Owe.to Update: Group Reminders, Remember Email Verification Status and Sneak Peak of Android App

Here is a quick update on Owe.to:

• Group Reminders: You can now setup reminders for more than one person by simply filling in additional email addresses separated by commas. This is perfect for keeping track of shared expenses like parties and celebrations, going clubbing, group holidays or buying a gift for special events like a friend's birthday, wedding, housewarming or baby shower.
• Remember Email Verification Status: If you are a regular user of Owe.to, then you won't have to verify your email address every time you want to setup a reminder. When you verify your email address by clicking on the link sent in the verification email, it will remember the verification status for your email address and won't ask you for verification for all subsequent requests in the same browser. 

I've tried to implement these without sacrificing the immediacy and simplicity of Owe.to. Hope you like it. To give feedback to improve Owe.to visit: http://oweto.uservoice.com/

Coming soon: My friend Mital is working on an Android app for Owe.to.

Owe.to (my "little" app) featured in The Times of India's Mumbai Mirror

I woke up on Feb 9, 2011, to see a lot of users on Owe.to. Ok, a lot is not really a lot, more like a few hundreds, but it was more than the usual, considering I hadn't announced it anywhere and only showed it to few friends.

Looking at the access logs, I stumbled upon a few requests coming in from the online version of The Times of India's Mumbai Mirror. Turns out that someone at Mumbai Mirror came across Owe.to and featured it on Page 24 (the sci-tech section).

The reason I hadn't announced it yet was because I was still wrapping up the finishing touches on it (lots of small things to do). This forced launch had me scrambling to finish off stuff, but it was also kind of liberating and exciting. Plus I now have a nice pitch for Owe.to thanks to the description in the paper:

Fed up of friends who borrow money and then conveniently forget? A website to send friendly automated email payment reminders to them.

Other places Owe.to has been spoted so far:

• Jared Spool bookmarked my now dated post about Owe.to's design principles alongside Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design, Facebook Design Principles and LukeW's Developing Design Principles:  http://www.delicious.com/jmspool/designprinciples
• Stephen Anderson said "(Owe.to is a) Great example (of a conversational form), thought through in detail"
• Owe.to was featured on a Dutch website in an article about conversational forms: http://www.webanalisten.nl/verbeteren/praktijk-cases/%E2%80%9Cverhaal-formulieren%E2%80%9D-ruim-25-meer-conversie.html

4 things the MacBook Pro gets right

I've been using a MacBook Pro for a while now, and while I still prefer Linux over OS X (with the exception of  Safe Sleep), here are 4 things I love about the hardware:

• Backlit island-style/chiclet keyboard that is very comfortable and an absolute saviour  when working at night and in low-light situations.
• Large trackpad that is a joy to use.
• MagSafe, the magnetic power connector, which has saved the laptop a couple of times from serious damage.
• The nifty external battery indicator.

Stop Dreaming, Start Doing.

Dreaming up stuff is fun, but it does not count for anything, if you only stop at that. Inaction is the surest way to fail. That's kind of obvious; I know, so why then do we still dream about success, and yet not start?

Luck has a big part to play in ideas succeeding, and you're only as lucky as the number of ideas you've tried. So it's not just the "doing stuff", but the "doing LOTS of stuff" that really matters when your looking for those few ideas that will eventually succeed.

Oh, and when your doing lots of stuff, expect a lot of them to fail.

The problem with static websites

Problems

Nothing beats the flexibility and control you get with hand-crafted static websites, especially when it comes to SEO. But if you've made and maintained a few static websites, you quickly realize that it has its limitations.

Duplication
When you hand code HTML on a page by page basis, you end up creating duplication, because a lot of elements on each page (like headers and footers) will be common across the whole website. Duplication is bad because when you want to change one of these elements, you have to do it manually on all pages that contain that element.

Mixing structure and content
Static websites mix the structure of the page, with the content of the page. The structure of the page is the hierarchy of elements that constitute that page, and in most cases, is common across a lot of pages. The content on the other hand, varies on a page by page basis. Most of the duplication on static websites is related to the structure.

Dependency on multiple tools
When you manage a static website, you are dependent on a lot of tools, like ftp clients, ssh clients, etc. The absence of any one of these tools, for example, when you are on the go, makes updating the website very painful.


Solution

A CMS can solve these problems with:

Templates
Templates are a way to eliminate structure duplication by extracting the common structure of pages in one place. This way, any changes to the structure is limited to the template alone, effectively separating the structure of pages from their content. Templates can also be used to share content across pages to eliminate content duplication.

Browser based editing
Browser based editing allows management of the website on the go. Since all changes are done directly on the live website, it helps to have versioning, to be able to rollback to a previous version in case of errors.


Rewritepad is a simple hosted CMS that solves just these problems while still keeping it as flexible and simple as hand coding static websites.

What are you waiting for?

When you look back at your life, what would you like to have done that would make you smile and make it all worth while? What would you regret not doing?

Why aren't you doing those things now? If today was the last day of your life, would your answer to that question be the same?

Realize, that life is like a solo game of Russian roulette, and every day you spend not following your dreams, is just increasing the chance that you never might.

Heard today that someone I know got diagnosed with cancer. Trust me, you don't want to wait for something like that to happen to you, before you wake up and realize, you've run out of time.