Steve Richards: Information

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Study tips

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:56:03 GMT

I came across this site in the OneNote forum, it has some nice concise tips for studying and note taking

http://www.westshore.edu/webs/ltc/study_skills_resources.htm

of particular note is the Cornell Note Taking Method, which although not fancy does provide some insight into the fact that learning does not stop when you finish taking notes!

Really good list of SharePoint resources

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 23:12:48 GMT

http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/archive/2004/08/08/2238.aspx

I need help

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 10:28:52 GMT

This is a posting that I made to the GTD discussion forum.

I am about to start a small research project into personal productivity, I am going to be looking at the following main areas:

Personal knowledge management
Time, task and action management
Communication and collaboration
Team working
Subscription and research

As you can see these are quite relevant to exponents of the GTD methodology, and so I need your help.

First I wanted to explain a little about my personal experience with GTD and history in using similar techniques.

“I love to be organised”

I am one of those people who likes a clear desk, who like kids to have tidy bedrooms, who likes to be in control. I invest a lot in my IT, and a lot of my time in researching how to be organised. I can also invest a lot of time in establishing a new system. But once that new system is established, I find it hard to keep going. Here are some of the reasons why:

I only tend to be motivated to create my list of, “everything that needs to be done”, when things are out of control. The process of creating the list brings me back in control and that tends to last about a month. During that month I gradually begin to feel that I am working for my system rather than my system working for me, so I give up.
I find that although they all seem important when I write them down many of the items on my, “everything that needs to be done list”, never actually get done, as new things keep being added. So in reality I am only ever working with the things that filter to the top. In most cases I already know about the things at the top of the list. It’s the 80/20 rule all over again, I only ever work on the top 20% of my list, and most of the stuff in the 80% never gets touched because new items keep adding themselves to the top 20%.
During the times of my life when I am not following a GTD like methodology, I find I value the fact that my Brain forgets the 80% that’s never going to be done, and lets me keep my sub-conscious focussed on the 20% that is, and my conscious on the 5% I am working on. When I do follow GTD, I find myself distracted by the 80% feeling it’s important and must be progressed, managed, tracked, researched etc. For example for a month I captured research notes in Microsoft OneNote on everything related to my GTD list. Most of that time was wasted because in the end I never got around to the tasks. After the month was up I ended up deleting most of it because I wanted a tidier and better organised OneNote.
I find my Brain balances, “Important/Urgent” , pretty well
I generally always do some form of daily and weekly review and I get close to the “mind like water”, feeling.
I have seen lots of projects suffer because of too much project planning, and too little project management. By that I mean the project manager and project team start to serve the system, they spend all of their time and energy on task definition, tracking, reporting etc and not enough time on requirements, millstones, dependencies, estimating.
I think the above problem with projects is the same problem I see with GTD. Too much attention to managing your tasks and not enough time managing your time and goals.

Ok so you sort of get the idea of where I am coming from with the above, but I said I needed help. Well I have seen a few posts in this forum that really got me thinking. I will repeat a few of the key points here:

Someone said that it was the act of making the list of things to do that was key, not the resulting list. They tested it with for example shopping lists. If you make the list and then forget to take it with you, you still end up buying everything you need.
This was built on by someone who said that if you forgot the list you might actually do better because you might respond more openly to inputs/ideas that you have while out shopping, and maybe reassess your needs more openly as well, (i.e. decide not to buy things, whereas if its on this list you feel compelled to buy it).
In a critique of presentations someone reported how PowerPoint stifles many meetings. The bulleted list stops people thinking, because it trivialises issues, and the slide by slide format constrains discussion and debate. I have actually tested this myself by presenting on an eWhiteboard and its amazing how liberated you feel.
Discussions comparing “Putting first things First”, top down methodology, (which works like my Brain, but perhaps not everyone’s brain), and GTD help to bring the debate into focus
A few people have pointed to Life Balance and there is certainly a lot of thought gone into that software. I tried it for a while, but again concluded that I was likely to end up being controlled by the software, and spend a lot of my time working for it, rather than it working for me!
Finally its obvious that a lot of people love GTD more than I do, I want to understand why!

I was hoping that in discussion of this post more nuggets like those above might help me work this topic through in my mind in a more open way that I have been able to do by just reading the GTD books.

The final problem I have is the systems that support these processes just don’t work for me. When I look at my starting list again:

Personal knowledge management
Time, task and action management
Communication and collaboration
Team working
Subscription and research

I really need an integrated system that supports all of these. I have not found such a system. Although if I were able to use Outlook for my email maybe I would get close with the combination of NewsGator, Outlook, Outlook GTD plug-in and OneNote.

Another good diagram showing personal information management flow

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 18:10:29 GMT

In this post I described my "information processing pipeline". Here is a diagram that touches on the same area.

It was created by Mario Asselin in a response to this paper "Distributed KM" by Martin Roell

The blogging workflow

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 13:16:35 GMT

This is a very very nice summary of how blogs work by Roland Tanglao at Streamline, it complements my comments because it provides more details of some of the server side infrastructure:

1. Joe Blogger writes something and publishes it to his blog.

2. Joe's Blog system updates his site's HTML, updates his RSS file and sends a 'ping' message to the 'Aggregation Ping Server' indicating that his site has updated.

3. Search engines like Google and RSS specific services like Feedster, Technorati and PubSub periodically ask the Aggregation Ping Server, "Which sites have updated?".

4. Since Joe's site sends pings and has an RSS file and is easy to update frequently, Joe's search engine rank is higher than a 'normal site'.

5. Techie Teresa uses a program called an RSS reader to subscribe to Joe's site. The RSS reader checks Joe's RSS file for updates periodically (usually once/hour or once per day) and notifies her of Joe's updates. Teresa no longer wastes time manually surfing Joe's site. She just checks her RSS reader.

6. As a result, Teresa's information flow is more efficient and she can monitor more sites in less time.

7. Joe Surfer (who is not related to Joe Blogger) still can access blogs the old fashioned, slow and less efficient way using his web browser and search engines.

Interesting view on XML and the benefits of generic solutions

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 12:46:17 GMT

This article describes some of the characteristics of XML that make it so powerful The bottom line is that its generic nature means that generic solutions can be created tat can be applied to all manner of different problems. The example quoted is a tool that compares two XML files, produces an XML file showing the differences. The article then goes on to explain how this generic tool might be applied to different types of problem. Well worth a read if you are trying to get your mind around some of the things that will be possible in the future. Reminds me a bit of Unix pipes!

Office news

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 18:46:40 GMT

A new version of open office is available. The main improvements are:

Enhancements to the open-source productivity suite include support for PDF and XHTML exports and improved compatibility with Microsoft Office, according to the OpenOffice Web site. The new release, for example, will support forms conversion within Word documents and import text document layouts with more fidelity. OpenOffice 1.1 also boasts enhanced support for mobile device formats such as Palm's AportisDoc, Pocket Word and Pocket Excel.

IBM has ideas of its own, taking a thinner approach with its WorkPlace products

A wild card in the Office wars is IBM, which plans to offer server-based word processing, spreadsheet and presentation functionality to buyers of its WebSphere portal. At the very least, that could allow large customers to negotiate better Microsoft Office pricing/licensing, observers said. (See IBM Plans Sneak Attack On Microsoft Office.)

The MS Office team are majoring on quality for their next release, does this imply major changes, requiring major testing, or just good practice?

Software development, especially for a product as feature-rich as Office, is a repetitive process comprising what can seem to be endless feedback loops and rework.
"We're trying to reduce the iteration of that cycle because it's extremely costly," said Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Microsoft's Information Worker Product Group. "We want to use our development resources more effectively, yielding higher-quality code and not iterating what customers never see," he said.
The Office 12 team will rely on new tools, including Buddy Web, a system developers can use to privately share releases, according to the memo, from Eric Fox, Office development manager at Microsoft. Buddy Web had previously been used by the Outlook team.
In addition, the Office group will have access to Big Button, a system that gives developers easy access to the appropriate set of tests for their code.

Office 12, will not reply on Longhorn, not really a suprise, but its in print.

Microsoft knows it would be folly to leave the hundreds of millions of Windows XP and 2000 users out in the cold and force an upgrade to the shiny, new and radically different next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, which is now expected to come out in 2007 or later. Office 12 initially was slated to ship with Longhorn, but the next-generation Windows platform slipped and Office didn't, according to one insider. "The Office team is disciplined. They nail down their feature set, set a schedule and usually hit it," the insider said.

Read all this in the context of my previous posts on Choosing an office suite

Getting things done

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 17:51:23 GMT

Atlantic published an article about the tools and techniques promoted by David Allen the author of the book "Getting Things Done", which I read a few months back. I liked the book and gave it a quick review here. However for a better introduction its a good idea to read the article. I have repeated a small snipit of it here to get you started.

The doctrine that inspires this devotion starts with the idea that the difference between done and undone tasks is more stress-inducing than most people recognize. In earlier times, Allen says, work was more physically exhausting than it is today. But it produced less anxiety; because people could easily tell what they had to do and whether it had been completed. Either the wood was chopped or it was not. The typical modern day, he says, is a fog of constantly accumulating open-ended obligations, with little barrier between the personal and the professional and few dear signals that you are actually "done." E-mail pours in. Hallway conversations end with 'I'll get back to you." The cell phone rings. The newspaper tells you about movies you'd like to see, recipes you'd like to try, places you'd like to go. There are countless things that everyone really "should" do more of--exercise, read, spend time with the family, have lunch with a contact, be "better" at work. The modern condition is to be overwhelmed--and, according to Allen, to feel not just tired but chronically anxious, because so many things you have at some level committed to do never get done.

The anxiety is compounded, he says, by a foible of the human mind: it can't remember, and it can't forget. No one can possibly remember all the promises, deadlines, and other "shoulds" of personal and occupational life. The proof is the need for datebooks. No sane person tries to keep all future meetings in his or her head. But, perversely, the brain also can't forget; at some deep and not very efficient level it is always stewing about the things you should have done but haven't, and it tends to remind you of them at the worst time--typically, 3:00 A.M. A vague but powerful awareness of all these uncompleted promises, or "open loops," is what Allen sees as the basic source of work-related stress, Again, datebooks illustrate the point. People complain about their schedules, but they rarely wake up at night worrying that they won't remember to go to the airport on the right day. That is because they trust their datebooks and trust themselves to look at their datebooks regularly.

If you are serious about personal productivity though then you could do worse than invest some time reviewing the discussion forum that David Allen's company hosts. There is a very active debate in this forum and its quality stuff.

Some progress in server infrastructure for processing XML documents

Sat, 10 Jul 2004 19:17:30 GMT

Its interesting to see the slow but sure emergence of middleware to exploit XML documents. Microsoft have WSS which can manipulate Infopath docuemnts stored in its document libraries for example. InfoWorld report on a mor ambitious tool from IBM, code named Project Cinnamon, you can get the full details here, but here is the real content:

Cinnamon was born in IBM's Almaden Research Center and is a tool designed to automatically create mappings among different forms of data. By allowing users to define how an XML document gets mapped into a database such as DB2, the technology makes it easier to store those documents and to manage their content.

The upcoming utility hopes to address one of the thornier problems associated with XML-based development. Although XML serves as a clear standard for how content in a document is defined, the schema or definition of that content can be markedly different from document to document. This makes it impractical to place thousands of different documents in even a single data source and be able to retrieve certain data using a single search engine, an IBM representative said.

InfoWorld also says:

Some analysts think the upcoming technology can play a central role in helping corporate users crystallize the implementation of their Web services and SOA (service-oriented architecture) visions.

It may play a part, but I think "central role" is over stating it a bit.

Some background on NewsGator and Syndication

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 11:34:15 GMT

This post by Brad Feld, a Venture Capitalist who has recently invested in NewsGator is useful if you too have invested in a copy and want to understand a bit about where the tool is going. But its also interesting if like me you want to understand a bit about syndication in general and the market opportunity as investors see it. I recently posted on how I see the market from a technical perspective for behind the firewall corporate environments, in discussion with NewsGator this market is certainly in their plans.

Greg adds a bit more detail in his blog

Open Document Formats - XML to you and me

Tue, 29 Jun 2004 21:49:58 GMT

This is one of the areas I am going to be looking at so its good news that there has been a recent flurry of activity around it. here are some of the more important links.

The debate was started by the EC report into this topic which is summarised here the full report can be found here. One of the nice things about this report is that its been reviewed by Microsoft and Sun, and their comments on it, (at least those they made public), are also published. Tim Bray, a man with some credibility in this area, (now working for Sun), describes his meeting with the EC team here. John Udell writes up his views on the EC report here. Dare Obasanjo responds to Tim Bray here.

Then the thread starts to drift a bit, but Tim Bray also talks about his views on how the OpenOffice team have used XML, he is impressed! And a snippet on how Microsoft have used XML in Office 2003, he is less than impressed! Tim also talks about the use of custom schema’s and concludes they are not a good idea, (Microsoft implement them in Office 2003, OpenOffice don’t). Jean, (a MS employee), gives his point of view, Jean like Tim is also a member of the team that created XML.

It's when I see something like this that Microsoft really disappoints me!

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:31:18 GMT

I have just been sent details of this InfoPath web application by Microsoft. I should have been pleased, but I was very disappointed, not by InfoView which seems to be a great way of publishing an InfoPath form so that it can be completed using a web form, but because Microsoft did not ship it!

Microsoft would have got such a different reception and eliminated a lot of trust issues if InfoPath had been positioned as a web form designer, offline editor and aggregation tool, with a complementary web forms interface for those not able to take advantage of the native client. I can not believe that developed in parallel with the thick client developing the web client would have been that big a deal either.

Anyway Microsoft chose a different route and instead of being seen as producing a great innovative standards based product that demonstrated the best of rich and reach, they chose a route that exposed them to constant criticism over attempting to lock people into Office and Thick Client technologies!

Come on Microsoft examine everything you are planning from the perspective of those who are uneasy about your track record, I think it will be your best long term form of marketing!

Tablet PC for Jennifer

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 21:57:09 GMT

This is a short article that I wrote for the occupational therapist who works with one of my daughters who has Raynauds and Scleroderma.

There are a variety of different types of technology assistance that would benefit Jennifer in an educational setting. My perception is that a range of techniques will be required that reflect the unpredictable nature of her symptoms and the variety of different tasks that she needs to perform. There is no magic bullet solution that meets all of her needs.

Writing

When Jennifer has to write for extended periods there are a number of issues that need to be considered:

1. Her ability to dictate in a fluent fashion is limited at this age

2. Her hands get cold

3. Her hands get tired

4. Sometimes the movement/dexterity of her hands is limited

What solution options are available in addition to traditional pen and paper?

1. Voice recognition

2. Hand writing recognition

3. Simple gesture recognition

4. Different types of keyboard

5. text substitution

Each option is considered in brief below:

Voice recognition

Voice recognition is still not a mature and easy to use technology. Some of the important characteristics are described below:

1. The software, (SW), requires training and this process requires some dedication and can be very frustrating

2. The SW works best when the person dictating has mastery of fluent speaking

3. The SW works best in a quiet environment, although some people have reported success in a normal office environment with a high quality noise cancelling microphone

4. Considerable skill is required to use the SW for anything other than raw text input. In addition keyboard less editing of text input can be complex and very frustrating.

All of these characteristics are indicators that Voice Recognition will not be a magic bullet for Jennifer.

My view is that one should expect to use the SW as a complement to other techniques, where it is appropriate, and almost always alongside a keyboard and mouse or a stylus.

Hand writing recognition

Hand writing recognition has improved dramatically in accuracy and is now approaching 99%+ accuracy in SW that will be available in the mainstream operating systems by mid 2004.

Hand writing recognition may seem a strange option for someone who struggles with spelling, and traditional pen and paper however there are some significant advantages:

1. The SW works for people with fairly bad handwriting. Jennifer’s writing is neat by comparison

2. The SW allows the person to write large letters, much larger than would be appropriate for pen and paper

3. The SW recognises words by comparing against a dictionary, so for a poor speller accuracy can be increased significantly

4. The SW does not require significant training

5. Correction of words that have been incorrectly recognised is a fairly natural process and presents likely words from the dictionary improving spelling

6. If the digitiser used for entering the text is a Tablet format PC, the screen is warm and will keep Jennifer’s writing hand warm.

7. Using the same Tablet PC interface it is possible to transition between voice input and handwriting input seamlessly. This is useful for example if the stylus is used for correction and voice for bulk text entry. Or the stylus used for difficult words or for maths and voice used for descriptions.

8. Maths SW is also available to automatically calculate the answers of maths problems

9. Handwriting can be captured without conversion to text. Or can be converted to text later if required

Voice recording

As a complement to the two techniques above, rather than convert voice to text, it is also possible to record voice directly. There are some significant advantages to this as a complementary technique:

1. If Jennifer is getting behind she can just record her voice and she or her SSA can translate to text later if needed

2. Notes and annotations can be saved as voice

3. Note taking SW is available that merges the voice and text streams so that it is possible to hear the person’s voice at the same point in time that a note was being written.

Simple gesture recognition

There are alternatives to hand writing recognition that involve significantly less hand movement and much simpler gestures. This software can be used as a complement to the other techniques. It has the following important characteristics:

1. A stylus is used, so it has some of the benefits of handwriting recognition when used on a tablet, i.e. the writing surface is warm

2. The stylus movements are much simpler, generally just straight lines and L shapes

3. The movements can be small or large

4. A game is available to aid in learning

Different types of keyboard

There are a wide variety of specialist keyboards available that allow single handed typing. Gel keyboards for low impact etc. Although the mobility of a device with these keyboards is limited and they are only likely to be of benefit for extended text input.

Text substitution

Used in conjunction with most of the above, this allows short words to automatically be expanded to long ones, or difficult things to type to be substituted with easy things. It has the disadvantage of making people lazy, but it would help Jennifer. For example if you type:

1. dt, then the date and time can be substituted like this: 03/11/2004 @ 02:48 PM

2. dont can be automatically converted to don’t

3. address can be substituted to

Road

Town

County

Postcode

Note taking

A lot of school work is about note taking, research and idea assembly for projects etc. A variety of powerful techniques are available including, some of which have already been mentioned:

1. Ability to record teachers words, make text notes and listen to the teachers words later to reinforce the text note or to clarify the note

2. Ability to take notes using a keyboard, voice recording, handwriting and handwriting conversion to text. Or a mixture of these

3. Ability to annotate scanned in workbooks, text books and handouts, annotations can take any of the above forms

4. Ability to aggregate information from lots of sources, scanned, web, and personal input into a project

All of these mechanisms are integrated in products like:

1. Microsoft One note

2. Microsoft Journal

3. Agilix GoBinder™ For Students

Annotating

Annotating is key for students. In Jennifer’s case especially so as she is likely to focus on annotation of existing material and notes, rather than note taking. The primary technologies available are:

1. Freehand drawing using a digitiser, ideally integrated into the tablet PC format

2. Freehand writing

3. Handwriting converted to text, likely to be used for project work and other formal submissions

4. Voice annotation, (see comments above)

5. Voice to text, (see comments above)

Compilation/Project work

Project work is ever increasingly important. Project work involves:

1. Research

2. Assembly of material

3. Integration of information from diverse sources

4. Annotation of this information

5. Original input

All of these activities are served by Note taking solutions like Microsoft Onenote described previously.

Diagrams and Art

If any activity suited itself to the tablet, stylus driven input model it’s diagramming and art. Software is available that:

1. Converts freehand gestures to lines, circles, flow charts etc

2. Software is available that allows the production or graphs, and other diagrams using mouse or stylus

3. Voice or text annotation or freehand writing annotations can be added to these diagrams

4. They allow a person with reduced dexterity to produce neat well organised work

5. They provide powerful ways to correct mistakes, especially useful for people with low dexterity.

Other considerations

1. It would be great if Jen did not have to carry lots of books, notes etc around with her. A tablet format device with scanned notes and books or eBooks would be ideal.

2. Preparation for the future. The skills learnt in using technology to support the learning process would be invaluable in later life

3. Self sufficiency. The tools described would potentially reduce the level of SSA input, but make Jen more self sufficient and equip her better for later life.

Recommendations

1. Jennifer should continue to spend a significant amount of time reading out loud at school and home, as this will improve her fluency and prepare the ground for voice recognition SW later

2. Jennifer should undertake a trial of a tablet PC, recommended to be Tablet PC version 2004, (available mid year), for approximately 2 weeks for handwriting recognition. Potentially small changes made now in her style could significantly improve successful use later

3. Jennifer should begin to play with voice recognition SW at home, (equipment is available), so that it comes easily and naturally to her when she has to learn it for real

4. Jennifer should begin to play with Microsoft OneNote to keep her personal diary, so that she becomes familiar with navigation, and use, (voice annotation, voice recording etc)

5. Consideration should be given to equipping her with a Tablet PC and handheld scanner during her first year at high school. Access to ebooks and scanned books should be explored through the school and school book suppliers

Tips for using Lotus Notes and GTD methodology

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 10:51:56 GMT

I recently read Getting Things Done, and wanted to apply it using Lotus Notes. I struggled a bit and to tell the truth I have not fully implemented it even after a month of playing around. I am trying again now that I have a new PDA, better synchronisation software, mNotes and some hints and tips from Eric Mack on using Notes and GTD and on using Notes for task and action management.

Writing the living web

Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:23:56 GMT

I just read a very nicely crafted article describing 10 tips for writing the Living Web. Essentially its about writing blogs. As I progressed I wondered increasingly who could have put together such an article and what motivated them to put in the effort. When I got to then end I found it was Mark Bernstein who is chief scientist at Eastgate Systems, publishers of Tinderbox, a personal content management assistant. I went straight there to have a look, (so its good advertising Mark!), but unfortunarely its for the Mac only, but they are working on a Windows version.

More integration between WinFS and XML

Wed, 23 Jun 2004 13:52:03 GMT

Jon Udell of Infoworld says in his blog:

Meanwhile I've been working on a story about Longhorn, for which I had long and an extremely interesting interview with Quentin Clark, ~~the architect of~~ director of program management for WinFS. I'd like to transcribe the whole thing to post along with the story, when it runs, but the upshot is that Microsoft is planning more and better integration between WinFS and XML -- both in terms of data definition and query -- than I'd previously heard, which is welcome news

I'm pleased too because it means we are one step closer to the vision of WinFS that I have been talking about in my blog. Complementary and not competetive to the web.

He then goes on to talk about the different types of search experience:

It seems clear, though, that whatever can be accomplished by means of what I've come to call "managed metadata," we'll always want that Google effect to be happening in parallel. When asked about the Semantic Web and RDF at InfoWorld's 2002 CTO Forum, Sergey Brin said:
Look, putting angle brackets around things is not a technology, by itself. I'd rather make progress by having computers understand what humans write, than by forcing humans to write in ways computers can understand.

From my perspective, this isn't an either/or choice. I'd rather make progress by having computers understand what people write and by helping people to write in ways that computers can understand. What's more, I'd like to construe "writing in ways that computers can understand" as a problem for which hybrid SQL/XML technology is a solution. When managed metadata exists, or can be acquired, purely relational query will be powerful. When metadata is implicitly present, for example in XML fragments, XPath and XQuery can leverage it. The combination of relational, XML, and free-text search is the best of all worlds. As I've mentioned before, by the way, Kingsley Idehen has been demonstrating this for several years.

I agree but I don't think its a suprise to anyone that "The combination of relational, XML, and free-text search is the best of all worlds" and its my understanding that that's what MS is trying to achieve with WinFS, but the trick is that they are capturing as much of that relational and XML information automatically or transparently as people go about working with their emails, contacts, calendars, office documents etc.

To convert or not

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 09:34:13 GMT

Working Smart has a short discussion on whether to convert your hand written notes in OneNote, I had not really considered this topic from any other standpoint than speed. In this article the basic premis is that handwritten notes are much more expressive than typewritten, and the seamless inclusion of diagrams and other visual clues can greatly add to the quality of the notes.

When I demonstrate the computer, as I inevitably do, I usually do so by handwriting some text in Microsoft OneNote. Immediately, people ask, “So, does it automatically convert your handwriting to text?” Well, yes, it can ... if I want. But, 90% of the time I just leave my handwriting “as is.” Here’s why ... to quote Linenberger again:

Taking notes in ink:

facilitates creativity in your note taking
communicates more about the meaning of your notes
integrates better with sketches and expressive marks on the note-taking page
is a better way to represent information copied from whiteboards and presentations
is a faster way to record notes, faster than even the most speedy and accurate handwriting recognition.
I can virtually guarantee that after a few days or weeks of taking notes primarily in ink, you too will be convinced that this is a highly effective and preferable method of note taking on the Tablet PC (Linenberger, p. 237)

Personal Information Disaster!

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:58:05 GMT

I wrote this post then lost it! So this is just a place holder to remind me to get around to writing it again.

links I need are

http://www.novell.com/products/ifolder/

http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu/index.html

http://esw.w3.org/topic/PersonalInformationDisaster

http://www.kde.org/

http://oopm.openoffice.org/

http://news.com.com/2009-1016-5103226.html?tag=nl

http://www.adambosworth.net/archives/000021.html

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/office2004.aspx?pid=highlights

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/06/17.html#a1025

http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween11.html

and my own blog entries

Which Office Suite?

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:22:43 GMT

Which Office Suite? Is shaping up to be a fascinating decision making process. I am not ready to expose all of my thinking on this topic but it goes something like this:

Some people think its easy, MS Office alternatives are cheaper and most people don’t use the bells and whistles in Office so people will migrate provided the alternatives meet peoples core needs.
I think its more complex than this and as a minimum the costs of migration, lost productivity, and compatibility and rework need to be factored in
Intertia is a big one in Microsofts favour, for a business that has SW Assurance or an EA, the decision is deferred probably for at least 2-3 years after their EA expires and probably longer if they do a lot of data interchange. That probably means 4-5 years from now!
But this is the trivial stuff. Sure direct and indirect cost comparison is important but I want to consider:
1. How do people really use Office and is it really true that people only use a small amount of the functionality, and if they do, do they all use a different small amount?
2. I also want to consider vision, MS has a vision for Office, What is that Vision?
3. How open is that vision, probably not very! Is the value proposition worth the lock-in? Is the ‘integrated innovation’ that Microsoft are fond of worth the lock-in
4. What’s the vision of the competition, for some of them is it to catch up with Office 97. For others it’s a complete reworking of the concept. So it’s important not to just ask the question can it do what office does!
5. Remember the vision is the important stuff, if the decision is 4-5 years away!

Maybe that all sounds a bit dry, so why do I think it’s so interesting:

Consider how many users of Office there are
Consider how much of Microsoft’s profits come from Office and how desperate MS are to keep that profit coming in, desperate people innovate!
Consider how important Office is to drive MS Operating system sales and how important OS sales are to MS profits, desperate times two!
Consider how desperate the competition is to break the MS Office Suite monopoly
Look at the last few versions of Office, basically a stagnant product, innovating sure, but within a straight jacket imposed by the fact that all of the core Office stuff is effectively done, and improvements are marginal.
All the real interesting stuff requires further client side, client server, peer to peer and device type to device type integration
Hence we see the push in the Office System areas, Mobility, WinFS.

So its integrated integration where the action is from Microsoft's perspective and they are pouring billions into it, how are the competition addressing integrated innovation, or do they have an alternative perspective. How do the differing approaches affect real enterprises and real users, (see this blog for the difference). Thats the question I want to answer!

As a twist the answer may not just depend on the type of person you are, but on the type of device you use. So maybe portable device users and especially tablet device users will have a more compelling reason to stick with MS because for these people the flexible input technologies, online/offiline experience, home/work integration, device integration etc are more important.

Some of the important links are listed below:

Advantages of the OpenOffice.org XML File Format Used by the StarOffice Office Suite

Migrating to StarOffice Software from Microsoft Office

Draft of OO Product Concept Document

Accepted OO Projects

Calendar Feeds

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:04:41 GMT

In this blog, I started to talk about the evolution of subscription beyond news. Here is a great example of how this might work. This site describes the RDF Calendar format. It provides a few examples, (I have added a few as well), of why you migt want to subscribe to a calendar, and includes ToDo list examples:

Subscribe to you travel itinery and have the events automatically added to your calendar, flight times etc, and automatically updated
Subscribe to a list of bugs which flow into your todo list
Subscribe to an event schedule, for example football matches
Subscribe to a favorite TV show

More information is available here

Some of the scenarios are listed below:

EventDiscovery
CalendarScraping
TravelTools, PathCross
CalendarSynchronization
ScheduleAnimation
OpeningHoursUseCase
AnnounceOMatic
HTML views of calendars (see datebook2html.xsl in telagent for example)

One more example of the Personal Information Disaster that is the web today!

Getting things done

Sun, 30 May 2004 00:41:17 GMT

Just finished my first read of this book, (it really needs reading twice), and found it pretty good. Unfortunately it also left me being very frustrated because the methodology proposed is so well supported by the outlook Add-in, and I have to use Lotus Notes. There is a template for Notes, but so far as I can figure it only seems to be available through coaching sessions.

There are some very good blogs on how to refine the methodolgy:

http://blogs.officezealot.com/marc/archives/000582.html

http://www.shahine.com/omar/PermaLink,guid,a8bb7588-179d-4d6f-aa5e-703ea2275e57.aspx

and of course Dave's blog

http://david.davidco.com/

One of the key concepts in the book is, "A mind like water", ie emptying the mind so that it can focus on what needs to be done. The concept is sometimes misunderstood and there is a great post here that explains it very well.

Another short article that describes whats important about RSS

Sat, 29 May 2004 20:56:37 GMT

This site has just appeared http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com it includes the following bullet list of things that make up RSS.

RSS is...

1. A format.
2. Content management tools that generate feeds in the format.
3. Aggregators and readers that subscribe to the feeds.
4. Search engines and utilities that crunch the information and ideas.
5. Services from technology companies like Microsoft and Apple.

6. Authoritative publications like the BBC, The New York Times, CNET, InfoWorld, PC World, Time, Wired, Salon, Yahoo, Reuters -- that distribute news and opinion in RSS.
7. Many thousands of weblogs covering virtually every aspect of life on this planet.
8. A vast and growing community of thinkers, writers, educators, public servants, and technologists.
The revolution of RSS is what people are doing with it, what it enables, the way it works for people who use technology, the freedom it offers, and the way it makes timely information, that used to be expensive and for the select-few so inexpensive and broadly available.
RSS is the next thing in Internet and knowledge management. It's big. A lot bigger than a format.

Just getting the idea of smart clients, now we have smart documents

Sat, 29 May 2004 16:13:41 GMT

Joe describes the concept of a smart document:

A smart document is a document-based solution which provides a user with help information, auxiliary data, actions and custom tools that are pertinent to WHERE a user is in the document and that are presenteddynamically WHEN a user enters that region of the document.

Then describes the tools that Microsoft is working on to develop Smart Documents here

This is not an area that I know much about, but given the amount of time people spend authoring documents and forms, and the amount of times people get them wrong it looks important. Even more important when document content is tagged in XML and that tagged content can be mined, document content quality will need to increase and it sounds like Smart Document concepts are going to be key to driving that quality improvement.

RSS Extended Attributes

Fri, 28 May 2004 23:39:45 GMT

I blogged here and here about my ideas for the future of RSS and similar XML based technologies and how I use them myself. I then came across some stuff on RSS extended attributes, and the support for them in NewsGator and outlook 2003. So I built a little demo, here’s how:

First I took a copy of my RSS feed and put it here
I edited it to add a private namespace <rss version="2.0" xmlns:steve="http://example.org/cool">
Then I added an extended attribute Technology to about half of the entries in the feed, for some I set the technology to DATA, and for others to DESKTOP, like this <steve:Technology>Desktop</steve:Technology>
Look at the actual RSS file for more details
If you want you can subscribe to this feed for your own demo, but its not very impressive, so I encourage you to build your own!
Next in NewsGator, select the folder you want and pick Options
Then go to the render tab and the column mappings dialog.
Add a new namespace, in my case its prefix is Steve and its URI is http://example.org/cool
The add a column, name Technology, Type Text and Xpath originalItem/item/steve:Technology
Then create a folder under your RSS root folder called Steve Richards Test Blog
In Outlook click on the new folder and right click on the column headings and pick customize. Add a new custom column called Technology. Fields -> User Defined Fields In Folder -> New Field
Then subscribe to my feed, it should get delivered into the customised folder
The custom attribute should then be displayed for the feed items as they arrive, you can sort, group by etc on this attribute
Here's what it looked like in outlook in the end

Now that was a lot of work for not much gain, but that’s how it is with hand crafted demo’s. If the RSS feeds were already created, and the client side UI a bit more integrated, (i.e. no separate NewsGator and Outlook configuration), and the UI already understood the most common extended attribute sets then you can see that the experience would be pretty rich.

I guess this is exactly where MS want to take us with WinFS and the Longhorn shell, so its worth thinking around the concepts now.

The examples for how to use this stuff that immediately spring to mind are RSS feeds for:

Documents libraries
Film reviews
Book reviews
Scheduled events
Price lists

Poking around the web I found the following:

A proposal of an extended attribute set for scheduled events
A simpler proposal for events
There are quite a few standard attributes to play with as well, not sure if they work the same though, if at all as they don’t have a namespace
This is where I got the idea from

An excellent article on blogging and RSS

Fri, 28 May 2004 21:47:37 GMT

Here is an excellent article on RSS and Weblogs. It has good coverage on discussions and collaboration aspects, which I neglected in my own simillar article.

Steve Richards: Information

This site has moved, subscribe here!

I have a new blog so this blog is now closed down!

Wait a sec and you should redirected automatically, if not click below

Study tips

Really good list of SharePoint resources

I need help

Another good diagram showing personal information management flow

The blogging workflow

Interesting view on XML and the benefits of generic solutions

Office news

Getting things done

Some progress in server infrastructure for processing XML documents

Some background on NewsGator and Syndication

Open Document Formats - XML to you and me

It's when I see something like this that Microsoft really disappoints me!

Tablet PC for Jennifer

Tips for using Lotus Notes and GTD methodology

Writing the living web

More integration between WinFS and XML

To convert or not

Personal Information Disaster!

Which Office Suite?

Calendar Feeds

Getting things done

Another short article that describes whats important about RSS

More details on Smart Documents

Just getting the idea of smart clients, now we have smart documents

RSS Extended Attributes

An excellent article on blogging and RSS