I’ve been designing and creating websites for as long as there’s been a World Wide Web. My first efforts were pretty typical, too - long scrolling pages, lots of “back to top” links and such. Basically, really awful websites. I learned though, from watching people interact with either sites I’ve created, or others. I learned a great deal more when I was teaching web development. Oh my, the things we assume. (We being me in this case.)

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I have to say, I am loving my iPhone. I’m finding that it works well as a PDA for me. The Notes tool is fine for meeting notes, and I’m getting faster at my thumb typing, and I can easily use phpCollab or RememberTheMilk for my task and list management. At the end of a meeting, it’s one click to generate an email with my notes in it.

Meetings with whiteboard drawings can also have the whiteboard recorded with the use of the iPhone’s camera. I couldn’t do that with my Palm Pilot. I would like to have an easy means of drawing on photos/images, but that’s not the end of the world. I am hopeful that an application for this sort of work will be done in the next few months.

Using phpCollab with the iPhone isn’t hard, but a bit more spacing on some of the action icons would be helpful. The iPhone’s management of forms makes changing form data a snap.

I’ve also found a new GTD tool that I’m going to play with. The interface isn’t as slick as RememberTheMilk.com but it’s simplicity may win out in the long run. It’s also designed just for GTD. Checkout iDo To Do. There’s a free trial for a month and the cost is only $6. I’m going to play with it for a day or two as it shows promise. I like the email features of RememberTheMilk though, and that’s been a good system thus far.

I’m guilty of this problem. I assume because it makes sense to me it will make sense to others. Hey, I’m logical - it must work like this for everyone, right?

Denial is a powerful thing indeed. When it comes to looking at an interface I’ve created and designed, I can’t successfully be the final judge. I can make arguments about why I did something, placed an icon here, set this link to be in the first position, and made the wording like this and not like that… but ultimately, I need someone else to look at it and try it out, and to be honest with me. Read More…

Almost a year ago, the minister at the Unitarian Universalist church we attend had a sermon that truly hit home with me. It was about being inconvenienced. We tend to want things now, quicker, faster and with less work on our part. Being inconvenienced is simply not tolerated these days. However, we take much for granted with this attitude. What improvements to my life might a bit of inconvenience do for me? I began to question some of the things I was doing simply to make my life ‘easier’.

One thing was driving the 2.3 miles to the Ventura Harbor to go paddling three days a week. I would do this, then drive home, shower and ride my bike to work like I did the other days of the week. This was simply a matter of convenience on my part. However, it burned more fuel than I needed and seemed wasteful. Why not just ride my bike the added distance and paddle in the morning and then ride to work and shower there? I decided to give it three months and see what I’d learn from the experience.

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