My Web Brain 0.20 available for testing

Release 0.20 of My Web Brain is now available for testing. There are not a lot of user visible changes in this release. Of note:

• Session cookies are now user specific
• The HTML markup is now validated (HTML 4.01 Strict) and in content-first markup order for users with screen-readers
• A draft privacy policy has been added
• URLs that include the context, like the Today page, are more readable
• Basic paging has been added to action lists
• The default form field on a page automatically receives the focus without being selected
• New actions have the current context assigned by default
• There have been a few small stylistic changes

There are still a lot of features and polish to add to the web application. I hope to post the next release in two weeks.

If you have any feedback or comments please go ahead and leave them at the My Web Brain Google Group. If you want to be kept informed of developments, you can subscribe to the My Web Brain news feed.

Visit My Web Brain now

Company Closedown October 10 to November 6

Hi everyone. Helium 3 IT Solutions will not be operating from October 11th to November 5th 2009. I am going on holiday to North America, visiting the West Coast of Canada and the United States. Should be a lot of fun.

My Web Brain now on Custom Domain

Last night I set up a custom domain for My Web Brain - www.mywebbrain.com. You can still access the application at the *.appspot.com address. I blog about the process of setting up a custom domain for Google App Engine on my other blog here.

My Web Brain 0.11 available for testing

It is with some excitement and trepidation that I announce that My Web Brain, a GTD flavored task manager and mental appliance, is available on the web for anyone who is interested to take a look.

As per my previous post this release (I am calling it 0.11) is limited in size, scope and functionality and will certainly not be winning any awards. It is however something to talk about, discuss, and get feedback on.

You are welcome to try it out by going over to its temporary URL at my-web-brain.appspot.com. All you need is a Google login to get started. Knock yourself out, but remember this is an application in the very early stages of development and you should not record any irreplaceable information there.

If you have any feedback, or want to report a bug you can do so at the My Web Brain Google group.

Status update on the Alpha 1 My Web Brain Release

I have had a busy week putting time into the development of My Web Brain. I was optimistically hoping to be able to release the Alpha 1 version of the web application today, but time was against me and I now think it will likely be early next week.

To ensure I am in a position to release something soon I have been pruning the planned functionality down. My intention is to ensure that - as much as possible with an Alpha release - enough time gets dedicated to non-functional concerns, such as markup validation, accessibility and to a lesser extent, performance.

The good news is that I now have a pretty accurate idea of what this initial release will provide:

• Users will be able to manage thoughts, actions and contexts (sorry, no someday/maybe, reference or project items in this release).
  
• The design of the web application is relatively simple and uncluttered
  
• User interactions are through basic, scriptless forms
• A solid technical basis for further development is in place, including CSS layout, validated pages ans semantic markup, RESTFUL design.
  

After this release there will be a small mountain of features to develop and integrate, but my focus has initially been on implementing the smallest possible feature required to make the application useful.

As always if you have any feedback you can post it as a comment on this blog or, even better, at the My Web Brain Google Group.