The Register ("Biting the hand that feeds IT") has a report on "Deep inside Apple's Piles. Forgotten UI innovation to be exhumed?" Piles is an alternative to the hierarchical file/folder system, based on work done by Gitta Salomon et al. at Apple back in the early 1990's. Despite the unfortunate name, this seems like an interesting system.
The story was also posted on IASlash over a week ago: Piles of Documents. They have a bit more detail, plus a link to the HCIBib citation for the original article by Salamon in the comments.
I've uploaded the pdf file for my evaluation of Cartagio Missiontrek Enterprise to the archive: Download file
My evaluation of GS Notes is available. Download file.
This program is a tree-structured organizational tool for notes and small text/picture files.
I've posted my KMS evaluation at http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/~annedon/KMSeval.pdf Missiontrek Cartagio is a rather nice, not too expensive Web research/project management software package. I've purchased the home version for my personal research.
The release of Lotus Notes in 1989 revolutionized the way people worked together with computer. Lotus Notes helps users to improve human productivity by fundamentally changing how people work together.
“Release 6.0.1 enhances the quality and reliability of the Notes and Domino 6 products, as well as a limited set of new features, which include Single Copy Template, the ability for iNotes Web Access users to read Notes-encrypted mail messages, and Roaming User Support. ”
The URL is: http://www-3.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/n/jmae5jntvb?OpenDocument&Site=lotus
Among the new features, “Roaming User Support” is very interesting and related to Personal Information Management that we learned in class.
I found a new term " Water Cooler" while I was reading class handout, Personal toolkit.
Water Cooler is "a collection of messgeboard with an unlimited number of subjects". We can discuss our interests such as hobbies, so it fuctions as a tool for collaborating information and ideas.
This site provides good example of Water Cooler.
http://commerce.vertex.net/simple/clubs/default.asp
But, I am still trying to understand what the "telesis" is.
Who has good resources to figure it out?
We did not get to have a class discussion last week, so I'm posting some questions that I would have asked in class. I have also submitted my ppt, which is available through the class Website under Week 7.
I thought the Lifestreams article was particularly interesting. It discussed organizing documents according to time, and begins to explore the idea of past, present, and future, where the past is completed work, the present consists of things that are active, and the future is about reminders of upcoming due dates. What do you all think about organizing according to time?
In records management (RM), the idea of organizing according to time is vital. The backbone of RM is the retention schedule, which determines the disposition of every document. Do your respective fields have something similar?
Slashdot pointed me to this fascinating piece by James Grimmelman on LawMeme (which I've never followed before but will watch in the future):
Accidental Privacy Spills: Musings on Privacy, Democracy, and the Internet
The article discusses the spread of a personal email by Laurie Garrett, a journalist attending on the January World Economic Forum in Davos. Particularly, iit addresses Garrett's (justifiable?) anger at learned that her "private" email had been forwarded without her permission by someone in her circle of trust and had subsequently been discussed by "techno-liberalists" on lists such as MetaFilter.
All in all, I think that this piece ties together a lot of the themes we've discussed so far in class.
Doing some more research on security issues, I ran across this article, Object Security and Personal Information Management.
It has some interesting applications for business, including outsourcing email and calendars, by having users set their own privacy levels on a system based around Object Security Architecture. The article is a couple of years old, but the scenario for application of the OSA, a company intranet, is pretty relevant to what we're discussing in class.
The article, Keeping Found Things Found on the Web analyzed "a fuctional comparison of different methods of keeping Web information for re-use". As a whole, the result of the study is significant, but I cannot understand that the portability of Bookmarks is low. Because we can copy and paste "Bookmarks" easily to our own diskettes, folders and etc., and carry to our home from our offices and vice versa.
Now I'm using Windows XP as an OS. In my case, my "favorites(Bookmarks)" are located in one of the subfolders under drive C.
Anytime, anywhere I can use my "favorites", because they are very "portable".
Just out of curiousity, how many people in our class use a PDA? I know Don and I do, and I know that Anne Marie won't use one (I'll change that to doesn't use one now, based on her comment below. I'll corrupt her yet!). I have a personal theory that there's a critical threshhold of stuff that you have to reach to really make use of a PDA. I'd like to know what you think.
My first PDA was a hand-me-down Palm V (after my husband upgraded to the Vx). I wasn't sold on the idea of a PDA; in fact, I made a big deal at the time of saying that I preferred my paper organizer. For a long time I used the PDA to organize my address book but I didn't use the calendar. It was only when I came back to school that I became totally dependent on my PDA. I reached a point where I couldn't keep track of my evolving schedule on paper anymore. I think I'd have a hard time going back to paper now.
My current PDA is a Treo 300 communicator, and I'm even more pleased with it than with my previous system (Palm Vx plus Sprint phone plus cable to connect as needed). For one thing, I check my email on my PDA more often now and so am more likely to copy information from email into my calendar, to do, or memos while at work than I was before. It's quick and easy to do on my desktop (although I have ideas for making it even easier), but it used to be just inconvenient enough on my combo system that I didn't do it. Also, I only have to manage one phone list instead of having a list on my phone plus a list on my PDA. I was showing my husband just this morning how easy it is to create a new contact based on a phone number in my call log. So if someone calls me, go to the call log, tap a couple of buttons, switch to my contacts, hit new and paste it in and type a name. I think Handspring could do even more to integrate this, but it's much easier now than it used to be, with much less room for error.
There are apparently ways to integrate the PDA with Outlook and with Lotus Notes, but I haven't really tried it. However, when I go back into a work environment I suspect I'll have to. Those products can make coordinating various schedules somewhat easier, whereas the Palm Desktop is more of an individual PIM tool.
I couldn't help but shake my head and chuckle as I read Malone's article "How Do People Organize Their Desks?", especially the description of Michael's "neat" office.
It helped that Michael had a relatively large office with a variety of furniture. I remember trying to create a similar sort of file management, with just as many live piles, in a tiny cubicle with one desk that my computer sat on and a small bookcase. Although this article discussed the degree to which the study participants were organized, and the degree to which they were successful in finding files, it made no analysis of the equipment/furniture that impacted each person's organization.
Of course, in the digital world, this issue is less important. Or is it?
I found the Lifestreams storage model to be very interesting, but for me it certainly did not seem to provide an intuitive information organization structure. My primary mental (and physical) organization model is based on taskflow, not timeflow. I don't think I could tell someone what events were occuring across taskflows at any particular moment in my life but I don't see that I would often want to do that. The big pile of chronologically presented stuff interface really didn't appeal to me. However, since one can create sub-streams on the fly, I suppose a task flow presentation of information is easily produced and a presentation of sub-streams could be the primary interface for a task-oriented user. The integrative function of Lifestreams is really intriguing, however, though the article doesn't provide enough information on the "stream filtering" function to give me a good feel for how effective resource integration would really be. It seems that the filtering process presumes a level of resource description that isn't presently available in most desktop applications (at least, not automatically generated description).
Soon you will be able to talk on the phone (in 5 continents), email, play mp3s, send images, keep to-do lists, AND play action packed games. Nokia and Sega (among others) teamed up to create the ultimate time management / time waster. For the kid in all of us (or at least some) we will finally be able to get in some gaming on the fly without having to toot about a Gameboy.
The device is called N-gage will be available in the fall for a mere (est) $200 - $300.
Check it out: www.n-gage.com