Scooped by Google

I’m trying to start this good habit of going around writing software for no particular reason but for learning and personal pleasure. Not too easy though, given how lazy I am. I usually enjoy writing software but only do it on demand. Either course assignments or work. Since none of these deal with Ruby or Rails (yet), and I’m trying to get my hands dirty on those, I have to leave the couch.

The thing then, as people always say, is to find something that bothers you, something you want for yourself. A personal itch.

I’m a heavy browser user. Lots of tabs all the time on lots of subjects. Some frequent breadth-first-search on Wikipedia articles. The problem is that I use browsers all over. Especially now that my computer is momentarily dead (found the culprit already, waiting for replacement part), I have no fixed internet place. So I start digging up some subject and, before I get to the later tabs (there’s an endless supply of them!), I have to go and leave them unread. And next time I log in, it’s on another computer, and I can’t restore those tabs until I get back to the original computer.

So I thought “hmm… I mustn’t be the only one. This might be a nice idea for a pet project, a little app to synchronize closed tabs between computers, perhaps even expand it into some web-service with social whatever just to practice. Perhaps (my imagination was flying here) even make it a killer product for some niche and make money with it.”

Well, I got scooped. The need is gone. The itch has been scratched. And my laziness once again gets indulged. But hey, there’s the Bayesian Networks for Ruby project! More about that in some later post.