Project Idea #35: Auto Tasks via Email
Create a program that is designed to parse and track projects and tasks from emails alone. The point would be to make it completely non-intrusive (albeit not entirely non-interactive). So for example, when composing a message to a client or customer you might be asking a question. You want a response (there's a "task" outstanding that's pending a decision or some action). You would simply BCC the special mailbox. The message would be parsed and tracked. When the user replies, the same program is monitoring your incoming mailbox items. When the message arrives it would attempt to interpret whether the task was complete or not. It could then fire a simple email to you indicating that it THINKS that the task is complete with a simple Yes/No form that would let you close the task or not and also possibly make notes or record anything of interest. Or alternatively you could manually complete tasks by forwarding the message to the same mailbox.
This probably is not incredibly value in its proposed form -- I'm sure something similar exists. But it would be fun to work on and would be neat to see how smart you could train it to be. Introduction of learning algorithms that would adapt to particular users would be even better.
New Studio Speakers
I went ahead and got some new studio speakers for my home office. These are the M-Audio BX5a. The Logitech system didn't sound terrible (especially at normal volumes) but it was cluttery and was difficult to work with. The new system has less bass (no subwoofer) but they sound very clean and seem to perform quite well with everything that I've thrown at it. It's a new experience to me because I've never really distinctly noticed the different between "muddy" sound and what I hear now.
Mine don't look quite as nice -- the exterior case design is a little older. But still a good buy overall.
Versioning for S3
I just got this notice in my email:
We are pleased to announce the availability of the Versioning feature for beta use across all of our Amazon S3 Regions. Versioning allows you to preserve, retrieve, and restore every version of every object in an Amazon S3 bucket. Once you enable Versioning for a bucket, Amazon S3 preserves existing objects any time you perform a PUT, POST, COPY, or DELETE operation on them. By default, GET requests will retrieve the most recently written version. Older versions of an overwritten or deleted object can be retrieved by specifying a version in the request.
Amazon S3 provides customers with a highly durable storage infrastructure. Versioning offers an additional level of protection by providing a means of recovery when customers accidentally overwrite or delete objects. This allows you to easily recover from unintended user actions and application failures. You can also use Versioning for data retention and archiving.
This is some slick stuff. I'm amazed... I just wish I had more time to play with it. For now, Amazon continues to impress.
Recursion
So w
hat happens when your can of WD-40 is left out too long and the trigger gets stuck and won't stop spraying? Spray it with some WD-40?
Did you know that WD-40 stands for "Water Displacement - 40th Attempt"? Thanks Wikipedia!
Price Tracking
Price tracking can be confusing online. Retailers like Amazon and Newegg (two that I buy from frequently) seem to sometimes change their prices daily. One expects prices to drop over time but this doesn't always happen. I was surprised to find that prices for Solid-State Hard Drives have actually been rising recently (although the real deals appear to have been back in October/November). Thankfully there are some tools that can help. One of them is the Camelizer -- a Firefox plugin. Alternatively, you can access the same data at the website camelcamelcamel.com (for Amazon) and camelegg (for Newegg). The same group also tracks prices at BackCountry, Best Buy, OverStock.com, and Zzounds,
Here's an example of one of the SSD's that I'm interested in:
In this digital age it's nice to have something that keeps some history around. It's easy to get information these days but it's always easy to change information (which is why I'm also a big fan of the WayBackMachine -- check out the original Google page!) We don't keep coupons, flyers, or catalogs anymore, we just remember the website.
Anyone experience this sort of problem?
Happy New Year
It's 2010 everyone! It's ridiculuous how fast 2009 went by. I have high hopes for the year. We'll see how things go...
Office Setup
I seem to remember talking about this already but I've further upgraded my man-cave to new levels of geekiness. I know have two 26" screens that I've wall mounted just above my desk (keeps them in the same position regardless of all the clutter on my desk.)
Currently I'm running OS X on my right screen and Windows 7 on the left. I use Synergy to share mouse/keyboard commands so it feels like one continuous background. I'm mostly using OS X still but the new machine has 6GB of RAM which gives a lot of breathing space if the Mac gets bogged down.
What I'd like to do is switch out my aging Logitech system with two simple monitor speakers -- I still haven't decided what make/model to get but they have good stuff for pretty cheap. I'll plan on mounting these on a small shelf along with all the hard drives and accessories that I have. If that all works, I could simply get rid of the desk and bring the leather chair from downstairs. Should be a nice setup.
I have visions of punching a hole behind the monitors and making an in-wall rack that I can use to store my rather large 4U case. The wall there backs into the garage rafters and there's quite a bit of room. Ventilation and cooling would be an issue but I'm sure I can come up with something that works well.
What's your work/play area set up like? I'll post any pictures I receive...
Google Public DNS
Google today announced that they're providing a high-performance public DNS server. This sounds like a great idea from a performance perspective ... I've not had too many complaints with my DNS servers provided by Comcast but I've definitely had some issues at my work with slow/non-responsive DNS servers.
However, I suppose this is just one more thing that can go wrong. Now there's one BIG target to attack and if someone happens to poison the cache, we're all in a world of hurt.
I do plan on updating my home router though to start using this. I'll post a follow-up with my review.
From: Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Public DNS.
Update: They're definitely taking security very seriously. Some more info can be found here that's quite helpful.
Scuttle Firefox extension
I use Scuttle on my server (for storing bookmarks). The beauty of the solution is that I have a centralized repository of bookmarks (which isn't too special considering that many services provide this feature) but in addition, it's very nicely set up to server as Live Bookmark lists in Firefox. So for example, I can have a single Live Bookmark drop-down for all work-related links, or all my "daily" websites or whatever and automatically add and remove from them as I see fit. The Live Bookmarks mean that all I need to do to reorganize links is retag them and it's instantly working on all the computers I have.
It's handy. But there's a problem. The Firefox extension for Scuttle isn't really being maintained. It's pretty simple but needed a new "max firefox version supported" string in the configuration. I've updated this and am now posting the unofficial 0.4.2 release of the Firefox Scuttle plugin with support for Firefox 3.5+.
