Tag Archives: program

Workflowy – Reinventing the Outline

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Even though I can’t remember where I found Workflowy, I know I won’t forget what it is like to use it. In short, Workflowy is an outlining application on the web. It is not complex or advanced, but it is awesome. Why is it awesome? Because it mimics the way you think according to the folks over at Workflowy. While I can’t exactly figure how that works, I like how Workflowy works. Workflowy lets me create an outline however deep I need it to be just like any old outlining program. Where the cool part comes in is that I can click on any specific item in the outline and focus on it – all the other content disappears letting me select and focus on one specific part of the outline. Perhaps this video can explain it a bit better.

I played a bit around with Workflowy to organize some small thoughts I had, but I though I could really test out the program by taking notes for a class. So last Friday I took notes for my CS 1331 class on Workflowy rather than using Pages to normally take notes. My initial feeling that Workflowy would be awesome was only confirmed by this test. I love the ability to take notes in a hierarchy of College -> CS 1331 -> Notes -> November 5th, 2010 all without knowing I’m taking notes in such a deep hierarchy. Another of my favorite features is the ability to collapse specific items in case they are too long and interfering with the cleanliness of the outline. The ease of use of the website also makes it a breeze to work with. I could not imagine outlining working anyway.

While Workflowy has a few bugs here and there, it is nothing significant enough to prevent daily usage. I would highly suggest checking Workflowy out if you are into organizing and outlines.

Thumbs up to Workflowy team!

Learning a new Keyboard Layout

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A few weeks ago, I learned about a new keyboard layout which I have not seen before. That layout was the Colemak layout.

In the past I have only seen the Dvorak keyboard layout. I did not however spend the time to learn the layout or do anything other than read about the layout and how it was different. Yet the idea of having a different keyboard layout interested me.

When I stumbled upon the Colemak keyboard layout, I googled the name to get more information about the layout. From that I came upon the “official” Colemak site. On the wiki site interface, there was one thing that stood out to me:

Your fingers on QWERTY move 2.2x more than on Colemak. QWERTY has 16x more same hand row jumping than Colemak. There are 35x more words you can type using only the home row on Colemak.

Reading this, I was intrigued on how to learn the layout and how exactly more efficient it would be to learn the Colemak layout. Doing a bit more googling and found this blog post which explained how one could go from a new keyboard layout to another one. In the blog post, there was also a foreword that explained why you might switch from one keyboard layout (perhaps QWERTY) to a new keyboard layout such as Dvorak or Colemak. The author of the post also threw in a really neat tool called Pat or JK’s Keyboard Layout Analyzer.

The keyboard layout analyzer site is really quite neat and simple. You type in or copy and paste some text that you would like analyze. Press the submit button and you are returned a page with tons of data. The result page shows the distance your fingers travel in each layout, the percent you use each of your fingers in each layout, the percent you use each row of your keyboard in each layout, and a nice picture of each keyboard layout to show which keys were pressed the most and where they are. Very nice. Plus there is a little keyboard layout generator picture that shows what the ideal keyboard would look like for the specific text you entered. Nifty on all sides.

Now I was interested to see which keyboard layout would be better for me. I had an idea that Colemak would be the winner, but I love hard data so I wanted to see which exactly would come out as the champion. What I did is that I submitted two writings to the analyzer – a normal English essay (actually one I wrote for ENGL 1101 a few weeks ago) and a large Java program I created.

The results of the analyzer were interesting. Using the analyzer I can get the distance my fingers supposedly travel across the keyboard to type the inputted text.

Keyboard Layout Distance for Java Program Distance for English Essay
QWERTY 2,529 feet 345 feet
Dvorak 1,899 feet 200 feet
Colemak 1,687 feet 174 feet

Obviously the numbers stand out showing that Colemak requires my fingers to move less which would in some way or form improve my typing speed. There were a few other layouts listed, but I have never heard of them and the difference in distance traveled was only a few feet. A few feet isn’t going to change my typing as much as going from the QWERTY layout to Colemak.

If you want to see all the information that the analyzer outputted for both of my input texts, you can click here for the Java program results and here for the essay results.

What is my decision now that I have chosen to learn Colemak? Well, I have already installed the keyboard layout onto my MacBook, so that step is gone. Instead of just saying the next step is to learn Colemak, I’m going to say the next step is to find a OS X compatible keyboard tutor program. After that then it is to learn the layout step by step.

So, hopefully I’ll have a typing tutor to share in the next few days and hopefully I’ll start learning the new layout then. Once I get an application and start using it, I’ll try to post status updates every so often.

The Social Network

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Over the weekend I saw the new movie “The Social Network” with my roommate and a friend from high school. I had not really planned on seeing it, but the desire to see my friend from high school convinced me to go see the movie even though it was late on Saturday.

What did I think? I did not get the movie. I saw the story, I understood the story, but I did not get why it needed to be the movie. Perhaps I saw the movie in this way because I have for some time saw Mark Zuckerberg as a guy who was not exactly the best of people and not exactly the most inspiring of people.

It is quite interesting as just the day after I saw the movie, I found a few articles online discussing the movie, Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg both from the New York Times.

One article discussed the truthfulness in Zuckerberg’s portrayal in the movie which is questionable for the fact that very little is publicly known about the beginnings of Facebook and the movie reveals so much.

Another interesting article discusses the generation gap of those who saw the movie and what their opinions were on Zuckerberg. Scott Rudin, one of the producers of the movie, perfectly shows what the article was about:

The older audiences see Zuckerberg as a tragic figure who comes out of the film with less of himself than when he went in, while young people see him as completely enhanced, a rock star, who did what he needed to do to protect the thing that he had created.

I asked my roommate, Sunny, if at the end of the movie he saw Mark Zuckerberg as a jerk or a hero. He replied that “he was mostly a hero, but also a jerk”. Sunny also made the point that at any part of the movie, the writers of the movie could be push the movie in any direction to create a better storyline for the audience. I asked another one of my friends, Ryan, what he thought of Zuckerberg – a jerk or a hero. “Hmm… A jerk but on the inside a nice guy. Not a hero. But an opportunist,” Ryan responded.

I find it interesting how the article displays that the current generation see Zuckerberg as person who seizes the moment to do something revolutionary without having extreme resource commonly found in large Silicon Valley business startups. Does the movie show what the current generation’s mindset is? I kind of think so. Are we now more focused on taking chances to make sure an idea moves forward and not the legal and moral consequences that could result of all the chances taken? I do not really know the answer to that question. It is something that exists in unique situations, but I am not sure if it can be said for the entire generation quite yet. There is still not yet enough data.

I really would like to know what my readers think of the entire situation. Who is Zuckerberg? Does the different views of him tell something about the generations that make the views? How much do you think the movie Zuckerberg differs from the real Zuckerberg?