Second Half

I just recently learned that Google Reader, Google's feed (RSS/Atom) reader has a new beta. So I decided to give it a try.

I am very much liking what I see and the fact that it's not another app, that it's in my browser, is nice (but that has its own problems that I'll write about some other time). It's got some nice keyboard shortcuts, and as long as you can export your current newsreader's subscriptions into OPML, you can import them right into Google Reader.

Give it a look, if you're looking for a strong browser-based newsfeed reader.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 10:13 PM | Permalink

From a handful of great guys in Vancouver comes Dabble DB, which, as the company puts it: "...combines the best of group spreadsheets, custom databases, and intranet web applicaitons into a new way to manage and share your information on the web."

Thanks to Tim Bray, via his Ongoing blog for the post that mentioned it.

Anyway, I started a 30-day free trial of Dabble DB back on June 27th. Since that time, I have been impressed with both the product and the company. The product basically, as they say, gets you out of all those database applications that we wind up shoe-horning into spreadsheets because they are just two-dimensional tables and Excel makes it easy to make those. The problem is that once you really want to do anything remotely interesting with your data (and I'm talking mostly non-numeric data for me), you're not quite sure how to go about it and it's definitely not straightforward. Dabble lets you import a spreadsheet with ease and then you can ease your way into managing and slicing and dicing and organizing and filtering and grouping so you can get the data represented and presented in a way that makes the most sense for your use.

The most interesting attraction to me (as if the above were not enough) was that once you've got your categories (read as tables) and fields defined, Dabble DB lets you "export" the code for a web-based form that you can drop into any web page. Once you do this, and someone fills out the form, the data goes right into your database. This was a survey waiting to happen.

So, with Dabble DB in hand, and me being in a new job involving trying to find out what was on the mind of nearly 400 college students, I set up the database with questions for field names and posted a survey to the web. Not only was this insanely simple to do, but within 24 hours of sending out the email request to students, asking them to complete the survey, I had a Dabble DB database with 100 responses (ok, it helped that I offered a chance to win an iPod Nano). The survey started on July 18th and by the deadline (August 15th), I had 201 unique responses. And all of the data was in a form that allowed me to analyze it in a myriad of ways with very little effort. I found myself waking up in the morning with a new way to look at the data and literally minutes after I sat down, I had the view of the data as I wanted.

Interestingly, since the product is relatively new, along the way of my 30-day trial, the guys at Dabble DB, happened to be adding features to the product that made it even easier to do certain types of tabulation. I know they weren't just for me, but their responsiveness to requests was nearly frightening (I do hope they sleep).

They have a wonderful User Forum set up and they are incredibly active in reading every single posting and responding in thoughtful ways and, if needed, requesting direct email to resolve an issue. I cannot say enough positive things about how this has gone so far. The forum itself is now open to the public, so you can even get a sense of the action and positive vibe before you sign up.

The database is multi-user, and you can allow read-only access or read-write or read-write with build privileges.

I think that these guys have reached just the right balance of functionality and service and the pricing is reasonable. I'm using the "Basic" level, which lets me build up to 10 applications with 5 unique users and it includes SSL.

If you're looking for a sharable web-based database app, I'd strongly encourage you to at least take the 30-day free (no credit card needed) trial.

No disclaimer needed as I have zero financial interest in the company; other than it's saving me a ton of time and, as we know, time is money.

P.S. The company also has a blog.

P.P.S I only mentioned a handful of the many features of the product. There's lots more that I haven't even taken advantage of (yet).

Posted by Bob Monsour at 10:04 PM | Permalink

I just completed my third week in a new job. I am now employed by Princeton University, serving in the role of Associate Director for External Affairs at the new Center for Innovation in Engineering Education. The center is part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Networking outside of the University is a key part of my job. However, there are a lot of people - roughly 5,000 faculty and staff and close to 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students - at this place. I have had need to find people's email addresses and phone numbers as I learn my way around.

To do that, Princeton has a wonderful web search service that serves to search the University site. It can also search for people. You can even do a Google web search from there. Hence, there are 3 choices once you get to the search page.

What I find myself wanting to do most often is a "people" search. However, the default setting is to do a "Princeton.edu" search. See for yourself.

So, what happens is that I go to the search site and 9 times out of 10, I enter a name and click "Go", which results in a bunch of articles, rather than a directory of people with that name.

Well, I couldn't take it anymore and had to find out a way to change the behavior of the page. That's where Javascript comes into play; and not only that, there's Greasemonkey that lets me do it in a way that I can share it with all of you (assuming you're out there somewhere...hello? anybody there?). Ok.

First, for Greasemonkey to work for you, you have to be using the Firefox browser. If you are, you can find Greasemonkey here. If you've come this far, just follow those directions when you get there.

Once you have it, you can install my "PU People First" script, which can be found here.

Once it's installed, go ahead and reload the Princeton search page. It should now have the "Princeton people" radio button selected, instead of the "Princeton.edu" button.

I hope you find this helpful.

Update: I added a feature to the script that puts the cursor into the search box after the page loads, saving a tab to get the cursor into the field.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 10:51 PM | Permalink