Happy bomb

I was thinking today about hiding away something that I'd later find, which would make me happy. I don't know what such an action would be called, so I termed it a happy bomb. Perhaps there is an opportunity for a business that you pay some money to for a particular object or service, and you get it at some point in the future at random to cheer you up.

Screen real estate vs productivity

I would like to see the results of an experiment to test the productivity of workers at various screen sizes, from a 50" display right through to a smart phone screen. The same software would need to be run on all screen sizes, and the input methods (mouse, keyboard) be kept consistent.

Auto optical disk backup

Backing up is essential, but it can also be laborious. For backing up to optical disk (CD or DVD) the process is very manual and requires the following steps: go and fetch optical disk; open optical disk drive; insert disk; close disk drive; run backup software; open disk drive; remove disk; close disk drive; store disk.

I would like to have a backup device that is remote from my computer (and connected over the home network either wired or wirelessly) and can house a stack of blank disks. In response to my backup schedule my backup software would automatically send the data to be backed up to this device, which writes the data to a disk. Periodically (at an interval of my chosing), the backup software would remind me to put the outputted disks from the backup device into storage.

The device could also function as a multiCD burner if you wanted to burn lots of optical disks or a mulitCD ripper if you wanted to rip lots of optical disks.

It's all about: summarisation, simplification, abstraction

We spend so much of our time summarising, simplifying or abstracting information for the benefit of other people or, having been presented with summarised, simplified or abstracted information, trying to get down into the detail. We spend time moving information up and down the scale of summarised, simplified or abstracted.

Google docs on Android phones

I recently acquired an Android phone, and was hugely disappointed with the functionality of Google docs on Android. Or in fact the complete lack of functionality. There are a couple of free apps, but nothing that does what I want.

I want the phone to be the primary storage for some documents (i.e. those I use mostly on the phone). But I want these to be automatically backed up to the Google docs server. And when I access Google docs online I want to know how current the version I am looking at is.