’t think it’s a threat to Excel power base at all.
Although it’s well known that most of the time Excel is used for fairly basic tasks, most of the biggest users (consulting, corporate finance, investment banking) use a very wide subset of functions including:
- External database queries
- PivotTables (extremely important)
- Large, complex spreadsheets (30+ sheets in a single workbook)
Which Google Spreadsheets is unlikely to offer in the short term (although I’m willing to be proven wrong). Most importantly, data that ends up in the spreadsheets is of confidential and/or proprietary nature and wouldn’t be on an online service.
That doesn’t mean that Google Spreadsheets won’t have its users, it’s just not a threat to most of the core Excel customers.
June 6th, 2006
Juice Analytics has a great post about huge gap in quality and ease-of-use between consumer-oriented reporting interfaces and those typically found in enterprise software. Zach makes the point that the enterprise reporting, besides coming last in the development process, usually puts raw data above insights and values quantity over quality.
Doug McClure wonders whether this represents an underserved business niche for some new start-up explore. I’d say hell, yes!
Presenting information has a lot of know-how and it’s definitely transferable. It doesn’t matter whether you’re displaying sales of widgets or inventory of beef cows, time series is still a time series and the thing people making decision want to know is the same. It’s the “so what” or “why do I care”. And typical enterprise reporting interface sucks at doing that.
One could easily imagine a start-up staffed with people who know how to extract the “so what” from a data dump, people with interface design skills and yes, some graphic designers to make looking at it all much less a chore.
Any takers?
June 1st, 2006
