Developing eWrite

• A method of tracking comments left by your favourite bloggers on other peoples blogs.
• In Firefox, one can open links in a new tab or a new window if needed. When using a form or a search it would be cool to be able to open the resulting screen in a new window or tab too in case one wants to continue on the same page too as well as performing a search.
• Might be cool to have a programme on your laptop or phone that could ‘listen’ to a TV programme or a film you are watching and display interesting facts or info about it. Such as the actors details, similar films,  or when the next episode is on for TV programmes.  Could even be a screen saver if on a computer.
• Ever use your mobile phone to light up an area? I do, all the time.  Might be cool to have a plastic enclosure to wrap around the phone with a mirror and a lens to focus the light more like a torch….either that or I could get one of those tiny torches for my set of keys.
• A Google search which uses (or prioritises) preffered web sites set by the user. When a user searches for something, their preferred set of websites appear first if they are relevant to the search.
• I use the search functionality in Thunderbird all the time.  I can search by subject, sender, to, content etc. When Im in my inbox I would love it this defaulted to search by ’sender’ and when im in my outbox I’d love it to default to search ‘to’. At the moment it stays with whatever it was searching last.

Skipped a week last week, not enough ideas floating around the noggin.

I planned to do 4 weeks of Friday invention ideas. Might keep going, but less frequently, maybe I’ve used up all the ideas floating around my head already.. thought there’d be more.

• A version of Google which shows you the least relevant results for your search.
• A video search that allows you to capture 10 second a video of a video your watching with your phone, send it to some web service and it will tell you the film its from.
• An extension for Thunderbird that will tell you if you have mail from a particular person. Ideal if you don’t check your mail purposely to be productive but you want to be interrupted when you get a mail from a specific person.
• Google Reader allows you to subscribe to the same RSS feed over and over again. It would be handy if it told you that you are already subscribed.

A couple of weeks ago I wondered how many emails I send and receive every day. I was just curious, it wasn’t for any particular purpose really.

I thought it would be cool if my email client Thunderbird had an extension that could monitor my email habits and record the data for me. I considered writing an extension but then I had the idea of getting PHP to check my email inbox on a regular basis and record the info to a mysql database.

I wrote the PHP script and set it to check my email address every ten minutes from the 4th of September to the 15th of September.

On the 10th of September I read an interesting article on Slashdot titled ‘Why Email Has Become Dangerous‘. The article points to a study which states that it can take up to 64 seconds to recover your train of though after receiving an email. A person who checks their email every 5 minutes can waste up to 8.5 hours a week!

I don’t check my email every 5 minutes but I do have Thunderbird open all the time which checks the email every 30 minutes. Also, I have been known to search for wireless signals when Im out and about on my phone to check my email so Im probably just as bad.

Among other info, my PHP script told me how many emails I received each day. I decided to put this information together with the 64 seconds from the study and see how many minutes per day I was being distracted from whatever I was doing.

On average it seems Im distracted only 23 minutes or so per day, not much. Though thats only for one email address. I have 5 of them set up in Thunderbird and it doesn’t include the time involved in responding to them if needed.

Before knowing those results today, I knew I was checking my emails too much anyway. Today I changed my habits to try it out. I checked my emails early in the morning, at lunch time and coming up to 5pm. As a result I got a tonne of work done, 2 items that I thought would take me the day I completed before lunch. I spent the rest of the day mapping out the rest of the week, I plan on getting a lot done now if I can maintain this new habit of checking my emails only a couple of times a day.

A few people are probably going to be annoyed at first, there are a few people I work with that email me often and I’ve always responded immediately to them.

An interesting set of information for me, I’ll be aiming to keep this productivity up by not being distracted by emails every day.

Last week, I decided to start writing down some of the ideas I have that might make useful additions to programmes or even apps of their own. I don’t expect that they are world changing ideas or anything I just think they are better served out there rather than in my head.

• An image search engine, that allows you to upload an image and it will search for related images or perhaps show you where the image you uploaded originated if its not your own.
• Theres blogging and then theres micro blogging with Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce. Is there a gap in the market for something in between?
• An extension for Thunderbird that monitors sending/receiving email trends. It would be cool to feed this info into some web app and see stats like who emails you the most, who do you email the most, most popular time to receive an email, busiest email hour of the day, bussiest day of the week etc.
• Have there ever been any temporary domain names? A domain extension like *.temp might be good idea for events, films or causes that only have a limited life span. A domain like this could be bought for a fee for shorter periods such as 2,3,6 and 9 months instead of yearly increments.

Thats all for this week. Read last weeks ideas.