How ActiveWords should have been done
Just musing on ActiveWords. It's a good idea, a sort of meta-application. But it's expressed in the wrong way. I found it both intrusive (it would popup as I was doing something, but I was trying to do something and it wasn't talking to ActiveWords) and the wrong expression of the idea.
Here's how I think it should work:
- It should have a calendar where you specify when you want to talk to AW. All the bits of training data it accumulates should be saved and processed then. At that point AW should make it's recommendations about things it things it could help you with.
- It should be based upon video recognition and should be triggered by gesture. I hated having to type the keywords. It was a bore, if I could have just made a sign to my (well I don't have one but you get the idea) webcam and have my browser popup and load Google. That would actually be cool!
Maybe I didn't give it a fair chance, but I just felt ActiveWords was a nice idea, implemented without much imagination. Have I been unfair?