I want new blog software.

Now, there's nothing wrong with the crop of blog software out there, but it all pretty much works the same. I'm not even sure what I want different... I just want something different. What I want, really, is something so radically different that it's hard to even call it "blog software".

[The .NET Guy]

This is a great type of question. This is a CEO question. It says more than calling attention to the fact that there's a market for something that doesn't exist. It says that fulfilling this need is secondary to defining it. Define it right and you win, that's your edge. It also says that technology has not done a good job of capturing and reinterpreting for us. Technology is not a good reporter, unbiased, efficient, and organized. Most blogs I read including mine offer a tiny sliver of that person's universe. Here Brad is asking what would we do with the 99% of our brain that we're not using. Replace brain with blog (=spare brain) and you've got the idea.

I read somewhere that the impulse to suicide in humans is really a desire for instantaneous, transformative change. A new outfit and a square meal won't really do the trick. Of couse sometimes therapy and a new city will, but my point is that a technology like blogging has to find a way to change deeply just like a person does.

Okay steps for doing this. I would start with analysis. What is working with blogging today, and what surprisingly does not. What are the soft benefits, the indicators that we know a blog is good, either writing or reading. What is the context of blogging compared to other communications, where does the overlap occur and when is blogging unique. The analysis will get quite confusing and multifaceted. This is good. As the person analyzing you can then step back and think what if I was analyzing something less complicated? Something simple? And after this work, the simple thing will occur to you, the thing with all the good parts and evolved one step farther besides. If not, back to more analysis. I suppose my technique is a combination of brute force whiteboard alternating with zenlike awareness. Whatever works.

Hey, could that be a band, bruteforce whiteboard?

comment []8:28:29 PM    

I spent some time today looking at online calendar sites. iCalShare looked enticing, but no category for families. I looked at Calendric, but they did not include the boxy "Month" view which is just how my brain works. I considered AOL but too many ads. (And this is from someone who has her resume on geocities). MSN seems to have a calendar service as per "My MSN" off their main web site, but clicking on the link produced a shocking "No longer available in my area" announcement. (Wha? they know where I live?). Yahoo I've blown scads of time on and been frustrated with enough times just for little things. In this case, better the evil you don't know. I finally settled on MSN groups which I've used before. It has a mediocre calendar page, so I set up my redirect so that folk can access the page via my domain. That way when I change my mind I can take folks with me.

MSN Groups is actually OK and needs just a few more things to be superfabulous.

1) have the boxes for the month view get as tall as they need to be, no "more items..."

2) in month view, if you're going to show the next few days for the month in case your month doesn't end on a Saturday, you might as well show the contents of those days. Leaving them blank does nothing for the decor and snubs those who like to get glimpses of weeks from within month views

3) when you add tasks, don't confirm them afterward, just take us back to where we were when we said Add.

4) take us back to where we were when we said Add - not the view for the current date.

5) Allow us to Add from the month view or the week view without the intermediary click of going through the day view

6) RECURRING APPOINTMENTS for pete sake

7) When you're setting up an appointment, show the day of the week next to the date.

8) The "pick a date" calendar widget is broken. The SMTWTHF headings are incorrect in the grid.

9) Allow us to share appointments with other MSN groups entries that we belong to.

No web based calendar system is very good these days. It seems no one has taken to heart the caveat of "let the computer do what the computer does best." Features are all specific to making the online version close to a printed wall calendar. Doing this loses the entire point of why make it online. I would love to see a boxy month calendar that scrolls along treating the whole year as one month. I did not even put it up above as it's too radical even to ask for.

comment []8:08:02 PM