
Status Chart: Your Personal Status Dashboard - kennedysgarage
http://statuschart.com/
======
kyro
I got really excited after reading the submission title because I thought
someone had finally created a service I've wanted for a while. This is great,
but you should take it further! Here's the idea:

I've wanted a personal dashboard to track everything in my life at a quick
glance, like weight/health metrics, financials, to-do, schedule, emails,
twitter replies, etc; something that'll give me a quick and comprehensive view
of everything going on personally, socially, financially, professionally.
Basically a Mint meets Ducksboard for my life, or even better, a universal
life platform that services can hook into.

Email me if you're interested!

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yes, as I die I'll be able to look back on my life and see that I had
everything properly organized into neat folders.

~~~
kyro
Not sure what the snark is for. Perhaps I didn't explain its usefulness that
well. I may write a post about it because there seems to be some interest.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Okay, sorry, let me spend some more time and give you an example.

One big problem with a unified dashboard is that not everything in your life
should be monitored on the same frequency.

Here's one example: You probably need to check your email several times a day
(if not, god bless you!) but checking your 401k balance several times a day is
almost certainly _harmful_ to your well-being. It probably doesn't make you
happier; contemplating your money rarely does. Instead it will alternately
make you worry (as every dip in the stock market causes nightmarish visions of
a retirement spent in a cardboard box), or make you irrationally exuberant (as
every good trading day makes you dream of buying a second home). The net
effect is that it will subtly encourage you to _trade_ , because if you don't
trade your 401k is the most boring thing imaginable, and you feel the
subconscious urge to tinker with it to make it _do something_. But trading is
a disaster, because churning your investments makes other people rich at your
expense, and because timing the market doesn't work, and _telling_ yourself
not to time the market usually doesn't work, either.

For much more on this topic see the work of e.g. William Bernstein ( _The Four
Pillars of Investing_ , _The Investor's Manifesto_ ) or any of the so-called
Bogleheads, or try Ramit Sethi:

[https://wordsofward.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-single-
best...](https://wordsofward.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/the-single-best-
investment-choice-intro-to-index-funds/)

Here's another example: The ideal amount of time to spend monitoring your
weight is _none_ , unless your weight is unhealthily large or is increasing
significantly. (If you're prone to anorexia, a continuously updated dashboard
showing your weight is potentially dangerous. You need to _avoid_ playing that
game.) And unless you're some sort of edge-case athlete, by no means should
you monitor your weight daily: You should either weigh-in weekly, or weigh
yourself daily but compute a running average (and have a deep understanding of
what a _running average_ is and why you're computing it). Otherwise day-to-day
fluctuations are likely to destroy your confidence in your diet. (I'm told
that, for this reason, Weight Watchers explicitly trains members to weigh-in
weekly, not daily.)

~~~
philwelch
So why can't your dashboard show different metrics each day? You can just
configure the different widgets to show up at different frequencies.

Perhaps your 401k widget only shows up the first time you log in each quarter.
Your weight tracking widget only shows up Monday morning. Your banking and
monthly budgeting widget shows up daily. Your Amazon order shipping widget
shows up only when you have an open order. Your meal plan widget shows up all
the time.

You can choose which widgets you want. If you're poor and don't have a 401k,
don't turn on the 401k widget. If you're rich and skinny and don't have
problems maintaining either of those, don't turn on the budgeting and weight
loss widgets. But a shared dashboard doesn't imply everything on the same
frequency.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I already have a page where significant announcements show up at a wide
variety of frequencies. It's called "webmail". Or an activity feed.

The point of a dashboard is that no navigation is required beyond turning your
head and glancing. Dashboards are for things that you want to see by accident,
or while waiting for a phone call. A widget that usually _isn't_ there when
you turn your head might as well not be on the dashboard at all. If you have
to click to see it, it can be in a separate app or site. If you have to wait
for a specific date and time to see it, it might just as well arrive in your
mail, Twitter stream, or SMS.

~~~
philwelch
The main difference in my eyes is that activity feeds and messages can create
a backlog. The user experience isn't quite right either--different types of
messages still look exactly the same. But different dashboard widgets could
have radically different user experiences.

------
mattwdelong
This is pretty neat, but it's not something I would enter my CC details for
and pay for each month. I would however drop a one time ~$25 fee and self host
it on my own server, and _maybe_ use it. At least this way, I will see it
running on my server and periodically update it.

I'm just one person of many, but when I see neat little apps like this I would
always much rather pay for it outright than pay for it each month. I don't
know why more people don't sell cool services like this. Chances are I am
going to just cancel it after a month anyway.

~~~
1123581321
For hosted, an annual fee is appropriate here. A $25 annual fee is quite
similar to a one-time fee of $25 because once it is paid, there is nothing to
do but use it for an entire year. After a year, it's very obvious whether the
app is worth another $25 or not. Either way the developer's compensation is
nearly the same assuming many accounts share the low cost of the servers.

~~~
mattwdelong
There is a mental line between annual and "once and forever" type purchases. I
think it comes down to the thought of getting more value and the fact that you
own it..it's yours. Secondly, what if I purchase an annual subscription and
forget about it the next year? I just paid another $25 for an app I stopped
using over 10 months ago. I don't like that hassel of having to remember what
my card is attached to and what random fees are going to come out each month,
and that's why I don't like subscribing to anything.

I would rather drive a shitty used car at a one time $5k purchase price over a
brand new car at $300/month. For the same reason, I also don't get into cell
phone contracts and cable subscriptions. I don't know what subset of the
population is like me, but I think it would surprise you.

~~~
1123581321
I agree people are like that, although I am not sure more people are willing
to self-install than pay for hosted.

You also make a good point about renewals. Because the cost of annual plans is
out of mind for most of the year, it's important they allow users to disable
auto-renew. I use Pandora, RescueTime and Forrst and they all have this
option.

------
IsaacL
Suggestion: "how much would you theoretically pay for this" won't give you
much accurate information. I'd suggest changing it to "pre-register for one of
our plans: free, $5, $25", with an overview of each, and see what people
click.

~~~
sigkill
This is a wonderful suggestion. OP listen to this.

When you put such an option to people, they will not tell you how much it's
worth to them. They will only tell you how much they are _willing_ to pay...
if at all they had to. Expect the numbers to skew heavily towards free.

Actually, I'd say, once you get the data you should generously double the
price.

------
thegooley
Looks like it was heavily inspired by this (from ~2010):
<http://culturedcode.com/status/>

And I really like the concept, but I believe that the value of a "status
dashboard" is that it's a concise view of what's happening right now. I really
don't think that this sort of concept is a good resume replacement it's not a
good format for 20+ items.

I'd suggest making it a status dashboard for what you're working on right now,
and once things are "completed" they drop off into a bulleted list at the
bottom which becomes your "work log" rather than "dashboard" at that point.
Make it less overwhelming and I could really see a recruiter or business
partner getting some good info from it.

~~~
snowwrestler
Software company status boards are not uncommon; here's another one from
~2010:

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

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notJim
As someone who does hiring, this sort of thing is kind of neat, but mostly
very annoying. I look at maybe a dozen resumes (there's someone else in front
of me who looks at _far more_ ), and having to figure out the bizarre format
of yours is a waste of my time. I would guess that this applies similarly for
people hiring contractors.

The consistency of the boring resume format is a plus. If you want to
distinguish yourself, I would suggest you work within that format: better
typography, a nice header, a striking layout (that still follows the format.)

~~~
fribblerz
But won't it work better in case one has just a couple of candidates to deal
with. Pick 10 from 100 as per their regular boring format resume, then use
these kind of detailed profiles to pick 3-4 to call in for an interview.

~~~
notJim
I don't really think so, but I guess it's possible. The reason I don't think
so is that this thing is much harder to read than plain text, and I have to
spend time figuring out how to read it.

Chances are, if I like someone's resume, it's time to talk to them on the
phone, not read a secondary resume that's in a weird format.

------
rezrovs
I'd use this but not as a resume tool. I'd use this as a motivational tool to
keep track of the todo items I have since some of them are quite long running
and to motivate me into getting those personal projects finished.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
This is exactly how I read it too. That's what I want. A motivational tool
with the style/feedback of most game's achievement systems.

Kind of like the new Visual Studio Achievements but for everything else.

------
UnoriginalGuy
When I first looked at this I got excited: A way to track my OWN goals for my
OWN records, and help me with my own personal development.

When I found out it was another resume/CV/job board thing I just rolled my
eyes and closed it. If I wanted that I would just use LinkedIn or Google+
(public) to talk about my bits and pieces.

~~~
kennedysgarage
That is how I am currently using it (<http://kennedysgarage.com/status>). I
just wanted see if there were other uses for it. I think keeping it basic and
to the original point might work the best. I do agree with you that we don't
just need another Linkedin.

~~~
alexobenauer
This is very cool - you should link to this on the main page you submitted;
it's a very concrete example that I really enjoyed poking through.

------
kyberias
What freaking standard is it to write dates as mm.dd? Not cool. In many
countries it's the exact opposite or that is how you write TIME (ie. hh.mm
instead of hh:mm).

~~~
jarek
> What freaking standard is it to write dates as mm.dd?

American.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
As an American, I personally hate that standard, and usually use YYYY-MM-DD
wherever possible, and only revert to MM-DD-YY on documents that require it in
that format. I get that MM-DD follows the conventions of speech ("the event is
on May 7th"), but it's really ambiguous when written in all numbers.

~~~
ricardobeat
"The event is on the 7th of May"

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Unfortunately, that's just not the way people talk about dates here. Maybe
it's because we use a backward date order, or maybe it's a self-reinforcing
loop, but that just doesn't sound natural, even to me.

------
Shenglong
Change the wording to be more affirmative. "We may, IF" -> "We will be".

A/B test the price points with a pre-registration, and do not take payment
information yet.

------
alexobenauer
When given three pricing options, the majority of people will go for the
middle one. I would personally make that an open-ended question, where you ask
people to punch in a number. That would give more conclusive results. I'm
willing to bet you're going to see most people pick the middle option, and
unfortunately, that won't mean much.

~~~
huhtenberg
> _the majority of people will go for the middle one._

... of those who didn't leave because they didn't like any of them. And even
that is not true. It's more of an urban legend popular between "UX designers."
In reality, people will go with the cheapest option that fits their needs.

------
roymabookie
Mathematically, the only values for the other box are $5 and $25. Lol

~~~
bhousel
I think it's for people who are less enthusiastic about the "/yr" part.

------
sicxu
Great idea! I just added backend function to your prototype. The dashboard UI
is at: <http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/guest/dashboard.ws> The admin
UI is at:
[http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/pages/taskslistpage....](http://s.myezapp.com/demo5/app/ezstatus/pages/taskslistpage.ws)

Please login as demo5/demo5 to use the admin UI.

It comes with complete source code. Please feel free to take it from there and
improve it. Thanks!

------
incision
What a coincidence that I would run across this post while taking a break from
struggling with exactly the problem this could solve.

I'm in the process of trying to summarize my real work and "value" to someone
in reference to what could be a dream job. A job that my traditional resume
doesn't quite fit.

It would be wonderful to be able to provide a recruiter or similar with a link
to a not necessarily public status chart to demonstrate myself.

~~~
patio11
_It would be wonderful to be able to provide a recruiter or similar with a
link to a not necessarily public status chart to demonstrate myself._

That is _terribly_ against your interests, because your future employers do
not burn with the need for more status charts. The _contents_ of your existing
work are not all that relevant to them. The _results_ are much more
interesting. How you are going to apply those experiences to their problems is
most interesting of all.

Figure out a way to credibly claim that you increased sales or decreased costs
at a past employer and that, by consequence, you could do it at a new employer
-- most employers perk up at that sort of thing. Show them your plan for doing
it. It's so effective it is _practically cheating_.

~~~
incision
I agree with essentially everything you're saying here, but I don't see how
something like this couldn't be useful to show work behind my results
progressed. Or at least easier to consume than a traditional resume or modern
blog-as-resume for that purpose.

I'm thinking of it as a simple tool for providing context and references to
what I've done. The first step in making those claims of results credible.

I'm not talking about shipping a link in lieu of a CV or proper introduction
to a job I'm pursuing, rather when someone reaches out to me and would like to
know what I'm up to - I can show them.

Obviously, once you get to the point of sitting face to face with someone it's
a totally different type conversation, but for the first exchange I see
nothing wrong with this.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Your customer/employer not only doesn't care how the product is made, they
don't _want_ to know: They are hiring you to _abstract away_ the detailed
steps involved in making the product. [1]

They don't want to babysit you, or live your life alongside you. They don't
want to understand every little thing you do. That is the very opposite of
what they want. They want you to deliver something valuable with as little
fanfare as necessary, to the point that they might pay extra to be able to
download your work product without even _speaking_ to you.

And they _really_ don't want to hire someone who seems to be _expecting_ to be
micromanaged, and who is therefore more obsessed with presenting the process
than presenting the results. Your todo list should not look more polished than
your products.

If someone asks to know what you're up to… you tell them? Using sentences?
Probably as few of them as possible, unless you're having the conversation
over beer? If they don't find your claims credible… you offer them references?

\---

[1] Okay, there is a (considerably smaller) market for artisanal products
where part of the deliverable _is_ a lovingly detailed description of how the
product was made. But those who buy artisanal products won't settle for a mere
checklist. They want _personality_. They want lovingly described blog-style
updates with coffee-table-quality photos. Or they want a minute-by-minute
first-person account on Twitter.

~~~
incision
I fully understand the thrust of what you're saying, but feel like it's
reading a lot into my thoughts that I certainly don't intend. It's a bit
smarmy too.

Still, abstract from what I actually said or meant it's an educational
perspective and I genuinely thank you for it.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_It's a bit smarmy too._

My apologies.

------
kmfrk
I think you're making a big mistake by only asking resumé-builders and not
employers about the pros and cons of your idea.

I love the design, though. It's a way to reinforce the idea that there is more
to a desirable applicant than their diploma and grade average. Basically why
LinkedIn is fundamentally broken.

EDIT: Another way to include speaking gigs would be to provide links to your
Lanyrd and Speaker Deck profiles.

------
d_mland
Awesome idea. I think it would be awesome if it had the additional ability of
exporting my data into a form I could use to update other things like
LinkedIn, my paper resume(.doc or .pdf?), and a website (html or even a widget
type deal). I just had retyping and tracking. He's got the tracking down and
if I was able to keep everything updated with it I would be willing to pay for
it.

------
almost
I think it's a nice idea and I'm really interested to see how you execute on
it.

I mentioned it on the form but I'll say it again here. I think for prices
around what you're talking about it makes sense to make them per month
$25/year is about $2/month, if you ask me to spend $25 up front for something
I might think about it but $2 just seems like nothing.

~~~
icebraining
Would you feel the same if he had to raise the prices to cover the fixed fee
per transaction that most payment processors charge?

~~~
almost
I think so, if you doubled it to $4 it just still seems like less to me, I
know it's not but that's how it feels...

------
xyzzyb
The resume should be a simple listing of your claimed skills and work history.

To really stand out write a cover letter that sells what you've done and makes
the case for your benefit to the company.

If you want to go further, create a personal website and reference it from
your resume/cover letter.

e.g. mine is <http://stephenballnc.com>

~~~
ldng
Interesting Duckduckgo Karma widget. Where can I find more info about it ?

~~~
xyzzyb
Hm, odd. I can't seem to find it. It used to be at duckduckgo.com/karma.html.

Additionally the widget doesn't seem to be current (my scores are all out of
date). Aw, I sure hope it's still online, but I sure can't find it.

------
yobfountain
What I love about this concept is that it's a simple way to share what you
have been working on without the appearance of overstating it's importance. It
also allows you to update your status quickly while you find the time to write
up one of those blog posts that never seem to get written.

~~~
kennedysgarage
This was the main idea behind creating it for myself. I glad that it came
across this way.

------
sim0n
Just an interesting thought; you could actually build a page like this using
our product (<http://interstateapp.com>) and its API (just whack up a custom
theme and sort the board/roadmap by date). Best of luck with this regardless.

------
justindocanto
I didnt realize until i went back that there was a full-scale demo of this. I
thought this was just a landing page with a concept image at first.

If you're like me and didn't notice, here's the full demo:
<http://kennedysgarage.com/status>

~~~
paulsb
If the numbers in the meters (current workload, amount of stress and chance of
emailing back) are percentages and the colours are representative of the
percentage, then the 13% chance of being emailed back should be coloured red
and not green to indicate the low chance of being emailed back.

------
combataircraft
It has nothing I need. I need something that shows my bank balance, bills that
need to be paid, some stupid very stupid things like preparing some tax
documents etc.. So, it's very far away from being my dashboard.

------
arturadib
Neat but I'm not sure I'd try to push that into my resume (as suggested by the
author). If anything, resumes tend to be too noisy, hard to pick out what
really matters.

Nice to have a place to keep all that stuff though.

------
nolok
Reminds me of this thread that I read here earlier today:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4414567>

------
peacemaker
Very nice! I know you said it's for non 9-5 work but if you added a 'jobs'
category on there too, for me to show past work experience, I would definitely
use this.

------
williamalvarez
I'm in love with this idea, pretty neat and functional.

------
scosman
On the more visual resume side, check out FolioSpace.me

Here's my profile: <http://foliospace.me/scosman>

~~~
_lex
I like the idea, but it's really hard to read anything. There's just too much.

------
shell0x
I would use it if it would be open source.

~~~
MattyRog
Came here to mention this. I would absolutely make a few donations to make it
happen. Understandable to want to make a couple bucks off a great idea though.

~~~
shell0x
Well, he could make it open source and still earn money with it. I haven't
always an internet connection, so this would be a huge advantage.(plan to
travel in the next time)

------
engtech
I wouldn't use it, but I think that getting the domain name and setting up a
demo site like that is great idea.

Good execution.

Kudos.

------
jobu
I love that under the Honors section he has: "Reached #1 on Hacker News for
Status Chart".

Very meta.

------
basiszwo
some alternatives maybe found on
[http://www.cloudli.st/apps?t=monitoring%2Cweb+analytics%2Cin...](http://www.cloudli.st/apps?t=monitoring%2Cweb+analytics%2Cinfrastructure)

------
egypturnash
The example chart is pretty much unreadable on a portrait iPad.

------
jcastro
I'd love to see this connected to Trello!

------
flak
Nice job Chris!

------
qpleple
Very nice UI.

------
hhimanshu
very impressive!

------
hhimanshu
very impressive

