I have spent way to much time finding logs and then do-someting, refresh-log-viewer, do-something, refresh-log-viewer, … to repeat in absurdum.

The refresh part is solved with tail or Notepad++’s tail or other options
but it doesn’t work over the wire (or at least I didn’t get it to work).

So I suggest having a simple tail implemented as a simple stand alone web server. Start this “tail” on the machine you have log files. Then you can surf to the web server and with some nifty CSS/javascript have a tail traversing your intranet on a port of choice like so: https://MyServerInTheCellar:666

To avoid polling use SignlR or similar.

If you want it to stay active for days a more stable solution should be crafted.

Highlight latest rows

A nice feature would be to highlight the latest rows. There must be a time limit of sorts to figure out what the “latest” means as the computer (yet) cannot read your mind and know what rows you have looked at and considered.

For simplicity say there is a time limit of 0,5 second where everything inside that interval is considered the same burst of log rows. Color this burst differently to distinguish it from earlier ,and later later, rows.
This should make it much easier to read.

Is it already made?

It seems WebTail does approximately what I am writing about but it polls. It is pleasantly GPL and is written in Java.

I have created bits and pieces of this solution but not anything passed alpha.

I have also noted that Notepad touches the file twice; so if you plan to create this solution don’t use Notepad to figure out how to register and read file changes in Windows.

I found a spike of mine called Farmer Charlie Sprouts at Github. Here is another, even older, project Farmer Logan and his cow called Loui at Github, this time solving the problem of showing the latest updated log rows in an easy-to-read manner.

Say you (involuntary) started an SMS or email avalanche with some friends. Why not have a site with a very simple chat. No usr/pwd and no functionality; if you know the URL you can get to participate.

The chat is erased after a few days.

But in that time the participants have sorted out where to meet and who brings what and the SMSes/email flood can trickle down to a more manageable level.

“hey everyone – information overlaod – please continue the discussion on http://bachelor.chat.ninja”

The GUI code is reduced to as few bytes as possible to load blazingly fast on mobile devices.

Think SMS and Twitter – simplicity on the verge of stupidity.

There are so many needs for just 1 page.  Be it a restaurant menu or a party specticulaire.  Create a simple site for creating very very simple pages.  Limit each project to 1 page.  Limit to already created templates.

In the simplest case one uses a URL like www.example.com/id=12.  It would be nicer though to have projectname.example.com.  One could buy a bunch of URLs and let the user choose from them.  myproject.otherexample.com or sunday-evening.has-the-menu.com.

Let advanced users upload PDFs or DOCs or ODFs and convert it.

One could, for the advanced advanced users, make it possible to upload HTML and CSS.

Just keep it stupidly simple, otherwise we will try to recreate the home pages of last century.

If watching movies on mobile phones is on the rise I believe the film format should be smaller.  The 10 meter wide high resolution dream filled with 3D and details doesn’t make it to a smaller screen, the details will be gone or smoothed out.

Also watching a movie on a mobile isn’t an all night thing, unless you are hiding in your bed under your blanket, so the stories should be kept short.  Think 20 minutes train ride or 7 minutes with a tram.

There are already books being written on and for mobile phones, why not take the moving pictures there too?

I guess it can be less expensive  too, smaller images allows cheaper cameras and less resources for editing.

Bring on the story telling!

A small, fast and simple site to set up voting.

One case is a conference room where, by some reason, ordinary pieces of paper doesn’t make it.  The voting might be secret.  There might be complex rules (messes with “simple” site).  Whatever reason I haven’t though of.

Another is 5 people going out for lunch.  Instead of wasting time by the elevator or in the rain outside – set up an easy voting page.

What to get for birthday present.  Which day is the best for meeting with relatives (relatives are not all on email).  Which time is best for floor ball (a team of 20 people).   A whole school can vote on bike shed colour.

Spice the site with a simple forum, especially for colouring bicycle sheds.

Make it simple enough to not require usr/pwd.

As a computer knowing fellow human being it is my ban and blessing to be the answerer for every computer related question.

Short:

Why not create a user interface that is so simple that even your mother can understand it?  And even you can talk her through over the phone?  Then introduce more functionality as the user’s knowledge and self confidence rises.

Long:

Create a user interface to a computer.  Let it run a simple web browser and a simple email client.  Let it have one and one only folder to store files.  Let it be easy to setup for remote control.  Maybe even maybe stop the user from changing things to start with.

Bare with me for a few more lines if the above solution is too rough.

Wire frame example

Let there be only one way to start things.  Skip double click.  Skip drag and drop.

Now let the user use this for a while and become comfortable with reading email, chatting, surf the web and print pictures for the camera.

Add more functionality.  Depending on the savviness of the user – introduce drag and drop or the context menu.  Introduce more programs or the possibility to format emails.  Allow more ways to do the same thing.

By the time of writing I see no way of doing a transparent change from Your mother’s operating system to Windows or MacOS or KDE but one should be able to introduce the ideas, allegories and words from a full grown OS GUI.