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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

I'm always underwhelmed by these things because I think they are solving the opposite problem to the one that needs to be solved. The basic premise is that it's possible to pick a collection of important things and put them on one screen. And it's interesting from their example how poor that selection is: there's a huge amount of space wasted on time, there's a specious graph of inbox depth and a useless graph of sent emails.

I believe that rather than gathering information together in one place we are far better served by ambient information (a small example: http://blog.jgc.org/2012/03/ambient-bus-arrival-monitor-from... and my as yet unwritten up ambient weather display). Then information that's useful becomes part of the environment.

So, then I ask myself why this has been upvoted so much. And I think the answer is because it _looks good_. It's all shining and new-car-smell.

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Looks like their implementation of this:

http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/

Those graphs don't really make much sense because such a dashboard is going to be context-sensitive. You would need to somehow customize it to give you the information that would be relevant to you, your team, or whomever.

I think my favorite example of "useful information now" is Google Now.

I love how when I search for a place on Google Maps, my phone or tablet assumes I want to go there soon and gives me a driving time estimate and an option to start navigation.

I also find it very useful when my web searches and linked accounts are taken in context: searching for a flight brings up the flight details on the day of the flight, and Google Now automatically pulls up my daily upcoming events so I don't forget.

Yes. There's a multi-billion-$ startup to be created that can deliver 'relevance' like that.

And it's not only knowing what is relevant - I used to use some nokia phone and it would show my meetings on the sign in screen - so I know when I was going to get interrupted. With my iPhone, technically superior in every way, I have at least three clicks or swipes and I never know what my day is shaped like.

Luckily I use it as an excuse to get my head down and work.

But the point (another long one!?) is iPhones UI whilst much lauded, misses some useful functionality - and that will become more more painful as relevance becomes achievable

That sort of thing is available if you jailbreak.

I don't think there is. The only reason Google is any good at is that they have been collecting data for well over a decade in order to do it. It's not just their web index, but they can see most peoples' email and calendar, their web searches, their location. Google also did things like "Google 411" which got them vast amounts of voice and behavioural data.

I'd be interested to see a startup go for the relevance idea, but I don't think they would have the data needed to do it.

it has already been created and it's called google.

On the ambient weather side - for years I commuted by bike, over country lanes or through London, and I simply knew the weather for the day (London is not quite as changeable as say SF).

Whilst these days I can barely tell you what season it is, I was more in tune with the weather then (not nature, too treehuggy)

I think my overly long point is to agree with you - I had no dashboard for weather info, but because it was part of my daily environment I knew what was normal and sensed changes.

that is so true. when our body sensory tunes into our daily tasks and routines, it just knows.

While it does look good, it's not the answer.

Dashboards are exceptionally useful, you just probably haven't come across the need for one. They automate the task of needing to flip through webpages and jump through CLI commands to poll for the system status, whatever that system happens to be. You can argue that there shouldn't be a need to poll in the first place, but that's the nature of things - for one, looking at the raw data is interesting, and for two, the alerting logic may miss exceptions that are otherwise obvious from a quick glance.

Also because information is not valuable or actionable without context, and many of these dashboards do not exist in an environment where the data they collect can be delivered in a contextually appropriate setting. Maybe if the various modular components switched out for more relevant ones depending on what I wanted to or am doing, stuff like this would be more useful.

It seems to be telling me it's 72F in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne at the moment.

I wish :'(

Either that or I'm assuming wrongly that because the demo is reading my location and localising the time, it would also be reading the weather.

that being said, their description of its original incarnation (solving a data problem specific to their managing their office) was pretty cool. My guess is that, they figure there's some value in this so much as well put it on the app store and generate an extra bit of revenue.

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