Syncing Up Life - Elements of a Personal Web App
My first step in creating a personal web application was developing specifications and a basic site outline. As I mentioned in my first post on this subject, the app is first and foremost for me, but I plan to build it in such a way that it would be useful for just about anyone. I started by asking a simple question: What information in my everyday life needs to be organized, archived, consolidated, and shared?
The answer resulted in two major types of content - public and private. The following categories are general enough that they should cover most individuals.
Private
- Calendar
- aggregates iCal, Google Calendar, plus workouts and social events
- Contacts (Address Book)
- import and sync data, provides backup and
- To-Do Lists
- categorized individual lists with a consolidated view
- Grocery & Shopping Lists
- simple, secure, shared list functionality for use by roommates/family as well
- Health
- workout and competition tracking in calendar, personal stat tracking (weight, etc.)
- Notes / Journal
- simplified Evernote-style system
- Social Networking Input Feeds
- pull together Facebook, Twitter, and all others into a single feed
- Events
- aggregate evite, Facebook invites, etc. into calendar
Public
- Blog
- integrated into the site as a subdomain
- Weather Forecast
- Tailored to where I am on any given day - do I need an umbrella?
- Bookmarks and Links
- categorized, computer and browser-independant listing with favicons
- Adventures (trip reports)
- descriptions of trips with locations, maps, photos, etc.
- Media (books, music, and movies
- currently reading/watching, lists of media to purchase, backup repository
- Education
- personal and professional development resources and info
- Projects / Work
- portfolio, current projects, LinkedIn integration
- Social Networking Output Feed
- push out my various public feeds like Twitter, blog RSS in one place
I have created an application with some of this functionality already and will continue to build it out over the coming weeks and months. If there is anything you do on a daily basis that could benefit from being consolidated into this kind of system, let me know!
1 comment
Feb 15, 2010
Colin Ulen said...
I would keep in mind that your private list and your public list shouldn't be mutually exclusive. There are some projects/books you might not want the world to know you are reading and there are probably some calendar events you might want to share. Just as two examples.
