In the process of questioning whether or not my work process is proper and efficent, I have been spending all of my time this week using my FireAnt. It makes me realize that I still wish things worked together better than they do, despite the layer of compatibility that the Internet provides.

One thing that kills me is email. I have office email, Internet email, and I access both at home and at the office. In each place, I have both a PC and a Macintosh(Each running more than one operating system.), as well as a Pilot that I read mail from. I have to turn cartwheels to make sure I don't delete mail I need. Inevitably, its 10 pm, and I need something that is a 20 minute drive away. So I'm looking for a solution that doesn't involve my carrying equipment around with me everywhere I go. Web based email would be the answer, I guess, but I think that there has to be a more elegant way. Also, I prefer to be able to read and compose email offline. I also like to read my sent mail and refer to it. This has become an issue for me, and I haven't found an acceptable answer yet.

I did, however, find some useful things on my quest for an answer. The first is Magical Desk Interesting place to keep your documents so that you, or others, can access them. I am using it now to transfer documents from the office to my home. I wouldn't use the free email, if I wanted that there are a million other places, but I like the idea and interface. Since it's free, it makes good sense. It also would be great for traveling types.

HotOffice takes this idea one step further.(You also have to pay for it.) For a small business with high speed Internet access, this is a quick and inexpensive Intranet with all the expected features and a much lower cost. I wonder how many users you have to have before you hit the cost barrier of doing the Intranet in house? Great solution for a small company with a distributed workforce. Unfortunately, they seem to only support some WIN32 browsers, no Macintosh browsers. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose? Still, the idea is a good business model with the commerce they are building into it.

Scripting News is tracking the disappearance of the IE 5.0 beta from Microsoft's servers. I was waiting until I would have time to do testing to download it. I guess that makes me one of the developers that got screwed in this deal. Now I have to wait for three weeks to get it.

I'm doing the preliminary sketches for the new Bump, expect the development cycle to go beta within two weeks. I plan on adding a bunch of features, better content, and some interesting ideas.(I think)

I'm trying out Enfish Tracker Pro . It indexes and tracks information that you specify on your hard drives and on the Web and then links the information based on relevancy. Over time, I think it could be a really usefull tool in tracking writing and ideas.

Finally, there is a new Pilot in the family. Since I can't use it yet, I don't have any comments. I couldn't resist once I saw it.  12:00:00 AM    discuss []