Ideas

Often when I'm reading blogs or news articles online, I notice small spelling mistakes. They're usually the ones that get through spell checkers... the ones where the writer accidentally spelled a different word (e.g. today I saw "cap" instead of "cape"). Every time I encounter a mistake like this, I want to tell the author about it (I'm just that way about spelling). But, I'm too lazy to find a way to contact the author, and describe the mistake. I wish I could just highlight the text, make the correction, and have it sent to the author. read more »

I've been running into a recurring problem lately: when I have a lot of work on my plate, and a prospective client comes along, I have a hard time knowing if I have the capacity to take on the new project, and when, and by what deadline I could complete it. Surely this is a common problem among freelancers.

Usually, I just assume that I can do it (better to have too much work than too little), but that's definitely made my life chaotic at times, having too many projects to juggle at once, and having weeks at a time where I had to spend way too much time in front of the computer.

I've looked around for a solution that looks good to me, but I haven't found it yet. So instead, I'm going to solve the problem myself, by making a new tool. Development starts today (design started last week). read more »

Earlier today I downloaded a bookmarklet from Sumaato Labs that allows you to easily geotag your photos on Flickr using Google Maps. I tried it on a few of my photos, and was really impressed with how easy it made the geotagging process.

That got me to thinking, "wouldn't it be great if there was a website that allowed you to browse Flickr using a map?" Recently I've been playing with the Google Maps API, so after some quick searching to see if such a site existed (couldn't find one), I decided that I should sit down and make a prototype.

It quickly occurred to me that such a site would have to maintain its own database of coordinates for each photo. It's easy to find geotagged photos on Flickr by searching for photos with the tag "geotagged", but you can't directly search by latitude and longitude coordinates. read more »