Half baked but crispy

Manymoon: Project Management with Google Apps Integration

Written by Darrell Etherington.

There’s no shortage of options for those looking to manage projects using web-based applications these days. Manymoon is another recent entry in this expanding category, and they are a serious contender that doesn’t lack for professionalism and features. But is there something you can get at Manymoon that you aren’t already getting with your current project management solution?

Manymoon is well-designed, with a clean interface throughout. Of course, that’s true of a lot of project management web apps, and especially the free ones targeted at the independent, rather than the enterprise, user. Commands and tools are housed in submenus and tabs to keep visual clutter on any given page to a minimum. And I do find that everything is located where I intuitively expect it to be, which is not necessarily always the case in other apps.

Your home screen looks more like a Facebook newsfeed than the dashboard-type interface you might be used to with other, comparable services. You receive updates here based on the recent activities of members of your project team. Things like the creation or completion of a task or a project, what any member is currently working on, and additions to the project team will all show up here as they occur.

Setting up a project is easy, and assigning sub-tasks within that project is as complicated or as simple as you need it to be. By default, task addition is shown in a convenient quick entry mode — all you need to enter is a title. Clicking “Show options” allows you to add more detailed information, like a due date, priority, project staff responsible and file attachments.

One really nice feature that sets Manymoon apart from other similar services is its Google Apps integration. You can tie your project and task deadlines to Google Calendar, right from within the web app, automatically. And you can attach documents directly from your Google Docs account, as well as those you upload from your hard drive. It’s definitely a huge plus if you depend on Google Docs as much as I do.

They’ve taken some cues from Facebook and Twitter, in that you can quickly and easily post about what you’re currently working on, or a useful link, from entry fields on the right of the home page. This certainly comes in handy when you want to draw your team’s attention to a useful resource without going to the trouble of sending a mass email.

While the basic version is free, Manymoon also offers two levels of upgrade, which offer you more storage space, and other custom options, for $5 and $10 a month. Since for my purposes the 5MB allowed on the free version is more than enough, I highly recommend Manymoon as an inexpensive project management solution, especially for those who already depend heavily on Google Apps.

Does the Google Apps integration in Manymoon appeal to you?

Ada Lovelace Role Model: Desi McAdam

On Ada Lovelace Day, it's my pleasure to sing high praises for my best friend and partner of over 8 years, one of the most wonderful, hardworking and ethical people that I've ever met in my life: Desi McAdam.

Not only is Desi a role-model and example to women software developers through her tireless work as a Principal Consultant at Hashrocket, she's also the founder of DevChix, an organization devoted to advocating women's place in our unarguably male-dominated industry.

Not trying to be immodest, but you know that saying: "Behind every great man is a great woman"... well in this case it's certainly true. I'd be lost without my beloved Desi.

Ada Lovelace Day: Tribute to Suw Charman-Anderson

Suw Charman, London Copyfighters’ Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop speeches at Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, London by Cory Doctorow

For Ada Lovelace Day, it will probably come as no surprise that I’m choosing to blog about Suw, my wife and mad ninja geek soulmate. Suw came up with the idea for Ada Lovelace Day because she often went to conferences where no women were on the panels, even though she knew plenty of incredibly talented, intelligent women who would contribute to the discussion about technology and social media.

As she said when she launched Ada Lovelace Day:

Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised.  

It’s not necessarily a lack of women in technology that Suw was mourning, but a lack of visibility.

Suw also wanted to highlight the contributions of women in technology and science so they can serve as role models for girls. I’m from the US, and it’s long been known that girls start school with strong math skills but lose interest in their tweens, mostly due to social pressure. Suw said that the situation is similar here in the UK.

One of the reasons I chose Suw is because I think she’s a great role model for girls who want to study technology and science. When Suw and I first started dating, I remarked to a friend that she was probably the first woman I dated who out-geeked me, and while that might sound like typical male insecurities, I love her for it. Being a geek is not just about skills and knowledge but also about passion, and she has a passion for knowledge, not just in terms of computers and the internet but for all kinds of knowledge, whether it was the geology she studied at university, physics or psychology. Her curiosity is limitless, and if we share a common failing it is that we’re so curious about nearly everything that we sometimes find it difficult to focus on just one thing. She is a keen observer, and she quickly turns from noting a trend or a pattern to asking deeper questions about the underlying causes and motivations driving that trend. She wants to understand the world around her.

She also is a pioneer. I felt like a blogging charlatan when I met her. I started blogging in 2004 at the request of my editor at the BBC. I quickly fell in love with it, but Suw had been exploring blogs and other forms of social media long before. She set herself up as a ‘blogging consultant’, and many people told her that she couldn’t make a living with it. But she has, largely because she was years ahead of the curve of blogging and social media consultants that have sprung up in the past few years, and she remains ahead.

One of the things that keeps her ahead of the curve is not just her knowledge of the technology but also a deep understanding of people’s relationship to the technology and how social motivations influence our use of technolgy. I think the psychology of social media is fascinating, and I think Suw’s understanding that the fundamental human need to not only express ourselves but to communicate drives so much of the current trends online and on mobile.

She’s also a doer, and I think that Ada Lovelace Day proves it. She realised that highlighting women’s contributions in technology is important, and instead of getting frustrated, she did something, something that she hopes to build on. For all these reasons and more, that’s why I have chosen to blog about Suw Charman-Anderson, my wife and someone who I think is not only inspirational to girls looking to become tomorrow’s technology leaders but someone who inspires me.

The Women of XML

It's Always Ada Lovelace Day at O'Reilly

Ada Lovelace Day - Celebrating women in tech

Today (March 24) is Ada Lovelace Day, a great idea organised by Suw Charman-Anderson. Over 1,000 people have signed up to write a blog post about a woman in technology whom they admire. Although I didn’t sign the pledge I’m doing a post anyway. I knew about Ada since the day I read about her semi-fictionalised character in that amazing steampunk novel, The Difference Engine, and well, I was impressed. Plus I like the aim of the whole project.

Ada Lovelace Day was founded to raise the visibility of women in tech, and rightly so. This sector is woefully bad at getting more gender balance into the industry, and that is partly why I’ve put a debate about the issue into Geek ‘n Rolla next month.

Ada Lovelace herself was fascinating. Born in 1815 she became the world’s first computer programmer. In 1842 she translated some notes on Charles Babbage’s invention, the Analytical Engine, and then created a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with it. Thus the first computer program was born.

The first computer programming language was thus named Ada. In 1942 the ENIAC was programmed not by men but by six women. A woman, Grace Hopper inspired the development of the COBOL programming language. So computers are steeped in female history.

The Guardian has a great list of women in tech. But I’ll be honest. I don’t know many of them, so allow me to list some of the great women in this business today I that have had the privilege to meet, aside from Suw herself, and some I’d like to meet. This list is not comprehensive and yes - before you ask - it includes people who don’t code because there are plenty of men in tech who don’t code but still consider themselves in tech. Including me! Capeesh? And besides, these women have to put up with all us guys, so I think they deserve a roll of honour don’t you?

In addition to which, the next time you see an advisory board with no women members, or a tech event with no women speakers, then at least now you might have a list to refer to for some ideas, right? Right. (see also Geekspeakr.com)

Adriana Lukas, mediainfluencer.net
Aleks Krotoski, The Guardian
Alicia Navarro, Skimbit
Amanda Lorenzani, Excite
Amanda Rose, Twestival
Anna Bance, Girlmeetsdress.com
Anna Colclough, Tourdust.com
Avid Larizadeh, Accel Ventures
Basheera Khan, journalist
Bena Roberts, Gomonews.com
Bindi Karia, Microsoft
Caroline Roberts, WE Connect
Carrie Marsh, Mydeo
Cate Sevilla, BitchBuzz
Catherine Williams, Osborne Clarke
Christina Domecq, Spinvox
Clare Logie, HBOS Women
Daniel Aarens, Linqia.com
Deirdre Molloy, freelance
Elizabeth Varley, Onlinecontentuk.org
Elizabetta Camilleri, Tereca
Helen Keegan, Beepmarketing.com
Hermione Way, Newspepper
Inmaculada Martinez, Stradbrokeadvisors
Isabel Fox, IF Communications
Jane Houghton, British Venture Capital Association
Jemima Kiss, Guardian
Jenny Fielding
Joanna Geary, The Times
Judith Clegg, 2nd Chance Tuesday
Julie Meyer, Entrepreneur Country
Karen Hunton, Toptable.co.uk
Katie Lips, Treasuremytext
Katie Moffat, PR
Leisa Reichelt, Freelance user experience consultant
Linda Bernardi, Straterra Partners
Lisa Bilton, Life-Essentials.com
Liz Bolshaw, Lymehound
Margaret Gold, Betavine
Maria Dramalioti-Taylor, Protos Capital
Martha Lane Fox, Luckyvoice.com
Melissa Geffert, Opal Telecom
Michelle Dewberry, Chiconomise.com
Michelle Martin, Digital Planet
Miranda Munn, NovaLoca.com
Natalie Diep, Morrison & Foerster LLP
Nicola Maguire, Reed Smith
Peggy Anne Saltzman, MsearchGroove
Petra Johansson, Twistedtree.co.uk
Priya Prakash, Priyascape.com
Rachel Armitage, Zoombu
Rachel Bremer, Spark PR
Rassami Hok Ljungberg, Rassami PR
Renate Nyborg, Poken

Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp.com
Sally Goodsell, Finance South East
Sarah Cebik, DLA Piper UK LLP
Sarah Eaton, GLE Growth Capital
Sarah McVittie, Texperts
Sasha, “sashinka”
Sayula Kirby, Index Capital
Shaa Wasmund, Smarta.com
Sharon Vosmek, Astia
Sherry Coutu, Cambridge Angels
Simone Brummelhuis, The Next Women
sMary harrington, School of Everything
Sonia Calvo, BlueandPink
Sophie Cox, Worldeka
Sophie Hobson, Smarta
Steph Bouchet, Rougefrog
Sue Guerrieri, SugarPlum Shop
Sue Lawton, WE Connect
Swannny, Gadget Girl
Thayer Prime, just unique
Vero Pepperrell, Thatcanadiangirl.co.uk
Wendy White, CEO Moonfruit
Yuri Bacas Hosaka, CityAmigo
Zoe Margolis , Girlonetrack
Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson, Huddle.net

(Apologies if I’ve accidentally left you off the list!)

Web-based applications are programs but you can't read or change the source code, so they aren't free software

Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation and the free software movement, created a bit of a stir last year when he told the Guardian that the concept of using web-based programs such Google's Gmail was "worse than stupidity".

Now he has returned to the fray with an article on The Javascript Trap.

Stallman wants people to run free software so that they can read and change the source code and share the results. That's possible when you run programs on your own PC. Web-based (so-called cloud) applications -- mostly written in JavaScript, but sometimes in Flash -- don't provide for that. They just download huge chunks of code to your PC without even telling you. Stallman writes:

For instance, Google Docs downloads into your machine a Javascript program which measures half a megabyte, in a compacted form that we could call Obfuscript because it has no comments and hardly any whitespace, and the method names are one letter long. The source code of a program is the preferred form for modifying it; the compacted code is not source code and the real source code of this program is not available to the user.
Browsers don't normally tell you when they load Javascript programs. Most browsers have a way to turn off Javascript entirely, but none of them can check for Javascript programs that are nontrivial and non-free. Even if you're aware of this issue, it would take you considerable trouble to identify and then block those programs. However, even in the free software community most users are not aware of this issue; the browsers' silence tends to conceal it.

And, of course, if you don't like Google's proprietary software, there's nothing you can do about it except not use Google. You can't easily inspect Google's Gmail code, and you can't write your own software to replace it.

Stallman doesn't have any real answers at the moment. However, he has put down a marker and told the people who believe in free software (or, as a breakaway faction calls it, "open source") that online/cloud-based web applications are not free.

Ada Lovelace Day ABC