loose wire blog

Death of a ‘Toughbook’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(update: after two days of nothing, the device is now booting again and Panasonic have offered to take a closer look at it and tell me what happened.)

My faith in my Panasonic Toughbook took a bath today when a waitress poured coffee all over it (and me.) It’s that absurd thing that waiters do of having to put coffee and food down right next to you when you’re clearly in the middle of a key discussion/interview/meeting/nap. It was bound to happen.

Still, I held out hope the Toughbook would be up to it. After all, the videos show guys doing stuff to their Toughbook we wouldn’t do to our partners (unless they asked us to.) I splashed the coffee off under a tap, knowing the damage coffee can wreak. To no avail: within minutes the screen went blank and the thing died.

Now I know why they call them ‘drop- and spill- resistant”. If it’s a spill, you might be ok, so long as it’s purified water. And “resistant”? It resists it, like Niles would Maris.

I bought a new one and am charging the hotel for it; they’ve agreed but I’ll send the lawyers home when I see the money. I happen to have a recording of the point when the coffee is spilt. It goes something like this:

Interviewee: in a fast growth  economy like India. Bangladesh, meanwhile.. [sound of crockery slipping, liquid spilling] oo shit!

Flaks (in chorus): oh no!

Me: (bizarrely quietly) Interesting…

Flaks (in chorus): oh dear!

Me: (still bizarrely quietly) OK…

[Sound of waitress disemboweling self with sugar spoon]

Lessons from all this?

• Don’t order coffee in five star hotel lobbies when you’ve got a laptop in the area.
• Don’t believe any waterproof claims from laptop manufacturers. Turns out that spillage only applies to the keyboard. You can see the waitress managed to get the latte everywhere except the keyboard.
• Don’t settle for less from those responsible than full replacement immediately. I made it clear to the phalanx of hotel management that they would face serious claims if I did not check and rehouse the hard drive as quickly as possible and that meant buying a replacement computer immediately (it helped I was down the road from the place I bought it at the time. Singapore is like that.) It’s not about the computer: it’s really about the data, but it’s also about your day. You’re a working stiff and you don’t deserve to sit on your hands while they try to wriggle out of a full refund.
• Back up your data regularly. I was lucky; the hard drive was safe. But I bet a lot wouldn’t be.

This, by the way, is what Panasonic say at the bottom of the page on spillage:

Furthermore, if you spill coffee, soft drinks, or similar liquids on the computer, the keyboard or other parts of the unit may become stained. Sugar and other substances may also cause corrosion, so liquids other than water are more problematic. Deal with such spills in the same way as directed for water and then have the unit checked.

Be aware that the spill resistance of these products in no way guarantees that liquids will not harm them or cause breakdowns.

del.icio.us Tags: toughbook,panasonic,coffee,failure,hotels

The Limits of the Cloud

Microsoft’s FolderShare, a folder synchronizing tool that I’ve recommended in previous columns, is going off the air for up to three days in the middle of the week “for server upgrades”:

FolderShare will be offline for a little while (48-72 hours) next week for some server upgrades.

• The outage begins Tuesday, June 17, at 6 PM Pacific Times (UTC-7).
• We hope to be back online by 6 PM Friday at the latest.

I share some of the disbelief of commenters to the blog post and ZDNet’s Michael Krigsman:

Users are attracted to services such as FolderShare for two reasons: useful features and the promise of always-on reliability. Remove reliability from the equation and the service’s value plummets.

(Zoliblog also points to some odd, unexplained changes in the way FolderShare works, whereby the index of files you’re syncing between two computers appears to now be stored on Microsoft’s servers. Whether this is important remains to be seen.)

The bigger point is this: If we are genuinely going to shift computing to the cloud—move our stuff online, think in terms of being able to compute from anywhere, anytime—then we need to have reliable access to our files and accounts.

That Microsoft, of all people, can switch off such access for up to three days in the middle of the week highlights the inadequacies of that thinking. In the longer run it may be that we are in error for considering relying on cloud computing, and Microsoft, for access to our stuff.

(The arguments that it’s free, and in beta, don’t wash. Imagine if Google took Gmail or Google Docs down for three days: beta no longer means broken, at least not for the majority of a working week.)

Windows Live FolderShare Team Blog: Planned system outage starting June 17

del.icio.us Tags: windows live,microsoft,backup,foldershare,cloud computing,online backup,synchronization,downtime,failure

The Alarm Clock is Dead, Long Live the Cellphone

Gadgets, like software and services, often end up being used in ways the creator didn't intend. But how many companies make the most of this opportunity?

Take the cellphone. More than a third of Brits use their mobile phone as an alarm clock, according to a survey by British hotel chain Travelodge (thanks textually.org):

Budget hotel chain Travelodge quizzed 3,000 respondents on waking up habits and 71% of UK adults claimed that alarm clocks are now obsolete. The faithful bedside companion has been cast off in favour of the modern must-have, a mobile phone. Sixteen million Brits (36%) now prefer using the latest ring tone to rouse them from sleep rather than the shrill bleeping of an alarm clock.

Why? The article doesn't say, but the answers are pretty obvious:

• Who wants to take an extra device with you when you travel?
• Ever come across an alarm clock with a dozen different ring tones?
• Ever tried to program an alarm clock you're not familiar with?
• Ever tried to rely on wake up services?
• Most alarm clocks are badly designed.

This might even reveal itself in the Alarm Clock Law: if another device can handle the task of a dumber gadget, it will replace it. So does that mean that the alarm clock is dead?

Not exactly. The alarm clock performs a single function: wake the person up. But that has turned out not to be as easy as it looks. While the design of most alarm clocks have been outsourced to the brain-dead, other designers have recognised the potential of alarm clocks that don't merely wake up the owner, but keep them awake long enough to get up.

This list, for example, illustrates the thriving world of alarm clock design (think Clocky, that has wheels and has wheels and . And in this post about Seth Godin last September there was a bunch of responses suggesting that in fact alarm clock designers have tried to add features to make the alarm clock relevant. As one of the commenters pointed out, the problem is that we're just not ready to pay more for those features because alarm clocks have become a commodity.

I suspect it's a bit more complicated than this. There may be other factors:

• the decline of radio, and therefore the decline of alarm-clock-radios (34% of respondents wake up to the radio in the Travelodge survey);
• We travel more and carry more gadgets with us, so something had to stay behind;
• As home alarm clocks became more sophisticated (music, radio, mains-powered) so we were less likely to take them on the road with us;
• Then there's security: I know I stopped bringing an old-style ticking alarm clock with me because it made airport security professionals nervous.

Perhaps most important, we have developed a comfort level with our cellphone's inner workings, and few of us would like to entrust a morning alarm to something or someone we don't know.

Cellphone manufacturers, to their credit, seem to have acknowledged this new role: I tried to find the alarm function on a Nokia 6120 and did so in five seconds. I bet it would take me longer on any digital alarm clock. The process is quick and painless, and a little bell logo on the home screen reassuringly indicates it's set. The alarm itself is cute and starts out unobtrusively but then gets louder until you're up and about.

Or, more ominously, have thrown the phone across the room where it now sits in pieces. Maybe there is something to be said for keeping the alarm clock separate.

del.icio.us Tags: alarm clock,design,travel,sleep

We're All Information Gatherers Now

When we talk about the future of newspapers, the future of education, the future of media, and the future of learning we tend to ignore the most important aspect. We tend to focus on information delivery and not on the nature of information seeking. We think, somehow, that we still need to get the same kind of information to people, but just in a different way. But the bigger shift is how the Internet has changed what kind of information we're looking for and how we go about finding it.

A British Library report on the future of libraries [PDF] hits the nail on the head:

Library users demand 24/7 access, instant gratification at a click, and are increasingly looking for "the answer" rather than for a particular format: a research monograph or a journal article for instance. So they scan, flick and "power browse" their way through digital content, developing new forms of online reading on the way that we do not yet fully understand (or, in many cases, even recognise.)

A page later, the report says:

In general terms, this new form of information seeking behaviour can be characterised as being horizontal, bouncing, checking and viewing in nature. Users are promiscuous, diverse and volatile and it is clear that these behaviours represent a serious challenges for traditional information providers, nurtured in a hardcopy paradigm and, in many respects, still tied to it.

 John Naughton at The Observer helps put this in context:

What Marshall McLuhan called 'the Gutenberg galaxy' - that universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study - is imploding, and we don't know if what will replace it will be better or worse.

This is true, of course, not just of libraries and academia. It's true of newspapers and pretty much any medium that delivers information. The Internet has forced us, encouraged us, to develop scanning techniques way beyond the simple quick-reading skills of old. Now if I'm looking for information on the Gutenberg Galaxy I can do so quickly on Wikipedia simply by selecting the words on the page, right-clicking and selecting Search Google for... in the pop-up menu. Time taken: 2 seconds. (Indeed, Naughton and The Guardian/Observer could be considered somewhat backward by not providing the link in the piece itself.)

This ability to secure, and appetite for, quick access to snippets information (what I guess we used to call "gobbets") is part and parcel of the web and of the lives of those who spend any time on it. Why hunt for a dictionary if you can look it up on your cellphone/laptop/fridge display? The impact is still not properly understood or studied, however. If we satisfy our curiosity so easily, does our curiosity grow in all directions, both in breadth and depth, or does it flit from flower to flower like a bumble-bee in summer?

The British Library research seems to suggest the latter. Using words like horizontal, bouncing, checking, viewing, promiscuous, diverse and volatile seems to suggest we're entering a world where people are fickle and their attention spans short. Once the initial curiosity is satisfied ("What the hell is a gobbet?") the reader moves on, following the Serendipidity of the Hyperlink.

On the other hand, the word seems to suggest the readers have built-in safeguards against misinformation and inaccuracy. Our scanning skills are honed beyond merely being able to take in a page of information quickly. We -- or most of us; Facebook seems to presenting a challenge, if all the gullible messages my friends send me are representative -- are able to judge the source of information too, based on the layout, design and style of a web page and its contents.

This latter skill may be more important in the long run. Perhaps the shift is more about our understanding of what we need to know, and the time we can dedicate to knowing it, than to any shift in our attention span or ability to absorb deep columns of information.

The Gutenberg Galaxy, in fact, was bound to come to an end sometime. We simply have too much information to digest nowadays to be able, most of us, to take a leisurely stroll through the literature. And, frankly, in academic terms, much of the literature could be better and more tightly written. (I admit, I scanned the BT report and was mildly irritated it was a) in PDF format which slows digestion, b) didn't conform to usual layouts and c) lacked an executive summary and conclusion).

If there wasn't much information out there, and not much access to it, I would probably be quite happy dedicating my time to knowing a lot about Chaucer or the sex life of the fruitfly, and not much else. But the Internet has taught us a valuable lesson that we, as a race, seem to have forgotten: That there is so much stuff to learn out there we should be in a mad race to learn as much as we can about it as we can before we're run over by a Sat Nav-dependent truck.

Perhaps our generation will be the last to be stupid enough to think we know enough as individuals to be smart (or conversely, happy to wallow in our specialist expertise and general ignorance). Future generations may look back at us and ask why we were so incurious about all the things in front of us we didn't know anything about. Right now, I'd settle for knowing why the sky is blue, how many Grand Slam tournaments there are, what a grommet is and why there seem to be so many different types of plug to go on the end of a coaxial cable.

Thank God we're at last beginning to learn the skills necessary to find that stuff out before breakfast.

Reading:

John Naughton: Thanks, Gutenberg - but we're too pressed for time to read | Media | The Observer

Gutenberg and the changing nature of how we read and find information

'Google Generation' is a myth: pioneering research

Technorati Tags: printing, information, data, libraries, gutenberg, british library, research, web 2.0, future, guardian

Bye Bye, Laptop?

The day seems to be getting closer when we can do something that would seem to be pretty obvious: access our pocket-sized smartphone via a bigger screen, keyboard and a mouse. Celio Corp says it's close.

Celio Corp have two products: their Mobile Companion (pictured above), a laptop like thing that includes an 8" display, a full function keyboard, and a touchpad mouse. At 1 x 6 x 9 inches and weighing 2 lbs, the Mobile Companion promises over 8 hours of battery life and boots instantly. After loading a driver on your smartphone you can then access it via a USB cable or Bluetooth. (You can also charge the smartphone via the same USB connection.)

Uses? Well, you can say goodbye to coach cramp, where you're unable to use a normal laptop. You can input data more easily than you might if you just had your smartphone with you. And, of course, you don't need to bring your laptop.

The second product might be even better. The Smartphone Interface System is, from what I can work out, a small Bluetooth device that connects your smartphone, not to the Mobile Companion, but to a desktop computer, public display or a conference room projector  -- these devices connect via a cable to the Interface, like this:

The important bit about both products is that the Redfly software renders the smartphone data so it fits on the new display (this will be quite tricky, and, because it will carried via Bluetooth, would need quite a bit of compression. The maximum size of the output display is VGA, i.e. 800 x 480, so don't expect stunning visuals, but it'll be better than having all your colleagues crowding around your smartphone.)

The bad news? Redfly isn't launched yet, and will for the time being be available only for Windows Mobile Devices. Oh, and according to UberGizmo, it will cost $500. The other thing is that you shouldn't confuse "full function keyboard" with "full size keyboard": this vidcap from PodTech.net gives you an idea of the actual size of the thing:

this is the keyboard size relative to Celio CEO Kirt Bailey's digits:

Until I try the thing out and feel sure that the keyboard doesn't make the same compromises as the Eee PC, I'd rather use my Stowaway keyboard.

For those of you looking for software to view your mobile device on your desktop computer, you might want to check out My Mobiler. It's free software that purports to do exactly that for Windows Mobile users.

Technorati Tags: keyboards, celio corp, redfly, foleo, umpc, ultramobiles, smartphones, bluetooth, windows mobile, microsoft, usb

User Determined Computing

I'm not sure it's a new phenomenon, but Accenture reckons it is: employees are more tech savvy than the companies they work for and are demanding their workplace catches up.

A new study by Accenture to be released next week (no link available yet; based on a PR pitch that mentions no embargo) will say that until recently all the most advancted networks and communication devices were at the office. Now they're at home. The company calls it "user-determined computing":

Today, home technology has outpaced enterprise technology, leaving employees frustrated by the inadequacy of the technology they use at work.  As a result, employees are demanding more because of their ever-increasing familiarity and comfort level with technology. It’s an emerging phenomenon Accenture has called “user-determined computing.”

The global study of more than 300 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) will argue that "executive and technology leaders are undertaking superficial improvements in their information technology systems rather than making fundamental changes to meet the growing demands of users." The research will show that the high performing companies are those that are deploying the new technologies.

So far so good (and until we see the report that's all we've got for detail.) I'd argue that this disconnect has existed for years and only been exacerbated by the rise of Web 2.0. But I'm a little less sure of Accenture's argument when it says that it has launched an internal initiative of its own -- what it's rather lamely calling "Collaboration 2.0", which involves

rolling out enhanced search capabilities, high-definition and desktop video conferencing solutions, unified messaging, and people pages (similar to personal pages on social networking sites).

A good enough start, I guess, but hardly an office revolution. And I think the term "user-determined" is misleading; it sounds as if users actually have a say in what computers, communications and software they use. Even Accenture's own Collaboration 2.0 doesn't sound as if that's the case. "User-influenced", maybe.

What do I think? I believe that most companies' internal software systems need a major more radical overhaul -- of five media companies I have had dealings with recently, one still uses the same editing software it had in place more than 10 years ago, another uses a system that has no major changes to its interface since the early 1990s, and another uses DOS WordStar.

I believe that companies need to be more flexible about how/where/when their workers work. The when and where is being addressed with telecommuting and flexible hours. But I also think that workers should be free to use everything that Web 2.0 has to offer -- collaboration tools like stuff from 37Signals, Google Apps, Skype, their own hardware, whatever it takes. I know there are security and legal issues involved, but, let's face it, what worker doesn't use their own instant messaging program, log into Gmail on their office computer and other "illegal" moves inside the enterprise?

It's time to let the worker work as s/he wants. If Accenture has spotted anything, it's probably that the most productive workers are independent workers -- those who set up their own systems so they're not dependent on and held back by their employer. If that's true, then the logical conclusion is that those employees are probably not employees anymore, but have struck out on their own either as consultants, freelancers or hitched their wagons to smaller, leaner and more flexible startups.

PS I wasn't hugely impressed with Accenture's own website, which didn't comply with the most basic standards of Web 2.0. For one thing, it's Flash-based, with no options for a quicker loading, HTML version. And the Flash doesn't load quickly:

Secondly, a pop-up window greets you on your immediate arrival requesting your participation in a survey:

Not a good start.

Technorati Tags: productivity, accenture, web 2.0, skype, google apps, instant messaging, collaboration tools, project management

Tight Angles at 30,000 Feet

I'm sure I'm not the first person to think that economy class seats are getting smaller. This is me trying to do some writing on my ThinkPad when the person in front had her seat in recline mode. Forget about it. It's impossible to lift the screen any higher than this (it's a Malaysian Airlines plane.)

So what's the answer? I want something I can type on when the muse strikes wherever I am, without worrying about space or whether I'm going to be told by attendants I can't use the device because it's really a phone.

I'm trying to get a new iGo ThinkOutside keyboard (spilt coffee over the last one) and was wondering whether a Palm LifeDrive might be the answer. Any thoughts? I'd like to have something with a bit of space on the screen and on the drive itself.

Technorati Tags: flying, mobile worker, laptops, lifedrive, palm, keyboards

The Power Thieves

Why must those of us trying to find a power outlet feel like thieves?

I'm sitting here at KL International Airport at what seems like the only power outlet (found after asking an information officer who clearly had been asked before) in the place, between a vast Samsung TV blaring bad images of Turkey to zero people and the cleaners' entrance.

At least there's a power outlet: given my plane's been delayed an hour, that's the least I could hope for. But why should we have to put up with this kind of thing? Why should we be so inconvenienced? I want to see

• a Wiki style database of power outlets at airports so we can pool our knowledge and
• airports (and everyone else) to wake up to the fact that we're taking up far less power than the Samsung TV.

Anyone care to join me? (Of course you may know a better place at KLIA, in which case I'd really love to hear from you...)

Technorati Tags: outlets, airports, KL, travel, mobile work

Design: It's All About Alarm Clocks

Business writer and entrepreneur Seth Godin throws out product ideas like other people throw out orange juice cartons:

For twenty cents or so, alarm clock manufacturers can add a chip that not only knows the time (via a radio signal) but knows what day it is too. Which means that they can add a switch that says "weekends." Which means that the 98% of the population that doesn't want to wake up on the same time on weekends as they do on weekdays will be happier (and better rested.)

But he's not touting a new alarm clock, he's making a point: "So why doesn't every alarm clock have this feature?" he asks. "Because most people in that business are busy doing their jobs (distribution, promotion, pricing, etc.), not busy making products that people actually want to buy--and talk about."

Indeed, companies are always far too busy doing what they're doing to think about what they're doing and wonder whether they can do it better. And, as Seth points out, this is because companies are compartmentalized into responsibilities, and brave is the person who tries to straddle departments.

The weekend alarm clock won't be made by a big alarm clock company, it'll be designed by someone like Gauri Nanda, who I mentioned a few weeks back as the inventor of Clocky, the alarm clock that goes walkabout. Gauri, needless to say, was working on her own.

Actually what I suspect happens in companies is that they just ignore the user entirely. This is partly because technical products are built (and much of them designed) by programmers and engineers. I hate to generalize, but these people thrive on complexity, not on usability. For them creating and mastering the opaque is an achievement, not a symptom of failure.

What usually happens is that there are two sides to product development: the people in the company who think it's a good idea and the people who have to build it. But in my limited experience there's no one in between who speaks both languages, and, most importantly, can see what the customer might expect and want.

This is the hardest bit: it's called usability and it seems to be the last thing people think about. If you've ever grappled with an alarm clock, to continue Seth's example, you'll know what I mean.

My favorite is the alarm clock that makes a beep every time you press a button: not so useful if you're trying to quietly set the alarm but not wake your loved one. One clock I have, despite being sophisticated enough to tell me the temperature, the time in Lima and how many thous in a furlong, even makes a beep when I hit the backlight button. And no, it can't be switched off without a PhD in molecular biophysics.

I wish I could say that this is confined to alarm clocks, but it's not. Nearly every device or program is dumb in its own way. But there are bright spots. One of the things I love about Web 2.0 is that the people designing the tools really seem to understand usability.

Of course, given the fact that Web 2.0 is one big feedback loop, where new versions pop up like mushroom after rain, it's inevitable. But the result is websites that are easy to navigate and to figure out.

Apple, of course, figured this out long ago, But everyone else seems to be having problems understanding it. I tried out a website the other day which was supposed to help me find the best form of transportation between two places. The search engine was not smart enough to know a building's earlier name, or even to recommend alternatives if I got the name slightly wrong.

The internal calculator was not smart enough to get the distances right (one walk I was asked to make between bus-stops would have taken me into the sea and halfway to the next country); neither was it smart enough to realize that was an error. All should have been spotted by any usability tests. All undermine the whole point of the website, which is to make it easy to figure out a way to get from A to B.

I won't bore you with more examples: You are users, and you come across this stuff all the time. What worries me more is that we're not listened to, at least in a way in that makes sense.

I was sitting in a seminar the other day listening to an employee of a global cellphone operator talking about she and her colleagues have been canvassing opinions about how consumers use cellphones. This is good, and what should be done, but I was surprised by how she went about it: Getting users together and asking them to make collages about how they use technology.

Frankly, I don't think making collages is the right way to go about things. We need to get out on the streets, into the offices, bars and clubs, into the villages and factories, and observe how people actually use technology. Don't expect people to fill in forms or do collages for you: Follow them around. Spy on them. I do.

One of the side-effects of the cellphone revolution is that it's taken technology out of the usual places (office, den) and into every other room in the house (texting in the bath, watching mobile TV in bed) and beyond, into the bus stops, the subways, the village gazebo. Technology is now a seamless part of our lives. Researchers need to get out more.

The sad truth is that we've moved on and the geeks need to catch up. Because, lame as the alarm clock that beeps all the time and doesn't know it's the weekend is, nearly all our devices are no better: They're too smart in the sense of feature density and too stupid in the interface that lets us use those features.

So, companies: Hire a usability consultant to tell you about your products and how they might be better. Or just try your own products: sleep in on a weekend or let your spouse try to find the alarm light button in the middle of the night and see how you like being woken up.

Then rub your eyes, get out of bed and head for the design table.

Seth's Blog: Alarm clocks

del.icio.us Tags: innovation, design, seth godin, alarm clocks, web 2.0, usability

The Gecko in the Machine

 (This is the text of my weekly Loose Wire Service column, syndicated to newspapers like The Jakarta Post. If you're an editor interested in subscribing to the service, drop me a line. Regular readers of the blog, meanwhile, will be familiar with some of the themes here)

I found myself reading the words of one Timo Veikkola one morning.

Frankly, before then I did not know that Timo existed, although I do know of his colleague at Nokia, Jan Chipchase. Not only do these men have far more interesting names than I, they also have far more interesting jobs: peering into the way we use technology and how we might use it in the future.

But this column isn't about them. It's about you and your computer. Timo and Jan made me realize that often we focus on the minutiae of computing, as if that's where the whole thing stops.

It's as if we're car owners who blame the car for our being stuck in traffic. It's worth remembering that if we are not happy with our computers, it's not all the computer's fault.

First off, I can understand why you're frustrated. Computers don't work very well (though a lot of Mac users, and even Windows Vista users, convince themselves that their particular computers do). The truth is they don't, because computers don't help us think better.

They are merely tools, when they should be more than that. They help us send e-mails. They help us download and listen to music. They help us draft long resignation letters we never send. They help us crunch numbers.

All of this would make the early developers of the computer initially excited ("All that computing power in the head of a pin! Back in my day we had to make do with the computing power of a toilet brush in a box the size of Angkor Wat"). They were also, quickly, disappointed ("So everyone has these computers in their homes, bags and hands, and they do WHAT with them?").

But it needn't be like that. Computers can be used for good stuff. Here's how:

* Collecting stuff: Computer hard drives are big enough now for you not to worry about storing stuff (unless you take 5,000 videos and photos a day, in which case you may want to consider an external hard drive or six.)

The trick about collecting stuff -- whether it's words, pictures or audio -- is to organize it. After all, you want to find it again quickly. So, if you're not a Mac user (who has Spotlight) install Google Desktop, which will index your hard drive and let you find stuff as easily as if it were on the Web.

But that shouldn't be an alternative to organizing your stuff. Each batch of photos you store on your computer should have its own folder, usually organizing by date (for example, 20070722 as today's date is best).

If you're saving information you find on the web, save it to one place. I use something called MyInfo, an outlining program that includes a button you can install in your Firefox browser, which makes it very easy to save anything you read online.

* Brainstorming: there are some great tools out there to help you brainstorm, but in my view the best are those that bring mind mapping to the computer. (A mind map is a drawing where the central idea is put at the center of the piece of paper, and other ideas are added to it, floating off like branches.)

If you've not done mind maps I recommend them; if you're a big computer user then it makes sense to do them on your computer. (Mindjet's MindManager works on both Macs and Windows; for Mac users there's also NovaMind, which looks promising.)

* Think stuff up: The computer won't think for you, but it will do the next best thing -- help you recall things you forgot. You're probably aware of the fact that however smart you are you won't be able to remember what you want into the kitchen to get. Most of what we do, read, hear and say is forgotten within minutes. This is where the computer can help.

But whereas it's great about storing stuff, it's not good at recalling things that we don't know we knew. Search is great if we know what we're looking for, but for that tip-of-the-tongue stuff I'd recommend something else: PersonalBrain.

PersonalBrain is a program that I have bored my friends with for several months now -- it works on Mac, Linux and Windows, and has a free version available.

It looks odd, and will take some getting used to, but think of it as a place to throw everything you know into. You add "thoughts" and then you link those thoughts to other thoughts: The more the merrier.

For Timo Veikkola (the Nokia guy) I added a thought called "Timo's predictions" and "Timo's ideas". To the latter I added all the ideas I liked, including one "travel is the best stimulant".

This is something I know but I keep forgetting. So I linked that to another thought I had elsewhere in my PersonalBrain called "Guiding principles".

Already linked to that thought were a bunch of ideas I had added (and promptly forgotten about) which, together, form a philosophy of sorts (if you call "Don't write columns like this before your morning coffee because they won't make any sense" a philosophy.)

Put simply, the brain works not by hierarchy, but by connections. We watch a movie and it reminds us we haven't sent a letter to Auntie Marge. We find a website we like but it looks vaguely familiar: We don't realize we actually visited the same website two days ago. We are looking for a friend in Nongkhai but can't think of anybody, forgetting that Bob used to work there five years ago.

PersonalBrain helps you add this data when it first hits you and, more importantly, map its connections to other things so that you can find them again when you need them. When I add my friend Bob to my PersonalBrain, for example, I can link him not only to my other friends, but also to the places he's worked at, the places he's lived in -- anything that may increase the chances of his name popping up when I might need him, but when I might not have thought of it.

PersonalBrain is the kind of software that makes you realize a) You spend way too much time using your computer to watch YouTube videos; and b) Your brain may be big, but you can't remember anything that happened more than 30 seconds ago.

So, grumble as much as you like about your computer and what pain it causes you. But then set your sights higher and turn it into something that really complements you and the way you do things.

Technorati Tags: outliners, productivity, myinfo, personalbrain, mindmaps, google, search

Brain Withdrawal

I'm really getting into using PersonalBrain, the newly launched version of a decade-old program that should have swept the world by now. But there's a downside to relying on one piece of software so much: When it goes wrong, you're adrift.

Luckily the guys at PersonalBrain are looking into it, but I had to stop using mine about 24 hours ago when I noticed weird things happening. My brain is now on their operating table and I'm praying I'll get it back soon because I just have no appetite to do anything meaningful without it.

PersonalBrain fills that hole I've often felt existed between having ideas, finding snippets of information or encountering websites, companies, people and books I encounter in my day. Before I would not know quite where to put them so I could find them when I needed them, and invented dozens of systems to try to solve the problem. None worked very well, because they all relied on me remembering what I'd added and where.

As you may have found, most of what we know doesn't fit neatly into a structure -- that PR guy we met last night? Should we put him under PR, or the companies he handles, or the fact that actually he was much more interesting on credit card fraud, and he could definitely be lured out on a date with one of the legions of single females we seem to know?

And what about that idea you had in the bath this morning, where you wondered aloud whether the plethora of news stories on global warming was evidence of a) a sudden increase in global warming, b) a sudden increase in journalists' interest in global warming, c) a sudden increase in editorial commitment to educate the public about global warming d) a pathetic hope on the part of editors that global warming stories may sell more papers or e) a sort of new tacit agreement between media and public that now we all agree that climate change is happening, we need to be reminded of how clever we are? If you're not sure, where are you going to put that in your database? Future media? Future of newspapers? Cynical ploys? Global warming? Great ideas you have in the bath that don't sound so great when you're not?

The answer: with PersonalBrain you can put it anywhere, and, more importantly, have a higher chance of finding it again. Quickly PB envelopes your processes and shifts them into a different gear. Which is why it's sooooo hard to function when your file gets corrupted and needs to go in for surgery. (Yes, it's worrying that software can do this, but we should have gotten used to it by now. I'd much rather there was software that wasn't perfect but which reached for the stars than some more basic mush that always worked but never transformed how I worked.)

So. I'm brainless, gormless, mindless, whatever you want to call it until the doctors call. Next time I'm going to back up my brain every hour and hope this doesn't happen again. But I'm excited, too, that I care enough about a piece of software and how it can help me that I feel so bereft. I haven't felt like this since Enfish Tracker Pro.

Update: An all nighter by the PersonalBrain people and my brain is back, fixed and missing half a dozen thoughts (out of 7,000). I've been assured the problem is being investigated and future versions of the software will include an automatic backup option each time the program is closed.

Technorati Tags: personalbrain, search, mindmaps, organizers, outliners

The Death of Writing

James Fallows points out that not everybody back in 1980 believed the computer would replace the typewriter as a writing implement, and that his prediction that the device would be useful incurred the wrath of, among others, the late David Halberstam. James offered to write some articles on a computer, some on a typewriter, and offer a prize to anyone who could tell the difference. No-one took him up.

I recall Bruce Chatwin saying that he could always tell which books had been written on a word processor and which hadn't. And, funnily enough, I disagree with James' assertion that:

As is obvious to everyone now, but as was not obvious to most people then, the “sound” of people’s writing is overwhelmingly their own sound, not that of the ThinkPad or the quill pen or the Number 2 pencil or even, gasp, the Macintosh.

I don't think the 'sound' is the issue. The real difference between the two technologies is that a computer transfers some of the creating process from the head to its RAM. Anyone who has written on a typewriter will know that it's less painful to compose before committing anything to the page, since the price of correction is so high. So the words, once they come out are much more likely to be the final words one uses. Computers meanwhile, allow indefinite revision, so the composition process takes place on the screen.

 I'm not saying one is better, although I think I probably wrote better when I had a typewriter. I used to take more care over my words; I definitely wrote less, too, which has to have been a good thing. When I joined the BBC in 1987, we only had manual typewriters, and my colleagues looked down their nose at my Canon Typestar, which allowed me to compose a line in the tiny LCD before committing it to the paper. In retrospect, I think they were right: My writing went downhill from then on.

Technorati Tags: typewriters, writing, computers

The Shift to a Mobile Web

This more than anything else, probably, will push the shift from desktop browsing to mobile browsing. The more restrictions workers face on their office computers from blinkered employers, the more natural it will be to turn to their mobile:

A nationwide study by T-Mobile UK has revealed that over a quarter of the UK's workforce, still deprived of web access, are now turning to the Internet on their mobile - as employers enforce blanket bans on net usage.

A few points worth making here:

• It’s an umbilical thing: offices misunderstand the use of the Web, which is probably why they ban it. It’s no longer just about surfing for information, shopping or football scores (although it’s still that). It’s about staying connected. The Internet is no longer just a resource of information (and, cough, images) but of “checking in” with one’s network, whether it’s on FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Skype, or wherever. Offices need to cope with this somehow, or they’ll lose the attention of their workers.
• A different screen, a different app: the shift to the mobile web because of this negative pressure from the work place will create huge demand for mobile web apps that work quickly and efficiently. Indeed, it’s not the only pressure: Browsing is a quite different experience on the mobile phone. Browsers are already developing ways to reshape information to fit on a screen, but a smarter way would be to find new ways to deliver the information via the mobile phone (Widsets have made a start in this direction.)
• Toilets: the unsung productivity hive Techdirt rightly points to the part of the survey which shows that 15% of users “resorted to hiding in the toilet just to get online.” Working from home, I do this with my laptop, frankly. But it’s not really about resorting to anything: it’s what the mobile world is. We used to read the newspaper on the john; why not a mobile phone?

History will find it weird, not that we connect to the Web on the john with a device once designed to make phone calls, but that for 15 years we had to do that via a big hunk of metal, plastic and wires sitting in the middle of what used to be a big open space called a desk.

Tags: mobile+web, toilets, browsing, offices, restrictions, UK

Directory of Lifestreaming

I probably should lump all these into the Directory of Attention, but I’m not going to.

Don’t look for a definition of lifestreams on Wikipedia, because it will take you to a Final Fantasy VII page. The term actually goes back to at least 1997, when Eric Freeman and David Gelernter saw it “as a network-centric replacement for the desktop metaphor. As their project page (last updated in 2000) at Yale put it:

A lifestream is a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life; every document you create and every document other people send you is stored in your lifestream.

They in turn say they got it from David Gelernter's "chronicle streams." Web 2.0 has picked up the ball and run with it, redefining it on the way. As Mark Krynsky, creator of the Lifestreamblog points out, the lifestream is now called lots of different things:

• Lifestream - Jeremy Keith
• Data Stream - Emily Chang
• Life Cache - Trendwatching.com
• Lifelog - Kevin Kelly
• Attention Stream - Chris Saad
• Syndicated Chronological Life - Steve Poland
• Digital Lifestyle Aggregator - Marc Canter
• MyLifeBits - Project Page
• Presence Stream - Jaiku
• Lifecasting - Dandelife
• Vomit Log - A.M. Griffin

The blog defines the lifestream thus: “In its simplest form it’s a chronological aggregated view of your online activities.” I wouldn’t quarrel with that, although of course it’s no longer purely about online activities. Indeed, Jaiku and Twitter have made it easy, indeed desirable, to add more data to your stream than just the when, including

• where (location via Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS)
• how (how updating: via SMS? GPS? web?)
• what (you’re feeling/ doing/ eating/ listening to/ watching/ using/ reading/ browsing/ writing/ photographing/ commenting on)
• with (other people, things, animals, tools/equipment)
• while (listening to music etc)

Tools to build lifestreams: There’s a great list here, again, from the excellent lifestreamblog. Basically they can be divided into the meta data that is added without your input and that which you consciously enter (upload photos, adding data, commentary via Twitter etc).

To those I’d add a few more:

• Software use: Wakoopa (tenminut.es review here)
• TwitKu (mix of Twitter and Jaiku)
• loopnote (multichannel twittering)
• group hug (a sort of confession stream)
• slifeshare (share digital life)
• tabber (same stuff)

Needless to say, the only services that survive will be those that

• can easily import and export all kinds of streams
• add a little something more than just gathering together streams
• work on all platforms, at the computer and away from it

More suggestions etc welcome.

Tags:  lifestreams, attention, presence, lifecasting, lifecache, lifeblog, jaiku, twitter

Directory of Attention

This week’s WSJ column (subscription only, I’m afraid) is about attention:

If you feel the Internet has both blessed you with an abundance of information and cursed you by drowning you in it, I have one word which might help make sense of it all: attention. (And, if you give me enough of your attention, I promise to give you a tip about how to cope.)

It’s beginning to dawn on people who ponder these kinds of things that it’s attention, not information, which lies at the heart of the new online world. In a world full of information, the scarcest commodities are your eyeballs and ears.

Here are some links to find out more. Suggestions very welcome, as ever.

Attention, according to The Attention Trust, is the substance of focus. It registers your interests by indicating choice for certain things and choice against other things. Any time you pay attention to something (and any time you ignore something), data is created. That data has value, but only if it's gathered, measured, and analyzed.

A definition of Attention Data from Chris Saad. And I like this one from, again, The Attention Trust:

When you pay attention to something (and when you ignore something), data is created. This "attention data" is a valuable resource that reflects your interests, your activities and your values, and it serves as a proxy for your attention.

Wikipedia’s entry on the Attention Economy, and The Attention Economy: An Overview from the excellent Read/Write Web, are also well-worth a read (as well as the comments.) A look at Google’s role in all this from Sam Sethi, who asks: Is Google building the Attention Economy?

I quoted liberally from Anne Zelenka, who is writing a book on this kind of thing. Check out her blog here, and a great piece she wrote on where attention fits into the whole Web 2.0 thing.

Stuff to play with:

• Particls, formerly Touchstone, which is a ticker that tries to understand you or tick you off. (My description, not theirs.)
• I didn’t have a chance to write about Attensa for Outlook, but it’s trying to do something a bit similar.
• Or the AttentionMap, which “helps you keep track of your attention on a daily basis.”

See also my Directory of Lifestreams

Tags:  attention, lifestreams, attentiondata, attentioneconomy, attention+data, attention+economy, particls, attensa

Podcast: Receipts

How to get rid of receipts, without just binning them. Another piece from the BBC World Service.

Inside the Pocket of a Productivity Porn Star

Merlin Mann does a great blog on personal productivity at 43 Folders. After foodies watching and reading about food without actually cooking anything (food porn) and travel shows about places you’d never actually go or activities you’d never actually do (travel porn) this is productivity porn: an obsession with the detritus, in this case the books, pens, notebooks and gadgets, of the action, in this case productivity, without actually becoming more productive.

Anyway, occasionally Merlin catches the zeitgeist, and when he posted something on this blog referring to a NYT/IHT piece about the Jimi, a minimalist plastic wallet with an ideological goal of reducing the amount of stuff you store and carry in your wallet, readers were excited. A request for readers to share how they carried their money and credit cards around drew a slew of responses – 130 at the current count – which manage to be informative and, perhaps unintentionally, hilarious at the same time. Always a risk, I guess, when you ask people what they have got in their pocket.

I personally prefer the Viz Top Tip-esque (“Don't waste money on a lead. Simply walk your dog backwards holding its tail”) home-made money solutions, which may or may not be written with tongue in cheek (you never know with the productivity porn lot), like this one:

Five years ago, I bought a bag of rubber bands for $0.99 and they have been my wallet ever since. A few times a year, the band breaks and I grab another from the bag. Besides being economical, it adds practically zero bulk to my pocket, and it’s quick to access. Cash tends to get a tad crumpled, but it’s worth it.

Another guy said his favorite was a metal cigarette case. It held a few cards and some cash perfectly, and looked really cool. I used it for years, until one of the corners got kind of scraggly, and it started poking me in the ass. Another touts a red binder clip, another a bungie cord case, another a 3x5 index card wrapped around his stash, while someone called trevor uses his girlfriend’s “’Yasmin’ birth control pill sleeve. It holds 3 credit cards (MC, Discover, ATM) on one side, driver license, insurance cards (auto/medical) on the other. It’s super slim, pretty durable and I get a new “wallet” for free each time my girlfriend gets a new supply of the pills.”

Sadly none of these solutions work in a country where the highest denomination bill/note is less than $10 and you use a credit card at your peril. But that’s my fault for living in Indonesia.

From Cubicle Slave to Mobile Slave

I kinda liked the irony in this, but at the same time realised it illustrates the sad fact that many of us are slaves to the office even when we’re not there. Reuters’ website reports that the UK’s Trades Union Congress has launched www.workyourproperhoursday.com “where workers can take a quiz to diagnose themselves as a "desk junkie", "stay late sheep" or one of five other types of overworker.”

The idea, of course is to get people to work their proper hours and then go and have a life. While the Reuters photo on the left certainly captures the grimness of cubicle life, the accompanying “5 to 9” Cisco ad on the right suggests that the cubicle isn’t really the prison: it’s our computer, and the “secure collaborative networks” companies set up to get more out of their workers. The blurb at the bottom of the ad, by the way, says “Work anywhere, anytime with secure collaborative networks.”

Synchronize Outlook with Others

Collaboration is the next big thing for software. Not that people aren’t trying, but I’ve not yet come across something that really solves the problem of people working together, needing to be able to see the same information etc. Here’s a new and quite simple offering that will synchronize your Outlook folders with other internet users:

OLFolderSync can synchronize any Microsoft Outlook folder with anyone else’s (except Drafts, Outbox, Sent Items and Deleted Items). The folders you allow to be synchronized will do so in the background by e-mail. You can easily synchronize Outlook folders through the internet without the need for both parties to be online at the same time.

If you have private data elements on Outlook you can exclude them from the synchronization process. It is also possible to synchronize only objects of a user defined category.

The German company that does this, Somebytes Software, suggests this would be useful for letting your

• PA add and amend appointments, tasks or other Outlook objects while on the other side of the world.
• Synchronize birthday dates with friends and family.
• Work with a synchronized Outlook calendar, tasks and other documents across your team.
• Synchronize Outlook data on your laptop with your desktop.
• Check appointments with those of colleagues on the road.
• Check club/association schedules with that of other members.
• Facilitate schedules to team members.

All pretty useful stuff, though a little steep at $72 for a two person license. The web site is not easily navigable, but there seem to be other products that focus on synchronizing particular parts of Outlook, such as the Calendar, Tasks, or Contacts.

The Lessons of Wikipedia

The Seigenthaler/Wikipedia case is attracting attention from strange quarters. I’m not sure what it means, but it’s fodder for pondering on the nature of truth, falsehood and deliberate obfuscation. From OfficialWire, there’s this piece: “It's Your Story...You Tell It Anyway You Want On Wikipedia”:

After four months, Seigenthaler was finally able to get Wales to remove the offending piece from Wikipedia and from the other online 'resources' that simply copy from Wales' pool of data, but not before it had been read by tens of thousands of people, who may or may not have repeated, copied or stored the nonsense.

I may not have looked hard enough at this, but I can find no support for that assertion in Seigenthaler’s original piece. He visited the site in late September, and doesn’t specifically say when the offensive remarks about him were removed. But he does say they had been up there for four months, which, given an initial publication date of May 26, I put at late September. In other words, it sounds as if pretty much immediately after Seigenthaler had complained to Jimmy Wales, the owner of Wikipedia, the remarks were removed. The OfficialWire piece is ambiguous, but a casual reader might well assume that Seigenthaler had been bugging a reluctant Wales for four months to pull the offensive text. Doesn’t sound like it was like that.

So, a distorted and offensive entry on Wikipedia now spreads like a stain in the retelling. Is it just an innocent mistake? OfficialWire is run by someone called Greg Lloyd Smith, who wrote the December 4 piece. In it he links to another piece OfficialWire put out back in early January, written by one Jennifer Monroe, who writes about the activities of a Wikipedia volunteer, Christian Wirth, whom the piece alleges to have been trying to “sully the good work” of an organisation called QuakeAID. QuakeAID is an organisation with the same owner as OfficialWire. These two organisations, and other linked groups, have extensive entries on Wikipedia, none of the material particularly flattering (sentences such as ‘The following indicators raise questions about QuakeAID's legitimacy and good faith’).

On first glance the contents of these articles seem damning and I’m not going to question their veracity. But is there something not quite right with this picture? It’s good that research is being done, and, to judge by the pages’ history, there’s plenty of “toning down” being done. But one can’t help asking the questionL Is there an ax to grind on the part of certain members of Wikipedia about Lloyd Smith and his activities, and, if so, is Wikipedia the correct forum in which to wield one? I wonder whether Seigenthaler’s case might not be offering us a more nuanced lesson than merely its occasional unreliability. After all, we still don’t know the motive (or the identity) of Seigenthaler’s character assassin. Perhaps it’s not mindless vandals we should be worried about on Wikipedia; it’s people using its benign offices to settle scores and run opponents out of town.