Carrying the Lantern

Bill R.: I'm always on the lookout for new creativity tools to try out at home. As I said in Part 1, the gulf that is present and expanding between my work environment and home environment is a serious point of frustration for the 8-10 hours per day I spend at work. I'm always bumping into the situation were I say to myself (and too often others) I know there's a better way to do this (i.e., brainstorm, present, visualize, analyze, present relationships, present findings / conclusions / recommendations.) Thank goodness I use a Mac at home.

James Fallows on Mac thinking tools.

Mac Programs That Come With Thinking Caps On - New York Times

The Atlantic’s James Fallows — who also wrote one of my favorite pieces on The David — has done a piece for the New York Times on the various “thinking tools” for the Mac. He covers all the goodies, including Devonthink, Tinderbox, Circus Ponies Notebook, AquaMinds NoteTaker, and my current steady date, OmniOutliner Pro (including a nice shoutout to Ethan’s amazing Kinkless GTD for OO).

These programs are of obvious interest to the Mac community, but the much larger community of non-Mac users also has good reason to keep an eye on them. Some are simply better than their current Word counterparts, illustrating features and approaches that PC users will want once they have seen them. The companies making two of the programs discussed here have announced forthcoming Windows versions.

Others may follow next year, when Apple Computer begins producing Macs based on Intel processing chips like those that PC’s use. That change will make it easier for software vendors to create both Mac and PC versions of their programs; the introduction of the Mac mini, discussed here two months ago, makes it easier and more practical for users to switch back and forth between platforms.

[ Thanks, Brian Oberkirch ]

Tags: thinking,, brainstorming,,

[43 Folders]

Bill R.: Somebody give this guy a copy of Naked Conversations. No, wait! Throw a copy at him: Bill Schreiner, VP for AOL Community Programming. Read the BusinessWeek article (some excellent points by Stephen Baker), then click through to the AOL blog posting, and don't forget to read the comments/responses at the AOL blog post. OK, not all of them; skip the purely emotional comments. Even the reasoned ones send a clear message. Hello? Mr. Schreiner? Anyone home at AOL Journals in Ashburn, Virginia? With this attitude and understanding of concepts like blogging / journals / diaries / personal / services / amateurs, not much longer.

AOL exec responds to anger... on someone else's blog. AOL exec responds to angry bloggers at AOL Journal--but he does it on an employee's blog [BusinessWeek Online -- Blogspotting]

Bill R.: This Financial Times article by Richard Waters is right on the mark. Without being judgmental, my machine at work is restricted by security concerns to having only the lowest common denominator set of applications to support me. I'm a knowledge worker, but am limited to using tools that only support productivity, not creativity. For example, Microsoft Word is a productivity tool. It is good at making reports / documents look good. It is good at cutting and pasting. MindManager is a creativity tool. It helps me brainstorm ideas, organize thoughts, visualize information. I need both kinds of tools at work. But all we are allowed to have at are the minimum set of productivity tools (AKA Microsoft Office.) This gets frustrating for me primarily because of the contrast with my home environment. There I get to use one of the ultimate creativity tools in a fairly unrestricted environment. It's called an iMac G5.

Reason this is Part 1? No sooner did I read this FT post than an article in the NYT addressing the cartesian view of this issue arrived in my reader.

The Future Ends at the Firewall. By tim

Great article in the Financial Times about the reversal that has occurred in the past few years, in which richer and more powerful services are now available to home users than to office users: :

New services from companies such as Google and Skype and the spread of domestic broadband access have created a new generation of digitally aware consumers. Having access to free video conferencing, or being able to examine the world in exquisite detail on a programme such as Google Earth, has awakened home computer users to the expanding possibilities of life on the web.

When they get to work, however, these same computer users are starting to find that many of the digital goodies they have come to expect are out of reach. That is more than just a frustration for individual workers: as more technology innovation shifts to the web, it could slow the pace at which many new technologies are adopted and prevent companies from reaping the full productivity benefits....

"In a lot of companies, the desktop is locked down - only the IT department has access to it," says Dave Girouard, general manager of Google's enterprise division. "There's no question that consumer technology is racing ahead at a breakneck pace. Enterprise technology kind of slogs along; the adoption rates are much slower."

The title of the article, "The Future Ends at the Firewall" reminds me of the dire prognostications on internet mailing lists when firewalls were first introduced, that by breaking the network, they were the wrong approach both to security and the ultimate health of the network.

Firewalls are only part of the problem dissected by the article. It also talks about IT policies that limit the grassroots technology adoption that has been one of the source of IT innovation since the PC first invaded the workplace, and the lags in bandwidth that make some technologies unusable.

Of course, the office firewall and desktop lockdown are only part of the problem. The US as a whole lags in broadband adoption, due to the shortsighted policies of the telcos. A reminder that the line between the digital haves and have-nots may end up being drawn in unexpected places, with enormous consequences not just for businesses but the economic health of nations.

(Via Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed blog.) [O'Reilly Radar]