http://elruso.com/blog Evgueni Pervago writing about Web 2.0 and technology in general Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:54:10 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Signal vs. Noise points to an interesting application of treemapping: NewsMap. It displays news stories, grouped by section, as rectangles whose size is proportional to significance of the story: A similar concept has been employed (much earlier) in SmartMoney's Map of the Market: Both of those are good tools to deal with information clutter, ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/07/12/newsmap-treemapping-for-google-news/ 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 ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/06/23/todo-lists-galore-and-a-short-review-of-rough-underbelly/ 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 ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/06/14/joes-goals-to-do-list-with-a-twist/ 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 ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/06/08/google-spreadsheets-after-trying-the-beta/ 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 ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/06/06/google-spreadsheets-not-really-a-threat-to-excel/ 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 ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/06/01/fun-interface-to-boring-data-as-a-business/ Talkety is a new VoIP-based phone service which works in a fairly novel manner: Talkety will connect any two phones, cellular or landline, by number. With ease and effectiveness, all one must do is type in his number, the number he wishes to dial, click “connect” and let Talkety ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/26/talkety-callback-phone-to-phone/ It used to be that the only option to check Mexico City/Monterrey street-level maps online was fairly mediocre (compared to Google Maps et al.) Guia Roji site (no smooth map scrolling was particularly annoying). Checking out local.live.com after reading TechCrunch article I found out to my delight that it finally ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/25/at-last-an-alternative-for-mexico-street-level-maps/ Deviant Abstraction points to a very interesting 188-slide presentation of Yahoo's strategy. As Nicolas Toper seems to be right about blogosphere silence, I'll try and make some noise. A lot of people underestimate the value of investor presentations to gain insight into corporate strategy and this one is particularly tedious ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/23/yahoo-analyst-day-why-it-pays-off-to-read-analyst-presentations/ Via NogzBlogz comes a pointer to Snap, a very interesting search engine. Although it all starts with a simple search box: Results page is a pleasant surprise with easy keyboard navigation (Up, Down, Enter) and page thumbnail fairly quickly displayed on the right side. Based on few searches I did, ... http://elruso.com/blog/2006/05/19/snap-new-search-engine-with-a-useful-twist/