The Jeff R Project

I’ve noticed a pattern in my life that I think might help some people, so I’m going to force it on share it with you.

Do you ever have moments where you’ve been working on a project/item/report/blog post for a while and you find yourself staring at the computer screen but nothing is happening?

Happens to me a lot. Just staring at a problem and not making any headway.

The experts tell you to think about something else, turn your attention away and distract yourself. Go for a walk, grab a glass of water etc. But if you’re like me, you find yourself inexplicably drawn right back in having made no progress, 30 seconds later.

So what I sometimes do is reboot my computer. Save your work first.

It’s a great way to force yourself away from the problem for 2 or 3 minutes (or more in some cases) and you can’t just jump back into it.

Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it does force that tiny break which is good for you.

I’ll be right back in about 5 minutes…

It wasn’t the best weekend, mostly because Chris was super sick all weekend. It didn’t entirely stop us but slowed us down. It’s now Monday and he’s not 100% better, but improving. Poor guy.

I spent the majority of the weekend working on my WordPress plugin. Standout Comments runs the comment system on this blog and many of my other personal blogs. My partners in this, Alex Shalman and local marketer John Chow hope to launch this to the public on March 25.

I’ve been struggling with Tweetbacks, a system for tracking tweets about your blog across the Twittersphere. I think I finally nailed it 100% this weekend, but it cost me about 8 hours of tracking, testing and coding to get it. The main problem was that it sent thousands of requests and Twitter would rate-limit me. When Twitter rate-limits you, they send back an error that says “Enhance your chill.” Cute, but not helpful.

We had to cancel some plans with friends and the weather wasn’t great for getting out or having the windows open too much either, it seemed like I was opening and closing windows every 5 minutes, or turning the heat on or off too.

Combine that with “Spring Forward” and the new early morning darkness and it was a little confusing. Oh well, now it’s Monday. Which can only mean one thing…

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At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop”.

The original article is on IndiaTimes here.

Mistry demonstrates some amazing technology including projector and camera systems that the user can wear transforming any flat surface into a computer system. He started by pulling apart 2 ball-based mice and transforming their physical rollers with some string and springs into a gesture based input device. You know those wearable gloves that let people manipulate 3D objects on a computer? Yeah, that – from spare parts!

If Mistry can bring this kind of tech to live, then we’re going to be living in some amazing times. What’s cool is that Mistry and his team have actually developed this tech. It’s not just theory, but actually working! He even plays PONG! on the floor of a subway. He’s promised to release the open source code to all of his development, which means just about anyone could pick it up, build on it and start releasing consumer products for a fraction of the cost.

Thanks to Susan and Pardeep for sharing this with me.

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For the non-techies out there, this website or blog runs on the WordPress platform. WordPress is a tool that makes blogging easier by simplifying a lot of the “tech” bits.

That said, I like my “tech” bits, so I dig a little deeper.

I run several (over 10) WordPress blogs, and even started looking at WordPress MU to build communities.

I also started developing plugins, or add-ons, to give it even more functionality. My first attempt was a good idea, poorly implemented, that I haven’t been back to revisit.

Recently, I’ve been working with a commercial or premium plugin with my friend Alex called Standout Comments and it’s nearly ready. We’ve designed it to be an all-in-one comment plugin with lots of great features for your average site owner, but also for Internet Marketers who want “everything”. It’s not perfect, but it’s “good enough” for a beta release.

Alex has lined up Vancouver blogger and big-man-on-campus, John Chow to help us (awesome) and given a couple of people a private beta copy. I’ve installed it on all of my main blogs (including this one) but am looking for more testers.

You can test Standout Comments in one of 2 ways.

1. Leave comments here and/or tweet about posts using the Tweetback URL provided – this is the function I’ve tested least. Tweetbacks should be tracked and show up in comments automatically.
2. Request a beta copy by leaving a comment below. I’ll take a look at your site and make a decision. Ideally you get a bunch of visitors and comments daily to put the plugin through it’s paces.

Beta testers will get free access to the software when it’s launched.

Twitter released this video demonstrating their development over the years. It’s not techy, although you could analyze it if you wanted, but it IS damned cool. Give it a watch and let me know what you think.

Twitter Code Swarm from Ben Sandofsky on Vimeo.