Drivel:  The number of communication channels I use through my computer is growing.  It used to be pretty simple -- email.  Then it was email and instant messaging.  Still not too cumbersome because the totally complemented each other.  Email is for permanent or more formal communication and instant messaging is for very quick, concise exchanges of information you need immediately.  If you need something immediately and you can't get it all over instant messaging, you pick up the telephone and break away from the computer.  Nothing will ever replace the telephone, except perhaps direct brain-to-brain communication.

With UserLand's Radio on the market and it rapidly becoming a multiple channel switch for communicating through your computer, I have many more channels opening up to me.  I now have email, instant messaging, weblogging, and instant outlining.  My communication channels just doubled in terms of mechanisms through which I can communicate.  Radio allows me to have multiple weblogs and instant outlines.  The number of communication channels can now grow exponentially as my activity increases.  This is natural, but it can impact personal productivity.  The time is coming when all of these channels will need to be aggregated into a single application in order for me to continue to increase my personal productivity.  11:57:52 AM   comments ()  

Drivel:  I have really been getting into Instant Outlining (I/O) lately with UserLand's release of their Instant Outliner for Radio.  One of the applications I think I/O's are great for is producing topical outlines that represent  very concise, targeted bodies of knowledge.  Some examples of this are FAQs, status reports, quick start guides, project specific outlines, etc.  I have produced one for Radio Community Server reference architectures, which you can see to the right.

In producing multiple I/O's, managing them is going to be challenging.  Radio provides you a great way of getting to the outlines for editing using Bookmarks in the Radio application.  I bookmark each of my outlines.  Making them available for other people to subscribe to is another thing.  I have hacked one of Dave's macros, drawLeftLinks, to allow people to manage multiple outlines via a single OPML file is the same way you can manage your left hand navigation links in Radio.  You can find the macro here.  It takes a single parameter, a URL to the OPML file that contains the links and descriptions of your I/O's.  A call to this macro looks like this:

<%ioLinks("http://radio.weblogs.com/[usernum]/instantOutliner/Outlines.opml")%>

Drop this macro into your macros folder and you are off and running.  Happy I/O'ing!

11:33:31 AM   comments ()