Flagger

Okay, I've just thought of the next great social networking website.

Working name for it is Flagger.

The basic premise came to me last night when I was trying to figure out the availabilities of people for just hanging out. Back when I was living in a dormitory at Miami, this was pretty easy to do; just look out the door, see which other ones are open and what people's body language is.

Now, inside an apartment, let alone an apartment where I can't even leave my door open for people to stop on by because it opens to the outside directly, that's not possible. My friends and I are strewn across miles of area, which makes it hard to just drop by, something that works a lot better for my personality than calling people up and seeing if they want to do something, and only get shot down.

Enter Flagger.

Flagger is a "contact manager" website, where you and your friends sign up, and have three basic settings (with corresponding color flags of green, yellow, and red): available, interruptible, and busy.

At a glance, you can see who's up for doing something right now, shoot them a line, and instantly have someone to hang out with, all without having to look up your phone directory and call down the list.

Flagger could then be customized further with renaming the flags (similar to Google Chat's status settings) contact information listed such as AIM, phone number, email address, and street address, and whatever else was desired, so that after you found someone to hang out with, you could click on the corresponding messaging service, it would launch the program needed, and bam, hangout time.

The beauty of all this (messaging service aside) is that it would require nothing more than an Internet connection, allowing someone to access this wherever they had access, such as the public library, their iPhone on lunch break, or at work. Easily accessible with no necessarily installed software, allowing everyone to use it equally.

In addition, that lack of software would mean that unlike an AIM away message, that if someone kept their computer shut off to save energy (money and environment there), or if they used a laptop in a location without an Internet connection, they could still have their status listed. This would allow people to be environmentally and economically conscious without sacrificing their ability to get in contact with people.

Flagger would probably be paid for through discrete mini-advertising, similar to Facebook, Google, Freerice.com, and so on, although that would be determined later.

What do you all think of this Web 2.0 venture?

Infinity Mileage

I finally purchased myself the Threadless Infinity MPG Tshirt, so expect to see me sporting this in just a bit over a week.

Dang it feels good to be a biker.

Inventory Management

Probably the most annoying thing right now that's preventing me from accomplishing anything really significant at work is my lack of programming training in specific, web-oriented languages, namely Javascript, and to a lesser extent, CSS.

Our inventory management software at work is a mess, and I've been going over my HTML/XHTML and CSS O'Reilly books, trying to get myself back into the webpage coding mindset, which only helps as much as the time I devote to working on this, which is sadly lacking as the LSAT approaches and my studying time for that decreases. However, I've finally started slicing apart the code of the old management website, and realized that Javascript plays a much higher role in the application of the site than I had thought.

The main issue is that I want to be able to populate the "option" code in the HTML with elements from a database file (namely users, computer types, and so on), which I forgot is not how it works.

Another solution I am considering is creating an executable in Visual Basic or C++ that will let us do the exact same thing as the current page, but I fear that would cut down in usability, as it would not be easily accessible from any IT-affiliated terminal; as the inventory management is currently accessible via a secure hyperlink, only those with IT credentials can access the inventory, but can do it from anywhere (helpful if we've forgotten to log the serial number off a new machine).

In addition, I'd like to set up a database that will let me trackback via links (similar to Mac OS X's Finder) between computer names, types, serial numbers, rooms, and so on, enabling the manager to quickly find out exactly what type of monitor, printer, laptop/desktop, and who is using what computer in what room.

If anyone has any suggestions on pre-existing software (so I don't have to write it from the ground up), that would be great. Otherwise, it looks like it's going to be a bunch of late-night coding with some caffeine :)