Bubble Timer
If you do anything that involves time, such as living, and have ever had the inclination to 'spend time' more wisely, etc..., check out Bubble Timer. The concept is simple, by tracking how much time you spend on things, you can analyze your habits as data and find concrete, practical ways to improve your use of your time going forward. Then, you can see how you've improved and improve your improvment, ad infinitum.
"Wait," you say (you being me), "there's no way I'll use it. The very factors that undermine my foundation will just undermine my efforts to track it." Not so hasty. That you said this is a sign that Bubble Timer is for you. The happy folks at Bubble Timer have made a very slickapp that makes tracking time as fun as poking at bubbles. So, from the depths of your darkest hours of blocked workage and frustrated communication, you can emerge as your child-self and poke at a few bubbles and revive the rational side of yourself with the joyful knowledge that you just gave your future self the ability to look back at this depraved moment with a scientific eye, one that may just prevent it from recurring quite so often. In short, it brings a glimmer of hope to despair and a framework for practical self-reflection to generally unproductive and self-perpetuating nagging, gnawing moments of self-doubt.
They also have an iPhone app, if you're into that kind of thing.
If you still not convinced, then check out the company's stance on privacy of data collected. Sean Johnson speaks out against RescueTime's (another time isv) tendencies toward usage of time tracking as a managerial tool as opposed to a tool for personal improvement. The discussion that ensues in the comments between Sean and a voice from RescueTime is THE best discourse on privacy-spyware implications in the office that I have read to date. If not that, the Heideggerian reference that is the title of his blog "Being and Time" should assure you that you're in good hands.
Tough love for Firefox
This is a shout to add to the cacophany surrounding how badly Firefox 3.5 sucks. It is true, this post isn't meant to be a bug list or a how to make browsing better page; it is not constructive in that sense. Instead is is a bit of tough love to tick up the stats that some employees over at Mozilla may be reading that will weigh into their strategy meetings and hopefully help steer the project back to it's roots of stability and speed, etc... I mean, I installed Opera today and it struck me just how bad things are getting.
Now, I admit that I use firebug, which slows things down, but the problems reach far beyond that.
So if you have the FF3.5 blues, download an older version and rekindle your romance with what is still the most promising browser project out there.
looking forward to 3.6!
Google Voice pulls phones onto the web
After buying http://www.grandcentral.com/ a while back, Google has launched Google Voice offering a single phone number solution with full searchable sortable transcribed voicemail. The number of electronic lifestyle habits remaining largely autonomous from the web (aka Google’s lair) dwindles. In other news, law enforcement dry cleaning bills skyrocket as police who once had to catch phone calls in the moment begin to drool uncontrollably over the latest and what may be the greatest massive database of personal communication yet.