Charles's dashboard

Charles replied on July 07, 2009 11:33 to the question "Create a notification radius between 200 and 2k" in Brightkite:

I'll revive this old request instead of making another. I live in Japan, Tokyo to be specific. 200m is too small as Evolver said. 2km is too large. That can cover 5+ (as many as 8 or more I think without spending a lot of time checkign) stations in central Tokyo and more in some places. It's too large for so dense a city. 750m would be about perfect. It would keep it from running into the next station most of the time, yet cover a good area around where you are. 500m and 1km could work, but I think 500m would be too small at times and 1km would run into surrounding stations. I've seen a couple bright kite posts in Japanese complaining about the same time.

A comment on the idea "Creating a story from a trip" in Dopplr:

Ok, maybe I'm doing something wrong. When I click on that link I'm automatically at step 2 of 3 (having set it up before) It looks like the only thing I can do is search my Flickr contacts for people using Dopplr. I've tried having it forget my Flickr ID and go through the process again, but I get the same screens. Is there a way to get my photos to appear on my trips? – Charles, on December 06, 2008 02:08

A comment on the question "Charging 20$ for a beta?!" in The Cosmic Machine:

@Glark, yes it does. http://www.flickr.com/services/api/fl... – Charles, on December 06, 2008 01:02

Charles started following the question "is there a way to add past trips?" in Dopplr.

A comment on the question "Charging 20$ for a beta?!" in The Cosmic Machine:

A quick web search and the only company I can find charging for betas is MS. And they only charged $1.50 to test office and people still threw a fit over that. They are doing a favor helping you test and design it, for free. You throw that back in your face.

You have no release notes on your site. The Flickr changes are new since I had downloaded. I'm glad to see you are adding some new features. I'd love to test it again and give you feedback on your beta, but you don't allow people to test without them paying $15 for the privilege. – Charles, on December 03, 2008 09:27

A comment on the question "Charging 20$ for a beta?!" in The Cosmic Machine:

@ZicklePop Please go back and read what I wrote. I didn't say anything about it being buggy. I said it was incomplete. (well, imcomplete. mistyped it) When I could run it, Eventbox was very stable for me. I like what I think they are trying to create. What I disagree with it telling your users they have to pay $15 to test it. I know they are poor college students, but this is asking too much.

There are lots of Twitter software that does what eventbox does for free. Flickr integration doesn't support comments. The rest you can do a RSS reader because all Eventbox does right now is forward you to the web page.

They made a mistake picking some services that had poor APIs. I want a tool where I can do all the things I do on a daily basis inside the application and Eventbox has a long way to go there. I hope they reach it though. – Charles, on December 03, 2008 05:59

Charles replied on December 03, 2008 03:15 to the idea "The trial should be at least 40 days... here's why." in The Cosmic Machine:

It's beta. It should be free. Still have a time limit. 14 or 30 days so people can't keep using it after it go live and it forces them to keep up with the most recent version for testing.

Charles replied on December 03, 2008 03:14 to the question "Charging 20$ for a beta?!" in The Cosmic Machine:

I agree with the other posts. Requiring users to purchase your very imcomplete beta to continue testing for you is just rude. Only 14 days? MAYBE, for something like $5, I can see it, but for $15? I'm saving a whole $5 on an incomplete app. So what? For that type of minimal saves you should be giving away a lifetime of upgrades if someone is willing to take the risk.

Charles started following the problem "Auto downloads on first run. Don't do it. EVER." in Songbird.

Charles replied on November 30, 2008 08:57 to the problem "Language failure on first run (don't default based your IP address)" in Songbird:

I finally got around to looking at this.

1. That menu option doesn't exist on the Mac, or on any of the Mac drop down menus. I know enough Japanese to be able to read language in Japanese or at least find the right location.
2. I did finally find a language tab under add-ons after opening up the options dialog. Add-ons is a bad place to put language options in the first place.
3. Only Japanese was listed, so I click on install which brings up a file dialog box. Very unhelpful.
4. Goto your website and look at add-ons. No listings for language options that I can see and searching for english doesn't bring up entries.

You really need to fix your faulty install process. Awfully bad user experience here if you use a computer in a language that doesn't match the country you are in. The number of those types of users keeps growing I think.

Charles replied on November 25, 2008 06:24 to the problem "Language failure on first run (don't default based your IP address)" in Songbird:

I believed I tried that last time and it wasn't changing to English. I haven't had time to play with it recently, but I'll try again when I get home and let you know the results. Thanks for the update!

Charles reported a problem in socialmedian on November 21, 2008 06:21:

User info popup windows get in the way.

These things come up way to easily. Just moving my mouse over a link to another area pops up these windows. They get in the way of reading information about the article, cover links and comments. I find I keep having to move my mouse out of the way to get them to disappear.

And honestly, none of them contain the right information to help me decide if I should follow someone or not. I have to visit their page anyway.

Charles replied on November 21, 2008 06:07 to the idea "Facebook needs deeper integration" in The Cosmic Machine:

I agree with you Paxton. Without deep integration with different services you are still required to go to the site which makes Eventbox a lot less useful. I hope they concentrate on those services that provide the API for deep integration and skip stuff like facebook until they get their act together.

Charles replied on November 21, 2008 06:04 to the idea "Integrate Google Reader" in The Cosmic Machine:

I don't really get this. I'd rather have Eventbox specialize on social networking sites and integration with them. There are already a lot of great specialized news readers that are likely to do a better job then eventbox in this area.

What I maybe wouldn't mind seeing it integrating with google reader to get my starred articles and shared articles so that I could share them more easily on social sites if I choose. I'd rather do my news reading on a different app though.

Charles replied on November 18, 2008 07:02 to the question "Why does liking and disliking an article auto-clip it for me?" in socialmedian:

If you do choose to link them, that's fine. Just make it clear what's happening.

Charles replied on November 18, 2008 07:01 to the question "Why does liking and disliking an article auto-clip it for me?" in socialmedian:

But say you see an article on how to tie up your girlfriend and you think cool! So you 'like' it planning on reading it later. I doubt that is something most people want to send out to everyone.

Charles reported a problem in socialmedian on November 18, 2008 06:57:

I can't un-like or un-dislike something.

Once you click like or dislike you undo it. You can only switch it to the opposite one. You should be able to go back to a neutral position.

Charles asked a question in socialmedian on November 18, 2008 06:50:

Why does liking and disliking an article auto-clip it for me?

As a news maker people follow you because they enjoy the type of articles you share/post. That doesn't mean there might not be other articles you see that you want to save or keep track of, but they just aren't the same material you'd post. Like should only like an article, and Clip it should share it with those following you. Besides that there is nothing to indicate that a side effect of liking or disliking an article also shares it with everyone. It's easy enough to hit both if you want.

Say I see an article 'How to be child rapist' or something. Ugh, disgusting, so I dislike it, now it's sent out to all my followers! Umm, not what you'd expect to happen. Not to mention I don't really get the dislike button anyway.

Charles asked a question in socialmedian on November 18, 2008 05:06:

What is the point of dislike?

I don't get the point of disliking an article. If I don't like why do I want it to pop back to the top? Why do I want to automatically clip it to everyone following me? The actions resulting from disliking an article don't seem to match.

I can understand hiding an article so I don't view it anymore. I'm just not interested in the topic.

I can understand marking news false. (spreading false news/rumor. Article has been proven false) That probably would be a good feature.

How did you imagine people using dislike?

Charles replied on November 18, 2008 04:55 to the question "Old articles need to die and not be resurrected by commentators." in socialmedian:

Freeze an article. This would prevent it from jumping to the top of your list when it's commented on, clipped, liked or disliked. (Actually, does an article move when it's disliked? That seems kind of silly if it does) Or it would be nice to select under what circumstances an article is moved to the top of my list. This could also be like 'mark read/done'. You've already done what you needed to with this news, so stop bugging me about it. Kind of like friendfeed's hide or Rejaw's mute, but doesn't actually remove it.