Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts

29 November 2007

3 Apps I Really Want (Open Source Only!)

I'm full of ideas.  Aren't we all?  Eventually, when you reach a hairy old age like me, you realise that There Ain't No Way In The World you'll ever be able to do them all.  This is what makes ideas cheap.  Let me say it again.

Ideas Are Cheap. Implementation Is Everything!

Just occasionally, though, we have ideas that are so good that we really, really want to see them implemented.  But we know, deep down inside our souls, deep down in our secret heart, that we're never, ever going to have the time, energy and stick-with-it-ness to pull the thing off.

Here are three of my ideas:

1. I want a ToDo manager that works like this: Keep my top five ToDo items only. Don't even allow me to put more in.  I must be able to prioritize them.  And they should display at all times as my computer's desktop image.

2. A decent word-processor.  One that fails almost completely to concern itself with formatting.  Perhaps bold, italic and lists -- that's all that's really needed.  On the flipside, though, it should really understand document structure -- sentences, phrases, paragraphs and sections.  And allow me to collapse them.  If I move a heading, move all its subheadings and associated text, too.  In other words, focus me purely on prose, editing prose, tightening up my phrasing, reordering my own words.  Please don't make me fuck around with margins, fonts or colours.  I know that Lyx does something pretty close to this, but its far from pretty, and, frankly, TeX is dead.  Get over it.

3. A social-networky, Web2ish, Ajaxy, <insert-own-buzzword-here> website where people can list their ideas for systems they don't have time to write, and everybody else can vote on the ideas, comment, add/edit the spec (wiki style). Perhaps, just perhaps, some people might choose to pick up those projects and start implementing them.  No bounties.  Sorry, but I'm more broke than you!

Come to think of it, maybe I will implement that last one!  After all, don't the VC pundits all say "Get the simplest thing that functions out the door, and then listen to your user-base."  Here's a way of listening before you even get version 0.0 written!
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