Disqus - Latest Comments for sgreenblatt

Re: 11 Colleges With Geographically Confused Names - 11Points.com

Seth Greenblatt — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:50:51 -0000

I grew up in Maine and went off to school at Washington University in St. Louis. Of course, upon hearing Washington University, everyone would say, "In Washington, DC?" To this I would reply, in an appropriately tired sounding voice, "You are probably thinking about George Washington University." Fast-forward a few years, and where did I go for my Ph.D.? George Washington University (in Washington, DC), of course. When I mentioned this, people would say something along the lines of, "So you decided to go back to St. Louis for graduate school?" I tried to break it to them as gently as I could that I was in DC for graduate school, but it was too much for most of them to grasp, and I haven't heard from any of them in the 25 years since...

Re: 11 Incarnations of Doctor Who, Ranked by Handsomeness - 11Points.com

Seth Greenblatt — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:09:43 -0000

Great list! I have long enjoyed watching Dr. Who. I think that there are probably a few reasonable guesses as to why Angie would have ranked the Drs. the way she did. I believe the main reason is that the definition of 'handsome' varies over decades and over age groups. Matt Smith may not have been considered to be as handsome by earlier generations of women during earlier periods of time. Dr. Who aside, if you had taken a time machine back to the '60s and showed pictures of this group of men to women of Angie's current age group, these women would have given you dramatically different opinions.

The second reason follows from the first. If you want to pull in a new demographic of viewers, women of Angie's age and younger, then you might wish to start by casting a man that they would find attractive...

Re: Your Credit Cards Will Never Be the Same Again: Meet Card 2.0 [VIDEO]

Seth Greenblatt — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 08:28:32 -0000

I think it is a great idea. As other commenters have mentioned, there are several hurdles to clear to gain widespread acceptance. My main concern would probably be reliability of the cards. Electronics in cards can have a tendency to break when bent. Fortunately, they will only get better. I would hate to be in a money-critical situation, and when I go to pay and it won't function. You could be at dinner with your largest potential client, or arriving at the only service station for 250 miles in any direction, your phone doesn't have a signal, there are no payphones and the proprietor's phone isn't working when your card fails. Even though I am a rabid early adopter, I would wait awhile before getting one of these cards, to make sure they are robust (or at the very least carry a backup card).

Re: How I Use Mindmapping to Write

Seth Greenblatt — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 23:43:31 -0000

Chris, I'm glad to see such interest in mindmapping. I have an old post in my blog, Tech Landscape, that gives a pretty good, if a bit dated, list of mindmapping software. A few of the following posts give a very brief intro into mindmapping. The list of software is at: http://bit.ly/d5sULq

Re: The light bulb that lasts 25 years goes on sale

Seth Greenblatt — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:21:38 -0000

These look great, if they are as bright as they appear. Unfortunately, at the existing price, in order to outfit my entire house with LEDs I would need to sell the house ;o)

Re: louisgray.com: Designing the Perfect Twitter Client Is Impossible, But Tweetie Is Close

Seth Greenblatt — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:50:56 -0000

Louis, great post!

Ever since it was released, Tweetie has been my primary desktop client. It is really close to an ideal client for me, with a few exceptions:
- Groups, like everyone else...
- DM - I like the conversation view, but I would really like to be able to see DMs segregated into incoming and outgoing, so it would be quick and easy to see if someone is trying to start a DM conversation, or if another tweet is added to an ongoing conversation.
- Tweetshrink - I use Tweetshrink quite frequently and a few clients provide the ability to click a button to shrink the tweet currently in the composition box.

I'll continue to skip around trying new and updated clients, but for the foreseeable future, I'll spend most of my desktop Twitter time using Tweetie.

Seth

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/07/video-demo-how-to-use-lazyfeed-for-real.html

Seth Greenblatt — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 01:38:19 -0000

Louis, from the looks of this, Lazyfeed could be just what I've been looking for and a tremendous source of blog topic material. Is it still possible to get an invite code? Thanks. (seth.greenblatt@gmail.com)

Re: Why Toodledo is the most underrated task management system out there

Seth Greenblatt — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:32:36 -0000

Zee, I'm a task manager nut, as well. I've probably tried out most of the ones you have. I've spent so much time trying to find the perfect app to get things done, I often don't have any time to actually get anything done. However, for some reason, I haven't tried out Toodledo. I'll give it a try straight-away. It's about time to have my time sucked into a task manager black hole.

Re: http://blog.louisgray.com/2009/04/lets-stop-speaking-like-machines-and.html

Seth Greenblatt — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:06:28 -0000

I agree, to some extent. The @ and # notations could be a deterrent at first to non-computer-savvy users, but the natural language equivalent, something like "To: Louis re: DISQUS," is a kind of clunky for the seasoned user. Why not have both styles as options? Then, new users could use a notation that they are used to in business letters. Once they get sufficiently irritated by the verbosity, they can switch over to the current notation.

If you want the subject of the tweet to be automatically inferred by Twitter, then we would probably need to help it along. Again, provide options. Users comfortable with # notation and want to make absolutely sure that Twitter gets the subject right, use the # notation. Users who want the system to infer the subject do not use # notation, and take their chances. Over time (probably a very short time, due to volume of tweets) Twitter learns what a tweet about a particular subject looks like, taking into account all available information. The tweeters that take their chances with natural language would get better and better results as more tweets come in, and everybody is happy.

The changes necessary to implement this sort of behavior are not trivial, but they are not insurmountable either. It all comes down to how much Twitter wants to capture these potential non-computer-savvy users.

Re: Apture: demo of cool service to build “super links”

Seth Greenblatt — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:53:40 -0000

Oops! Vlogger is not a new blogging platform. I meant Blogger...

Re: Apture: demo of cool service to build “super links”

Seth Greenblatt — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 08:51:41 -0000

I just tried Apture out in a test run on my Vlogger blog, and it is really cool. I'm going to try and incorporate it as soon as there is a fit. I think it will be really useful, or it will be overkill. We'll just have to wait and see!