Why you should never employ a techie to solve your problems!!!
I've just read a fantastic debate on the usability of Git (or rather the lack of) and it reminds me that most technical folks I encounter are too clever for their own good and will constantly introduce complexity for the sake of it (or to keep their souls clear from the devil - users).
The problem with this is that these wannabe rocket-scientists are fundamentally too stupid to appreciate that real people may not care about the elegant layers of abstraction or powerful combinations of wacky commands that can yield amazing powers. What they want is a simple solution to the problem they have expressed. The technical folks I admire are the technical folks who can create a simple, usable solution in a format that is acceptable and digestible by the end user.
As Einstein quoted "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.", which indicates the technical community appears to be filled with lots of intelligent fools...
And just to illustrate this further, I would include Spring in the mix here as an (actually it's a collection of) overly complex solution(s) to a fundamentally simple problem space, which given the size of the user community indicates their are a lot of intelligent sheep...
Information Overload
The internet has now pervaded my life to such an extent I'm going to soon be looking to get a direct connection to my brain. But before I do, I'm in desperate need for a way to organise the constant, chaotic stream of information that is radiating from it...
Here's my list of basic requirements.
I want to be able to
- view all messages in a single application, regardless of source (rss, google reader, twitter, etc).
- post messages to any of the applications I use (twitter, blog, facebook, etc)
- Should also be able to post to multiple applications at once
- search and filter the content
- filtered messages, should still be available for future search/display
- use multiple platforms (phone, web, laptop, desktop) with them all kept in sync
- specify multiple ways of notifying me if anything relevant appears
- particularly important for mobile platforms
- switch between different modes (professional, private, meeting)
But MOST IMPORTANTLY
I DO NOT WANT TO:
- create YABA (yet another b****y account) to use yet another free online tool
- wait for hours while it downloads everything before I can view a single message
If anyone knows of such a tool, I'll be extremely happy to hear about it...