An idea for the now: web application that OCR’s my grocery receipts to track my dietary habits over time while at the same time building a realtime database of food prices across the city. A bit like the Brian Lehrer project, but on a grander scale.
After a bit of a hiatus, we finally tagged the 0.5 release of Edit Flow this past weekend. The most significant new feature is a slick editorial calendar designed by Andrew Spittle, implemented by Joe Boydston, and nitpicked by me. Functionally, it allows you to view all content, regardless of status, in a week view, and then filter that content by custom status or whether it’s “related” to you. In the near future, we’ll be adding the ability to filter by categories, tags, and then additional editorial metadata. Download the most recent version and hit us back with any bugs, feedback, or ideas.
Even more exciting is that, with the new gig I started yesterday, I’ll be able to eat my own dog food and have a laboratory to play in to boot.
It feels wonderful to have my camera out again.
I’m moving to Brooklyn at the end of the month, more on that later, and need to unload the bulky household items I’ve accumulated over the past few years. These include:
If you know of anyone looking for home furniture in very good condition, I’d be willing to make a deal.
One thing I’ve observed: the market is absolutely flooded with second-hand furniture right now. I imagine this happens every June. I also know that it was nearly impossible to find the things I needed when I moved down here last August or September. This smells like a market opportunity to me.
The idea that came to mind immediately was a centralized solution: the enterprising entrepreneur would rent an empty house or storage unit, pick up all of the furniture on the market at depressed prices, store it for a couple of months, and then resell when the demand picks up again. I’d imagine that most items listed on Craigslist or on display at garage sales in June are discounted at least 50%, if not more. The biggest issue with this model, although, is that there are serious costs associated with moving the furniture twice, first to storage and then to the buyer’s home, that might well cancel out any margins.
There’s got to be a cleverer solution.
Super Analyzer is a nifty little Java app that will parse the contents of your iTunes library and then spit out statistics like song plays by album release year, library growth over time, most played artists and albums, and how often you play each album compared to the rating of the album. Furthermore, for each metric, you can break down the results by decade, genre, album and artist. For me, it’s all about the 2000′s.
Or time charts or whathaveyou. Three methods of visualizing activity on a given topic over time.
Google News search result for “Apple”
New Orleans police action after Katrina
What are the best methods for visualizing information over time, and how do you measure its effectiveness in telling a more complete story to the reader? To what degree should these tools be used for navigation versus presentation?