Bring Tellico to this decade

Author: Sudarshan Murthy


I recently learned about Tellico, an application to catalog pretty much any collection. It includes templates to record details of books, audios, videos, stamps, coins, and other common kinds of collections and it can connect to many popular data sources such as Amazon, IMDB, and PubMed. Tellico is released under GPL.

To me, the best part of Tellico is its committed author, Robby Stephenson: He has actively maintained Tellico since its inception in 2002. And, he even lists alternatives to Tellico right on the Tellico page. Kudos Robby.

I can't comment on Tellico's usability (because I haven't used it enough), but judging by the screenshots, I see it can be quite useful in managing household collections. For example, my wife should be able to use Tellico instead of the MS Excel workbook she currently uses to catalog and track our household items. (Before you ask, my designated role at home is to move items around such that the catalog becomes unreliable.)

But, Tellico's age shows, and here is how. 

What motivates a Google+ user to become and remain active?

Author: Sudarshan Murthy (first posted at http://bit.ly/plzjrR on July 19, 2011)

For no apparent reason, I wondered if Google+ users who have created circles but have not set a profile picture have also created posts.

So, I conducted a straw test: I picked some users in my circles, then randomly picked users in their circles, and so on: some users with pics; some without. After following about 100 users who have created circles but have not set profile pictures, I found one user with posts. (That user had exactly one post, ironically, wondering if it is worth using Google+.)

(I also noticed users with circles and profile pics but are yet to post anything. However, there were far fewer users of that kind.)

Of course, no particular conclusion can be drawn from the straw test, but it makes me curious to know: