Stephen Wolfram Uses This

http://stephen.wolfram.usesthis.com/

by flapjack • 16 years ago

130 54 16 years ago

stephen.wolfram.usesthis.com

SoftwareMaven2• 16 years ago

This (FTA) would be creepy to see roaming around: http://anybots.com/

philwelch4• 16 years ago

Anybots is also well known on HN for being founded by YC partner Trevor Blackwell. They even share YC's building.

tommynazareth• 16 years ago

Trevor must be half insane. Those people sitting around laughing with the Anybot is one of the most bizarre things I've seen. Can you imagine working in a factory where your boss roamed around the floors as an Anybot?!

I'm not going to say this isn't a great and sensible product, but it is very weird.

Groxx3• 16 years ago

Needs a laser drawing tool (think laser light show) to be even remotely useful, not just a pointer, else how do you describe something they haven't seen?

"No, the $circle_7 goes below the $resistor_3_12, inscribed in $heptagon_3, like in a fronkit. What? Never seen one? Oh hell..."

Until then, good luck designing anything collaboratively. I like the hat-like look to the top, though. Personality without uncanny valley, and still highly functional in design; perfect for something like this.

philwelch4• 16 years ago

You can just draw a doodle and hold it up to the webcam on your end. It doesn't have to be anything as awesome as a laser light show, though to be fair that would be pretty cool.

SoftwareMaven2• 16 years ago

The solution to this is digital white boards. If you are going as far as Anybot to enable virtual participation in design meetings, I think it would be reasonable to go all the way.

m0nastic• 16 years ago

I'm hoping some day that he goes into more detail about the system he uses to catalog conversations. I'm actually trying to work on a project similar to that.

Wil Shipley talked about it upon meeting him at Ted in this blog entry: http://wilshipley.com/blog/2010/03/ted-2010.html (towards the bottom of the entry)

bretpiatt• 16 years ago

Yeah, I'd love a Xobni Desktop, maybe they can make it happen. The only problem I have with Xobni now is I find myself forcing important things I want to find later through email so I can easily locate it.

If a "Dropbox" style product would also index everything I send it so I could have a search experience like I do with Xobni I'd certainly pay extra for it.

jseliger• 16 years ago

If a "Dropbox" style product would also index everything I send it so I could have a search experience like I do with Xobni I'd certainly pay extra for it.

This sounds very similar to DevonThink Pro: http://devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html , which I use daily, mostly along the lines that Steven Berlin Johnson describes here: http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002... .

arst• 16 years ago

An idea that I've been dreaming of (and kicking around some prototypes of) for a while now is a integrated archive of all the communications services/mediums I use these days. I have close contacts who I may interact with across 5 or 6 mediums in a given week - e.g. email, IM, IRC, SMS, twitter, comments on their blog posts. I'd like to be able to go into a contact list, click a buddy, and get a timeline of my interactions with them across these mediums. Google's gotten part way there in the last few years with email, Google Talk logs and Google Voice voicemails and SMS all being searchable from the Gmail interface but it's not as extensible as I'd like and the results quality (ironically) leaves a lot to be desired.

quickpost• 16 years ago

Wow, that's amazingly cool. Thanks for posting that!

portman• 16 years ago

"I've also had systems built for me personally. One of the more important is my archiving and searching system, which includes 25 years of email (and 20 years of keystroke data), as well as searchable scans of all my archived paper documents."

What do you think he means by "20 years of keystroke data"?

mmaro• 16 years ago

A keylogger, recording all keystrokes.

samratjp• 16 years ago

Like this one at the kernel level http://code.google.com/p/logkext/

Tim_M• 16 years ago

He once said that he records all of his own keystrokes(Sorry don't have the link). You need to remember he is a very unusual person.

Donald• 16 years ago

Wolfram seems to keep a searchable index of all his keystrokes.

From the 12 December 2009 issue of New Scientist:

"I'm an information pack rat," he [Stephen Wolfram] confesses. Recording our interview is just the tip of his peculiar obsession with documenting every moment of his life. "I have a keystroke logger that has collected my every keystroke for the last 22 years," he says. "Every day I get an email that tells me how many keystrokes I typed the previous day into each application. I find it slightly interesting." He shrugs off my suggestion that it's a way of securing his immortality; he believes that soon everyone will be doing it.

philwelch4• 16 years ago

That sounds rather Nixon-esque.

Which, if any historians become fascinated with Wolfram, would be an amazing boon.

j_b_f• 16 years ago

Weird then that he regularly uses an iPhone and iPad which presumably don't offer this functionality.

powellc• 16 years ago

I like a man who spouts off about how great it is to use software builds that are (gasp!) an hour old! That's so 1337 dude! Welcome to the world of open source, douche bag.

I appreciate that I probably shouldn't be nagging on the guy who built Mathematica. But seriously? webMathematica? yawn.

atuladhar• 16 years ago

How do you down-vote around here?

nkurz• 16 years ago

You gain the privilege after you've accumulated enough 'up' votes for comments and submissions. The exact number changes over time due to inflation.

tzs2• 16 years ago

Until you have a certain amount of karma, you cannot down-vote. When you have enough karma, you'll see down-vote arrows below the up-vote arrows.

gaius• 16 years ago

How do you downvote below -4?

BoppreH• 16 years ago

I loved the "interview" and also the website. I have always wondered what the great people use on a daily basis.

But it could use some sane URL organization. Sub domains are horrible for quick "select and erase/replace" actions, though I understand the final result is quite beautiful.

sophiebits• 16 years ago

> What would be your dream setup?

> Mathematica + Wolfram|Alpha everywhere!

That's a funny dream, considering he charges a few thousand for a copy of Mathematica. I'm sure he'd have a larger user base if it were less expensive (or free…).

tzs2• 16 years ago

$300 for home use.

gecko• 16 years ago

That's still literally more expensive than the main computer I use at home.

philjackson• 16 years ago

It could be an indirect way of saying everyone, everywhere buys a copy of Mathematica.

zmmz• 16 years ago

Been a fan of the setup for a while, thanks for the engaging interviews.

Wanted to let you know that your rss feed seems broken.

paxswill• 16 years ago

It was broken for the past couple days (that I noticed) but I got this post.

shin_lao2• 16 years ago

Am I the only one to think that Mr. Wolfram manages in few words to appear to be both pretentious and unfriendly?

jacquesm• 16 years ago

Most likely not. He actually manages to do that time and again, examples aplenty.

JabavuAdams• 16 years ago

I don't get that from this article. The one time I met him (at StartupSchool), he seemed like a really pleasant person I'd like to invite over for dinner. He was not faux-humble, but he was also not boastful.

Now, from other publications like NKS, I do get the vibe you mentioned.

shin_lao2• 16 years ago

In the introduction:

My main job is being CEO of Wolfram Research. I spend most of my time figuring out technical and strategic things, sometimes short-term and sometime very long-term.

Compare with:

"I am the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research."

Which contains exactly the same amount of information (because strategic planning is the job of a CEO, isn't it?). No subtle "Well everything I do is pretty heavy and it doesn't fit in this little paragraph, you see?"

Nitpicking, I know, but that's how I feel when I read the §...

there• 16 years ago

in response to the last "the setup" interview posted here, i created a "setups" subreddit for people to post links to their own articles describing their workspaces

http://www.reddit.com/r/setups/

nanairo• 16 years ago

Once you've got that much money, and therefore don't need to make a choice, this kind of information becomes a lot less useful.

It would be like wondering which car a top class football player drives, or which flight tickets the USA president uses.

long• 16 years ago

I find it incredibly goofy that he uses Mathematica for everything.

gcb2• 16 years ago

This was the most uninteresting usethis.

He barely touched the thing his usethis would be most interesting, the fact that he claims to record so much.

He may be a good mathematician and project manager. but hardly fun for a usethis

jcsalterego• 16 years ago

Yes but where's the cellular automata? Those things can do EVERYTHING

Stephen Wolfram Uses This

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