The Blog of Jonas Martinsson

There is this great insight about human relationships that I keep coming back to. The whole concept of it makes my mind spin because it is so meta and fresh. I first read the piece more than half a year ago, but I keep coming back to it. In fact, it's the most important blog post I ever read! Even if it would turn out that this theory has got it all wrong, the concept is still stupendous and enriches the understanding of social behavior. I am referring to Steve Pavlina's article from early this year, titled " Understanding Human Relationships ". In it, Pavlina puts forward an idea where all relationships are purely perceptions. He says that the relationship exists entirely inside you and by making a change in yourself you will change your perception of the other party. This works in parallel in two different ways. Firstly, by changing yourself you can see the other person from a slightly different perspective. Pavlina argues that the errors we see in others are typ...

A while back I decided to port FeedJournal into a web application and offer it at feedjournal.com . The decision was greatly inspired by the user community who strongly voiced their opinion about choosing the web option. I had a vote here on my blog a month ago and a very large majority voted in favor of the web. The two most important factors were: Not having to install the application locally Cross platform availability I am happy to announce that the development is well underway and going smooth. Due to the fact that the code base is C#/.NET 2.0, my choice of technology has naturally fallen on ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server. As is a standard these days, I plan on including some AJAX in the interface to improve the user experience. Users can expect a launch sometime this year. I plan to roll out features incrementally and having an early release with a basic feature set. The idea is to early on grow a strong user base who will influence FeedJournal's direction and future. On the deve...

A new version of FeedJournal is available for download! What's new in this version: Improved installation program. Improved support for Atom 1.0 feeds. Download the build from FeedJournal's download page . Note about Blogspot/Blogger feeds: If you previously had issues with Blogspot's Atom feeds you should try the new build. If you are using Blogspot's new feed URLs (ending with "posts/default") please use the workaround outlined in the FAQ .

Google? What's going on? I used to like you, but lately you've been disappointing me plenty. I'm not going to regurgitate that the Redmond guys beat you to the live RSS feeds for web searches . I still feel burned about the way you deleted my iGoogle start page a few months back, and didn't acknowledge the problem until much later. I still can't access my Google Calendar over HTTPS on iGoogle. Google Analytics were non-functional in iGoogle for more than a month, perhaps not surprisingly considering there is not even an official Google Analytics control! But who cares, I've moved on to another start page anyway. Greener pastures. But what's really annoys me is what's happening with Google Reader . Lately I've been suffering intolerable delays in retrieving my feeds. Pushing the Refresh button does absolutely nothing. Today, more than 18 hours after I published my last blog post on Blogger (also Google-owned) it showed up in Reader. Pffft... And addi...

On my daily commute to and from the office I enjoy listening to podcasts on my iPod. One of my favorite shows is Microsoft/Channel-9 sponsored " The Micro-ISV Show ", where Michael Lehman and Bob Walsh interview software developers who run their own businesses with small means, often on a smaller scale. The podcast is a spin-off from Bob's book "Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality", where he describes how to plan, market, host and sell your software. Amazon.com: Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality: Books: Bob Walsh ISBN : 1590596013 ISBN-13 : 9781590596012 While the book itself contains plenty of interviews with independent software vendors (ISVs), the audio interviews is a great addition and I always look forward to tuning in to new shows. The interview questions are all relevant and always shed new light on areas where software and business intersect. Some of the many notable shows have featured Eric Sink, Joel Spolsky and Nick Bradbury. My only criticism is re...

"Founders at Work" is a inspiring book for anyone interested in reading the stories of successful software companies' early days. A lot of well-known companies' founders get to tell their story on how they made it all happen, and how they felt at the time of the start-up. Amazon.com: Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days: Books: Jessica Livingston ISBN : 1590597141 ISBN-13 : 9781590597149 It is fascinating to learn that so many successful companies struggled in their early days, and that they often didn't know which product to market. Many of the founders tell stories of how they stumbled upon their successful idea after many failed attempts, and that the product which finally took off was just a side project. This is for example true for both Blogger and PayPal, among many more. "Founders at Work" should be mandatory reading for anyone running a start-up software company or with such aspirations. It is especially interesting to read...

Let me be the first to admit (after my wife) that I spend too much time optimizing my to do-lists and calendar implementations - more than I actually earn from the process. Like a large number of other like-minded, I am trying to find the perfect balance between easy note-taking and a manageable and computerized system. I love the immediate availability of a pen and paper in my pocket, although I have been through a lot of other systems like a larger Filofax system (not mobile enough), Palm and PocketPC (too slow compared to handwriting) as well as the cool index-card based Hipster PDA (too difficult to sync with the PC). GTD is obviously the system of choice these days, with a splash of Covey 's Weekly Reviews and role-based goals thrown in for good measures. An eruption of online GTD implementations have become available lately but it's not until now that we are finally starting to see them mature into useful tools. My vote goes to Toodledo - it has a nice AJAXy interface w...