Joe’s Blog

It isn’t often that Joe’s Goals gets a video review and this one was so random I felt I should pass it along. The video comes from Channel Flip, a British video entertainment site.

I’ve got a new project finally coming out of beta testing and I’m very excited to finally announce it. The project is called Most Recent and it lives at mostrecent.net.

Most Recent was born out of frustration with the quality and scope of popular social news/bookmark sites. For every good link you have to wade through handfuls of spam, link bait, fluff, or outdated content. Most Recent isn’t a social link site. Instead it empowers page editors to create unexpectedly delicious pages on any topic by amassing the newest, most relevant, and most useful content from across the Internet. I wanted to be able to go to a page and have experts in that field highlighting what is really important. And I wanted to be one of those experts in the areas I cared most about.

Most Recent features an experimental drag and drop editor that makes it easy for anyone to build a page, no coding skills required. Pages are located at mostrecent.net/your-page-name. Check out the video to see how it works.

While virtually any topic is fair game, I want to start by building a community around programming languages. Of course they are of interest to me, but they also move so fast they demand this type of resource. If you are passionate about a programing language please check it out. You can also see if your page location is still available here.

If you’re looking for some good examples, I’ve been working on the JavaScript and F# pages myself.

Check out Most Recent and try creating a page. I invite your feedback and hope that this proves useful to folks.

A new version of Joe’s Goals is now live with a number of minor bug fixes and improvements. Thanks to everyone who keep writing in suggestions and bug reports. I’ve got some exciting things coming down the pipe for the next few months so stay tuned.

What got fixed:

• The badge new refreshes after you make a change to your goal tracker
• A bug on the preference page that can’t you from making updates in certain browsers has been fixed.
• The width of goal names has been fixed in 2.0 so you can’t create goals with longer names than can be displayed.
• The reports have been fixed to solve the problem of certain negative goals showing up with positive scores.
• Made better distinction between the save and clear log buttons.

I’m going to be giving one of the presentations at JSConf2009. Scheduled for April 24th and 25th JSConf2009 is a conference for JavaScript developers and will be taking place just outside Washington DC. I’ll speaking on TaffyDB, a free JavaScript library I wrote that is at the heart of Joe’s Goals.

If you are a web or JavaScript developer I’d urge you to attend and support this upstart conference.

I’ve been working on this JavaScript News and Resources page and I’m looking for more content. The basic idea is to build out a one page reference to easily access the highest quality content related to JavaScript. I know there is a lot more out here so this is my call out to see what other’s may have found.

Spesificlly I’m looking for:

• Videos worth watching
• Good blogs that regularly cover JavaScript
• Ajax Frameworks/Libraries (preferable ones you have experience with)
• Non-Ajax Libraries (utilities, etc)
• Tutorials
• JavaScript on the service resources
• Other places to find news

Got something for me? Send it here.

Everyone loves a good resolution. They just hate working at it. It is easy to look at a mountain and see yourself standing on the peek…next year. It is harder when you reach the base and face that long, difficult, and boring hike. But the rewards are worth it. Follow these very simple and very practical tips to increase your chance of success.

1. Pick resolutions that are doable - Deliberately pick resolutions that are practical and that you can both implement on January 1st and make a part of your lifestyle throughout 2009.
2. Come up with a plan - You want to be more successful than the guy next door? Have a plan! Want to lose weight? Pick a specific number, chart it out on a piece of paper, see how much you have to lose each week to achieve your goal. Make a list of what you need to do to follow your plan. List potential hangups. Write it all up so it is easy to reference. Post it on your fridge, your desk, your mirror. Define what you need to do and do it.
3. Track your progress with Joe’s Goals - How often do you compromise? When do you trade off and break your resolutions? How successful have you been in keeping with your goals day in and day out? Our minds aren’t designed to keep that information, so you have to track, track, track. Use a tool like Joe’s Goals to keep track of what you are trying to do. Note your stumbles and your successes. It is the only way to know if you are making progress.
4. Talk it over with friends - A friend who is ignorant of the personal change you are adopting can be your worst enemy. They know the old you. They will tempt you and draw you away from the path of victory. But a friend who knows what you are trying to do, what you are up against, and how they can help will become a huge asset. Talk about your goals. Get buy in, support, and encouragement.
5. View your failures in perspective - No truly innovative and successful individual has success handed to them. They all have to earn it by discovering hundreds or thousands of approaches that don’t work. They fail. You’ll fail. View it through the lens of life: you are still alive, you still have your wits about you, you’ve gained skills, you’ve gained knowledge, you can do better next time. Most important of all: move on. Don’t have a pity party. Turn against your failure and guilt. Fight the good fight.

Best of luck to you in 2009!

Worthwhile comic for any goal setter to ponder. Often it isn’t a lack of time, talent, or inspiration that keeps us from meeting our goals. Our success may be determined by how well we say “No!” to the things keeping us from our goals.

Joe’s Goals has been down a lot lately. The problem isn’t entirely clear and I’ve done what I can to try and fix it on the software side. The issue appears to be with the server itself. I know this has been terribly irritating for you Joe’s Goals users and I apologize. I’m working with my hosting provider to setup a new server and migrate Joe’s Goals there. This will take a few days to complete and I’ll post an update before the final move date to let you know when to expect an outage.

Many of you have written in to ask what happened to Joe? Well here is the answer: a baby!

Our lovely little daughter was born late in October. She’s obviously been taking up a lot of time and attention. That isn’t going to change, but I am slowly getting back to my Joe duties. Stay tuned for updates.