These are my personal things and some of them relate to the specifics of how I work and where I work, namely with a broadband connection at home, for work I use a VPN connection, I also travel a lot so use mobile broadband (sic) from a variety of devices on my laptop and I also use a separate personal PC at home for doing a lot of research on as it has two big screens attached which is way easier than a laptop. I also use several different phones and SIM cards for testing etc, now that’s out of the way here’s my list, feel free to comment, add, suggest ways to fix etc.
- Call/SMS/MMS history – local to device so keeps getting lost when devices change
- IM chat history – local to PC so no continuity
- There are services that allow you to proxy IM through them and store info on the web for retrieval later but if you have to use a work proxy to get out in the first place this breaks that
- Browsing history – local to PC so can’t access consistently
- I do use services like Del.icio.us but this is not the same. Albeit very good as I often forget to post a URL as browsing around and then can’t remember how to get it back, Google helps of course but a searchable history across all devices would rock
- Connectivity – specifically on the East Coast main line
- I can’t stay connected all the way down, I could use the onboard Wifi when it’s present but it’s costly and I have all the connectivity devices I should need to stay connected, just doesn’t work
- Power – when it runs out
- More and more places are providing power but when I get on a train that doesn’t have it now I groan inwardly, fuel cells promised a lot but aren’t there yet and try staying dialled in on a 3G phone for a few hours and watch the battery die
- Sending a URL – to an IM buddy
- Highlight URL, copy, open IM, open chat window, paste URL, send or post to Del.icio.us and do the same with the link or the tag – I want 1 Click (maybe two) as in click ‘send to buddy’, select buddy and that’s it
- Tags – I have them in Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Odeo, Last.fm
- I want one set across all services – simple, this is sort of what Technorati, Icerocket et all do but they simply look at all the services for a given tag, there is no real integration between them all
- Presense / Availabilty – not good enough
- Another integration one, I have it on MSN, Skype, PC, Mobile etc but for one it’s not detailed enough and more importantly it’s all pretty manual (except the auto “I’m away” message but again not good enough. Why can’t proximity give my availability, if I’m on my mobile why can’t my PC comms apps know that and set accordingly, if I walk away to get a coffee same thing! If I’m using Skype to make a call why does my mobile ring or my home phone (I know why but you get my point) If I’ve been writing in Word for 30 mins then I’m busy, if I’m just paging through a doc I’m not so busy – activity driven proximity based presence/availability is what I need
- Notification – too many and too different
- The windows system tray goes some way to fixing this but the nirvana would be all apps that need to notify you of anything go through one interface that can be controlled and set to your preferences depending on your state. I vaguely recall an app like this for Mac but as I’m offline can’t check and I don’t use Mac
- Content Syncing – manually on several devices
- I hate the fact that when I get a new piece of music I have to take several manual steps to make sure it gets on the right devices, yes I have Smart playlists in iTunes but once you start to really use them and also use different devices you find they aren’t as useful as first thought, I can fill my Shuffle with the 1GB of most recently added music to my library but that’s almost always not what I want so I have to create a manual playlist and keep it up to date, I also like to put some music on my laptop for when I’m away so have to do that. It’s all wrong if you ask me, I want to see a new field in the ID tags for a piece of content that allows you to set where a piece of content should live and then let it just happen for you, I mentioned this about a year ago and tried to get it built in to a new music service we are developing but nothing yet I have to say
- Interruptions – this is a big one but specific to mobile use
- If I’m typing a text message I don’t want a call to disturb me til I’m finished, If I’m syncing mail same thing, may be even more specific to using the SPV C500
- If I’m rocking my head to a killer tune on my shuffle don’t talk to me :) or at least wait til its finished
That's it for now but I'm sure there's more as another thing that annoys me is the fact I forget as much stuff as I think of
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