Steve Richards: HomeWorking

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Inspired by interest in my humble office ...

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 18:50:51 GMT

There are two discussion threads active on the GTD forum on Offices. The first is asking people about their home offices and I have replied to this with some links to my blog. Inspired by the interest people seem to have I have updated some of the pictures and added a couple of new ones. Of particular note is my new baby spider phone, (brand new and 2/3 off retail price off eBay!):

Then Eric Mack got into the act with this "not so tidy" desk post, and another post that links to his blog:

I cope with this by having a designated untidy area:

My wife and kids also have a desk each, and share this one in my office, which helps keep them away from mine:

Diagram of my home network

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 18:35:51 GMT

I described my Office in a previous post. In this post I thought I would provide a bit on insight into my home network. The following diagram should give you the basic idea.

The hub of the network is a little 4 port 100MB switch. All three servers and one laptop are plugged into this
There are two dedicated servers on the network

Server 1 is a dedicated application server. It only runs Windows 2003 Server and GSX Server 3.1. All application servers and some test desktops run on top of GSX server.
Server 2 is a dedicated management server, and Active Directory domain controller. This server runs the MOM Express 2005, and acts as a backup of my main file server, using Windows 2003 Volume Shadow Copy.

My desktop PC also happens to run Windows 2003 server, as this allows me the flexibility to access it via Windows Terminal Services from anyhwere in the house, mirror my data files, and also runs as AD domain controller for resiliance. It also runs VMWare Workstaton.
When I need access to my company network, I run up a corporate standard PC in a VM on my Desktop Server and VPN from there, (VMware allows me to share files between my Corporate network and my PC network, with full network isolation).
The Pinter/Scanner is plugged into the management Server and the Desktop application server, one connection via USB and the othere via parallel.
For flexible use around the house and offsite I also have a laptop which runs Windows XP Professional, but can access Linux from the VMWare application server. The laptop and my PDA both connect via WIFI.
My eldest daughters both have PC's. One laptop and one desktop both connected via WIFI.
All machines are part of the home AD Domain and use roaming profiles.
All data access except from my desktop server is via DFS
All print access is via my desktop server
Windows Terminal services is used extensively by everyone in the family
My desktop has three screens all driven from my desktop server. One display via analogue, one via DVI and one via a virtual display adaptor from Maxivista.
I have a KVM switch that allows my Keyboard, Mouse and Secondary display to be connected to either my desktop server or my application server for console access, although its more convenient most of the time just to leave a Windows Terminal Server session open.

In a future post I will explain a bit about my home lab, which is all virtual for maximum flexibility and runs a mix of Windows and Linix servers and clients. I will also expand a bit on my desktop application environment and security.

This is just so cool!

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 22:15:25 GMT

Microsoft research have come up with some really cool tools for capturing and manipulating whiteboard contents captured using low quality web cams. My whiteboard is right behind me, (so my web cam points right at it, so it would work just great, but the downloads are MS only. The best trick is it removes the person writing on the board from the image. Here are some of the key points:

Other systems use expensive cameras or dedicated electronic whiteboards. The Live Whiteboard system, developed at Microsoft Research by Zhengyou Zhang and Li-wei He, uses whatever whiteboard you already have. It only needs an inexpensive Web cam and some clever software.

Live Whiteboard doesn't just deliver a video stream of the whiteboard. The software takes out all the shadows and uneven surfaces that come through on a Web cam, and turns the whiteboard into an image that allows viewers to see the whiteboard notes. Through a series of image processing procedures, the originally captured image is first transformed into a rectangular bitmap to correct perspective distortion, and then color-enhanced to increase contrast, saturation, and to provide a clean uniform white background.

In addition, if the remote viewer wants to focus his attention only on the content, the system can take out the image of the person who is writing on the board. The remote viewer sees only the new content magically appearing, he never sees the person who is writing the content. This saves even more bandwidth.

The full news article can be found here, and the web site for the developer with more info and the research reports can be found here.

My Home Office

Thu, 08 Jul 2004 18:16:03 GMT

In another post I am going to talk a bit about why I think multiple monitors are really important, but first I want to introduce you to my home office, so you can see my personal working practice in its full context. First things first:

Everything I need is within arms reach
I try to scan all my paper, and its all there in PaperPort, see below
I have two desks, a computer desk where I have my three monitors, and drive all my clients and servers from one keyboard and mouse and a layout, reading etc desk where I have space to organise. The kids use this desk at night if I am happy to be disrupted a bit.
I have a web cam on top of my primary display, again more on that later

For the full article click here to continue ...

3 Monitors is the way to go!

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 23:25:58 GMT

I have been quite happy with my two monitor setup at home, but using maxivista I am now able to drive three monitors from my main desktop PC. This is just great. I can now have my email in one, my RSS feeds in another, be using Office in another etc. I am also using a lot of virtual PC's and I can have these displaying on different monitors. So I can have RedHat on one monitor and SUSE on another and still be using Office on my third. It really must have driven my productivity up 20% when I am doing this sort of work, which is probably 50% of the time. That's at least £100/day. A staggering return on investment - the third monitor, (old laptop), was being scrapped and Maxivista is about $40!!

The other great advantage is that your concentration and focus is not disrupted, you might think it would be, but it seems that by not switching applications all the time, and by being able to focus on the task at hand on your primary screen, the other two monitors just provide supporting information.

We really must get more people to understand the value proposition of multiple screens!

WIndows 2003 Server, anywhere access

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 12:36:45 GMT

It's TechED Europe this week and Microsoft have announced more details of the next release of Windows 2003 Server. The area of most interest to me is, "anywhere access", which Neowin reports on. Anywhere access enables users to use terminal services over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC), Outlook over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC) and also file shares from within corporate LANs over port 80 (HTTPs/RPC).

These are very interesting developments, the WTS capabilities removing one more advantage that Citrix has over Microsoft. The file share access is interesting, as file share access using WebDAV is already available I can only assume that this is CIFS access tunnelled over HTTPS, this would be a big improvement over WebDAV as it would support more applications, the properties dialog and other features not available today using DAV. I thought Outlook over HTTPS was already part of Exchange 2003 server, so I am not sure why this is included in a feature list for Windows 2003 server unless its actually provided by the OS or probably IIS rather than Exchange.

These HTTP access mechanisms are useful not just in providing internet access to corporate resources but also for corporates wishing to provide controlled access on their WAN for third parties, aquisitions or businesses in the process of being disposed of.

Workspace design

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 22:02:29 GMT

One of my favourite topics just started to get an airing on the web, Work Space design. It’s been an interest of mine ever since I can remember, it’s the frustrated Architect in me, (I was never good enough at art to take it at University). Anyway what really bugs me about the topic is my belief that it has a huge impact on individual and team effectiveness, but receives very little focus and even less investment by many companies. Even companies that reap huge profits from their consultants tend not to invest in their productivity. I talked about this in a previous post, but mainly from an IT SW perspective.

Since I have been working from home I have invested quite heavily in my own work environment and I certainly notice a huge improvement in my productivity. The biggest improvement comes from two large monitors driven from the same desktop PC, supplemented by a management console that I use to monitor my lab and anything else that I need to check frequently. I also have a dedicated portable that I can just pick up and carry away whenever I need to move around the house, I use a dedicated portable for this because I don't get any issues with windows being resized and moved around between monitors and because I want my primary machine to be my desktop, (that way I get two large 19" monitors").

As all of my machines run Windows Terminal Services, X Windows or Remote Desktop, I can easily connect to any of them from any machine, and I have dedicated short cuts to them all to make it really quick. As my desktop is running Windows Server 2003, I have two short cuts one to take over the console, and the other to login a separate session.

I have made a few other investments:

1. A fan to keep the air moving

2. A nice big table next to my desk in case I have meetings or need layout space

3. Everything within easy reach

4. A great scanner and Paperport to minimise the amount of paper clutter

5. A good but simple filing system

6. Music

7. A good speaker phone

8. A desk lamp

Anyway that’s a bit about me. But what about a workspace design in a corporate context, I might talk a bit about my experiments in this area, (mainly flexible offices), in another post but I wanted to link to some other interesting posts that I have just come across.

It starts with the results of a survey by Microsoft which concludes:

Nearly two-thirds of office computer users tie the fatigue they experience during the week to working at the computer for long periods. In addition, nine out of 10 said the design setup of their workstation directly affects their ability to be most productive at work. More than 50 percent of those surveyed said one of the best ways employers can show their commitment to employees' success is to provide them with the latest technologies so they can do their jobs more efficiently.

I particularly liked this bit:

This compares with 23 percent who said they would prefer motivational tools such as morale-building and social outings, and 16 percent who would opt for perks such as free soda and parking, which are commonly offered in workplaces today.

It goes on to say:

Researchers have found that individual performance increases by 25 percent when employees use an ergonomically designed workstation

However this is from a study in 1991, so is probably not that relevant today, but check it out and make your own judgement. 25% is a lot!!

In a similar survey by Logitech, reported by CNN, it states:

In a survey by office furniture manufacturers Logitech asking workers to grade the design of their workspace, 56 percent rated their office or cubicle as a "C" or below.

Only six percent of employees gave their office an "A" grade.

More than half of those who rated their desks as "C" or worse said they would feel more valued if they were given more input into shaping their environment and 84 percent said their comfort levels could be improved.

According to the research, workers now spend an average of 37.5 hours at week at work -- more than 14 hours a week longer than in their living room -- and a majority say they place equal importance on the comfort and design of both.

To get you thinking here are some hints and tips on Work Space design taken from PowerHomeBiz.com

· Do try to arrange your space in an L-shape or triangle, with a swivel-style desk chair in the middle of the configuration. With a spin of your seat or a slight roll backward or to the side, all essentials are within arm's reach.

· Don't skimp on comfort, especially when it comes to your desk chair. Choose one with a cushioned seat and back, adjustable height so your feet are flat on the floor, a back that tilts and curves, and wheels on the bottom to get around easily.

· Do group equipment and furnishings into different centers of operation. These might include your computer, phone/fax, mail handling area, and worktable.

· Don't be stingy about storage space and lighting. Put in as many cabinets, cubbies, and shelves as you can without crowding your workspace. Illuminate individual work areas with their own direct lights.

· Do plan with portability in mind. Cordless phones and laptops allow you to move your work close to your children, if necessary. Other portable conveniences are furniture on casters, baskets that can quickly be repositioned when needed, and a rolling cart to easily transport files and correspondence so you can work in the kitchen, family room, or even outside for an hour or so.

· Don't set up your office where it should be; put it where you want it to be.

· Do personalize the room by hanging up children's drawings and other favorite artwork, propping family photos on the desk, painting the walls your favorite color, including a knickknack or two, and adding other special touches. These not only make for a cozier space, they can help reduce stress.

· Don't do everything at once if money and/or time are tight. Start with the bare-bones basics, adding on when you can afford more. As your profits increase, you may even consider hiring a professional designer to help you make improvements. Most charge between $75 and $150 an hour for a consultation, and it would not take long to toss around some design ideas.

· Do plan for future growth. Architects and designers recommend that you project 25 percent more space than you currently require, especially if you're remodeling your home to accommodate an office or buying a new house with work-at-home potential.

Goodbye to the Tablet

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 22:01:59 GMT

There is a flurry of debate in the blogs because Peter says, I Still like the tablet. But I am all out of love, well I have a story to tell about Tablet love as well.

I got my first Tablet, a HP TC1100, in January and it was love at first sight, I just took to the slate format and at the time forgave the terrible keyboard, (although it didn’t take me long to remember my old IBM keyboard with increasing longing). I wrote all about my early experiences in my tablet blog. Well my circumstances changed and I found myself working mostly from home so the mobility benefits I was getting from the tablet reduced and I started to look at the platform more objectively. These are some of the conclusions that I came to, but I think it’s a pretty personal view so don’t expect any conclusions that I draw to apply to you.

The Tablet didn’t work for me when I was mainly deskbound:

I love screen real estate, before I had a Tablet I had a 1400*1050 resolution ThinkPad A20p, it had a great keyboard to, (I love IBM keyboards).
At home now my desktop drives a 19” 1280*1024 LCD and a 19” 1600*1280 Flat screen LCD and I still have my ThinkPad A20p as a management console for my home lab. So for me the 1024*768 screen on the TC1100 was just not up to the job.
With a screen that size the Tablet is a huge improvement over a PDA, but it’s a lot bigger, I have just settled on an IPAQ 4150 so you can see that size, or lack of it in true portable device is pretty key for me.
As an auxiliary display things improved considerably but the docking station was a bit ‘strange’ and I still found myself struggling to use the small screen for anything really useful, when I had a glorious 19” LCD as my secondary. I tried using it to monitor my email but I found I could do that just as easily on my IPAQ, which had a brighter screen as well.
I found it slightly under powered compared to my desktop, but I could have lived with this, it had 1GB of memory and this seemed to make up for the slower processor and hard drive.

The true mobile experience I was hoping for never happened:

When I first got my Tablet one of the real benefits I was looking forward to was being able to take anywhere and use it inside and outside. However all too often I found that the lighting was not right. Outside it’s practically unusable and this was a real disappointment.
I also never came across a really good case that I could use at work and home that was small enough to always take with me everywhere
Battery life however was never a problem for me as I had two batteries and I managed 6-8 hours.
The end result I ended up leaving it behind and wishing I had a Pocket PC so that I could take something everywhere. In the end I bought a Pocket PC!

I still needed a keyboard:

I was impressed by the handwriting recognition when I got the Tablet and blown away when I started testing XP SP2, but I still needed a keyboard for so much of the work I did when I was mobile, even when I was just sitting watching TV, answering a few emails or reading blogs I missed the keyboard. This was a real shock to me as I just love the slate format, its just that the slate format is only really useful when you are making very short notes, browsing/reading or making hand written notes or drawings. If you are doing any serious writing or PowerPoint for example you really need mouse and keyboard with today’s applications. Strangely enough PDA’s seem much easier to use in slate mode, they are lighter, the applications are better optimised and my expectations about being able to write are much lower.
I have found since switching back to a laptop when mobile, a IBM ThinkPad T40, that I use it much more sitting in the lounge or in the garden than I used my tablet. Quite the opposite of what I was expecting when I let the Tablet go.

So what did I like about the Tablet:

I loved the slate format
I thought the HP hardware design was fantastic, apart from the keyboard, they should have recognised how important the keyboard was still going to be
I thought the handwriting recognition was first class, especially in SP2 and was vastly improved over that on my IPAQ, however it should be put in its place, a useful complement to the keyboard, or a bonus when you just have the slate with you
I loved the natural interaction model, and the more applications that are developed to take account of it the better
I loved OneNote, but still think it could be optimised slightly more for the pen interface, look at a product like Pocket Informant for some clues
I loved some of the concepts, but not the reality, for example the voice recording and recognition just did not meet my expectations

What needs to be done to get me back in love:

I need a first class keyboard
I need a much higher resolution screen, one I can read an A4 page on, 1400*1050 would be just fine!
I still want to be able to use it in slate mode, keyboard detached, to minimise weight and maximise portability
I want some innovation put into cases, or protection so that I can bung it into my rucksack and take it wherever I would take a pad of paper
I need to be able to read the screen outside
The price point needs to be right
It needs to be light enough without the keyboard to hold in one hand

Interestingly all of these improvements are hardware, there have been a lot of criticisms of the platform, but I personally liked it well enough, sure improvements would be welcome but these are unlikely to win me back on their own. At the end of the day today’s hardware does not allow for the radical new way of working that the operating system and applications already support.

For another personal perspective, I looked at the needs of one of my daughter’s who suffers from Raynauds and Scleroderma. I think a Tablet would be just perfect for her, I wrote that up here.

Choosing a PDA - can it really be so difficult!

Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:59:40 GMT

I used to have an IPAQ years ago and despite using it a lot in the beginning I gradually stopped using it mainly for the following reasons:

I did not like having to sync it
It was too big to carry around everywhere
I did not have a case that gave me instant access to it when carrying it around, so it tended to be in a bag
The battery life deteriorated to the point where it could not be relied upon
It did not have enough storage space without a great big expansion jacket add-on

Then along came a Blackberry which I instantly fell in love with, I have talked about my love affair with my Blackberry before in my gadget blog. However I recently started working from home and the subscription costs to the Blackberry service no longer seemed worthwhile so I decided that I would take that money and invest it in something that was a higher priority, I decided I would try a traditional Palm or Pocket PC PDA again.

The process of choosing is a classic example of the tyranny of too much choice.

My experience went something like this:

Every day I changed my mind because I loved my Blackberry so much
Email and Calendar on a PDA always seemed like a compromise compared to the Blackberry, but everything else I wanted from a PDA either was not an option or didn’t work too well, like tasks for example.
I have a company supplied phone and for some reason its incredibly difficult to get GPRS approved so I would have a PDA that was only online at home, making the transition from the BB even more difficult
On the days when I did decide to go the PDA route I alternated between Palm and Pocket PC.
Each day I switched from wanting a lovely large high resolution screen at all costs, to wanting a small Bluetooth and wireless equipped machine

I finally managed to make a decision to swap from the BB as follows:

I gave myself the money from a years BB subscription and asked myself how I wanted to spend it
I decided that it was useful to break the instant email addiction
I decided that when I was out of the house it was most likely that I was not working so getting a device that had many non work related distractions would be a good idea

I made the Palm/Pocket PC decision as follows:

I run Windows 2003 Server on my desktop and I was able to make sure that Active Sync worked fine and that Wireless worked fine with Pocket PC before I made the purchase
I had quite a lot of software left over from my old IPAQ. Particularly eWallet and Pocket Informant which I really liked
I use Lotus Notes at work and came across some fabulous synchronisation software called mNotes and I was able to check this out before I made the decision, (its available for Palm too but I couldn’t test it)
I was familiar with Pocket PC and knew that it was good enough

I made the decision on which form factor to get as follows:

I knew from past experience that having a small device was important if I was to be successful in motivating myself to carry it around
The small devices were cheaper than the half or full VGA models
The VGA models had problems with some applications using the screen in VGA mode that required hacks to get around and whilst these seemed to work for most people they seemed to stop WIFI working for some people
The VGA models were first generation. Next generation models were likely to be much better, but I didn’t want to wait
I decided that if the next generation models were really great then I would do a bit of cascading and make my eldest daughter very happy when she starts High School in September!

I finally decided on an IPAQ 4150 because:

HP has a good reputation and they are going to be in the market for the long term
I had an IPAQ before and that gave me confidence
It is very small
It has a great screen
It has a good software bundle
It has Bluetooth and WIFI
I found a great case, holster style that fits on my belt and is as close to the Blackberry case as you can get. That decision was easy I wanted something exactly like the Blackberry, this is it.
I got a good deal and had money left over for the case and 512MB storage card
Battery life seemed ok, but a high capacity battery is available if I have problems

The Tyranny of Choice

Thu, 24 Jun 2004 16:58:40 GMT

An article in Scientific American, titled The Tyranny of Choice has sparked a considerable debate on the web about the problems faced by western societies as a result of too much choice. In fact the idea is a very old one, I came cross it years ago but it is not mentioned very often by your every day Happiness literature which tends to talk more about internal changes that people can make to the way they think rather than factors from their external environment.

You can sum up the material prior to this article as follows:

The intent of advertising is to make us dissatisfied with what we have
If we meet people who have more than we have, or have different spending priorities or saving priorities then we tend to be dissatisfied with what we have

These two factors are the main environmental factors that effect happiness. In my experience they are even more powerful than having somewhere warm and dry to live and enough food to eat, which I soon got used to. However some people disagree with this and consider these to be essential, (Hygiene factors in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

This new article extends the model a bit with the following concepts:

Too much choice can be a bad thing
Especially if when faced with a choice you spend a lot of time and energy of assessing the options and agonising over them. This is a particular problem now days with the popularity of “what xxx” type magazines and the Internet which:
- Exposes us to ever increasing choice
- Provides access to a huge amount of information on each option
- Provides access to a huge amount of often conflicting opinion about each option
Even worse if when you finally make a decision you then continue to expose yourself to options and opinions that may change the choice you made and lead to dissatisfaction. In fact this can easily happen anyway because often the way that tradeoffs are prioritised when making a decision then change once the decision has been taken and real life experience refines or overturns them
These factors are compounded with easy credit which does not provide a natural limit on peoples capacity to dream and plan to acquire things.

I don’t want to repeat the article, but it’s worth mentioning that it identifies different personality types who are affected by the above to a greater or lesser extent.

There are a few articles that discuss this topic in more detail and I have provided a few of the links here:

Worth repeating is a great quote by the great physicist Richard Feynman, who when faced with the dessert menu in restaurants always chose the chocolate option. As Feynman saw it, while the other desserts might be better, they might not be. On the other hand, the chocolate option was always pretty acceptable - so why fret for ages over making a choice that might be wrong anyway?

In many ways Richards approach mirrors my own, I am happiest and most at ease when I am doing simple familiar things, that I don’t have to think about, but which I know I enjoy. When faced with the option to do something different I will often avoid it to reduce the risk that I won’t enjoy it, rather than take the risk that I will enjoy it more. However when faced with choice I definitely suffer from the problems described here. Read my blog entry about choosing a new PDA for an example.

Getting things done

Sun, 30 May 2004 00:41:17 GMT

Just finished my first read of this book, (it really needs reading twice), and found it pretty good. Unfortunately it also left me being very frustrated because the methodology proposed is so well supported by the outlook Add-in, and I have to use Lotus Notes. There is a template for Notes, but so far as I can figure it only seems to be available through coaching sessions.

There are some very good blogs on how to refine the methodolgy:

http://blogs.officezealot.com/marc/archives/000582.html

http://www.shahine.com/omar/PermaLink,guid,a8bb7588-179d-4d6f-aa5e-703ea2275e57.aspx

and of course Dave's blog

http://david.davidco.com/

One of the key concepts in the book is, "A mind like water", ie emptying the mind so that it can focus on what needs to be done. The concept is sometimes misunderstood and there is a great post here that explains it very well.

Where I live continued ...

Sat, 29 May 2004 17:24:16 GMT

The web site for the Time and Tide exhibition is now available. Its full of fab images of Victorian Seaside Towns and their Piers, like St Annes on Sea, my home town. I took a few photo's myself which are in my My Images folder.

Where I live

Thu, 27 May 2004 19:19:09 GMT

I live in a little sleepy town called St Annes On Sea. I walked down the beach today to another town and on the promenade I spotted a photgraphic exhibition called "Time and Tide"

Three years in the making and over 10,000 separate images, Tide and Tide, the photographic study of the 54 remaining seaside pleasure pier sites by Liverpool-born photographic artist Lawrence George Giles launches to the public at Blackpool Promenade (South Pier) on Friday 2 April 2004.

Time and Tide explores the place seaside pleasure piers hold in childhood and in collective memories. On occasions figures re-appear in a different part of the image, and the changing of the light, building of sandcastles, a stroll along the beach or a football game are part of the recorded experience.

It was a really great exhibition, and the area around me was very well represented, having about 6 of the 54 photo's. I am going to take a few photo's myself because they are very clever.

My personal information processing pipeline!

Thu, 27 May 2004 16:25:01 GMT

In this blog I talked about a generic concept of operations associated with a conceptual information lifecycle.

however with the advent of RSS, we now have an Open and Simple way for applications to publish, for users to locate and subscribe and for subscribed content to be accessed, processed and ultimately scanned and consumed, discussed, archived and subsequently retrieved

In this article talk about my personal application of tools and techniques to that lifecycle.

Publishing, for all of my web publishing I use Radio Userland, either directly through the Radio Userland Web UI, or through MailEdit which provides an email interface which I can use through my BlackBerry. MailEdit uses a number of directives to define for example the title for the entry and the categories that it belongs to. I use autotext on the BlackBerry to make entering these easier. I tend to write the entries in Word though because the screen area is bigger and because of the spell checking, and then just paste and post. You can read my blog here
Location, like most people I locate RSS feeds in a wide variety of ways. The primary way is through other people’s recommendations, but I also subscribe to some key magazines like eWeek and InfoWorld. You can find a list of the RSS feeds that I subscribe to here. The list in contained in an OPML file. If you download it you will be able to import it into most RSS aggregators. In addition I have a few searches that return their results as RSS feeds. I personally use Feedster as my RSS search engine.
Subscription, I subscribe to all of my RSS feeds, Atom feeds and NNTP feeds using NewsGator which is a plug-in for Outlook 2003. I really like the Outlook environment and use it for my personal email so it seemed a natural choice for me but there are many other options. I will talk later about why NewsGator is such a powerful tool. I use the NewsGator online service as well because it allows me to access my feeds from the web and synchronize all of my machines and keep a single copy of my subscriptions. Subscribing in NewsGator is as simple is right clicking on any feed in IE.
Access and processing, all of my feeds are delivered into a separate local outlook PST file, i.e. not my mail file, each feed has its own folder which is automatically created. For feeds that just have a link to a web site, i.e. they don’t include enough information to assess whether you want to read the item I use a custom style sheet which grabs the web page and saves that instead of the RSS description.
Scanning, I have far to many subscriptions to read them all so its key that I am able to scan through them all really quickly. This is one of the key strengths of Outlook 2003. I simply create a search folder, which shows only unread entries from every folder under my root folder. By doing this I get a single list, (grouped by folder name), which I can very quickly scan. I also create a button on my toolbar that sets all entries in the search folder read, I click this each time I complete a scan. As I scan I do one of two things, I flag an entry for follow up, or I open it in my browser. Once that’s done I am ready to start reading.
Consuming/reading, OK so now I have a few flagged items in outlook which I want to come back to later, so I ignore these, they are easy to find because I have a search folder that aggregates all flagged items. I also have maybe 20-30 articles that I want to read in more detail, write a blog entry about, forward to someone etc. How do I manage all of those open browser windows, I use MyIE2. MyIE2 is a wrapper for IE that implements a tabbed UI, I find this fantastic because it allows me to open as many windows as I want and then come back to them for some serious reading. In addition as I read I often want to open more windows and I can do that in the background with a middle mouse button click on the link. Once all of my background windows have opened I can go and review their tabs. I can delete windows as I read them with a double click on each tab. It gets a bit better than this though, because I have two monitors I have Outlook on may main monitor when I am scanning, MyIE2 sits out of the way but visible on my second monitor. Once I start reading I switch them over. One other great little MyIE2 feature is that if I have 20 web pages waiting to read and I want to restart my PC, no problem, I just save them as a group and reopen the whole group of pages later.
Discussion, I don’t tend to have enough time to do a lot of commenting on other people’s blog entries, but if I do I do it while reading from the web page for that entry.
Archive, all of my blogs sit in a PST file, which is fairly scalable, however I auto-archive items that are a few months old to a separate PST. This makes no difference to retrieval because the tool I use searches both. In addition I often use Google to search online, but I find it easier to find things I have seen and want to find again by reviewing my personal archive.
Retrieval, I have tried lots of local search tools but in the end I settled on X1. X1 indexes all of my outlook feeds, emails, contacts, and files, (and promises to do Notes soon). It has some great features. As you type it shows you the matching documents in real time, its easy to filter the results based on full text, subject, author, folder, date etc. It has a great preview window, which is particularly good for files. X1 just sits on my second monitor waiting to jump into action.

FLOW

Wed, 26 May 2004 09:42:23 GMT

An interesting book that takes 300 plus pages to describe what it probably could do in 20. The basic idea, you are happiest when you are involved or imersed in what you are doing. It then gives loads of examples of how this can happen in sports, music, work etc. Not the most practical book on the subject of happiness and it seems to neglect lots of things in pursuit of the "flow" concept. For example it does not talk at all about the effect on happiness of advertising, too much choice, not living in the moment etc.

The JOY of Working from Home

Wed, 26 May 2004 09:38:20 GMT

A little book that concentrates mainly on opportunities for working from home. If you already have a job and are looking to work from home then its not so appropriate. But it does give a few hints on issues you might face working from home like feelings of isolation etc. Not my best find on the subject. In fact I would recommend te following web site as an alternative to any of the books I have read:

http://www.flexibility.co.uk/index.htm

Another WinFS article that starts to help

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 08:26:23 GMT

One of the topics I am really interested in with WinFS is to distinguish between the client side and the server side storage needs. This interview is a good example of client side integration with WinFS.

http://www.searchengineguide.com/beal/2004/0204_ab1.html

I am also keen to understand whether as security and application isolation becomes a fundamental part of the OS, and everyone has computers at home whether we will see a merging of business and personal computer use within corporates as has happened already with phones and PDA's.

The 'my life bits' research gives some insights into this.

http://research.microsoft.com/barc/mediapresence/MyLifeBits.aspx

My typical working day

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 17:05:41 GMT

I get up at about 7:30 and have breakfast
Then before 8:00 I start working, normally I try and get some good quality work done for about 2 1/2 hours
By 10:30 I am ready for a break, so at that point I print off some reading material or download it to my tablet
I then go for a walk and usually end up at one of my nearby beachside cafes, where I settle down for lunch, and review whatever paperwork I have taken with me, and then wander home for about 12:00 - 12:30
I then try and get another 2 1/2 hours work in until about 2:30
Then I go for another walk, usually to my local health club and spend about 30 minutes swimming, probably spend 15-20 minutes reading and then head back home, usually arriving at about 4:00.
I try to get another hours work done then and then have tea with my wife and four kids
Depending on kids activities then I will generally get another hours work done sometime before bed.

Why home working?

Thu, 04 Mar 2004 15:50:56 GMT

I called this blog, 'adventures in home working'. Why did I choose this title? Well it sort of sums up a lot of things for me:

1. I have this disease, AOSD, and home working is more suited to people with this condition

2. I am an IT guy, and for a while I have wanted to see how viable it is to work from home

3. I have 4 children, and I wanted to spend more time with them, and be able to arrange my work life more flexibly

4. I have always been a person who works better with people I know and interacts with them face to face. I wanted to get beyond these limitations and extend my circle of friends and contacts

Introduction to home working

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 10:56:49 GMT

I am now working at home. It has taken quite a while to adjust to the radically different environment, so I thought I wuld start a weblog about my experiences. A few things that I would like to cover are:

Good information sources on the web
How to get an agreement with you employer
How I setup my Office
How I setup my IT
My normal working day
How I manage with 4 children, especially during the holidays
Isolation

Thats the stuff I kno about right now, but I will add things as I learn more.