Tech regressions: MORE, Quicken, PalmOS, iOS, Podcasts, Aperture, Music, iPad photo slide shows, and toasters.

One of the odder experiences of aging is living through technology regressions. I’ve seen a few — solutions that go away and are never replaced.

Symantec’s classicMac MORE 3.1 was a great outliner/editing tool with the best style sheet implementation I’ve seen. It died around 1991. The closest thing today would be Omni Outliner — 16 years later. There’s still no comparable Style Sheet support.

Quicken for DOS with 3.5” monthly diskette records of credit card transactions was the most reliable and useable personal accounting tool I’ve experienced — though even it had problems with database corruption. I think that was the 1980s. Today I use Quicken for Mac, a niche product with unreliable transfer of financial information, questionable data security, and limited investment tools.

PalmOS Datebk 5 was an excellent calendaring tool with good desktop sync (for a while the Mac had the best ‘personal information management’ companion). That was in the 1990s. When PalmOS died we went years without an alternative. I briefly returned to using a Franklin Planner. Somewhere around year 3 of iOS we had equivalent functionality again — and a very painful transition.

iOS and macOS have seen particularly painful combinations of progressions and regressions. OS X / macOS photo management was at its best somewhere around the end of Snow Leopard and Aperture 3.1 (memory fuzzy, not sure they overlapped). OS X photo solutions had finally reached a good state after years of iPhoto screw-ups — the professional and home products more or less interoperated. All Apple needed to do was polish Aperture’s rough edges and fix bugs. Instead they sunset Aperture and gave us Photos.app — a big functional regression. Apple did something similar with iMovie; it’s much harder to make home “movies” than it once was.

iOS was at its most reliable around version 6. So Apple blew it up. Since that time Podcasts.app has gone from great to bad to not-so-bad to abysmal. The iPad used to have a great digital picture frame capability tied to screen lock — Apple took that away. For a while there was a 3rd party app that worked with iCloud photo streams, I could remotely add images to my father’s iPad slideshow digital picture frame. There’s nothing that works as well now; as I write this I’m working through a web of bugs and incompetence (I suspect a desperate timeout stuck into iTunes/iOS sync) to sneak some photos from Aperture to an iPad.

Apple Music is following the path of Podcasts.app as Apple moves to ending the sale of music (probably 2019). At the same time iTunes is being divided into dumbed down subunits (iBooks regression). The last 2-3 revisions of iTunes have been so bad that this feels almost like a mercy killing.

We don’t have a  way to avoid these regressions. Once we could have gotten off the train, now the train stations are dangerous neighborhoods of lethal malware. We need to keep upgrading, and so much is bundled with macOS and iOS that we can’t find 3rd party alternatives. Data lock is ubiquitous now.

I think regressions are less common outside digital world. It’s true toasters aren’t what they were, but since 2006 Chinese products have become better made and more reliable. Perhaps the closest thing to tech regressions in the material world is the chaos of pharma prices.

This takes a toll. There are so many better ways to spend my life, and too few minutes to waste. I wonder what these regressions do to non-geeks; I don’t think it goes well for them.

A change to my publishing streams

These are the last days of app.net. It ends in 3 days. App.net has been good to me. Great tools, smart and interesting people, RSS integration (albeit grudgingly at first) and the best communication/conversation platform I’ve worked with. App.net was what Twitter should have been. It has made clear how badly Twitter has failed.

These are, surprisingly, also the end times for Maciej’s Pinboard as a publishing platform. I have 33,236 pins there, and something is broken. Neither pinner.app or pushpin.app are able to connect and download the streams. From what Maciej has written in the past I may have passed some throttling limit. I’m using Pinboard in ways he did not intend — and the iOS apps don’t scale either. 

So I need to make some changes. Gordon’s Notes and Tech will stay on Blogger for now — it’s been surprisingly robust and trouble free for many years. It helps that there’s an exit strategy to WordPress if Google kills it, but as best I can tell Google is going to keep Blogger limping along.

My DreamHost wordpress microblog has mirrored my pinboard stream for years. I’m going to see if there’s a way to make it a true microblog publishing platform. I’m not sure how to do that, in particular it’s not obvious how I can conveniently post via Reeder.app. It will take me a while to work that out.

In the meantime there are several app.net spinoffs in the work. I’m tracking several of these as much as my time allows - especially pnut.io (@jgordon) and 10centuries (@jgordon). March 2017 is a heck of a month for me so things have gone slowly.

Uncertain times! For now if you follow kateva.org/sh you’ll see what I’m up to, no matter how the process evolves.

Maciej's Pinboard is a contender for longest lived microblog platform.

Twitter is racing app.net to the grave. Google social is almost as forgotten as Apple’s flails.

Maciej Cegłowski's Pinboard though, that continues.

Title, Link, Comment, Tag — all editable forever. RSS everywhere. No comments (no trolls), no images, no ads. Cash supported - $11 a year [1]. No obvious string length limit. Common API and bookmarklet support. XML, JSON, and Netscape Bookmark export formats and API for programmatic transfer. Minimalistic mobile support because that's for apps.

Almost a perfect microblog foundation — save that it requires a unique link for each post. [2]

Privately held by a brilliant iconoclast (eccentric?) with atypical values. Maciej has a regular cash stream, seems uninterested in further growth, does no marketing, and his ongoing costs decrease as storage and processing costs fall. He is unlikely to sell or terminate prematurely. Pinboard’s longevity is largely bounded by the health of a male born in 1976 who enjoys travel, is probably a non-smoker, and knows the bus will be fine.  Another 30 years seems achievable. Even Wordpress is unlikely to last that long.

Pinboard may become the world’s longest lived microblog platform.

- fn -

[1] I had to go incognito mode to find pricing. Turns out I paid when he had some kind of lifetime fee. A yearly fee is better.

[2] Pinboard has (editable) Notes which have Title, tags, and description (markdown formatted text). They are a handy way to create a text string with URL and RSS feed, but their native display omits the description portion and I don’t know of any app support (Pinner.app does not show Notes). I also don’t know if there’s API support for Notes or how export works. Notes are basically incomplete, but could be extended to create a complete (spartan) microblog framework. One could create a root “Note” and then, using Pinner, author posts as linked-lists of bookmark referencing prior bookmark … (hence unique url for each) …

Last days at the best of social networks: app.net (aka Alpha, ADN).

My (@johngordon) App.net services are beginning to fail - including PourOver. Post counts are gone. I still find some great discussions; the community will outlast the infrastructure.

I joined ADN/app.net Alpha in 8/2012, I’ve paid yearly since. I was a fan in 2013, still am. App.net filled the void left when Google Reader Shares died. It was better than Posterous, Tumblr or Twitter.

Four years isn’t a bad run. I’m not sure Twitter will be here in four years. On the other hand, “the Well” is 31 years old now (and funded by memberships). The Well is private, so I’ve no idea how active it is, but that’s probably a record.

There’s no obvious replacement for App.net on the horizon but I’m keeping my eyes open …

Beyond Simplenote: I still want a graph layer (concept map) overlay for my memory augmentation notes collection

I still want a graph layer atop my notes.

Yes, I want my personal locally stored data unlocked memex. Since the passing fad of the web is now, you know, passing, maybe I’ll get one.

Maybe someone will play with this now that there’s not much point in doing another searchable memory augmentation app. Apple and Google each have their “good enough” solutions. Those solutions have scary data lock issues, but for their vendors that’s a feature, not a defect. (For the record, I’m still on Simplenote/nvAlt, despite the extremely very insanely annoying search bug in the Simplenote Mac client. [1])

The idea is as old as time. Each open data format note has a title, a body, tags, and a unique identifier. The app maintains a separate data store of noteID pairs (relationships, no directionality or additional relationship attributes necessary).  When viewing a note one sees titles of related notes. There’s a UI for viewing the graph that also treats tags as nodes [3], and a UI for editing relationships.

The key is that the individual notes remain separate files and the note-note store is plaintext/rich text as well. [2]

One day…

PS. I think this was kind of what Gopher did. 

- fn -

[1] My own extended memory collection has moved through DOS text files, FileMaker Pro text base, PalmOS Notes, DateBk Memo, AvantGo files, Outlook Notes, Evernote, Google Notes (killed!), Toodledo Notes/Appigo Notebook,  and Simplenote/ResophNotes/NotationalVelocity/nvAlt. No wonder I’m a nut on data lock issues and distrust Cloud solutions for extended memory even as I use them. Also: Before Simplenote, Palm Notes, iOS Notes, Keep, EverNote and OneNote there was Tornado for DOS. 

[2] Remember when Mac Classic gave every file its own unique ID? Those were the days. How to get the unique ID for the notes is the trick for a plaintext implementation especially across platforms. With rich text one can bury the unique ID in the metadata. Unique ID could be an IP6 URI.

[3] Remember when graph data visualization was a thing? That was the early 90s I think, around the time of VRML and MCF/RDF.

See also: 

(This is started out as a tiny post but I kept finding more old material I wanted to think about …)

• All I want for Christmas is a graph (mind-map) … on App.net 11/2012 discussion of this on ADN.
• XMind: Impressions and comments on the mind mapping market 11/2012. I buried the lede in this post, the discussion of the graph layer for a Notes collection is buried within. I gave up on XMind because client-side Java died.
• Tinderbox, Simplenote, MindNode and data freedom 10/2011. Earlier version of this plea. Lists some Personal Information Managers I’ve known. My plaintext/rich text standards love is born of much painful experience.
• Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, SimpleNote for iPhone and Notational Velocity 7/2010
• Cloud data: Should I trust (Simplenote) Simperium? 8/2010. Only while nvAlt works.
• Before Simplenote, Palm Notes, iOS Notes, Keep, EverNote and OneNote there was Tornado for DOS. 
• Taking note: Tornado Notes Lives—Sort of (an entire blog on note taking. I just subscribed!)
• Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, SimpleNote for iPhone and Notational Velocity 7/2010
• Palm/Palm Pilot: Personal Experiences and Tips: my old Palm Pilot web page. For nostalgia.
• Jon Udell’s Interviews with Innovators: Evernote as Memex 7/2008. (Evernote is still in business!)
• Gordon’s Notes: xanadu and Gordon's Notes: memory management
• Full text search and digital prostheses: new email, new mind 7/2008 - A few years after full text really went mainstream. This doesn’t seem to show up on in our productivity stats, which is more than a bit curious. It is almost as if digital tech is simultaneously increasing and decreasing economic productivity, so we see only the delta.
• The Mundaneum 2008
• Mac NoteTaker for PalmOS with TextMate 1/2006 (oh, the pain)
• Palm to iPhone - the summary 8/2008
• Farewell Palm I didn’t get rid of all my old PalmOS gear until 2010
• The rise of software rental (aka software as service) 2/2010
• Moving Palm notes to Toodledo via CSV file - what worked. (Hard!) 9/2008
• Google’s IQ boost is only beginning 12/2009. Even as I wrote that Google was making a hard turn into evilplusness. Now it’s the AI assistant moment.
• Project Memfail: Tackling my search space problem 9/2013. I rely on my Notes as pointers to other stores but I still need Google’s increasingly shaking custom search engines.
• Thinking tools 2014 - holding steady but future unclear 5/2014. Two years later it’s basically the same toolset, but I created kateva.org/sh as a backup given ADN’s expected lifespan.
• Why we need to retire at sixty 3/2010. Memory augmentation is not an option.

My project management tools - April 2016

Early in my post-corporate days I wrote a detailed post on how I expected to do project management going forwards. Since then I’ve experimented with various tools and services.  

Today I updated a Simplenote/nvAlt [1] summary of my project management tools including how I archive completed (or abandoned) projects. All of these tools have multiple substitutes on iOS, Android, Windows and MacOS so I’m hopeful this toolset approach should work for years to come. Sometime I’ll write an update on my methodology, it basically shifts between Agile-Kanban and Agile-Scrum. Lately more Kanban than Scrum, but I go back and forth.

Principles
- minimize proprietary data formats and data lock (or at least tool lock) - always have an exit strategy
- archived indexable by Spotlight
- easy backup and restoration [Trello fails here, it’s the tool I’m most likely to replace.]
- integrated with Google Calendar
- scales to single person or team projects
- formal project archiving process

MacOS
- create a folder in Project hierarchy
- in some cases also have a shared Google Drive folder
- I don’t make much use of Tags in MacOS at this time.
- Mac file folder has aliases to nvAlt Simplenote, Trello (URL), MindNode (in iCloud Drive), may contain Scrivener files if a writing project, presentation files, etc.

Simplenote/nvAlt (iOS, Web, MacOS)
- Create a simplenote entry for the project, tag it with project.
- Simplenote title has prefix “Project: “
- Describe the project and where things are
- Define project tags: use tags in OS X file system
- project tags have prefix p_
- save as text file in project folder when completed

Trello - Agile Project Management (iOS and Web) (review)
- create Board for Project
- 2 lists: Queue, Active
- when Task/Card Done archive it
- Milestone Cards have dates
- Cards can have checklists
- Subscribe to Calendar on gCal
- Print as PDF when completed and export JSON

MindNode (MacOS and iOS)
- release planning, hierarchy, overview of project (alt OmniOutliner)
- store in iCloud drive but create shortcut
- export to PDF when completed

Scrivener (MacOS)
- for writing projects

Google Calendar (Trello project calendar, iOS, MacOS)
- scheduling and time/capacity management
- project calendar to PDF when completed

Google Drive (iOS, MacOS)
- for collaborative file sharing projects

Email (iOS, MacOS)
- Gmail with web interface and MacOS Mail.app IMAP client.
- Drag and drop selected emails from Mail.app to desktop (creates standard file) to a folder in MacOS project (“Mail Archive”) 
- Careful use of Subject lines to optimize search, typically I don’t file emails or use tags with emails. 

- fn - 

[1] nvAlt is post-maintenance but it still works on El Capitan. Simplenote still has active development, but search has been broken on the Mac app for over a year. I’m not worried because I keep all my notes in plaintext; I have multiple exit strategies. (Not including Apple Notes.app, it needs an exit strategy, a backup strategy, and significant updates. None of which I expect from Apple in its current state).

See also:

• Trello - an orientation review 11/2013, updated 4/2016
• Tools: emulating (Rally) Agile work using Appigo ToDo.app and ToDo Cloud: 7/2015, includes extensive links to productivity posts, Getting Things Done and so on.

Google and RSS: Not unfolding as anticipated

Google Reader died just 3 years ago. It feels a lot longer, I’m probably thinking of when Google burned Reader Social in favor of their G+ initiative. That was 5 years ago; eons by our reckoning, but things have changed less than we expected.

2013 was a truly bad year, but then Google ran into some G+ problems. Namely we hated it. They’ve since cut G+ into pieces, burned each piece, and scattered the ashes deep beneath the continental plates.

Meanwhile, despite a Feed 101 page that’s unchanged since 2004, Google’s Feedburner still lives. Google’s ancient Blogger Buzz blog is active, indeed blogs continue to be Google’s primary way of talking to the world.

Consider Google Fiber — one of their most critical projects. Today’s public housing announcement has a blogspot.com URL. More — take a look at the sidebar:

 

Ok, so it still has the obsolete G+ link, and Twitter and Facebook get colorful links, but note the old “Feed” link. Still there.

That’s not what we expected three years ago.

There’s more. Gmail has 1 billion active accounts. That’s big, but Google wants to replace it with Inbox. So Inbox is a good guide to Google’s current thinking. Inbox has an RSS (Atom) Feed.

RSS survived the great fire of 2013, Media gurus are shocked to learn that RSS still rules the news. RSS is still the only standard for two essential net functions: notification and subscription. RSS is going to last (Feedbin and Reeder.app are my personal clients).

I wonder when Google will incorporate Feed subscription into Inbox.

See also: 

• Quick thoughts on the end of Google Reader 3/2013
• Dapocalypse now: Google’s day of infamy 10/2011 
• Scorched Earth - if Google can’t own the web then it must destroy it. 5/2013
• Thinking tools 2014 - holding steady but future unclear 5/2014. Still same mix.
• Blogging is definitively back - the NYT has redone their Zombie RSS page 10/2014. NYT RSS continues to be primary way I use my subscription.
• Google and the Net 2015: The Quick, the Sick and the Dead - 7th edition 2/2015. Since then G+ was knifed and many Dead products have moved up to merely Sick.
• The Net is a forest. It has fires. 4/2013. In retrospect 2013 was a particularly bad year for the Net.
• Google’s war on standards: RSS, ActiveSync, now CalDAV. 3/2013. Apple deserves blame for CalDAV illness too.
• Project Ducky - why I’ve stopped using new Cloud services. 3/2013. I’ve been very careful since to only use services with low switching costs. Happy with how that’s worked.
• Google and Facebook: how Chrome supports life with an dully evil corporation 2/2012. Google turned Evil in 2011. They’ve been in rehab over the past year or so. Curiously no tech vendor is particularly Evil these days; even Facebook is respectable. Amazon and Google are probably still contending for “most Evil”, with Microsoft “most Good”. Apple and Facebook somewhere in the middle.

Calendaring in iOS, OS X, Outlook 2010 and Google Android/Chrome are all very different.

If you’ve ever wondered why healthcare institutions can’t easily share data between computer systems, just take a look at Calendaring in iOS, OS X, Outlook 2010 and Google Android/Chrome.

Google went down the road of calendar overlays. You can have as many calendars as you like and you can share them across a Google Apps domain or between Google users. Public calendars are available for subscription. My current Google Calendar calendar list holds twenty distinct calendars of which 8 belong to my family. (One for each family member, one for entire family, a couple of parent-only calendars that the kids don’t see.) In Google’s world, which is consistent across Chrome and Android, shared calendars can be read-only or read-write. Google supports invitations by messaging.

I love how Google does this, but I’m a geek.

I’ve not used any modern versions of Outlook, but Outlook 2010 also supported Calendar subscription. They didn’t do overlays though, every Calendar stood alone. I never found this very useful.

Apple did things differently. Not only differently from everyone else, but also differently between iOS, OS X, and iCloud.  OS X supports calendar overlays and subscriptions, but the support of Google Calendar subscriptions is  weird (there are two ways to view them and both are poorly documented). iOS has a very obscure calendar subscription feature that I suspect nobody has ever used, but it does support “family sharing” for up to 6 people/calendars (also barely documented). There’s an even more obscure way to see multiple overlay Google calendars on iOS, but really you should just buy Calendars 5.app.

iCloud’s web calendar view doesn’t have any UI support for Calendar sharing, I’ve not tested what it actually does. Apple is proof that a dysfunctional corporation can be insanely profitable.

All three corporations (four if you treat Apple as a split personality) more-or-less implement the (inevitably) quirky CalDAV standard and can share invitations. Of course Microsoft’s definition of “all-day” doesn’t match Apple or Google’s definition, and each implements unique calendar “fields” (attributes) that can’t be shared.

Google comes out of this looking pretty good — until you try to find documentation for your Android phone and its apps. Some kind of reference, like Google’s Android and Nexus user guides. As of Dec 2015 that link eventually leads to a lonely PDF published almost five years ago. That’s about it.

I don’t think modern IT’s productivity failure is a great mystery. 

Google Trends: Across my interests some confirmation and some big surprises.

I knew Google Trends was “a thing”, but it had fallen off my radar. Until I wondered if Craigslist was going the way of Rich Text Format. That’s when I started playing with the 10 year trend lines.

I began with Craigslist and Wikipedia...

• Craigslist is looking post-peak
• Wikipedia looks ill, but given how embedded it is in iOS I wonder if that’s misleading.

Then I started looking at topics of special relevance to my life or interests. First I created a set of baselines to correct for decliniing interest in web search. I didn’t see any decline

• Cancer: rock steady, slight dip in 2009, slight trend since, may reflect demographics
• Angina: downward trend, but slight. This could reflect lessening interest in search, but it may also reflect recent data on lipid lowering agents and heart disease.
• Exercise: pretty steady
• Uber: just to show what something hot looks like. (Another: Bernie Sanders)

Things look pretty steady over the past 10 years, so I decided I could assume a flat baseline for my favorite topics.That’s when it got fascinating. 

• Inline skating (I do this) is dead and so is skateboarding
• Microsoft Excel is stable, but Google Sheets is way way up. Apple Numbers is doing a lot better than I expected.
• Special Needs has a slight downwards trend but Downs Syndrome has plummeted - perhaps due to America's eugenics program. I wonder if the fading of Downs syndrome is responsible for the modest decline in special needs searches.
• Cycling for exercise is somewhat down, with a nice seasonal spike pattern. Mountain biking has declined significantly.
• Cross Country Skiing varies (bet it’s snow depth) but seems constant at a low level
• CrossFit has probably peaked but is still popular.
• AI (artificial intelligence), much to my surprise, is way down.
• Growing use of searches on “Apple Quality” — probably not in a happy way (I’m betting this is Apple corp, not Apple fruit).
• Dementia is a slowly growing concern
• Backpacking is in a gentle decline
• Google seems to have flatlined and even Android is trending down, but Facebook has fallen off a cliff (hard to interpret, it’s so ubiquitous), Apple has slow growth but iPhone is only holding steady. Weirdly, Twitter looks rather like Facebook - not healthy at all.
• RSS. Sob.
• Health Informatics, my professional discipline, has had a big decline since 2004. It feels that way. SNOMED CT is in a lesser decline. On the other hand, family medicine is pretty stable (one weird 2011 peak) even as Geriatrics is in decline (WTF?)
• Carbon tax is off the radar and interest in global warming is way down. Be afraid.
• eBooks are post-peak - a failure to takeoff (I blame the DRM).

Some of these findings line up with my own expectations, but there were quite a few surprises. It’s illuminating to compare Excel to Google Sheets. The Downs Syndrome collapse is a marker for a dramatic social change — the world’s biggest eugenics program — that has gotten very little public comment. I didn’t think interest in AI would be in decline, and the Facebook/Twitter curves are quite surprising.

Suddenly I feel like Hari Seldon.

I’ll be back ...

See also:

• Research the past 200 years of memetic propagation: Google Books ngram viewer 12/2010

Tools: emulating (Rally) Agile work using Appigo ToDo.app and ToDo Cloud

My circumstances have changed. I may have more to say on that later; even in the sort term it is probably a change for the better. But of course life must be lived forward and understood backwards and all that.

One of the benefits of my new position is an opportunity to revisit my Tools. At one time (less so now) I’d read that tools didn’t matter, it was all about … something. Process maybe, or magic. This was sometimes used to justify a lack of investment in tools to support getting work done. I won’t bother refuting this idea, it’s self-evidently wrong.

Tool choices shape everything. I like Tools that last years to decades; switching costs are often high [10]. In practice, since modern software has very short lifespans, this means choosing adaptable tools and, when data lifespan is longer than tool life expectancy, portable data. For a serious Tool complexity and learning curve don’t bother me, but complexity shortens already too short software lifespans and and usually binds a Tool to a single platform (web typically). So I reluctantly favor simplicity - just enough functionality to do what I need. (I despise the current fashion for early delivery of barely working products, but that’s another story.)

These past few days I’ve been choosing my go-forward task and project management tool. Over the past few years I’ve used a mixture of Google/Outlook Calendars (don't underestimate the power of the Calendar), Appigo ToDo.app for iOS with sync to Toodledo for web access and data freedom, and RallyDev’s “Rally” Agile project/task management software.

I could write a book on the RallyAgile (which is Agile shaped by Rally) and the twisted evolution of that tortured product. It is hard to watch software adolescence — the drinking, the reckless driving, the law breakin … then, if one is lucky, the emergence of a somewhat broken product that may do some good in the world.

Suffice to say there are things I liked about the way I adapted RallyAgile, such as Features that are completed in 3-10 weeks of work, Feature-Stories that map to 1-10 days of work, and Feature-Story-Tasks that map to 1-6 hours of work. I sized “Stories” [1] by “Points” where a “Point” is 5 hours of work [2], and where a Story could be any one of 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20 Points [3]. I liked two week iterations [4] as a practical planning unit - a period where each task was (tentatively) assigned Calendar blocks and where one could focus on getting Stories complete rather than constantly replanning. I liked having protected time for planning a “Release” (set of Features basically) and for planning an “Iteration” (2-3 week collection of Stories), time to review and improve process, and time to look ahead and reassess “Features” and “Release”.

Today I’ve made my first pass at a set of Tools (and, yes, practices) that will give me the functionality I want within the constraints [5] of time, budget, familiarity, platform (Mac/web) and the requirements of longevity. In bullet form, here’s my list:

• Google Calendar: Well, I’m certainly not going to use anything Apple owns [6], and Outlook is owned by ZombieSoft. So pretty much narrows that down.
• Appigo ToDo and ToDo Cloud: I never seriously considered Rally. Omni products are too platform specific and I fear lifespan. My use of Toodledo was a path-dependency accident of history, and now that Appigo has fixed task-creation-by-email I can switch fully. Primary downside is data lock [7]. My next option would have been Trello, but there’s no native Mac client, I don’t need distributed team support, it’s complex, the nomenclature is odd, etc. [8]

Here’s how I map “Agile” style of “getting things done” [9] to Appigo ToDo

• Tasks -> Tasks. (Tasks are are tied to projects may get Stars, not sure if I need to do that)
• Stories -> Projects
• Features -> List Name (Contexts and Tags will take on some of the things I use List Names for).

I think I’ll put “hours” and “points” into the Titles of Tasks and Stories.

 

The relation of “Features” to bigger Goals/Initiatives/etc I plan to map out in MindNode.app, but that’s another post.

Tasks associated with “Stories” get slots on the Calendar. I will still use Appigo ToDo for tasks unrelated to “Features”/“Projects”, those have the usual ABC priority (simplified from old Franklin/GTD priorities) which work like this:

• A/High: Get Due Date and time on calendar
• B/Medium: May get a due date, may have calendar time
• C/Low: No due date, no calendar

I’ll update this post in future as I fill in the rough spots.

- fn -

[1] Without going into details on my own twisted adaptation of Agile, I dislike the word “Story” and all of it’s subject-action baggage. I use “Story” to mean a testable unit of work that is composed of tasks, is measured in “points” where a “point” is 5 hours of real work, and may be part of a “Feature” (which is, etc).

[2] Ok, one more detail. The mysticism about the meaning of a “Story” "Point” also annoys.

[3] Fibonacci more or less, where as Points go up so does uncertainty. I was the best Estimator I know of — I’d do my initial Story estimates, decompose to Tasks and assign hours to tasks, sum the hours and divide by 5, then round up to next Fibonacci number (so 11 hours is 3 points). When I did Task estimates I assumed an average rather than ideal path, and adjusted for dependencies — esp. on unreliable corporate infrastructure.

[4] In practice this was too much planning overhead with distributed teams; 3 weeks is better in that case. I like 2 weeks for local teams. I could write another book on doing corporate software development with distributed teams.

[5] Ahh, Constraints. So important to choice, thus project planning. Could write a book about those too :-). Constraints are my friend, a relative of Requirements I suppose.

[6] Has any company ever killed more data, data formats, products and platforms? Apple is a charming TV sociopath serial-killer of a company.

[7] App.net.@clarkgoble tells me there’s a SQLite database and Todo Cloud data is CalDAV and theoretically extractable, though I suspect much would be lost. There’s also the back door of switching back to Toodledo and their export features, but that’s a cheat. I wish Toodledo had implemented full-text search, but I understand my task volume and complexity is not their market.

[8] I’m keeping on eye on Trello. Familiarity and time were constraints too.

[9] Yeah, GTD and all kinds of old Franklin stuff on goals, etc all fit in here, but that’s yet another book.

[10] In writing this post I reviewed past blog posts. It wasn’t too hard to switch from Franklin Planner paper to the PalmOS in the 90s, but the 00s switch from PalmOS productivity Tools to early iOS was brutal. Awful. Horrible. MobileMe… argggggghhh. It went on for years, no thanks to Apple [6] but sincere thanks to pre-Evil Google. The pain of that switch is one reason I’m reluctant to commit to anything novel - like Trello.

See also

• Gordon's Tech: Trello - an orientation review 11/2013
• Gordon's Tech: Getting Things Done and Managing Email with Lookout for Outlook 12/2004: I still do email this way but I do a lot more Calendar scheduling within an “iteration”.
• Gordon's Tech: The Fallows Summary of Getting Things Done (GTD) 10/2004
• Gordon's Tech: Toodledo gets it 8/2008: I’ve used them for 7 years! Not a bad run. They do a good job and nobody beats them for data freedoms.
• Gordon's Tech: Using Outlook Tasks: a mini-tutorial 8/2008: Outlook may be dead but there’s a lot of power there.
• Gordon's Tech: Getting Things Done: integrating the Outlook add-in with Palm synchronization across multiple machines 9/2004: PTSD. Ugh.
• Gordon's Notes: Google - please give me tasks that appear on my calendar 8/2009. Despite the title is really about how I did tasks then - which is quite similar to now. I’d forgotten I started doing Agile in 2009. By the time Google introduced their half-hearted task/calendar integration I’d changed directions.
• Gordon's Notes: What the iPhone needs is Gorilla Haven’s DateBk6 1/2009: Amazing how little progress has been made with task/calendar integration. I can only assume the Gods are interfering lest we storm the gates of Heaven. Seriously, why don’t we have smarter task/calendar software? i could write another book about this, or at least another book-length blog post. Pimlico actually has an Android app as of 2015.
• Gordon's Notes: Task management: a feature request 9/2008; Pre Evil-Google, when we used to ask for boons. Still waiting for this one.
• Gordon's Tech: Toodledo iPhone vs. Appigo Todo.app 10/2008: How I ended up with both.
• Gordon's Notes: Beating email - it's doable. Here's how. 7/2008. Early version, I got better.
• Gordon's Notes: Inbox zero - mastering corporate email 1/2010. Traffic management is key. I just discovered I still have a presentation online about this. In the corporate setting I went to “Sentbox zero” — something so advanced I fear to describe it.
• Gordon's Tech: Creating Google events from email and SMS 11/2010: Alas, the SMS creation feature is gone. Google’s email/event create support is a bit flaky.
• Gordon's Tech: Palm: 2003-2013. Mostly pain of transition.
• Gordon's Tech: pda and Gordon's Tech: PIM: way more like this. Someday I should clean up those two tags.

Google and the Net 2015: The Quick, the Sick and the Dead - 7th edition

I first published a Google Quick, Sick and Dead list in January 2009, at the dawn of Dapocalypse. This was six months after the Battle of Latitude; we were well into the post-Android Google-Apple War I. By then the iPhone was big, but not as dominant as it would get.

Less than two years later, in July of 2011, Google Plus launched. Five months later Google Reader Shares vanished and Google 1.0 was declared dead. Looking back, a lot of software became ill in 2011.

Again with the damned interesting times! Since then many cloud services have been killed or abandoned. We’re growing accustomed to major regressions in software functionality with associated data loss (most recently with Apple’s Aperture). I am sure businesses struggle with the rate of change.

Looking back the 2009+ software turmoil probably arose from 2 factors, one technological and one external. The technological factor was, in a word, the iPhone. Mobile blew up the world we knew. The external factor was the Great Recession (which, in Europe, continues today as the Lesser Depression). 

Of course if you believe the Great Recession has its roots in globalization and IT (including IT enabled fraud and IT enabled globalization) [1] then it’s really all a post-WW II thing. I suppose that’s how it will look to the AIs.

Which brings me back to my Google Quick Sick and Dead series. It’s been more than four years since the 6th edition. I haven’t had the heart to update the list the way I once did — too many old friends have become ill. I’m doing an update today because I started a post on the Google Calendar iPad experience and it got out of control.

As with prior editions this is a review of the Google Services I use personally — so neither Android nor Chromebooks are on the list. It’s also written entirely from my personal perspective; I don’t care how the rest of the world sees Google Search, for me it’s dying.

With those caveats, here’s the list. Items that have effectively died since my last update are show with a strike-through but left in their 2011 categorization, old items have their 2011 category in parentheses. Items in italics are particularly noteworthy.

The Quick (Q) 

• Google Scholar (Q)
• Chrome browser (Q)
• Maps and Earth (Q)
• News (Q)
• Google Drive and core productivity apps - Docs, Sheets, Present (Q)
• YouTube (Q)
• Google Profile (Q)
• Google Translate (S)

The Sick (S)

• Google Parental Controls (D)
• Gmail (Q)
• Google Checkout (S)
• iGoogle (S)

The Walking Dead (D)

• Google Search (S)
• Google Custom Search (D)
• Google Contacts (Q)
• Google Hangout (S): on iOS
• Google Voice (D)
• Google Mobile Sync (S)
• Google’s Data Liberation Front (S)
• Google Calendar (Q)
• Google Tasks (Q)
• Picasa Web Albums (Q)
• Blogger (D)
• Google Books (S)
• Google Plus (Q)
• Buzz (D)
• Google Groups (D)
• Google Sites (D)
• Knol (D)
• Firefox/IE toolbars (D)
• Google Talk (D)
• Google Reader (S)
• Orkut (S)
• Google Video Chat (S) - replaced by G+ Hangout

A lot has happened in four years. I was surprised to see I’d rated Google Search as “sick” in 2011 — but that was the right call. In my personal experience Search has moved into the Dead zone since; I am often unable to locate items that I know exist. I have to find them by other means.

 

I haven’t adopted any new Google Services since 2011. On the other hand hand many services I thought would die have simply remained “Walking Dead”. Google Scholar’s persistence is quixotic; I figure Larry Page is personally fond of it.

 

Google Calendar is the Canary case. Four years ago Calendar was due for some updates, but it looked healthy. My immediate family members each have 1 Google Calendar; with various other family and school calendars and event feeds our total number of subscribed calendars is probably in the mid 20s. We use Google Calendar with Calendars 5.app on iOS and Safari or Chrome elsewhere. We’re Calendar power users.

 

Since 2011 though Calendars has stagnated. Google’s only “improvement” has been a partially reversed 2011 usability reduction. Today, thanks to our school district’s iPad program, I got to experience Google Calendar on the iPad without the benefit of Calendars 5 

[2]. It’s an awful experience; the “mobile” view is particularly abysmal. Suddenly four years of stagnation leapt into focus. Google Calendar is now an Android/Chrome only product.

 

Looking across the list there’s a pattern. Google is abandoning its standards based and internet services, focusing instead on Android and an increasingly closed Chrome-based ecosystem. Presumably those two will merge and Google and Apple will become mirror images. It’s unclear if anything will inherit the non-video streaming internet, or if it will simply pass into history. Maybe our best hope is that smaller standards-friendly ventures like Fastmail, Pinboard, WordPress, and Feedbin may prosper in an ecosystem Google has abandoned.

  

Damn, but it’s been one hell of a ride. The take away for me is that I need to get away from Google, but that’s easy to say and hard to do. Replacing my family’s grandfathered Google Apps services with the Fastmail equivalent would cost over $600 a year and the migration would take a non-trivial chunk of my lifespan. History is better to read than to experience, and we’re still early into the AI age.

 

- fn -

 

[1] It’s a different blog post, but widespread hacking (governments included) and ubiquitous identity theft may yet kill Internet 1.0. As of as Jon Robb predicted in 2007 the Internet itself is ailing.

[2] I haven’t been able to get my own iPad purchase past Gordon’s Laws of Acquisition. Those same laws have stopped my iPhone 6 purchase. Maybe I can justify the iPad by keeping my 5s.

See also:

• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #1 (1/09)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #2 (11/09)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #3 (6/10)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #4 (10/10)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #5 (5/11)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #6 (9/11)
• AvantGo RIP - memories of the roaring 90s 6/2009
• Software died three years ago. Why? 12/2014.
• Apple kills yet another photo sharing service - and generally screws up iOS photo management 9/2014
• How quickly can businesses adapt? 7/2014
• Apple and the 2013 tech world - in the doldrums 8/2012
• Project Ducky - why I’ve stopped using new Cloud services 3/2013
• Fraud and Globalization: Toy Story III 6/2007

Learning new habits and skills - Pinboard, Simplenote, Toodledo and the skr tag

Being new-old means learning to be deliberative about things that were once opportunistic.

I used to get my exercise whenever I could — now I do regular group classes. Similarly, I used to pick up new habits and skills whenever the need arose or training required — but as of today i’m doing something more … deliberative. Something that should work better than my ad hoc approach of the past 30 years, not just because old brains suck but also because my old approach didn’t really work all that well. Even with a (relatively) young brain.

My new approach builds on 3 of my favorite tools: Pinboard, Simplenote and Toodledo — and a tag [1] of ‘skr’. The tag stands for “skills review”; it’s short because I wanted something fast to type.

I created a “habit/skills review” task in Toodledo and scheduled it a couple of weeks out. The task reminds me to review things tagged ‘skr’ in Pinboard and Simplenote. Meanwhile, as I come across things that I want to learn and make a part of my cognitive toolkit, I tag them ‘skr’. In Pinboard I save a Pin with that tag, in Simplenote I create a note with that tag.

Ever two weeks I get to the task and do my review. It only takes a few minutes. If I learn something I can remove the tag, if I’m failing to learn it I can take other measures or decide it’s not worth the investment.

I think this will work…

[1] Rant diversion — why are so many tagging implementations so awful? Why do so many devs exclude tag strings from full text search? Why does Simplenote display tags by data created rather than alpha sort? Why can’t one “merge” tags? Why … why …

Blogging is definitively back - the NYT has redone their Zombie RSS page

My feeds (Feedbin/Reeder) have never gone quiet — but there’s no doubt it was getting harder to find links to feeds over the two years since Google tried to kill RSS to boost G+.

Then came signs of a turnaround. Apple very quietly added RSS reading back into Safari — after removing RSS from both Safari and Mail.app [2]. Google, fairly quietly, backed away from G+ — I don’t get any G+ social invites at all any more. More interestingly, Google blogs all became more active. Microsoft kept RSS features in IE 11. Facebook never removed RSS from Pages. Old blogs started lighting up in my feed reader. Rosenberg has started writing about a blog revival amidst disaffection with Twitter and Facebook [1]. 

All significant developments, but they pale next to the very biggest sign of them all — the New York Times has updated their RSS - Feed Page! It no longer recommends use of Google Reader! [3] The NYT has even added Topic Feeds:

Times Topics feeds collect news, reference, photos, graphics, audio and video on thousands of subjects, covering material published since 1981 … Search 10,000+ Times Topics Feeds

 Dave Winer should be a happy guy today.

[1] Not directly related, but fairly suddenly, and for no obvious reason, many of my friends and family have stopped posting on Facebook.

[2] Apple needs to update it’s RSS Feed page though — it doesn’t mention use of Safari.

[3] It does mention AOL Reader. I thought that was a bad sign, but, and this shocks me, AOL really does have a Feed Reader with its own spiffy web site: "Moving from another RSS reader? You can upload your subscriptions in standard OPML format and start reading right away!”. It even has its own friggin’ API. Turns out this was launched a year ago. It’s still in beta, but there’s an active development blog and they released an iOS app in August that has few ratings but seems well liked. Best of all, it supports OPML export as well as import. So this is a real contender.

Bill Atkinson's PhotoCard.app for iOS - weekly messages to my Dad in his nursing home

I plan to expire at 85, 10 years later than Ezekiel Emanuel [1]. My Dad is a bit less directed; at 92 he recently moved into the longterm care unit of the veterans facility in Ste. Anne’s Hospital, Montreal island [2].

Since I live in St Paul Minnesota, and have a good number of child obligations, that’s a long way for a visit. Unfortunately, like many elderly men, he despises phones. He’s also resolutely low tech. 

Which leaves 2,700 year old technology — postal mail. 

The problem with postal mail, of course, is that the sending process takes time — and I don’t think Dad is into long letters anyway. Which is why I buy credits every few weeks with Bill (HyperCard, Paint, etc) Atkinson’s PhotoCard.app for iOS.

Atkinson developed this app in part to showcase his nature photography, but that’s now how I use it. I pick family photos Dad would like to have by his bed; I send one card a week with a short note of family news — and a reminder of the names and ages of 3 of his grandchildren.

I can reuse prior cards as a template, substituting a new photo and new text. The entire process from beginning to end takes about 2-3 minutes, I’ve a ToodleDo task that reminds me to send them weekly. I like the (rare) clarity of Atkinson’s pricing and the “buy credit” approach — my AMEX info never leaves the phone.

Cards are mailed from Silicon Valley and take 10-14 days to reach my father (Canada Post is notoriously slow).

I’m rather fond of this app.

[1] Obviously I approve of Emanuel’s essay, but I must say that by his logic most humans should be dead by age 20. His primary concern is to expire when he is past some absurdly high utility threshold; given his history and genetics a 75 yo Emanuel will still perform above the rest of us. I’m not worried about being vital or useful, I just want a 75% probability that I die in control of my life. So preventive care stops at age 75, cancer/cardiac interventions stop at age 80, antibiotics stop at 84, base jumping and cave diving start at 85.

That said, when I inspect Emanuel’s strategies I think he has rather good odds of making 82. If he really wanted to expire at 75 he’d need to be much more aggressive.

[2] WW II took a lot out of my father — who had more Aspie traits than I have. Maybe even a full diagnosis, though brains change a bit in 80 years. That’s not a good foundation for being a signalman on a frontline tank festooned with antennae (bullseye redundant). So whatever the Vets do now is small recompense. It does help he was a young Canadian in the war, and that Canada’s later wars were far smaller; he inherits facilities built for a lost generation. He’s been remarkably content there - so far.

Thinking tools 2014 - holding steady but future unclear

Revisiting something I wrote 14 years ago reminded me of the tools I use to think about the world. Once those tools were conversation, paper diaries and notebooks — even letters. Later came email, local BBS, FidoNet [1] and Usenet [3]. In the 90s we created web pages with tools like FrontPage and “personal web servers” [2] — even precursors to what became blogs.

In the 00s we had the Golden Age of Google. My thinking tools were made by Google — Google Blogger, Google Custom Search Engine, Google Reader (RSS/Atom) and Google Reader Social. We loved Google then — before the fall.

From 1965 through 20011 my thinking tools continuously improved. Then things got rocky.

These days I still use Blogger [4]. Blogger is old but seems to be maintained, unlike Google Custom Search. I’m grateful that Daniel Jakut continues to update MarsEdit — I wish he’d use Backer to charge me some money. There are features I’d like, but most of all I’d like him to continue support.

I still rely on RSS, even as it fades from memory (but even new journalism ventures like Upshot still have feeds). Feedbin (20$/yr) is almost as good as Google Reader [6], Reeder.app is still around (but unstable), and Pinboard ($10 lifetime) has turned out to be a “good enough” de facto microblogging platform — with a bit of help from IFTTT (0$) [5].

App.net Alpha ($36/year!) [7] powered by PourOver and consumed in part through Duerig Root-Feeds has filled out the rest of the microblogging role — and replaced the intellectual feedback of Reader Social.

So as of 2014 I’ve cobbled together a set of thinking tools that are comparable to what I had in 2009. It feels shaky though. Few people under 30 know what RSS is, app.net is not growing (even Twitter is dying), and I’ve recently written about the decrepit state of Google Custom Search. Of Google’s twitter-clone, the less said the better.

I wonder what comes next? I don’t see anything yet. I’m reminded of the long fallow time between the end of Palm @2003 and the (useful) iPhone of 2009 (transition hurt). Expect turbulence.

—fn— 

[1] FidoNews was last published July 1999.

[2] FrontPage 98 was a prosumer tool; the closest equivalent today would be MarsEdit or Microsoft’s forgotten Live Writer (2009).

[3] I used to tag Usenet posts with a unique string, then search for them in DejaNews and later Google Groups. So a bit of a micro-blog.

[4] I do use WordPress on Dreamhost for my share archive.

[5] Pinboard is about $10 for lifetime use. That’s so low it worries me. There’s a $25/yr option for a full text archive for every bookmark, but I don’t need that; it would just confuse my searches. Maybe Maciej should seek Backer funding for new features?

[6] Speaking of Backer funding, I’d fund a feature that gave me in-context editing of Feedbin feed titles.

[7] App.net is by far the most expensive of the services I use, but if you visit the site the yearly subscription fee is undiscoverable. You only see the free signup, without mention of follower limitations. This bothers me

See also

• Strange loops: Google custom and customized search - and a memory blog 8/2008 
• Full text search and digital prostheses: new email, new mind 7/2008. I still do email this way, though modern corporations are working hard to erase digital memories.
• Microblogging 2012 - Pinboard? 4/2012
• The not-so-vast readership of Gordon’s notes - and why I keep posting 1/2011
• Google’s IQ boost is only beginning 12/2009 We loved Google then.
• Gordon’s Tech: After the fall of Google Reader: Posterous, Tumblr and Zootool with Twitter on the side 9/2011 - I did find what I was looking for …
• What my blogs are for: memory management and the Google-Gordon geek-mind fusion 7/2008
• Gordon’s Notes: Why I love app.net (ADN) 1/2013
• memory management - tagged posts

Why I love app.net (ADN)

I joined App.net ($5/month or $36/year) about five months ago. Although it's fundamentally a messaging infrastructure it's currently marketed as an ad-free social network.

I paid $50 at launch, and my account was extended when the cost dropped. That was money well spent; I expect to subscribe as long as they are in business. I love App.net because ...

• It has a very robust ecosystem of tools and services including multiple Mac and iOS clients and multiple web apps. I use Wedge, Netbot, NoodleApp and Appnetizen and will soon try Felix. There are multiple integration points to my Pinboard feed, including IFTTT support. Most of my posts start with Reeder.app [1] then go to Pinboard and turn into App.net posts via IFTTT.
• The community I interact with on app.net is exceptional. More on that below.
• I love the mission: a public (pay) communications infrastructure and related services that I purchase. I love paying for things I use.
• The app.net development team is delightful. I mean that literally; it's a joy to see them play and build on the platform - like @duerig's early stage Google Reader Share alternative, Patter-app rooms and private messages (EdChat) and vidcast shared video commentary.
• 128 characters is stupid. 256 is not twice as good, it's eight times better. (Though URL characters count, so I use URL shortener services)
• I'm 50+ and this is a relatively young community (though plenty of 40+ too). I'm old enough to enjoy that. The only young people I otherwise interact with are my kids (10-15) and their friends.
• I have the (illusion) of helping build something good without, you know, actually having to do anything. (Hence the illusion bit.)
• No advertising. Of course that doesn't mean no marketing; it means I choose the marketing I want)

The real hook for me, however, is the community. I follow a very smart and mutually respectful group of people. The conversation reminds me of Google Reader Shares, some of the BBS forums I joined via packet switching networks before there was public net access, but most of all it reminds me of my undergraduate conversations.

 

During my undergrad days I got to know 4 institutions, partly because I wanted to escape from the one I graduated from, partly because in Quebec everyone went to "junior college" (CEGEP) after grade 11. Whether they were elite or accessible I found great conversations everywhere.

 

There were good conversations at graduate school, medical school and residency as well (I spent a long time in school), but the undergrad conversations were the most interesting. App.net reminds me of the best of those. It is, for example, the only place I can learn from the insights of a (gasp) republican.

 

The group I follow is a pretty tough bunch. If I'm sloppy, I get called on it. I love that -- it makes my thinking better. I learn things.

 

App.net won't last forever -- nothing does. But it's a good place now; it succeeds where Twitter failed me. 

 

If you'd like a free trial let me know at jgordon@kateva.org or in comments below -- I can share 3 invites.

[1] Alas Reeder.app may have been sunset. It's very unstable on the iPhone 5. Fortunately there are alternatives I can explore.

See also:

• The Economist's Babbage on two of my favorites: Pinboard and App.net. The Economist doesn't use bylines, but I suspect this is by @glennf.

Supporting sports teams - what I do now

Over the past ten years I've been the manager for a variety of hockey and baseball teams. Along the way I've tried a variety of technologies to try and support the teams, including blogs, wikis, traditional web sites and the like.

I've gradually settled on a handful of overlapping technologies that seem to work well for a diverse audience using Facebook and Google services.

Here's what I use now:

Communication - Gmail and Facebook both

Gmail

I prefer Gmail because of ease of access at work, home and on my phone.

I manually build a group of correspondents; this typically takes a few weeks to get right but then changes little over the course of a season.

I have one structured email for each team I support; I use the last email sent as template for the next. I use a large font and ample white space - not least because I'm 50+ myself. I use a consistent footer with links to a Google Docs team page, Photo album (if any), Team Calendar, and Facebook Page.

The primary limit to email is personal/work access issues and the global problems many people have with email in 2013. Many subscribers do not use email at home, and some do not have work access.

Facebook Team Page

I use Facebook because that's where our people are -- both athletes and families. They don't do blogs, they may have limited email access, but most use Facebook in one way or another [1]. Facebook Pages are always Public, and so web accessible for non-members -- albeit with an obnoxious popup pushing Facebook. Many athletes get SMS notices with Page activity, so it can be a quick way to notify of weather cancellations and the like.

I create a Facebook Page for each team. The UI for managing these pages is awkward and confusing, but by now I'm familiar with it. It takes me about ten minutes to setup a Page.

I copy paste emails into Page status updates, it takes only a minute or so to do that.

It's awkward to associate persistent links with a Facebook Page, but if you play around a bit you can make them show in the Page header; that's where I put links to our Team Page and Calendar.

Reference Page - Google Docs

I've recently started using a Google Doc "Team Page" with basic reference information including a simplified roster (no private information). There's no authentication, I share it using the "secret" URL but typically these pages get indexed one way or another.

Google Docs is easy to update and produces documents suitable for print or web access. It is the current version of the "personal web page".

Roster - Google Spreadsheet

I maintain the team roster in Google's Spreadsheet. Access requires authentication as this can contain private information including email and phone numbers.

Calendar - Google Calendar

I setup a Google Calendar for each team. I don't know of any alternatives. My family subscribes to the team calendar on our phones and devices, but most simply view it online.

Photo sharing - Picasa vs. Facebook

Historically I've shared using Google Picasa web albums and emailing the "secret" URL. I don't think these albums get a lot of access however, which is disappointing since the photos are not trivial to prepare. I liked the idea of full resolution downloads but in ten years I doubt more than twenty images have been downloaded.

I've recently started experimenting with Facebook's improved Albums and these seem to get much more team traffic.

I don't put any namers or other identifying information into shared albums -- just the images.

[1] They don't do G+ either, but then nobody does.

XMind: Impressions and comments on the mind mapping market

It's been two years since I first looked at XMind. During that time I used MindManager at work and experimented with MindNode Pro at home. I mostly use the tools to explore new terrain, and as a visual aide to some teleconferences (share the mind map while discussing).

MindManager wasn't ideal, but it was a decent tool when we could buy it for $100 or so. Their current pricing is too high for team use, and I really did want the option of sharing maps. So when I switched projects I also switched to XMind. I don't have time for a proper review, but I can share some bullet points on why I chose it, what it's like, and what I would love to see.

Why I chose XMind

• It runs on Windows 7 and it's nice I can also use it on my Air.
• Price: Free for a very solid version, upgrade to pro was $80 for me. I don't like free software, but we can't afford MindManager - so this freemium model is a good balance.
• Longevity: It's been on the market for several years and just went through a significant update.
• Quality: it's got bugs, but it's tolerable so far.
• It's a simplified clone of MindManager so it has a good feature set.
• The base version is "open source". A weak form of insurance, but could be worse.
• Freemind lacks the corporate look and seemed a steeper learning curve for non-geeks.

Impressions, including problems

• Data lock: The inevitable for all but Freemind
• Java: The UI is native, but the back-end requires Java. That's bad enough on Windows, but for a Mac user Java installation feels like installing a malware-welcome sign.
• There's no built-in Help, only web help.
• It is slow to load what I consider a mid-sized map.
• It is pretty reliable, but I have run into a significant bug with string search. Search sometimes fails unless the map is fully expanded.
• It's made in China, and the language localization is imperfect. "Extend" is used in place of "Expand" for example, and the mouse-over tooltip text is quaint.

Thoughts on the mind map / concept visualization marketplace

 

I've seen cognitive-support apps come and go for twenty years, and I don't think we're making much progress. We're shuffling in place. This definitely isn't a technology problem -- we had similar apps running on the computing-equivalent of medieval tech. I don't think it's due to lack of imagination, though that has occurred to me. I think it's a business problem -- the market for high-end cognitive-extension concept modeling software is tiny; probably not more than 1 in 10,000 adults, perhaps 300,000 worldwide on all computer platforms. If we then ask how many can/will pay $30 a year for a product … we're talking a modest income stream for 1-2 developers owning a world market.

 

Yeah, this is a business problem. So we're not going to get what I want through traditional market-driven mechanisms. We're going to have to figure a way to grow something from modest means, and it's going to have to be built atop something else.

 

So here's how I think it could work. Start with the standard data formats used in other apps like Notational Velocity for the nodes. That means UTF-8 including "plain text", RTF, and markdown with a simple title, tag, date/time and text metadata model. That way the "nodes" can live in a simple Spotlight/Windows Search indexed folder and can be used by SimpleNote or Dropbox.

 

Now put the graph structure as XML or XMLized RDF in just another note in the same folder with a special name.

 

Optionally, allow the folder to contain other files, images, and so on (future).

 

That's the data. Now the app reads in the RDF and the nodes and renders the relationships. Ideally many different apps work with the same data structure. There's very little income here, so we're taking labor-of-love with a bit of cash to pay for a new computer. From this base, over time, with full data portability, we can slowly build a concept-visualization ecosystem with full data freedom.

 

Anyone have other ideas?

See also:

• Gordon's Notes: XMind: Software made in China for OS X and Windows: 11/2010
• » Fix for Xmind missing icon bug. Gordon's shares
• Gordon's Tech: Mac Mind mapping software: Inspiration, OmniOutliner and MindNode 6/11: links to related topics and articles
• Gordon's Tech: Tinderbox, Simplenote, MindNode and data freedom 10/2011

I put $50 down on App.net

I was mildly (cough) irked (cough) when Google Reader Shares died.

My Pinboard/IFTTT/Twitter/WordPress replacement works better than it ought to, but it's frail. It could fall apart at any time, for many reasons. I want a solution that I can rely on, from a company that wants me as a customer -- not as a product.

That's why, like Gruber and many of the geeks I read, I put $50 down to reserve @johngordon on App.net. Time to put some money where my mouth goes.

They need a bunch of money in the next five days to launch. Take a gamble.

Update 8/17/2012: My (alpha) stream: https://alpha.app.net/johngordon. App.net is my kind of quest: quixotic, almost certainly doomed, but noble.

Browsing the blog backlist - we need a new app

I follow about 150-250 active blogs including the "Core" blogs I read religiously.

It's a good reading list, far superior to the days when I read The Economist (RIP 2006, but a bit better lately) and the NYT. Still, there's something wrong.

The wrong bit is that there's rich material buried in the backlog of many of those blogs, and in blogs that no longer publish but are still online. Obviously some of that material is better than what I'm reading now.

We need a tool to surface that material and make it available. A blog backlist browser tool.

I'd like, for example, to give Reeder.app a set of 20 or so blogs and have a convenient way to read posts from years back. I've tried doing this in the "new" Google Reader, and it really doesn't work. 

Has anyone heard of anything like this?