buzznovation

Scripting ActiveWords and GMail...

While our scripting language is hardly dazzling, it is quite good, and allows people to script simple, yet albeit powerful things. Earlier today I got an E-Mail from one of our users in Argentina. He told me had three different Gmail accounts that he had to check all the time. He wanted to know how to use ActiveWords to login instantly. I told him how I thought he should do it, and whammo about 2 hours later he wrote me back and said that following script work perfectly.

<"http://mail.google.com"><WAIT FOR WINDOW:TITLE=Email from Google:TIMEOUT=10>username<TAB>password<ENTER>

I just tested it, and it does work perfectly.  Such a simple thing, but just more painful than it should be.

I am always fascinated by the ActiveWords community. I tell people that ActiveWords appeals to smart people who want to get things done, and they truly are all over the world.

The E-Mails that make my day, and fan the Mac owners ire...

Yesterday we got an E-Mail from one of our great customers, e.g. Dorlene Kaplan. It is the kind of E-Mail that makes my day!

“After a frustrating six weeks I gave the iMac to my husband and bought a new ThinkPad. I'm thrilled to have ActiveWords back. Without it I'm in slow motion.

Thank you again for your terrific product.

Dorlene”

Thank you Dorlene..we need a million more customers like you!

We would love to build a Mac version of ActiveWords someday, and while it is on the list of things we would like to do, there are a lot of other things ahead of it, including our big idea

 

Thoughts as to a name...

A very dear friend of mine, Tom LeVine, the CEO of Pop!Tech is extremely ill. He has been diagnosed with brain cancer. This morning I was speaking with another close friend of Tom’s, and in our conversation, we realized how powerless we all are at times like this.

What we did conclude we would do is to try to find the very best neuro-oncologist in Boston, and failing that at other key medical centers in the country. We would like to ultimately forward any names to Tom’s family so that they can consult with that person.

So, if you are reading this, and have the ability to reach out in your network of friends for name, please do so and let me know via E-Mail.

In the meantime, please keep Tom, his wife Valerie and his family in your prayers and thoughts.

ActiveWords, scripting and memory management...

I am using the fastest Vista machine that I have ever used or seen. It is a 24” iMac with 3 gigs of Ram running Vista in Bootcamp. It really is a dazzling piece of hardware. Brilliant screen, lightning fast, and while the keyboard is not my favorite, I have gotten used to it.

I have noticed that memory management is not what I would like it to be so I have learned to close and exit from web sites and applications that are not required for what I am working on.

What has worked incredibly well is to script closing these various screens with two or three keystrokes, hence…using ActiveWords and typing say…

wcn.. <Close Window>n results in a window being closed and nothing being saved.

wcy.. <Close Window>y results in something being saved.

But in a funny way the real deal is to script closing either Windows Desktop Search events and web site pages.

In that case the script..

tj.. <CTRL>w</CTRL> closes the present window.

So far this logic seems to work great, very few memory management issues, and no unnecessary stuff cluttering the virtual desktop.

Why wcn,wcy, or tj…no clue, as they just made semantic sense to me.

Try them and others and tell me what you think, and if you script anything cool, let me know.

Alltop...or a truly brilliant idea...

A day ago, I saw that my gifted friend Guy Kawasaki had announced Alltop. Because we have enjoyed a very cordial relationship since 2000, e.g. Garage.com, Bootcamp for Entrepenuers, ( when he told me that we needed to build ActiveWords for the Mac.  and as I was a fan of his before that. I have watched, read and thought a lot about what Guy does, says and thinks about.

Guy graciously participated in a interview project that I have been working on last Fall during which the conversation we had was more fun than the perhaps ultimate work product.

I told Guy in the course of the interview that I would find some skates, take him out on the ice and teach him a bit about hockey.

But back to the idea of Alltop. Alltop is like the mother of all RSS aggregators. Where you don’t have to aggregate anything. If there is something comparable I am not aware of it, and while I would love to see something even better, I think for the moment, Guy and his team have created a new standard.

I have read and come to believe that the next phase of the web is about discovery and not about search. Google won this round of search, and it doesn’t matter that they did as I ignore their ads. Google is nothing more to me than better slightly better plumbing.

But with Alltop I find myself in a new world. One where I am discovering stuff that I didn’t know existed. One where I am looking at a dashboard, a control panel, a means by which I can suddenly navigate a world with navigation points both familiar and unfamiliar. One where I am discovering ideas and headlines, writers and topics, that I both knew and yet never knew existed.

Alltop for the web is a bit like the World Wide Telescope for the sky.

A whole new way of looking at ideas that may have been there before, but you never knew they existed, or perhaps never had them quite in focus.

Dazzling..great stuff…very worth taking a lot of time to stop and discover.

Sunday at the movies..or "There Will Be Blood"...

After springing ahead, and getting up pre-dawn to give a friend a ride to the airport, I was invited to go to the movies with my friend Doug. He suggested that we see “There Will Be Blood”. I had not seen it, and I have not been a big Daniel Day Lewis fan, but he is some actor in this movie, e.g. winning the Academy Award as the best actor.

There was a period in my life when I thought I would go to graduate school in American History. I was really interested in the period  from 1880-1917, e.g. a bit post the Civil War to the start of WWI.

The author of the book from which the movie is derived, e.g. Upton Sinclair was a very prolific writer during this time period. Sinclair was a pretty remarkable character. I read a number of his books, and recall writing a paper on him.

It is one of those movies that I think you need to see in a theater, because there are some really stunning visuals. As much a fan as I am of HDTV, I am not sure that this movie translates. But who knows…

And as a footnote, take a look at this piece by Anthony Arthur, it does a great job of putting the movie in a better literary context.

How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)

My friend Jason Calacanis has written a very interesting blog post vis a vis running a startup.I have thought a lot about startups and ideas behind them, but I found this both practical and useful.

I don’t agree with him vis a vis buying Microsoft applications, as I think they are the best in the business, and I think everyone should use both Windows computers, applications like ActiveWords, and certainly Outlook and Exchange. My guess is that since Jason is focusing on simply a web based company, e.g. “Mahalo” his focus is a little different than mine would be.

I also think materially disagree with his idea, which is set forth in point # 11. Which I have to believe is made in jest. It is great to hire very hard working people. Clearly my preference. But it is delusional to think that you would make that the bench mark in your hires, and also delusional to think that your hires will work as hard as the founders.

But there are a lot of good ideas here, simple practical ones, that I think people are sometimes afraid to put in place, in fear that they are not really conventional!

His take, like mine is that if time is the most valuable commodity that people have, getting the roadblocks and obstacles out of the way is the very best investment you can make in your company.

I am going to recommend to him that he make this post into a Wiki, so that people can contribute to it, and make it a really useful knowledge sharing site for the startup community.