Michiel . van Vlaardingen

Ever tried brainstorming by chat?  You know what happens:  conversation will go into particular details soon and the general picture is forgotten. What I would love to have is a threaded chat where things are ordered by subject in a tree (or mindmap if you like)  so you can easily return to a topic and afterwards the chat log is actually a good and useful overview of your session.

The interface would have a summary tree with markings for active/unfinished/closed topics  and the currently active topic chat in an other pane.     This makes it into some sort of live collaborative mindmapping tool.

Some extras that would be nice:

• pre-programming your meeting agenda as the structure so you know that you won’t miss an item
• mobile version
• From: antirez : @Michielvv about idea #2 maybe also the ability to vote chat messages in real time during a brainstorm automatically removing downvoted.
  — Yes that could be a very nice addition
• Something that works well with a group of people in front of a beamer
  

About this series: I believe execution is more important than the initial business idea.   At the same time  I have a lot of those ideas, that will never be executed by a shear lack of time.   That’s why I will start something new on this blog:  I will pitch my ideas here.    If you think it’s a good idea or know a service that already does such a thing, please leave a comment.

Almost two years ago  I got some paint and a canvas for my birthday, but I never got around doing something with it.  Until today:

I think it came out a bit weird, but I’m happy with it for a first (and quick) effort.

I had a design for our business card lying around for more than a year.   There was a nice offer from VistaPrint so I thought I’d give it a go:

It’s quite ok, but I think having the blue printed as a single color, instead of using CMYK would give it a better look.  Also I would really like to put the illustration we have on our website  on the back, to make it a bit less formal.

Anyway,  I don’t really need business cards,  so probably the next edition will not be printed soon 🙂

I thought to give Linux another try on the desktop.  It has been eight years since the last try and things probably have advanced enough to warent a better experience.    After some fiddling with splitting the existing ntfs partition and a failed installation (screen went to black and it froze)  I now have Ubuntu installed.    Now the only thing that’s not working by default is my Dual-Screen  Matrox P650 Graphic card…. so i’m still stuck with a single screen.  The driver provided by Matrox is not working out of the box, so I’ll have to dive into forums, etc. to get it fixed, I hope.

What I never expected a few months ago: I actually like twitter.    Although it seems like an overflow of non-interesting information at first sight,  it’s actually pretty useful.  For me it’s especially keeping up to date with new developments without having to read through tons of lengthy blog posts.      For myself I try to keep a schedule of at least one twit a day. That should not be to difficult to stick to.  Finally I’ve added the feed to this blog (bottom right).

I gave twitter another chance.  I created an accounts months ago, but never got past the first message.  I reconsidered it’s usage yesterday.   Why?

1:  I like the Facebook status updates and a lot of people seem to update them from twitter, so why wouldn’t I like twitter as well?

2: At MovingLabs we build software for the web,  how can we build the best if we don’t understand what’s going on?

3: I was (re)reading a discussion about the usage of twitter for marketing purposes. It seems to fit in perfectly.

So after my first day I think I’m going to persist to use it for a while.  I especially like the concept that you can follow someone without the need for some bidirectional (friendship) relation.

Facebook is catching on everywhere for some time now, but in the Netherlands Hyves is still the  major player.  I had a Facebook profile for some time, mostly for exploring it’s application platform. A lot of people I know have some presence over there for some time. However the last few months I see a change:  people are starting to use it!     People I know are starting to join groups, updating their status and uploading photos. And, very important:  my sister has an account, meaning it is way past the early adoption by tech-interested men.

I believe it’s just a matter of time before  Facebook will become more important than Hyves.   First of all:  most people past 16 have a world outside The Netherlands too.   Furthermore,  Facebook doesn’t look like a highschool project gone-wrong, so you can actually connect with someone above 30 without silently laughing at them.   While at Hyves it really looks very very wrong if a parent or a teacher joins.   So I believe Hyves will probably become  for kids even more than it is now and it’s empire will sink like the previous dutch profile site that seemed unbeatable:  cu2.nl.  (do you even remember it?)

I believe execution is more important than the initial business idea.   At the same time  I have a lot of those ideas, that will never be executed by a shear lack of time.   That’s why I will start something new on this blog:  I will pitch my ideas here.    If you think it’s a good idea or know a service that already does such a thing, please leave a comment.

Idea #1:  One-time chat

Do you run a business online and are responsible for customer contacts?  You will probably recognize this:  you are the man-in-the-middle between a customer and a programmer,  continuously mailing things back and forward.  But you can’t just pass the programmer’s email or IM contact, because your customer would bother them to death for the rest of his life.     Wouldn’t it be great if you could just create a one-time conversation on a secret page where both of the programmer and customer can go  and chat?    The chat log could be mailed to both  afterwards.

I got tired of the old look of 2vi.nl and decided to go for a quick facelift.   Basically I have removed a lot of excessive layout and information  and tuned some of the colors a bit more towards orange instead of the hard red it was.    Overall I believe it looks less agressive and better reflects the type of websites I design.

The last three years I have been busy  graduating and working on some interesting projects.  Allthough these are very interesting I have decided to make myself available for design and webdevelopment projects again.  Something that I have done the years before.   So if you believe you can use my help designing or developing something  (Especially if it involves website design, website review, HTML, CSS, JavaScript or PHP)  don’t hesitate to contact me to discuss your project.