March 31st, 2007

Lenovo X60 Tablet PC on the road

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 8:48 am

Categories: ETech, Events, Gadgetry, Hardware, Microsoft Office, Mobility, Productivity, Software, Tablet PCs, Utilities and Add-Ins, Vista

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I had my first real opportunity to put the Lenovo ThinkPad X60t to work as a conference machine this week at the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies conference in San Diego and I'm more impressed than ever with how useful this machine is for someone who needs a perfect balance of portability and power. While there were power strip and outlets available throughout the facility during the event (and a big hat tip to the facilities people for making that happen), I never had the "oh gosh, I need to make sure I'm sitting near an outlet" panic that plagues notebook users at these all-day-into-the-evening events. On two occasions, I was able to wring 5+ hours of usable juice from the extended battery the X60t came equipped with.

I did a lot of typing and inking and can now confirm my early impressions that the keyboard is every bit as good as I've come to expect from the ThinkPad line and that the inking experience is just excellent. The surface of the X60t's display provides a very nice "glide" feeling as you're writing and the ink "flow" is akin to the experience of using a really nice fountain pen.

With Tablet Enhancements for Outlook 3.0 installed to make Outlook 2007 the Tablet PC-friendly application it should be and OneNote 2007, I was able to create notes pages related to each of the sessions I had added to my Outlook Calendar with a single tap of the stylus and I've now got a perfectly synchronized record of everything I saw and heard at ETech stored on the X60t. I captured images with the Nokia N93 which were instantly synced to the X60t via Bluetooth so I could drop them into my OneNote notes pages on the fly. It was a highly productive way to cover an event.

I did have a few issues with the WiFi drivers - I think was a Vista thing since a Windows Update during the week which included a new version of the driver for the Intel WiFi chip seemed to make that intermittent problem go away. The issue I was having was that the radio had a hard time refreshing its IP address when waking from Sleep or Hibernation and often required a quick trip to the command line to force a refresh.

That was about the only glitch I encountered. I was asked to demo the X60t by a number of people who saw me flipping it from one orientation to another with automatic rotation following my gyrations smoothly and quickly and logging into a variety of web services and encrypted files using the biometric scanner. The onscreen Tablet menu was also a big hit – it provides access to virtually every function I needed when working in slate mode.

As an added bonus, I also had my first real opportunity to try out Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pro earbuds I've been evaluating on a reasonably long flight and was delighted to find that not only do they deliver the most astonishing bass response and stereo image of anything I've ever inserted into my ears, they also do an outstanding job of noise cancellation. The steady white noise thrum we subject ourselves to when we get onto a plane vanished and all I heard was the music, movie, or podcast I was listening to.

I will not leave home without these amazing earbuds ever again!  I'll do a full post about these ear buds soon. They're not inexpensive but they are well worth the investment if you fancy yourself to be any sort of an audiophile and they're nearly as effective at eliminating ambient noise as the dedicated (and much bulkier) noise-canceling headphones I've tried.

Note: a reader questioned my statement and to be clear, the super.fi 5 Pro earbuds are not noise-canceling. It's more accurate, as the reader pointed out, to call them noise-isolating. 

The Monster Power Outlets to Go travel strip was also a big hit. There were a number of occasions where I was able to turn a single available outlet into four and share the grid with folks sitting near me. And, in the hotel room, it provided a very elegant solution to the problems faced by someone who carries two phones, a Tablet PC, and a Bluetooth headset. Four devices, four outlets, no problem.

Having the right kit makes all the difference in the world. 

March 30th, 2007

What a long strange trip it's been

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 12:57 pm

Categories: Mastering the Inbox, Microsoft Office, Productivity, Software, Utilities and Add-Ins

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With apologies to my favorite band, that's exactly the feeling I had last night when I arrived home from ETech in San Diego to find a box from Wiley and Sons waiting for me in the front hall. In it were copies of my book, The Unofficial Guide to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. For 10 months, beginning in March of 2006, this book has been a major (and daily) part of my life. Writing it during one of the most tumultuous beta cycles I've ever experienced (4 major UI revisions), a change in full-time jobs, my son beginning high school, my daughter finishing college, along with the errata of life in 21st century, was an unforgettable experience.

Writing a book was one of those things that's sat on my Someday/Maybe list for a long, long time (it's a GTD thing). Now my Unofficial Guide is now officially a reality. Pretty darn cool.

March 28th, 2007

Podcast Interview with Mike Shaver of Mozilla.org

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 9:09 pm

Categories: ETech, Events, Software, Web Apps

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I had the unexpected pleasure of sitting down with Mike Shaver, one of the founders of the Mozilla Organization at Etech earlier today to discuss the recently released Mozilla Manifesto. The document is the organization's attempt to declare it's vision of the internet as a global resource, the role it plays in the ecosystem that develops and sustains that network, and acts as a set of guiding principles for the organization to use as an internal guide for decision-making as well as a measure for members of the community to use to gauge their adherence to the concepts it expresses.

Thanks to my pal Steve Borsch, author of the excellent Connecting the Dots blog for recording and editing our conversation on his handy M-Audio Microtrack.

When I asked if there was a precipitating event (or crisis) that dictated that this was the right time to do this Mike assured me it was simply a case that there was finally time to do this in the busy schedule the organization's core members have been keeping. One of the challenges in deciding exactly how these thoughts would be expressed, he said, was that "so many people have had a version of this in their head for a long time".

In the presentation he gave to discuss the Manifesto this afternoon, Mike went statement by statement and parsed things out. With more than a bit of humor, he quickly explained the key points that are made in the document and what it all means form the perspective of the organization. So, whether the topic was accessibility, neutrality, or importance relative to the position of the user in the socio-economic pecking order, the idea behind the statements in the Manifesto are to define guiding principles, in clear language, that define an describe the organization's perspective. That's a pretty good description of a Manifesto in my book.

In the conversation I had with Mike earlier in the day, he was quick to point out that, like everything Mozilla generates, this is a work in progress. When I asked him how deliberate the labeling of this first public release as version 0.9 was, he smiled and agreed that this was "a very software-like thing to do - it sends a clear signal ot the audience for this document that we feel this is ready for public examination and discussion but is in no way finished."

When I asked him about the potential for some passionate but misguided (or at least misaligned) individuals to use the Manifesto as a blunt instrument to support their own position as son often seems to happen in communities of passion, he was quick to acknowledge the possibility that might happen and said that in cases of gross abuse, he felt they had a responsibility to intervene but that essential nature of the organization, the Manifesto, and the community that surrounds it was to accept both the risks and reward inherent in an open conversation.

The Manifesto can be found here.

March 28th, 2007

More reflections from ETech

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 8:18 pm

Categories: ETech, Events, Productivity, Software, Web Apps

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In the morning sessions at ETech today, I listened to a very philosophical session by Mike Kuniavsky on the implications and role of magic in this technological world we inhabit. His presentation was heady stuff that engaged a number of people in the audience in a good conversation. The second presentation by danah boyd (pictured below) was equally interesting and featured some amusing visuals to illustrate a talk about the ubiquity of Web 2.0 application in everyday life. The point of discussion that kept coming up between me and the 50-something guy I was sitting next to was how that is certainly not everyone's reality and what the implications of this new "digital divide" portend for all of us.

This is an important dimension to the more practical question I've been giving a lot of thought to about how businesses today are (or are not) preparing themselves to deal with the next-generation workforce and the decidedly different expectations they'll bring to the world of work in coming years. It's a disconnect that I believe represents another opportunity for forward-thinking organizations to recruit the best talent and prosper. Those who fail to recognize this changing landscape will find themselves at a distinct competitive disadvantage in  both recruitment and business process adaptation. And, as danah pointed out in her talk, many of these younger people either have no notion of "career" in the conventional sense or see that as something to worry about later in life.

The presentations I attended yesterday included Jeff Hawkins' discussion of the work he's leading at Numenta to develop a software construct modeled after how the human brain works. Some of the science he discussed was way over my head but it's clear that they are making great strides in creating machine intelligence that can process sensory and environmental input in a much more human fashion that what is currently available. As always, watching Jeff present was a real treat. Whether he's talking about the Palm platform or this new work, he's a a visibly excited, passionate speaker who can explain complex ideas very eloquently.

Zimbra's Satish Dharmaraj gave a quick but thorough demo of the new Zimbra desktop client that provides what's promised to be a seamless online/offline e-mail experience. When online and connected to a Zimbra server, the Zimlets mashups that allow you dial phone numbers, track packages and flights, and map addresses are available. Currently the client only works with the Zimbra server but a forthcoming release will support POP3 and IMAP accounts as well.

BEA Systems' Adrian McDermott demonstrated a trio of new tools that allow enterprise organizatios to create behind-the-firewall mashup applications that leverage web services and RSS to provide rich, web-like applications that combine internal information with data pulled inside the firewall to add a new dynamic to tasks like scheduling, information aggregation and presentation, and event and meeting management.

ThinkFree Office founder and CEO TJ Kang previewed a new social exchange for office documents that allows users of their online suite of document tools to share their work in a "Flickr for Office Docs" environment. Doc Exchange is designed to allow people to share documents, templates, and information resources and connect with others who share both personal and business interests. I have been a longtime fan of ThinkFree Office for thvariety of usage scenarios they support which range from both a full-featured Java-based suite of Microsoft Office-compatible tools that can be used on the web as well as on Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops, a lightweight AJAX version for quick online editing, and a Server Edition that allows organizations to host their own browser-based tools.

As is usually the case at O'Reilly events, there's more to see than any one person can possibly fit into their schedule. And, as is also the case at these events, the hallway conversations, breakfast and lunch briefings, and networking in the exhibit hall is every bit as valuable as the sessions themselves. On a side note, the horrendous winds that kep everyone inside yesterday have settled down and we were able to enjoy a bit of the kind of weather San Diego is better known for today.

I'll catch up with this afternoon's events in my next post and then prepare for the closing day at ETech 2007. Stay tuned… 

March 27th, 2007

ETech day two: quick observations from the morning session

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 10:21 am

Categories: ETech, Events, Web Apps

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A great discussion led by Tim O'Reilly that delved into the intricacies and consequences of transactional efficiencies is one of the highlights this morning.  The big takeaway is that in Some net economies, where the difference between making and losing money is measured in nanoseconds, that location does, in fact, matter. Using brokerages as an example, the panel points out that data center proximity to the exchanges will be a competitive advantage and a critical point of differentiation for service providers and hosts.

I'm a bit disappointed in the presentation being given by Werner Vogels of Amazon.com right now. The topic sounded promising but the execution focuses too much on sales and technical information and not enough from their customers. When the customers do get on stage, you're able to appreciate the real world implications of what Amazon is doing with their three services: S3 (Simple Storage Service), EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), and SQS (Simple Queue Service).

When GigaVox (they host IT Conversations) talks about staging an alpha platform for their audio hosting service for a first month's investment of $84.00, that's powerful. When you hear statements like "nobody is wearing a pager… remember those days?" or "we don't have to worry about that anymore (a server outage) - that's oembody else's problem), you know you're hearing a revolution taking place.

And, whoever chose the color palette for the slides should be sent out for a color blindness test. Many of the graphics were utterly illegible. (sorry - recovering graphic designer rant there). UPDATE: I had a chance to speak briefly with Werner at lunch and it turns out the color issue was a function of a bad connection to the projector. Even after doing a complete dry run prior to presenting, stuff can still go wrong.

March 26th, 2007

ETech Day One: Bad news, good news

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 9:38 am

Categories: ETech, Events

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I'm at ETech this week and there's already been a change in plans. Kathy Sierra's tutorial on Creating Addictive Customer Experiences was canceled (reason unknown but were all hoping it was just logistics and not something serious). That's the bad news. The good news is that I'm able instead to sit in on Scott Berkun's tutorial about Innovation (the subject of his forthcoming book - published by O'Reilly of course).

The two big ideas he is pushing in this session are that innovation is usually an unintended consequence of work being done for completely other reasons and that there is no magic formula for producing innovation. That there are, in fact, many environmental conditions and forces over which we have little or no control that can impact whether or not innovation will take place and be recognized.

My favorite part of the presentation is the parallels he's drawing between improvisation and innovation. The best observation: don't be afraid of being embarrassed and don't be half-assed. 

From an event perspective, the WiFi is strong, the registration process was fast and trouble-free, and the venue is quite nice. The weather could be  better- it's cloudy and cool -but it's not like we'll be outside a lot. More to follow as the day goes on.

UPDATE: I'm really horrified to learn that the reason Kathy canceled her appearance at ETech is due to a series of threats made against her. The frontier nature of the bog space is somehting we all understand but, based on what she relates on her blog, this has gotten way out of control and way, way across the line that divides personal freedom of speech from fundamental respect for your fellow humans. I can only hope that those who made these threats are found and dealt with appropriately. There's no excuse for this - it's indefensible. 

UPDATE 2: Scoble weighs in with his personal concerns - well founded as it turns out since he and his wife have been the targets of similar threats from these same criminals. He's taking the week off and has called for a community discussion on this incident and the underlying issues. More via Techmeme.

March 25th, 2007

Is the demise of the daily newspaper inevitable?

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 10:36 am

Categories: Software, Web Apps

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Perusing the intertubes via RSS this morning I came across a troubling and thought-provoking post by Tim O'Reilly about the troubles facing the San Francisco Chronicle (in particular) and the newspaper biz (in general). I started my career in the newspaper business and it's more than a little disturbing and sad to see one of the great dailies facing the inexorable tide of the net. O'Reilly closes with the following observation that I find myself in complete agreement with:

We talk about creative destruction, and celebrate the rise of blogging as citizen journalism and Craigslist as self-service advertising, but there are times when something that seemed great in theory arrives in reality, and you understand the downsides. I have faith both in the future and in free markets as a way to get there, but sometimes the road is hard. If your local newspaper were to go out of business, would you miss it? What kinds of jobs that current newspapers do would go undone?

Frankly, I've all about abandoned the local newspaper. By the time I open it, the stuff inside is essentially old news. I can get the same (or usually better) content online faster and cheaper. I do subscribe to the Sunday New York Times because my wife likes to read it and it gets me access to the NYT online services and NY Times Reader application for Windows (which makes for a great demo on the Tablet PC and never ceases to impress people with its fluid re-rendering pf page content. I think the Times is blowing it big time with their recently announced price model for this app though. It undoes much of the good they've accomplished in their attempts to remain relevant IMO. They offer a customizable home page with AJAX, RSS feeds, a decent toolbar (Windows only) and the Times Select service which makes bookmarking and retrieving articles really easy.

Then they go and announce a bone-headed, we-don't-really-get-it price model for the Times Reader app. Sorry - $165 is a bit too rich for most people's tastes.

Hello? 

Update: Good thoughts from Doc Searls on how to fix what's broken. 

March 24th, 2007

Heading to ETech tomorrow

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 2:43 pm

Categories: Events

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I'll be attending the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference in San Diego this coming week. The programs look great and I'm looking forward, in particular, to Kathy Sierra's tutorial Monday morning on Creating Addictive User Experiences and learning more about Adobe Apollo following this week's release of alpha of the runtime engine. Adobe reps will be involved in a keynote and two sessions as well as exhibiting.

If you're there and want to connect, send me a note: mochant [at] Google's e-mail [dot] com. 

March 23rd, 2007

Brainstorm Lite - better than sticky notes

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 6:10 am

Categories: Mac, Productivity, Software, Utilities and Add-Ins

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The folks at CSOdessa, makers of ConceptDraw, have created a Labs site to show some of their internal projects and future thinking and have put up a couple of interesting tools available as free downloads. The latest is Brainstorm Lite (Mac only) which is a perfect replacement for sticky notes in a brainstorming technique I use frequently in meetings and coaching session. I was first introduced to these "affinity sessions" years ago and I've found them to be the single best best method for generating a large quantity of ideas from a group of people in a short period of time.

Here's how it works:

1. Give each participant a sticky notes pad and a medium tip black marker
2. On a white board (best) or an easel pad, write the question or topic you're brainstorming
3. Define a short time period (five minutes is usually more than enough) and have everyone write as many ideas as possible - you're after quantity, not quality at this point. All ideas are good - the crazier the better. Encourage everyone to write as quickly as they can and keep each though to a few words (hence the marker and not a pen or pencil). Write big!
4. At the end of the time period, everyone slaps their notes on the white board and reviews all of the ideas. Again, time box this review – two to three minutes is usually enough. During this review, anyone can add a few additional ideas if something they see inspiresthem.
5. Now ask everyone to collectively participate in clustering similar ideas together into groups. Encourage discussion and debate.
6. Ask the group to come up with labels for the clusters.
7. Capture the ideas in a mind map (ideally) or a list and distribute as a takeaway from the session.

So what does this have to do with Brainstorm Lite? It is a digital version of the sticky notes that allows you to define the brainstorming time period and capture each participant's output as an OPML, RTF, or text file which can easily be imported into a mind mapping tool, spreadsheet program, or word processor for aggregation, clustering, and labeling.

It's simple, elegant, and free. Try it in your next brainstorming session.

March 22nd, 2007

New members join the APML Workgroup

Posted by Marc Orchant @ 5:25 am

Categories: Mobility, Software

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Chris Saad pinged me the other to make the announcement that a number of new contributors have joined the APML Workgroup to assist in developing a standard for Attention data. As Chris wrote in his message, there is a undeniable need for a standard framework that gives us ownership and control over our Attention data. APML (Attention Profile Markup Language) is a significant undertaking to develop that framework.

In a world where our online footprints (Attention Data) are measured, dissected, analyzed and used to better target us with content and advertising, APML represents a way for users to take back control of their own Attention Profile.

In order for the study of 'Attention' to evolve into the Attention Economy we must have a way to export, own, trade and assign value to our own Attention Profiles. APML promises to become an important part of the solution and we believe this announcement is a significant milestone in it's development. Attention Profiles will become our digital fingerprints and will eventually have implications for all aspects of our lives including Media, Business and Lifestyle. Stay tuned… Attention Economy we must have a way to export, own, trade and assign value to our own Attention Profiles. APML promises to become an important part of the solution and we believe this announcement is a significant milestone in it's development.

Attention Profiles will become our digital fingerprints and will eventually have implications for all aspects of our lives including Media, Business and Lifestyle.

The new participants are:

• Sam Sethi (Vecosys)
• Daniel Winterstein (ThinkTank Maths)
• Steve Williams (Programmer, Digg)
• David Cancel (Co-Founder, Compete.com)
• Richard Giles/Graeme Sutherland (Co-Founders, Scouta.com)
• Elias Bizannes (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

They join the existing group:

• Chris Saad/Ashley Angell (Co-Founders, Faraday Media/ Touchstone)
• Paul Jones (Senior Architect, Faraday Media/ Touchstone)
• Mitch Ratcliffe (Co-Founder, Buzzlogic)
• Chris Messina (Citizen Agency)
• Daniela Barbosa (Solutions Architect, Dow Jones
• Ben Metcalfe (Orange/France Telecom)
• Daniela Barbosa (Solutions Architect, Dow Jones)
• Phil Morle (VP Attention, Yoick)
• Ben Metcalfe (Orange/France Telecom)

The APML Workgroup is tasked with converting the current specification into an agreed standard.

It has already started its work with a revised spec. More information can be found on the APML website at www.apml.org

We invite all the players in or around the Attention Economy to join us in refining, implementing and evangelizing APML. To join the Workgroup please contact us with your qualifications.

Members of the general public are invited to join the mailing list via the APML.org website, forums or blog to provide feedback.

I believe this is critical infrastructure work that needs to be supported. Having spent many years working in the info security world for an organization deeply immersed in standards development through the agency of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) working groups, I can attest to the benefits for end users and developers alike when open standards are developed and adopted to promote interoperability. We're all leaving these digital footprints and they quite obviously have value to companies that wish to track and target us. APML is an effort to put ownership and control of that data where it belongs.

Update: Cleaned up some seriously bad formatting. Sorry!