I have a new blog so this blog is now closed down! 

Wait a sec and you should redirected automatically, if not click below 

http://steves.businessblog.com/

Subscribe here

http://steves.businessblog.com/blog/index.xml

If you want to know why I switched have a look here

http://steves.businessblog.com/blog/_archives/2004/8/25/129522.html

I was seduced, (for the third time), into installing the Microsoft Outlook Domino Connecter for the following reasons:

 

1. I wanted a single place to manage my RSS feeds, personal email, tasks, calendar and work email
2. My trial of mNotes completes in a few days and I needed to decide whether to buy it, or whether I could use Active Sync alone, (as my Local Notes replica would now also be in Outlook)
3. I would get a unified search environment, (because X1 would search my Notes data, which would now be in Outlook)
4. Graham said it works fine for him

 

I have tried it twice before, and had to give up both times, despite considerable effort.  I kept telling myself the problems were to do with the sequence I did things, by interactions with mNotes, X1 etc, because I did not leave it alone – i.e. I tried to use it!  Having tried again a few times these are some of the problems I have had:

 

1. Synchronisation is painfully slow
2. It does not synchronise according to a regular schedule, it just does it in the background, but not as frequently as I would like
3. It affects the stability of Outlook quite badly, Outlook has hung on me at least 3 times today
4. It created duplicate email and calendar entries, (never did figure out why, but assumed it was some sort of cascade effect caused by replica’s and mNotes).
5. I ended up with a corrupt document in my Local Replica, I am currently creating a brand new local replica to see if I can fix it
6. It does not handle standard s/mime signed documents, (gives a security subsystem error)
7. Formatting of some message is a bit strange
8. X1 tries to index entries as soon as the headers arrive, then triggers a pull of the body causing a dialog to keep opening up, very annoying
9. if you do a full synchronisation, you can not use Outlook until its complete, (either that or Outlook was hanging).

 

It’s the stability problem that was the killer for me.  I could have carried on trying to work through the other issues.  I also got worrying that there were some version issues, Windows 2003 Server, Outlook 2003, Notes 6.51 is hardly a combination that has been well tested!

 

So I have just trashed it yet again and gone back to good old Notes!  Which is surprisingly refreshing because it does work reliably.  I also like the fact that it’s nice and colourful, especially when you use custom colours for emails from certain people, and colour different calendar entry types!  I just hope this new replica works ok!

Jonathan Schwartz writes another great article about what's important about the word Open in an IT context, he does this by comparing and constracting Open Source with Open Standards.  he goes further by showing the great work Sun has done to create reference implementations of their J2EE standard, and provide tools to verify compliance.  He provides a few real world illustrations of how the difference affects real business decisions.

Definately worth a read.

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/jonathan/20040808#rewriting_history_and_vocabulary

This is a posting that I made to the GTD discussion forum.

 

I am about to start a small research project into personal productivity,  I am going to be looking at the following main areas:

 

• Personal knowledge management
• Time, task and action management
• Communication and collaboration
• Team working
• Subscription and research

As you can see these are quite relevant to exponents of the GTD methodology, and so I need your help.

 

First I wanted to explain a little about my personal experience with GTD and history in using similar techniques.

 

“I love to be organised”

 

I am one of those people who likes a clear desk, who like kids to have tidy bedrooms, who likes to be in control.  I invest a lot in my IT, and a lot of my time in researching how to be organised.   I can also invest a lot of time in establishing a new system.  But once that new system is established, I find it hard to keep going.  Here are some of the reasons why:

 

1. I only tend to be motivated to create my list of, “everything that needs to be done”, when things are out of control.  The process of creating the list brings me back in control and that tends to last about a month.  During that month I gradually begin to feel that I am working for my system rather than my system working for me, so I give up.
2. I find that although they all seem important when I write them down many of the items on my, “everything that needs to be done list”, never actually get done, as new things keep being added.  So in reality I am only ever working with the things that filter to the top.  In most cases I already know about the things at the top of the list.  It’s the 80/20 rule all over again, I only ever work on the top 20% of my list, and most of the stuff in the 80% never gets touched because new items keep adding themselves to the top 20%.
3. During the times of my life when I am not following a GTD like methodology, I find I value the fact that my  Brain forgets the 80% that’s never going to be done, and lets me keep my sub-conscious focussed on the 20% that is, and my conscious on the 5% I am working on.  When I do follow GTD, I find myself distracted by the 80% feeling it’s important and must be progressed, managed, tracked, researched etc.  For example for a month I captured research notes in Microsoft OneNote on everything related to my GTD list.  Most of that time was wasted because in the end I never got around to the tasks.  After the month was up I ended up deleting most of it because I wanted a tidier and better organised OneNote.
4. I find my Brain balances, “Important/Urgent” , pretty well
5. I generally always do some form of daily and weekly review and I get close to the “mind like water”, feeling.
6. I have seen lots of projects suffer because of too much project planning, and too little project management.  By that I mean the project manager and project team start to serve the system, they spend all of their time and energy on task definition, tracking, reporting etc and not enough time on requirements, millstones, dependencies, estimating. 
7. I think the above problem with projects is the same problem I see with GTD.  Too much attention to managing your tasks and not enough time managing your time and goals.

 

Ok so you sort of get the idea of where I am coming from with the above, but I said I needed help.  Well I have seen a few posts in this forum that really got me thinking.  I will repeat a few of the key points here:

 

1. Someone said that it was the act of making the list of things to do that was key, not the resulting list.  They tested it with for example shopping lists.  If you make the list and then forget to take it with you, you still end up buying everything you need.
2. This was built on by someone who said that if you forgot the list you might actually do better because you might respond more openly to inputs/ideas that you have while out shopping, and maybe reassess your needs more openly as well, (i.e. decide not to buy things, whereas if its on this list you feel compelled to buy it).
3. In a critique of presentations someone reported how PowerPoint stifles many meetings.    The bulleted list stops people thinking, because it trivialises issues, and the slide by slide format constrains discussion and debate.  I have actually tested this myself by presenting on an eWhiteboard and its amazing how liberated you feel.
4. Discussions comparing “Putting first things First”, top down methodology, (which works like my Brain, but perhaps not everyone’s brain), and GTD help to bring the debate into focus
5. A few people have pointed to Life Balance and there is certainly a lot of thought gone into that software. I tried it for a while, but again concluded that I was likely to end up being controlled by the software, and spend a lot of my time working for it, rather than it working for me!
6. Finally its obvious that a lot of people love GTD more than I do, I want to understand why!

 

I was hoping that in discussion of this post more nuggets like those above might help me work this topic through in my mind in a more open way that I have been able to do by just reading the GTD books.

 

The final problem I have is the systems that support these processes just don’t work for me.  When I look at my starting list again:

 

1. Personal knowledge management
2. Time, task and action management
3. Communication and collaboration
4. Team working
5. Subscription and research

 

I really need an integrated system that supports all of these.  I have not found such a system.  Although if I were able to use Outlook for my email maybe I would get close with the combination of NewsGator, Outlook, Outlook GTD plug-in and OneNote.

In this post I described my "information processing pipeline".  Here is a diagram that touches on the same area.

It was created by Mario Asselin in a response to this paper "Distributed KM" by  Martin Roell

This is a very very nice summary of how blogs work by Roland Tanglao at Streamline, it complements my comments because it provides more details of some of the server side infrastructure:

1. Joe Blogger writes something and publishes it to his blog.

2. Joe's Blog system updates his site's HTML, updates his RSS file and sends a 'ping' message to the 'Aggregation Ping Server' indicating that his site has updated.

3. Search engines like Google and RSS specific services like Feedster, Technorati and PubSub periodically ask the Aggregation Ping Server, "Which sites have updated?".

4. Since Joe's site sends pings and has an RSS file and is easy to update frequently, Joe's search engine rank is higher than a 'normal site'.

5. Techie Teresa uses a program called an RSS reader to subscribe to Joe's site. The RSS reader checks Joe's RSS file for updates periodically (usually once/hour or once per day) and notifies her of Joe's updates. Teresa no longer wastes time manually surfing Joe's site. She just checks her RSS reader.

6. As a result, Teresa's information flow is more efficient and she can monitor more sites in less time.

7. Joe Surfer (who is not related to Joe Blogger) still can access blogs the old fashioned, slow and less efficient way using his web browser and search engines.

A lot has been written about the history of Microsoft.  This article reviews a new book that looks at Microsoft from the perspective of the changes that it has had to introduce and continues to push forward as a result of its legal difficulties and "evil empire" image.  The full article is worth reading but here are a few of the more interesting quotes:

"They need to get the outside world to learn to accept them without thinking that there's something shady going on there all the time. That's a very long-term process," he said. "There's an awful lot of cynicism out there. No matter what Microsoft tries to do, nobody's going to turn around overnight and say, 'Well, we accept them now as good neighbors.' "

One of the best insights:

In simple terms, some of Microsoft's critics might characterize the ongoing changes as an effort to shift the outside perception of the company from "evil" to "good." But Slater said he doesn't see it that way.

"I don't think they were ever evil," he said. "I think they were unable, or unwilling, to curb the zeal that was always part of the Microsoft culture." He said the company seems to be starting to make the shift from "excessive zeal" to "reasonable zeal."

And the bottom line:

"Before the last couple of years, Microsoft never talked about these types of things," he said. "The idea was to be as competitive as possible, and that was it."

The Radicati group recently published a report titled

"IBM Lotus & Microsoft--Corporate Messaging Market Analysis" (June 2004), available at www.radicati.com/reports/single.shtml.

Its a truly awful report, as many people have commented.  It breaks all normal reporting rules:

1. It does not compare like with like
2. It commends Microsoft for the same things it criticises Lotus for
3. It does not provide its sources
4. It uses emotive language to commend Microsoft and Criticise lotus

I actually looked forward to reading it when I first heard it had come out because I had some concerns over Lotus Workplace and how Lotus Notes/Domino would transition to the new architecture.  However the report was so biased I ended up feeling much more positive about Lotus than I had before.  The basis for my change of view "IBM must be on to something with Workplace if such bad analysis is the only tool available to make Microsoft look good".  I was also left even more uncertain over what Microsoft is up to with Exchange, as I have already blogged on here and here.

The last straw for me in this report was the criticism of IBM/Lotus over migration to Workplace and the commendation of Microsoft on the same issue, lets look at a few examples:

1. How seamless was the migration from Exchange 5.* to Exchange 200*, having just done a major project to do this the answer is NOT VERY, admittedly it was a pretty complex environment that we migrated, (with lots of consolidation and some Lotus Notes migration as well).
2. How easy is it to migrate from SharePoint Portal Server 1, using the Web Store to SharePoint Portal server 2003 using SQL Server.  Impossible without significant loss of functionality.
3. How easy will it be for developers who used the Microsoft's Web Storage System, touted by MS as a "Notes Killer - ha ha ha", to a future version of Exchange based on SQL Server, (pretty near impossible probably, if Microsoft failed to do it themselves with SPS what hope does anyone else have!)
4. Who believes that the Migration from Exchange Public folders to some future SQL server based environment like Windows SharePoint Services is going to be seamless!

The bottom line is that Microsoft's record in document management and collaboration type technologies is appalling, with very little strategic continuity and even less product compatibility.  Lotus's record is second to none.

I am guessing that the Radicati group wished they had never gone near this subject, it has damaged their credibility no end.  What is interesting is the power of blogging in bringing this issue to the fore and brutally analysing this flawed work in public.  If you want to read the gory details follow this trail:

http://sharedspaces.typepad.com/blog/2004/07/response_to_the.html

http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/07232004073204AMEBRFJL.htm

http://www.radicati.com/response.html

Eric Mack as always does a superb job of pulling the whole topic together in his blog

http://www.ericmackonline.com/emo/emonline.nsf/dx/dr-radicati-responds-sort-of

And IBM finally gets around to a formal response, which is the final nail in the coffin:

http://www.lotus.com/lotus/offering1.nsf/wdocs/c3b85eec9126b30885256ee4006c9003

I was talking with some senior guys from Red Hat last week about their potential move beyond platforms towards solutions.  We were actually discussing collaboration solutions.  There view at the time was that their focus was to take what was available in the Open Source community and productionise it.  Its interesting therefore to see them release an application server.  When you look at the potential though to address the collaboration market Red Hat would do well to consider packaging a solution for email, IM, document management etc.  At the moment they ship the bits, but the bits don't make a solution.  If you look at a previous post about Microsoft and their, "integrated innovation", marketting there is probably as much scope if not more to do the same thing in the Open Source world.  Start thinking Solution guys, you seem to have Platforms and Component packaging fairly well sown up.

The new Seimens SK65.  Full blackberry functionality with a really innovative format, tri-band.  Hopefully it has a decent task manager!  For more details check out this web site.

eWeek reports that Wyse, (a long term user of Windows embedded technologies), is now moving into Linux in a bigway.

"Linux has really grown, and has become 20 percent of the worldwide thin-client marketplace,"

What actually suprised me was that the market share was so low, given that Linux seems to be a perfect fit for the embedded market, but clearly it takes time for things to catch on.

This article describes some of the characteristics of XML that make it so powerful  The bottom line is that its generic nature means that generic solutions can be created tat can be applied to all manner of different problems.  The example quoted is a tool that compares two XML files, produces an XML file showing the differences.  The article then goes on to explain how this generic tool might be applied to different types of problem.  Well worth a read if you are trying to get your mind around some of the things that will be possible in the future.  Reminds me a bit of Unix pipes!

Jonathan Schwartz, provides a very interesting perspective on the pickle that IBM have got themselves into over Linux.  Whats even more interesting is that he does not discuss Sun's simillar predicament!  Maybe thats because his series of blogs on this and related topics is building up the background for Sun's position which is likely to see a return to the promotion of Solaris as a viable alternative to Redhat which is gradually being positioned by Jonathan as a kid of "proprietary solution", certainly one that locks you into RedHat.

Update: I am not the only one who is puzzling over what Jonathan is up to with his blog.  Look at this eWeek article that pulls lots of opinion together, it appears Jonathan is playing a pretty risky game.

These video's are pretty good examples of some of Microsoft's integrated innovation ideas.  Illustrated by the connected car concept