The Cramer Family

I’m just going to start out by saying that it is hard to find an online calendar that looks good and works well. But anyone who’s attempted to share the family calendar can understand the level of frustration that this search can cause. It doesn’t seem like a hard problem to solve, but there has yet to be a good calendar that can do everything that I want it to.

That was the case, but now things are going to change. And there is one reason for the change 30Boxes

This is really going to fit my needs perfectly. Not only does it do the calendaring in a straightforward, intuitive way (Think Natural Language -esque processing for entering events) but it ties together other bits and pieces from your online world. (Flickr, blogs, myspace, weather….)

Here’s some of my first impressions right off the bat.

1. Great way to add events

To enter an event you type into ONE text box and then it just goes ahead and figures it out. Where else could you write “Super Bowl 4pm-6pm” and have the program figure out exactly what you are talking about?! (ps I know that the Super Bowl is longer than 2 hours).

You can say things like “Dinner tomorrow at noon” and it figures it out! When you add “Dan’s Birthday” it asks you if you want the event to repeat yearly! It’s these simple little touches that are going to make this sooooo easy to start using

2. Mashing with other services

You can enter a TON of additional information to your profile to provide more info for each day for your ‘Buddies’. When you enter your Flickr username it will show an icon on the days that you have posted pictures. And then when you click on the day you can see your pictures! It also is smart enough to get your flickr buddy icon and use that as your buddy icon on 30Boxes unless you tell it otherwise. VERY COOL and a nice subtle touch.

You can also enter your blog feed and have the days show the titles of the entries that you typed that day with a link back to the blog. Now no one can have the excuse that they didn’t know you were writing something. It’s right there on the calendar.

3. Ajax goodness

It’s very cliche at this point, but AJAX is changing the browsing experience for the better. The team of 30Boxes has done a great job with making the whole application function like a single desk app. The workflow if very well thought out and anyone can jump right in and start using the app.

4. Open API

Nothing there quite yet, but there is a firm commitment to open up the API to let other’s have access to the app. This is AWESOME! It will allow developers to take the application to places that the original developers would never have thought of

Concerns

How is this app going to hold up against the enormous popularity it’s going to receive? I’m not an expert on multi server, web farm type ideas, but this has the potential to cause a lot of grief for the team. I realize that it is in a “Beta” phase but that doesn’t really mean anything anymore. If it crashes then that is going to be the impression that people have of the app. Period. I hope that they are ready for the trouble that comes with popularity (like I’d know what that is
So go and check it out. I highly recommend the app, especially if you are looking for a new way to organize your (and your friends/family/groups) calendars

Update: Another initial impression review can be found here

Got a kick out of this. From the bluehouse.wordpress.com:

Random Thoughts

This FoxTrot cartoon has a binary math puzzle as an Easter Egg.

read more | digg story

The binary numbers and their decimal equivalents:

01011001 89

01001111 79

01010101 85

01001110 78

01000101 69

01010010 82

01000100 68

He then goes on to show an example in c# to find the answer. In the name of ultimate nerdery here’s the java code to get this to print


public class FoxTrot {
 public static void main(String[] args) {
  char[] c = new char[] { 89, 79, 85, 78, 69, 82, 68 };
  System.out.println(c);
 }
}


If that is just too geeky for you then go to the next page for the answer
› Continue reading

So I’ve gone and got myself a flock browser. Here’s a test post to see what all the hubub is about.
I do think it’s a nice looking tool, and I’m excited to see how this can change my workflow, but I will wait to see how they add extension support and other features that are around in firefox.

I think the general concept is pretty good, but I’m curious as to what the business model is going to be here. I’ve heard it said that they aren’t going to have ads built into the browser, soooo…. where are they going to get money? It’s like the 90’s all over again, except this time it’s called ‘Web 2.0′ and nobodies learned a thing.

Awesome!

So cool. Orson Scott Card had a great review over on his website.

All I heard was, “It’s great, you’ll love it.”

Well, guess what.

It’s great.

I’m not going to say it’s the best science fiction movie, ever.

Oh, wait. Yes I am.

It’s great when a season premiere is as good as anything that was going on the last season. It makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Or very confused.

We got set up on a couple date last night with Paul and Kristina Kelly. Everyone came to our house and then the Grandparents stayed around to be with the various sets of twins. Paul and Kristina have a boy and a girl twin who are 9 months old. It was fun to go out and talk about our various experiences. Seeing their twins at such a young age brought back lots of memories. Both fond and not so fond. In some ways it was really nice to have the boys not be able to go anywhere when we put them down. But I don’t miss the long nights.

After dinner the Kellys had to get home so they could get the boys down. Tammy and I took advantage of the babysitters to go to a movie. We went and saw the new movie Just Like Heaven. It was definatley a chick flick, but one of those chick flicks that is actually ok to go to. It had the guy who played the main character in Napolean Dynamite in a supporting role.

Definitely worth seeing. And if it gets you out of the house away from the kids. All the better

Just found this article on a possible memory leak in Java. I’ve been under the understanding that StingBuffers where the preferred method of building large strings. While this is still the case, it turns out that when you call the StringBuffer.toString() method the entire byte array of the StringBuffer is returned.

if you initialise your StringBuffer to have a large capacity, then any String generated from it will occupy memory according to that capacity, regardless of the length of the resulting string.

This is nuts! This is supposed to be fixed in the latest verision of Java (v5), but I’ve only been using 1.4 for my java work and this is where the issue occurs. I’m going to run some more tests tomorrow, but this lines up with the information I’ve been seeing in JProfiler. The largest memory allocations occur in the String an byte[] classes.

What are you supposed to do when it’s the virtual machine that is causing the problems in your software! I hope this solves the problem, because otherwise it’s back to the profiler.

Tammy will tell you that I am horrible when it comes to the snooze button. There’s just something about the extra 7 minutes of sleep that I crave. Maybe that’s why I need the SleepTracker!

From the review at GearLive it really seems like this thing works. The basic concept is that the watch monitors when you are in a light state of sleep and tries to wake you up then. You set a window in which you can be woken up, and it does the rest!

Pretty cool idea. I know that there have been times where I’ve gotten up before the alarm was to go off feeling much more rested then if I had stayed in bed until the actual alarm time.

Now I just need to find me an extra $150 dollars.

Like everyone else in the blogosphere I’ve been very impressed with Google’s latest offering Google Maps. It has a very simple and clean interface but it looks to be very powerful. Everything is done without the browser reloading and the graphics and popups are very nice. I still prefer MSN Maps because it allows me to save my map directly to my pda, but for other uses I will be giving Google a try.

It’s over. The votes have been tallied up and there is a new last comic. I got caught up in the show when a friend of mine, Duane Day, mentioned that he’d been watching the first season and thought that it was really funny. So when I saw the previews for this new season I interested. I’m a big fan of standup in general and it was good to see a bunch of people compete to get the title.

The whole reality TV thing is such a guilty plesure. Putting people in artifical environments and situations and then analyze how they react through the beauty of confessional booths, inhouse mafiosa and the occasional crazy pyscho flip out. Well this reality show didn’t disappoint. There were all the bad things we love to watch but in the end of the show that’s not what made a winner. It was more like a hybrid of Survivor with the plotting and schemeing and other underhanded stuff crossed with American Idol with the performers coming together to compete purely based on talent and their ability to overcome apathy in the American People. Sure they had the gimicky voting off stuff, but when it came down to 6 it was all about who was funnier.

Now all they need to do is to get George Bush and John Kerry to square off in a battle of comedic proportions. And I’m not just talking about a singing contest, I mean a full on battle of the wits to see who can be “THE LAST POLITICIAN STANDING!!”.

In the end I still believe that American’s can collectively choose what’s best for the country. I believe that we will continue to be great as long as we continue to cherish that which is good. And last night, we cherished the goodness of John Heffron’s comedy. And you know what? It’s pretty great.