Oh the Old Document Paradigm

Let’s face it, the current document paradigm is way too old to be used in our digital era. When was the last time you actually created a document whose finality was to be printed? And how many documents, these days, are meant to be read in the computer and through the internet? Think of a Microsoft Word document or an Acrobat document, they really aren’t meant to be read and navigated digitally.

The most common structure of a document (be it an article, a book or anything else) is a tree structure:

Title 1
Sub-title 1
Sub-title 2
Sub-sub-title 1
Sub-title 3
Title 2
…These types of structures are begging to be assessed by a tree controller like those found on the HTML help files (those that usually appear when you press F1 on any application) or on the Windows Explorer. We should be able to only see the part of the document that interests us at a given moment, and not the other three hundred pages. A large document is a pain to navigate (just think of the tiny scroll bar with very fast steps) and a pain to find information. Documents should be like web-pages except we would have several views possible including the old, tedious print view.

This document format would be suitable for web, desktop, mobile and printing, what else could we want?

Edit: Another idea... This way of editing a document can be implemented on the web. Editing a document on the web with an interface like this would be great for collaborative work! You would edit only part of the document at a time and the system would tell the others that this particular part is being edited but everything else could still be used and changed, as if each document was a small wikipedia. I've been working with partners both close to me and on another countries and, as you probably already know, tossing around emails with word document versions attached is not a productive way of collaborating on documents at all.

Start with the Interface or the System?

When I was studying, every time I started doing a programming exercise, I almost always started with the interface and everyone made fun of me (including myself). I knew it was wrong but I was just having fun because that's the way (uhu, uhu) I like it!

But what if it wasn't wrong? What if it was just another way of thinking and what if it was a better one?

If we start doing the architecture and then program the logic, our natural laziness will accommodate the interface to the system. If we do it the other way round, the system will accommodate our well thought interface.

Even when it's a kind of application in which the usability is not as important as the system's performance, making the system accommodate to the interface doesn't mean it's going to get slow and buggy, and in any case, the system should be optimized so that the user doesn't have to wait more than the absolutely necessary.

In the end, the user will only see the interface, and it doesn’t really matter how the system is implemented as long as it works the way it should and the user has a good response to his interaction.

Of course both ways have advantages and disadvantages and it all depends on the purpose of the application but I believe we should, if not start with the interface, at least have different people creating the interface and the system in order not to make the mistake of designing an interface that reflects the inner system.

Wi-Fi everywhere

Today I was thinking about a way of having high-speed internet everywhere and I thought about this system:

Peter has a closed Wi-Fi network in his home and he decided to subscribe the Wi-Fi sharing service on the most common ISPs (including ISP A) in his area and opened his network with the necessary security rules.

From this moment on, he gets a discount from his ISP because he is sharing the network and the ISP can see that some users are using it.

John is a subscriber of ISP A so when he reaches Peter's network, he is automatically connected and is able to surf the internet within the bandwidth and time limits specified by Peter.

This way most of this country is covered with Wi-Fi networks and everyone has internet everywhere without having to pay any subscription to mobile phone networks.

ISP A wins because Peter will tell his friends how cool it is to be in ISP A when we are outside our home.


Do you think this could work? (I don't think so, but it would be a better world wouldn't it?)

edit: Hehehe this is funny. as Waldir pointed out, I've just discovered Fon's market model :P http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsFon