tech ronin

NetNewsWire 2.0 beta rocks!

Ranchero Software released the first public beta last Tuesday. I just found it today. Yum, yum. NNW is my reader of choice and this is a BIG upgrade. The most obvious great thing is that I now have tabbed web browsing inside NNW. I love it. Elegant implementation. No more having to decide between web surfing and news reading!

Embedded Browsing. I use the 3-paned view option with (c1) feeds (c2) posts for selected feed and (c3) the post itself. When I click a link in the post, columns 2 and 3 become one tabbed web page. I can surf as much as I want in there. When I want to go back to my 3-paned view exactly where I was, I click the tab called News Items and I'm back in business. Efficiency!

Flagging. This is very powerful. You can flag posts and they get saved indefinitely if you wish. This was the most wanted feature and I was one of those who wanted this bad. This way, I can save information right here. I don't have to put it somewhere else until and unless I want to.

Search within all feeds. There's a Search entry area like in Safari for Google that will search selected or all your feeds for whatever you type in. It assembles a nice list of posts in the middle column, ranked by relevance. Yes!

Search Engine Feeds. You can subscribe to searches such as *GTD* or *Sidekick II* and specify Daypop, Blogdigger or Feedster as your search engine. Works great. Seems as good as or better than Pubsub Subscriptions.

Persistence. A biggie I've wanted. I can set certain high-volume feeds to keep all entries for at least 2 days, so that I can keep up with the entire thing if I want instead of only getting the latest 15 entries when I haven't checked in for a day or two. Or I can set everything or specific groups to have a certain amount of persistence.

Smart Lists. As in iTunes. You set some criteria and any feed post that qualifies appears here.

Custom Styles. You get a bunch of css stylesheets selectable from a pop-down menu. Then you can edit them and have yours appear there - easy!!! I have my own based on Purple Ripples from Bryan Bell that I like.

Whoa! As you may recall, I've been asking for a lot in the way of desktop news reader. This is a lot! I've been glued to my new newsreader for hours!

On the Moleskine Bus

Tinderbox is selling Moleskine Notebooks right now. The pocket-sized books are $10 and the fancy silk ones are $18. These are the gorgeous special edition silk notebooks presented by Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum in Spring 2002.

I surfed the net for moleskine notebooks after reading about them. I found the Tinderbox sale and wanted to see how their prices match up. Their prices are as low as I've seen anywhere so far...

One more pocket would be used up, but at least these 3.5" x 5.5" notebooks are small enough to fit in one. Being without an extraordinary and pocketable electronic device that has a keyboard at the moment, handwriting on great paper is appealing.

In my travels, I came across and blogrolled moleskinerie and the manufacturer, Modo & Modo's, product site and Moleskine shopping site with lots of detailed information about each product called Moleskineus.

Macintosh Outlining Information Nirvana

I've been using outliners since ThinkTank in 1986 on my MacPlus. My next favorite was Acta. Then In Control. I've got a great outliner for my Zire 72 - Shadow Plan. I've got a wealth of outlining power on my Mac - OmniOutliner, AquaMinds NoteTaker, Circus Ponies NoteBook and Tinderbox.

Shadow Plan has a desktop version in Beta for Mac but it's taking a long while to get to anything like stability and it's not very Mac-like. I was poking around to see if I could find a way to move outlines from Mac to Palm and found this goldmine of information in About this Particular Outliner .

I never found my answer. But I believe I've found the best current source of information about Mac outliners on the planet. It's this ATPO column by Ted Goranson on ATPM: About This Particular Macintosh. These are a few of the must reads for Mac Outliner enthusiasts:

Mindmapping Outliners—Aug 2004

Three Topics on the Future of Outlining—Jul 2004

NoteTaker and NoteBook—May 2004

This series has appeared almost monthly since September 2003. Ted's articles are in depth, insightful and very readable. I intend to read them all. I'm looking forward to October's in depth look at Tinderbox. Thinking tools fascinate me.

Empty Email Inbox!

On CD4 of David Allen's Getting Things Done... FAST CD Set he challenges everyone to get to empty in their email inbox. I did it just now. I don't know when it will happen again, so I thought I better document it. Ahh that feels good.

Not long ago, I had over 7,000 emails in my inbox. I just kept emails around kind of like piles on a desk. I've been working on it for a while now and was down to 9 in my inbox today. Then I happened upon Jon Aquino's post and saw his screenshot of his empty inbox. I looked at my 9 and thought, hey, I can do that too!

The only catch is that the minute you clear your inbox, you better review your Action folder because there are next actions in there. I opened it up. Only 107 emails in there. ;-). That's better than the undefined 7,000...

I haven't attended the GTD 2-day seminar, so this 8-CD set that sells for $89 is great for motivation. Of course, I've got it on my iPod and mostly listen there. But whenever I feel like I need some extra motivation, these CD's hit the spot as a backdrop for me while I work on maintenance (collection and processing).

Finally, Social Interface Design

Joel Spolsky has put words to something hugely important in software: the social interface. OK, I'm biased probably. I have a Master's degree in Sociology and Bachelor's in Psych. I like stuff like this. But still. Here are some excerpts from this excellent article:

Software in the 1980s, when usability was "invented," was all about computer-human interaction. A lot of software still is. But the Internet brings us a new kind of software: software that's about human-human interaction...

When you're writing software that mediates between people, after you get the usability right, you have to get the social interface right. And the social interface is more important. The best UI in the world won't save software with an awkward social interface...

With social interface engineering, you have to look at sociology and anthropology. In societies, there are freeloaders, scammers, and other miscreants. In social software, there will be people who try to abuse the software for their own profit at the expense of the rest of the society. Unchecked, this leads to something economists call the tragedy of the commons.

Whereas the goal of user interface design is to help the user succeed, the goal of social interface design is to help the society succeed, even if it means one user has to fail...

Software used in teams usually fails to take hold, because it requires everyone on the team to change the way they work simultaneously, something which anthropologists will tell you is vanishingly unlikely.

Joel is aggressively applying these insights to his company's software called FogBugz:

FogBugz has lots of design decisions which make it useful even for a single person on a team, and lots of design features which encourage it to spread to other members of the team gradually until everyone is using it.

The discussion group software in use on his site is also benefiting:

There are dozens of features and non-features and design decisions which collectively lead to a very high level of interesting conversation with the best signal-to-noise ratio of any discussion group I've ever participated in.

Joel's Building Communities with Software written in March of last year is a wonderful companion piece to this one.

GTD False Start

Confession: I've been in the starting gates with GTD (Getting Things Done) for several months now. I've made little inroads. I've had my moments where I'm using the 2 minute rule to handle all sorts of miscellaneous junk on my desk. But I'm not really on board with the program yet.

If it weren't for these three GTD benefits, I wouldn't bother:

Get more done. By staying on top of your stuff, information, projects, priorities and commitments, you are in charge and get a lot more done.

Integrity. Without something like this, I can't reliably keep my commitments, do what I say I'm going to do - on time. Stuff slips through the cracks.

Less stress and worry. Without a good system like this, I'm always wondering and worrying about what has slipped through the cracks. What is due that I've missed? What's in the middle of that stack over there? What stacks are shoved to the side and what's in them lost? And the stress of not being able to find something when you need it.

Here's how I rate myself on the core tenets of GTD:

(1) Putting all the *stuff* that comes into your space into an in-box or handling it immediately if it can be handled within 2 minutes. D

(2) Maintaining a master projects list that includes a *what does Done look like?* description. B

(3) Having a *capture device* with you all the time so that when new *stuff* or ideas come along, you have a way to get it off your mind and in writing. B+

(4) Maintaining a set of *Next Actions* lists for each work setting you have (including @Car, @Office, @Home, @Online etc.). Next actions are to do items, but they are rigorously specific such as *Call John to set up consulting appt* instead of *Schedule appt with John* or *Do Consulting with John*. The idea is that no further thinking is needed to carry out the action. The thinking went into formulating the next action. C-

(5) Doing a weekly 1-2 hour review of all your projects and next actions to keep things moving and so that you are sure you have everything covered and nothing missed. F

It seems that my main stumbling block is getting all my stuff into the in-box. I have so much stuff that it won't fit into an in-box. And I haven't blocked out the 2 solid days to get started that David recommends. Maybe I am just going to have to follow instructions this one time. ;-)

The Getting Things Done Zone is probably the best single resource on GTD.

Sidekick II now or Treo 650 later?

I owned the Color Sidekick for 9 days before trading it in for a much more expensive, full-featured Sony Ericsson P800 at the last minute. Still have fond memories of that GREAT keyboard. At $300, the price beats the Treo 600 or 650 by a mile. I could afford this.

But then I go into the specs and features and get stuck. The 160x240 screen vs. the rumored and hoped for 320x320 in the Treo 650 gives the Treo a huge advantage for those who can put together an extra $200. Even though Danger has done a good job with the basic set of organizer / communicator apps, I prefer the proven Palm platform to the Sidekick *platform* which was supposed to open up but never has. Throw in a memory card slot and the expected Bluetooth and the 650 looks like the perfect phone/PDA.

But, I really have no idea when they're going to release the 650. It will never have the keyboard of the Sidekick - and I like keyboards a lot. And the 650 is still vaporware as far as I'm concerned.

Matt at Hit or Miss got me started.

Ever since pictures of the upcoming SideKick II were posted, I’ve been sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for it to be released. I briefly had one of the original models, but the signal strength wasn’t strong enough in Kirksville, MO and I had to send it back.

I’ve been a Palm user for years and I wasn’t looking forward to giving up on my favorite applications (like Vindigo) if I got a SideKick. But I always thought the Treo 600 was really big and clunky from the pictures.

Then, one of my new residents showed me his Treo the other day and I’ve fallen in love with it. Now that pictures have surfaced of the Treo 650, I’m counting down the days to its release instead.

Grace Aquino, PC World:

After testing an early production sample of the Sidekick II for two weeks, I can report that it works much better as a phone than the original. Voice quality in my informal tests equaled that of a standard cell phone. The unit's speakerphone was good, too, though it needed a bit more volume. Nevertheless, the unit's flat design and relatively large size made holding it against my ear feel awkward--especially during longer conversations (the unit does include an earbud)."

[via Armwood Technology Blog]

However, Engadget's excellent interview with Hank Nothhaft, CEO of Danger has me still hanging in there. The problem is that I like what Hank is saying and I like how he's saying it.

Things have not happened as quickly as many of us would have wanted, but plans include higher resolution displays and possibly adding wi-fi and bluetooth. Love the price point. Love the keyboard. Love the horizontal orientation. Love the targeting towards the *consumer* market rather than corporate. Check out this interview and see what you think:

Down the road, there is going to be some accommodation by everybody to support not only mobile wide area networking functionality but through Bluetooth or WiFi converged chip sets or some other means, people like ourselves will be figuring out how to provide both functionalities in the same form factor. It just makes sense.

I think the compelling aspect of this product is the fact that we’ve been able to blend these applications together on a single device — messaging, email, web browsing, a phone service — with what I would call doing justice to each application. We make it available to the user through  a very effortless, simple interface. I’d compare us to Apple’s iPod or to the TiVo. That’s our major achievement, we’ve simplified the complexities of all these phenomenal services so mere mortals can enjoy the fruits of this device. 

Eighty percent of the people do use the device as their primary phone, so that’s very popular. But the thing that’s really amazing is the messaging activity that takes place. I call them messaging engines. The people who are using IM on these devices are sending and receiving 110 instant messages a day. They’re also doing 25-30 emails a day, and they’re accessing 25 web pages a day.

This is a popular device. I don't know, maybe I need to pay more attention to usability and less to features and technology. The price is right...

By the way, I've already read the Gizmodo horror story about T-mobile. But, I am a happy T-mobile subscriber and don't figure the other providers are much better.

There's a good hands on comparison of the Treo 600 and Color Sidekick (not the II) over at Twelve Black Code Monkeys dated July 13, 2004.

Muddling Towards Engaged Citizenship

In The saddest music in the world, Jeffrey Zeldman, bemoans dashed dreams of “an era of limitless creativity”:

The illusion that the web would usher in a new era of limitless creativity can now be put away with the rest of the broken toys.

I think Mr. Zeldman is giving up too soon, too easily. There's no way that “every person” is going to be an “inventor and publisher”. Forget it. Just because we've fallen short doesn't mean we've failed.

I've been heartened by the growth of what has been called the “creative class” and the “cultural creatives”. Florida's book The Rise of the Creative Class chronicles a major shift in modern Western culture. We've seen some of these people before: the Romantics (Blake, Thoreau, Emerson), Bohemians (Gertrude Stein, et al.), Beatniks, Hippies and the Counter Culture. The good news is that the numbers have steadily risen.

The creative class is counted in some circles as already exceeding 25% in the US. It's no longer a fringe thing. I gotta believe that the bloggers, gmailers and friendsters that Zeldman talks about are members of this emerging group. This group is big and growing in a bottom-up way in the midst of a commercialized, “what's your business model” world.

My main point is that we are in the early stages of a good, good thing. Putting digital tools in the hands of *the masses* is spawning all sorts of creators (garage bands, bloggers, wikians, forum posters, emailers, eziners, programmers, scripters and webmasters).

We are not in a mature situation here. All of these new media are being created, picked up and dabbled with by often passionate amateurs in their scarce spare time. People are seeking connection and self-expression. Not necessarily the highest levels of skill, mastery, art and aesthetics.

Let me take a couple examples: blogs and Friendster. Take Friendster. It's already on the wane. As far as I know all these new social networking services are on the wane. These are just ideas thrown against the wall of human curiosity and sociability.

There's not much to do on these Friendsters. I think there's a lot more to do in the way of collaboration, mutual support, conversation, co-creation, presence and social organization. But it's trapped up in the Friendsters. Little commercial undertakings that aren't making money but strive to and are slanted towards making a quick buck or making sense to venture capitalists. It hasn't been long, but the concensus seems to be developing that all these little clusters of services and features need to be available across the web not turned inward into little homogeneous communities.

Blogging. This medium has emerged as one of casual, quick, self-expression. The blogging phenomenon stands on the shoulders of its forebears: forums, email, newsgroups, listserves, ezines. Add in websites and you get blogs. Personal websites with quick posts and comments. No, Shakespeare has not yet been reborn as a blogger. That's not blogging style. It's not the weighty medium of the major artist. It's the casual personal journal and low-strength citizen journalism of you or me or all the other gifted adults and teens and sometimes children out there.

If you are looking to be blown away or astounded by virtuosity, the new web may not be where you should be looking. There are plenty of artists around in all these media. You just won't suddenly find that everyone has the temperament for full-on artistic or intellectual virtuosity. They are out working and de-stressing. Many of them are creating. Who knows what's next. WAAAY to early to give up yet.

The question is: can crass materialism and corporate business models lure the artists and inventors away or lure the not-so-common man or woman back to the easy ways of passive consumerism? Of course. Whenever you are stressed to the max, the easy way beckons loudly and enticingly.

Luckily all these fun new tools like wikis and blogs and interesting combo products like ecto, NetNewsWire, Shadow Plan and the rest lure us into meaningful connections, expressions and experiments. Yes. If you measure it all against an ideal. It sucks. But, hey, it's moving in the right direction. I'm impressed with the resilience and experimentation we've seen in the face of the dotcom crash, 9/11, a repressive and war-mongering US administration, continued trashing of the environment and natural resources, starvation and AIDs.

Massive numbers of Net-empowered nerds, next-door-neighbors, employees, entrepreneurs and amateurs - operating in a chaotic but self-organizing way - give me hope.

Technorati Tags: blogging, creativeclass, creativity, culturalcreatives, ecto, netnewswire, shadowplan