I remember reading another similar blog post about why paying for useful services is so important after delicious was going to be shuttered. If it wasn't for the fourth quarter save by Youtube's founders, we would have all been driven to paid services like Pinboard.
I've been sitting on an idea since '96 and I think the time has finally arrived -- a bit ahead of the curve back then. It has a business model but it is (typically) very grand in scope. ('Choices' was conceived to be its corporate governance model ;-) Email is a subset. Wondering if the time has arrived to actually try and implement the thing. And why do I feel I may find my long sought after geek brothers/sisters in arms here on Hubski ... (p.s. I am a fully capable geek myself.)
> Where would you start? Email? Identity. Everything else follows.
- you are such a whirlwind of productive activity and I have been quietly admiring that fact ever since I found Hubski and did a little digging!
Well TBH, making the baby wasn't so bad. ;) It's the gathering storm of parenthood that has me a bit freaked out. As for productivity, it's very nice to hear that, but I wish I felt the same more frequently. My discipline often isn't what I wish it were. During a difficult time many years ago, I resolved to create something everyday. Whether it was adding some brushstrokes to a painting, writing something down, or even refinishing an old chair, -just that every day had some sort of imprint that I had been there for it. I had really formed a habit at one point, but life is so full of distraction. IMHO some distraction is fuel for creativity, and necessary, but limits are the challenge. It's not always easy for me to recognize those limits, or to act on them. Using Hubski as an example, swinging in a few times a day, finding something new, exchanging and developing some ideas in a conversation, -these things refresh and inspire me. And often, I'm just working on the site, and that's time well-spent. But those nights when it's far too late, and I click, and then I click. Oy. I haven't found much success in swearing off distractions; for the ones I enjoy, it doesn't feel right. But vacations are good, and balance is a process, and a good one. Huh, a bit of a ramble there. As I said, I am here for feedback and adoption. I only have an impression of Choices from what I have read (and I know that you have since reassessed), but if you could pick a slice and give us something to play with, I am game.Identity.
> Choices .. Has nothing to do with it -- entirely orthogonal. I'll head to storage this weekend and see if I can fish out the PPA[1] I filed for it back in '95 but I am pretty sure it is on a floppy disk :) Best is to revert to net vacation and just shut up and do it :) [1]: yes, I filed for a software patent. Reasoning was simple: I saw it as a potential big brother machine (think FB) and wanted a level of control over its use via licensing. I'm still somewhat on the fence re. patents, but the silver lining is that for various key social techs e.g. Presence Service, I have an official dated document from USPTO establishing prior-art on these matters.