Thinking About Metadata

Some of my thoughts on tagging and metadata in Converspace:

• Syntax over Interface: I prefer (from a user experience perspective) how tagging (and other meta-data like mentions, etc.) evolved on Twitter to be just syntax and became part of the content (without being obtrusive) with no special interface elements dedicated to them. This allows for the same interface to serve people that don't need them, and the ones that do. Invisible to the users that don't need it but yet, always there for people that need it.
• Visible Metadata: My preference for tags being part of the content has the advantage of them being always visible (moves/hangs with the content). However, it also has the disadvantage of not being able to cleanly do things like private tags (like how Pinboard does with tags that start with a period. e.g., .secret_tag). One obvious advantage of private tags is that you can do stuff like what Selective Tweets does with the #fb tag, but without having a visible public tag: like this IFTTT receipe that crossposts Pinboard bookmarks to Twitter that have the .twitter private tag. For the specific use case of publishing workflows, I'm considering using (something I'm calling) local action tags (tags that start with &, e.g., &action_tag) that are ephemeral and consumed by the publishing workflow and not saved as part of the content. Action tags obviously cannot be interspersed with the content and will have to be added at the end. Still need to figure out how this will work when the publishing workflow is also adding machine tags at the end. 

Update (after sleeping over it): Won't be implementing actions tags (as described above) because of it's limited scope (especially when it comes to allowing third-parties to participate in the publishing workflow) and I'm on the fence about Machine/Triple tags.

Update (May 07, 2013):

• Auto-tagging: Allow for the publishing workflow to automatically add tags (including Machine/Triple tags). This is hard when you don't have a separate tags property and only have one blob of text (content). For example, it might not make sense to add tags at the end of single-line post when it is missing an ending punctuation mark. To allow for auto-tagging, I came up with a syntax for trailing tags. Trailing tags are preceded by a blank line, starts with two spaces, followed by space-separated tags, followed by the end-of-string. e.g., "\n\n  #additional_tag1 #additional_tag2". Trailing tags can be added at the end of content if they do not exist or tags can be appended to existing ones. I chose this syntax for the following reasons:
• When viewing the Markdown, trailing tags appear slightly indented, which visually separates them from the rest of the content.
• AFAIK, it doesn't conflict with existing Markdown syntax. This makes it invisible when rendered by processors that don't support it.

See also:

• http://microsyntax.pbworks.com/w/page/20869409/Sightings
• Flickr: Discussing Machine tags in Flickr API
• http://pigsonthewing.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/triple-tags-on-twitter/
• http://microformats.org/wiki/microblogging-nanoformats
• http://www.pigsonthewing.org.uk/suggested-method-of-publishing-microformats-in-twitter-posts/
• http://microformats.org/wiki/picoformats
• http://twitterdata.org/
• http://blog.wolfspelz.de/2009/09/twitter-microtagging-personal-tags.html
• http://microsyntax.pbworks.com/w/page/20869401/Publishing

Webmention action

Exicted to see all the action around webmention, a modern alternative to the pingback protocol I drafted.

• http://tantek.com/2013/113/b1/first-federated-indieweb-comment-thread  
• http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2013/03/31/1/a-response-to-replies-i-received-on-my-post-an-open-challenge-to-app-net 
• Client library for sending webmention and pingback notifications: https://github.com/aaronpk/mention-client
• pingback.me, a service to convert Pingbacks to WebMentions
• http://indiewebcamp.com/comment
• http://indiewebcamp.com/webmention
• http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rww/2013Apr/0078.html

Grains vs Milk

"It's also important to consider the big picture when judging the suitability of various foods. It helps to tell stories about the food we eat, to think about narratives. Grains aren't just little morsels of protein, carbs, and fiber bred for our enjoyment. They are baby plant eggs. Those macronutrients are there to sustain the seed's growth and those micronutrients are there to protect it. They are the plant's lifeline to immortality. They are literally shaped by the hand of evolution to survive and ravage the digestive tract of the poor sap that swallows them and discourage further consumption. Grain is only food because we deemed it so. Dairy? Dairy is objectively, absolutely food. Its fat, protein, and carbs are there to be consumed, albeit by young cows, sheep, and goats. It's meant to spur growth, to pack on muscle and fat and weight. And yeah, eating dairy protein causes an insulin spike, but that can be useful if you know what you're doing." -- http://www.marksdailyapple.com/dairy-insulin/

Habit Domino, the simplest habit-forming/habit-tracking android app that could possibly work

What started out as an audacious idea inspired by a death in the family, to build a game-like habit-forming/habit-tracking android app (codenamed World of Doers), got refined into the simplest habit-forming/habit-tracking app that could possibly work.

The basic premise of Habit Domino is that once you've committed to forming a habit, the simple act of recording the routine and visiting the app once a day, has a sort of domino effect, driven by awareness and emotion, that gets you to complete the routine consistently till it turns into a habit.

No Graphs. No Reminders. Just commit to forming the habit and visit the app once a day.

Just Enough

There is a point at which a solution is just enough to solve a problem. Anything less and it won't solve the problem and anything more will only add marginally utility.

This is especially important because customers usually assign a certain value to a solution and therefore, are willing to pay a certain amount for it. Adding more features doesn't necessarily mean they'll pay more. Strive instead to refine your ideas by removing stuff till you're left with just enough to solve the problem at hand.

Ambition is the side-effect of a finite (limited) mind

Since we have a finite (limited) mind we cannot possibly "see" things in their entirety. So we aggregate and summarize. Instead of seeing the journey that is someone's life, we focus on the destinations they're reached. It's little wonder then that we aspire to reach destinations instead of paying attention to the journey and price we pay to get to our destinations.

This post was inspired by Clayton Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life? TEDxBoston talk from 2010 :