HayStackOverflow
I start more fun projects than I can finish. I used to think that dropping projects was bad form, that it was undisciplined. It bugged me for a long time too, to the point where I would wait to get excited about an idea until I knew I had a chance of completing it.1 But a few years ago I realized that it’s just the natural evolution of ideas. Some ideas take on their own life and others die on the vine. And that’s just fine.
I have four active projects these days, not including a handful of weblogs. The newest is HayStackOverflow, a play on StackOverflow and Haystack. It was something that seemed funny late one night, and that had a glimmer of hope the next morning. So I registered the name, mocked it up, and started hacking away.
In a few days I’ve made a lot of progress. The code works with a few tables in a database. The pages are generated with simple PHP (using CodeIgniter), resulting clean(ish) HTML. I’ve started on some Javascripts, adding a few pop up lists and forms, all in the least intrusive way I can. I even spent a few hours measuring page load times, so I could quantify the many tips I’ve read over the years. 2 It’s fun. That in itself is the payoff for a project like this.
I’m not certain that I’ll finish this one, but I can see hacking it to functional in the next few weeks. There’s a bonus that the parts apply to a number of other projects I’m working on, so at worst I’ve learned a few things.
But what does it do?
It scratches an itch I’ve had for a while: how to filter through the thousands of TED talks, Google Tech Talks, and iTunesU lectures. I love watching the good stuff, but don’t have time to weed through all of raw materials myself. But when I get recommendations from people for the good stuff, it’s pure gold.
It’s a link site for ongoing learning, the inverse of a Digg or a Reddit: it is aimed at content with depth. Documentaries, lectures, tech talks, papers, essays, textbooks — anything that pushes you to think and learn. Users can submit links and rate the materials, but the social incentives will be limited (no comments, no visible karma, and no self-promotion unless the materials are actually substantial). And, all on one page. It’s not an idea that deserves a mountain, just a simple placard of recent nuggets.
And that’s it.