Back in 2009, when we were really just getting started with what is now Timebinder, Mark and I went to see Dan Bricklin talk at the New York Tech Meetup. Dan is the co-inventor of the VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. One of the anecdotes that dan related was about hearing back from his users for the first time. It turned out that anesthesiologists were big fans of the new software. They were using it to calculate dosages for their patients. Dan described this as completely unexpected. No matter how much research you do, there will always be users and use cases that you have not anticipated. Some of those users will seem perfectly obvious in retrospect. Of Course! Anesthesiologists!
As we tighten the last screws on Timebinder prior to launch, I keep asking myself who our anesthesiologists are. To be honest, there’s no way of knowing. Still, I can’t wait to meet them.
Here at Graphient our thoughts are with those engaged in a higher stakes game than any startup ever could be. This morning I set Tweetdeck to search for “Tehran” for about an hour and watched the messages of hope and revolution stream by. It is amazing to see a technology derided by so many as useless and narcissistic have such a profound effect on world affairs.
Good luck to the Iranian people. And to Twitter: congratulations, your shipment of relevance has arrived.
By now, you have probably seen Sir Tim Berners-Lee talking about the importance of Open Data at this year’s TED conference. If you haven’t here it is. Take a look because it’s important:
I’m posting this now because the Open Data movement seems to be getting some traction–at least in Government circles. A couple of weeks ago the Obama administration launched Data.gov a clearing house for government data. Washington D.C. has become a leader in municipal public data, putting some 260 feeds of data out in raw form. And now the UK has decided to get in on the act: Gordon Brown the embattled Prime Minister, announced yesterday that none other than Sir Tim Himself would be heading up the initiative to open England’s data up to the public.
This was largely damage control after a series of embarrassing disclosures about how members of Parliament expense things, but it is a welcome development all the same.
We here at Graphient wish Sir Tim the best of luck moving forward and very much hope that FreeTime will become the application of choice for those looking at all that data.
