Steve Richards: TabletPC

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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 ...

Amazing array of Windows Powered Devices

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 16:28:53 GMT

I was wondering a few weeks ago why the Tablet PC team were moved into the Mobile and Embedded Devices division in Microsoft. Then I saw this web page and the array of Tablet format devices and I realised why! Theres a very good write up of recent news from the Embedded developers conference here. More links to Windows powered devices can be found below:

Tablet PC
Pocket PC
Media Center PC
Smart picture frame
Portable Media Center
Smartphone
Windows Automotive
Gametrac gaming device
SPOT watch
Windows-powered cash register at store
iCEBOX kitchen PC and home controller

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.

Tablet PC for Jennifer

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 21:57:09 GMT

This is a short article that I wrote for the occupational therapist who works with one of my daughters who has Raynauds and Scleroderma.

There are a variety of different types of technology assistance that would benefit Jennifer in an educational setting. My perception is that a range of techniques will be required that reflect the unpredictable nature of her symptoms and the variety of different tasks that she needs to perform. There is no magic bullet solution that meets all of her needs.

Writing

When Jennifer has to write for extended periods there are a number of issues that need to be considered:

1. Her ability to dictate in a fluent fashion is limited at this age

2. Her hands get cold

3. Her hands get tired

4. Sometimes the movement/dexterity of her hands is limited

What solution options are available in addition to traditional pen and paper?

1. Voice recognition

2. Hand writing recognition

3. Simple gesture recognition

4. Different types of keyboard

5. text substitution

Each option is considered in brief below:

Voice recognition

Voice recognition is still not a mature and easy to use technology. Some of the important characteristics are described below:

1. The software, (SW), requires training and this process requires some dedication and can be very frustrating

2. The SW works best when the person dictating has mastery of fluent speaking

3. The SW works best in a quiet environment, although some people have reported success in a normal office environment with a high quality noise cancelling microphone

4. Considerable skill is required to use the SW for anything other than raw text input. In addition keyboard less editing of text input can be complex and very frustrating.

All of these characteristics are indicators that Voice Recognition will not be a magic bullet for Jennifer.

My view is that one should expect to use the SW as a complement to other techniques, where it is appropriate, and almost always alongside a keyboard and mouse or a stylus.

Hand writing recognition

Hand writing recognition has improved dramatically in accuracy and is now approaching 99%+ accuracy in SW that will be available in the mainstream operating systems by mid 2004.

Hand writing recognition may seem a strange option for someone who struggles with spelling, and traditional pen and paper however there are some significant advantages:

1. The SW works for people with fairly bad handwriting. Jennifer’s writing is neat by comparison

2. The SW allows the person to write large letters, much larger than would be appropriate for pen and paper

3. The SW recognises words by comparing against a dictionary, so for a poor speller accuracy can be increased significantly

4. The SW does not require significant training

5. Correction of words that have been incorrectly recognised is a fairly natural process and presents likely words from the dictionary improving spelling

6. If the digitiser used for entering the text is a Tablet format PC, the screen is warm and will keep Jennifer’s writing hand warm.

7. Using the same Tablet PC interface it is possible to transition between voice input and handwriting input seamlessly. This is useful for example if the stylus is used for correction and voice for bulk text entry. Or the stylus used for difficult words or for maths and voice used for descriptions.

8. Maths SW is also available to automatically calculate the answers of maths problems

9. Handwriting can be captured without conversion to text. Or can be converted to text later if required

Voice recording

As a complement to the two techniques above, rather than convert voice to text, it is also possible to record voice directly. There are some significant advantages to this as a complementary technique:

1. If Jennifer is getting behind she can just record her voice and she or her SSA can translate to text later if needed

2. Notes and annotations can be saved as voice

3. Note taking SW is available that merges the voice and text streams so that it is possible to hear the person’s voice at the same point in time that a note was being written.

Simple gesture recognition

There are alternatives to hand writing recognition that involve significantly less hand movement and much simpler gestures. This software can be used as a complement to the other techniques. It has the following important characteristics:

1. A stylus is used, so it has some of the benefits of handwriting recognition when used on a tablet, i.e. the writing surface is warm

2. The stylus movements are much simpler, generally just straight lines and L shapes

3. The movements can be small or large

4. A game is available to aid in learning

Different types of keyboard

There are a wide variety of specialist keyboards available that allow single handed typing. Gel keyboards for low impact etc. Although the mobility of a device with these keyboards is limited and they are only likely to be of benefit for extended text input.

Text substitution

Used in conjunction with most of the above, this allows short words to automatically be expanded to long ones, or difficult things to type to be substituted with easy things. It has the disadvantage of making people lazy, but it would help Jennifer. For example if you type:

1. dt, then the date and time can be substituted like this: 03/11/2004 @ 02:48 PM

2. dont can be automatically converted to don’t

3. address can be substituted to

Road

Town

County

Postcode

Note taking

A lot of school work is about note taking, research and idea assembly for projects etc. A variety of powerful techniques are available including, some of which have already been mentioned:

1. Ability to record teachers words, make text notes and listen to the teachers words later to reinforce the text note or to clarify the note

2. Ability to take notes using a keyboard, voice recording, handwriting and handwriting conversion to text. Or a mixture of these

3. Ability to annotate scanned in workbooks, text books and handouts, annotations can take any of the above forms

4. Ability to aggregate information from lots of sources, scanned, web, and personal input into a project

All of these mechanisms are integrated in products like:

1. Microsoft One note

2. Microsoft Journal

3. Agilix GoBinder™ For Students

Annotating

Annotating is key for students. In Jennifer’s case especially so as she is likely to focus on annotation of existing material and notes, rather than note taking. The primary technologies available are:

1. Freehand drawing using a digitiser, ideally integrated into the tablet PC format

2. Freehand writing

3. Handwriting converted to text, likely to be used for project work and other formal submissions

4. Voice annotation, (see comments above)

5. Voice to text, (see comments above)

Compilation/Project work

Project work is ever increasingly important. Project work involves:

1. Research

2. Assembly of material

3. Integration of information from diverse sources

4. Annotation of this information

5. Original input

All of these activities are served by Note taking solutions like Microsoft Onenote described previously.

Diagrams and Art

If any activity suited itself to the tablet, stylus driven input model it’s diagramming and art. Software is available that:

1. Converts freehand gestures to lines, circles, flow charts etc

2. Software is available that allows the production or graphs, and other diagrams using mouse or stylus

3. Voice or text annotation or freehand writing annotations can be added to these diagrams

4. They allow a person with reduced dexterity to produce neat well organised work

5. They provide powerful ways to correct mistakes, especially useful for people with low dexterity.

Other considerations

1. It would be great if Jen did not have to carry lots of books, notes etc around with her. A tablet format device with scanned notes and books or eBooks would be ideal.

2. Preparation for the future. The skills learnt in using technology to support the learning process would be invaluable in later life

3. Self sufficiency. The tools described would potentially reduce the level of SSA input, but make Jen more self sufficient and equip her better for later life.

Recommendations

1. Jennifer should continue to spend a significant amount of time reading out loud at school and home, as this will improve her fluency and prepare the ground for voice recognition SW later

2. Jennifer should undertake a trial of a tablet PC, recommended to be Tablet PC version 2004, (available mid year), for approximately 2 weeks for handwriting recognition. Potentially small changes made now in her style could significantly improve successful use later

3. Jennifer should begin to play with voice recognition SW at home, (equipment is available), so that it comes easily and naturally to her when she has to learn it for real

4. Jennifer should begin to play with Microsoft OneNote to keep her personal diary, so that she becomes familiar with navigation, and use, (voice annotation, voice recording etc)

5. Consideration should be given to equipping her with a Tablet PC and handheld scanner during her first year at high school. Access to ebooks and scanned books should be explored through the school and school book suppliers

Microsoft Monitor on the Tablet PC

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 17:03:04 GMT

Microsoft Monitor is probably the best blog out there if you want a real insight into Microsoft and provides consistently high quality challenges to Microsoft as well. This entry on the Tablet PC is typical of what to expect.

To convert or not

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 09:34:13 GMT

Working Smart has a short discussion on whether to convert your hand written notes in OneNote, I had not really considered this topic from any other standpoint than speed. In this article the basic premis is that handwritten notes are much more expressive than typewritten, and the seamless inclusion of diagrams and other visual clues can greatly add to the quality of the notes.

When I demonstrate the computer, as I inevitably do, I usually do so by handwriting some text in Microsoft OneNote. Immediately, people ask, “So, does it automatically convert your handwriting to text?” Well, yes, it can ... if I want. But, 90% of the time I just leave my handwriting “as is.” Here’s why ... to quote Linenberger again:

Taking notes in ink:

facilitates creativity in your note taking
communicates more about the meaning of your notes
integrates better with sketches and expressive marks on the note-taking page
is a better way to represent information copied from whiteboards and presentations
is a faster way to record notes, faster than even the most speedy and accurate handwriting recognition.
I can virtually guarantee that after a few days or weeks of taking notes primarily in ink, you too will be convinced that this is a highly effective and preferable method of note taking on the Tablet PC (Linenberger, p. 237)

Using a Tablet PC in Meetings

Mon, 14 Jun 2004 09:29:19 GMT

here is a great summary of the main reasons that Tablets work better in Meetings than laptops, maybe its a cultural things but its certanly true that I switch off if a person I am with is using a laptop to tap away. If I am meeting someone with a Tablet I find we converge around it. often I project the tablet screen so that everyone in the meeting can see the meeting notes being captured as well.

Using a Tablet PC during a typical management meeting is totally different from using a laptop. It’s the difference between night and day. The difference between success and failure. Here’s why.

Discretion: Nothing is more distracting than, during a management-style meeting, having a meeting participant typing away on a laptop. In contrast, working with a Tablet PC in your lap appears no different from what you would be doing with a pen and notepad in your lap. This is particularly true if you use, as recommended later in this book, an executive-style portfolio case that makes your Tablet PC resemble an executive notepad portfolio.

Communication barriers: Placing a laptop with the screen flipped up in front of you on a conference room table creates a physical barrier between you and others in the room. This is literally a barrier to communication. The Tablet PC is normally on your lap, and out of sight. Or it is flat on the desk like a writing pad.

Personal effectiveness: Research shows that if you use both hands to accomplish a task, a much larger percentage of your brain becomes engaged in that operation. Typing with both hands tends to totally engage your brain in the typing activity and makes you visibly less tuned-in to the meeting. In contrast, writing with one hand during a meeting is second nature to most of us. The brain stays mostly engaged in the meeting activities. We all can take notes and participate in a meeting at the same time. Using a Tablet PC in a meeting is little different from this.

Eye contact: Related to the above point, and for the same reasons, many users have reported that it is much easier to maintain periodic and consistent eye contact with others in a meeting when using a Tablet PC versus using a laptop. This has a dramatic affect on the perception of others that you are engaged and personable. Lack of eye contact also limits your ability to read body language of others, adding to your distance from the meeting (pp. 15, 16)

Latest build of XP SP2 on by tablet

Sun, 13 Jun 2004 16:05:36 GMT

I have just instilled the latest build of SP2 and so far its looking much Improved by comparison with the early beta I tried and gave up on I have installed it because we are off on holiday to west Wales tomorrow and I want to try hand writing my blog entries for the holiday. This entry has been written 100% using hand writing recognition and it’s been very impressive the 100% needed to he entered using the keyboard but everything else was fine with the advantage that my spelling mistakes are automatically corrected!

Researching Tablet PC

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 18:12:58 GMT

here is a great thread, with links to useful resources on Tablet PC's. Focussed on people who are undecided and want to understand the platform and what it can do for them.

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=12320

Which Office Suite?

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 16:22:43 GMT

Which Office Suite? Is shaping up to be a fascinating decision making process. I am not ready to expose all of my thinking on this topic but it goes something like this:

Some people think its easy, MS Office alternatives are cheaper and most people don’t use the bells and whistles in Office so people will migrate provided the alternatives meet peoples core needs.
I think its more complex than this and as a minimum the costs of migration, lost productivity, and compatibility and rework need to be factored in
Intertia is a big one in Microsofts favour, for a business that has SW Assurance or an EA, the decision is deferred probably for at least 2-3 years after their EA expires and probably longer if they do a lot of data interchange. That probably means 4-5 years from now!
But this is the trivial stuff. Sure direct and indirect cost comparison is important but I want to consider:
1. How do people really use Office and is it really true that people only use a small amount of the functionality, and if they do, do they all use a different small amount?
2. I also want to consider vision, MS has a vision for Office, What is that Vision?
3. How open is that vision, probably not very! Is the value proposition worth the lock-in? Is the ‘integrated innovation’ that Microsoft are fond of worth the lock-in
4. What’s the vision of the competition, for some of them is it to catch up with Office 97. For others it’s a complete reworking of the concept. So it’s important not to just ask the question can it do what office does!
5. Remember the vision is the important stuff, if the decision is 4-5 years away!

Maybe that all sounds a bit dry, so why do I think it’s so interesting:

Consider how many users of Office there are
Consider how much of Microsoft’s profits come from Office and how desperate MS are to keep that profit coming in, desperate people innovate!
Consider how important Office is to drive MS Operating system sales and how important OS sales are to MS profits, desperate times two!
Consider how desperate the competition is to break the MS Office Suite monopoly
Look at the last few versions of Office, basically a stagnant product, innovating sure, but within a straight jacket imposed by the fact that all of the core Office stuff is effectively done, and improvements are marginal.
All the real interesting stuff requires further client side, client server, peer to peer and device type to device type integration
Hence we see the push in the Office System areas, Mobility, WinFS.

So its integrated integration where the action is from Microsoft's perspective and they are pouring billions into it, how are the competition addressing integrated innovation, or do they have an alternative perspective. How do the differing approaches affect real enterprises and real users, (see this blog for the difference). Thats the question I want to answer!

As a twist the answer may not just depend on the type of person you are, but on the type of device you use. So maybe portable device users and especially tablet device users will have a more compelling reason to stick with MS because for these people the flexible input technologies, online/offiline experience, home/work integration, device integration etc are more important.

Some of the important links are listed below:

Advantages of the OpenOffice.org XML File Format Used by the StarOffice Office Suite

Migrating to StarOffice Software from Microsoft Office

Draft of OO Product Concept Document

Accepted OO Projects

It's good to see some clarity around the future of the Tablet Platform

Sat, 29 May 2004 23:26:12 GMT

There is a good update on TabletPCTalk on the current status of the Tablet PC. Here is the key bit

We continue to be incredibly proud of and committed to the Tablet, and we are hard at work on developing those technologies for future versions of Windows. In fact, not only do we have a significant development effort underway for Longhorn (we spoke directionally about this at WinHEC 2004), but we have a group of people focused on Tablet technologies for the version of Windows after that.

Good news for Tablet fans.

Giving tablets another try

Sat, 29 May 2004 16:06:52 GMT

I must admit that whilst I love my Tablet I rarely use it for text input. For flexible browsing, reading, reviewing etc its a great machine. For text input and voice recognition the quality is just not there. In this article Tom Yager of Infoworld agrees, and gives the tumbs up to Tablet PC 2005, part of XP SP2, which radically improves the recognition quality and the general usability of text input, although I am not sure about the voice recognition yet. He also notes that hardware innovation is continuing.

Tablet PC programming Video

Fri, 28 May 2004 23:55:37 GMT

If you want more on the tablet PC programming, and don't have one, or want to read then check out this 2.5 hour! video.

It just works!

Wed, 26 May 2004 18:14:21 GMT

Great little piece of writing by Scott about the fact that some stuff just does not work easily enough and how people will seek out maybe pretty complex ways of doing things just to be confident that it will work first time every time. This is right up my street, I really like things that 'Just work' and MS and the Linux community need to really focus on that effortless simplicity. For inspiration I look at the Nokia phone UI, (6310i in my case), and the Blackberry which I think is inspirational from a UI design standpoint and reliability standpoint. How much of what we use in IT every day from any supplier would pass the test, effortless, reliable, intuitive etc and to what extent are these attributes sacrificed for fancy features, customizability etc.

One of the most impressive things about Scott's post? He wrote it all on his Tablet PC using the new input panel in SP2, his experience 'it just worked', that was my experience to with the alpha, except in Lotus Notes which kept crashing, so I had to uninstall it!!

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.

What would I like?

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 13:23:49 GMT

In my previous blogs, I talked about my concerns over the neglect of employees productivity and my personal productivity challenges. In this blog I talk about some of the simple things I would like. Its interesting that lots of them sound quite easy to achieve, and some of them work right now if only the systems were configured that way.

A single inbox, that works all of my email services and with the appropriate directories I need to access
A single calendar, that aggregates and synchronises calendar information from different sources and allows me to interact with different resource reservation and freebusy services
A single task list, that aggregates tasks from different sources and responds to the source with task progress and completion information
A single contact database, that synchronises with the server side record if there was one
A single presence/IM environment, that integrates with my contact database
A single way to get subscriptions, RSS seems the likely candidate, whether its subscriptions to company announcements, or WSS lists, or search results, or changed web sites
Then a place to make notes, link stuff together, annotate
a way to record everything I have touched in any way, has written by me, read by me, been pushed to me, subscribed to by me, and store it in a way that makes it easy to find again and easy to backup, perhaps peer to peer, ie to another machine in my home, rather than just to that expensive server infrastructure in my company.
an easy way to share subsets of the above with my peers
Then a UI for it all like the Avalon/WinFS stuff people are showing that allows me to search across all of this, group/visualise it in anyway I can imagine etc.

All of the above need to be integrated, so tasks can be converted to email, emails into tasks etc and other applications need to interact with them. This sounds fairly easy. Web Services standards for handling tasks, calendar items, emails etc. A standard client side representation like that in WinFS, standard UI components that all spps can leverage client side. Standard ways to deliver subscriptions, but more extensible than RSS, because I need more metadata associated with the items in the subscription.

Then I need something similar for files, probably a lot like WebDAV on the server side, but with support for pulling down all that rich meta data that’s on the server, remembering which server the files came from, understanding how to work offline/synchronise, version control etc.

Finally I want my devices to be in sync, without having to think about it, and if I get a new device I just want to be able to tell it who I am, and it rebuilds all of the above from some peer to peer replica.

This sounds a lot to me like Longhorn, but probably not explained as neatly and tidy. However I don't see the Longhorn value proposition being communicated in these terms, they are still trying to sell to the corporate audience, not to the individual. Maybe that comes later.

My personal productivity challenge

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 12:49:03 GMT

In my previous post In Pursuit of personal and team productivity I talked about general problems. In this post I talk briefly about my problems. My company:

Uses Notes for email and some applications
Has an extensive Intranet for functional web sites, news, standards etc
Uses Plumbtree as its portal and to host communities, some are still hosted on Notes
Some of the projects I am working on use MS Project Server
Others use just MS Project
My company uses Lotus Sametime for IM
One of my project teams uses Microsoft Exchange IM
External contacts use MSN IM
Some of the projects use a Windows file server for project files
My function uses a Notes Database as its repository for Work In progress and approval
Some of the projects use WSS, for documents, risks, issues and changes
Some use spreadsheets
Some of the projects use an in house developed collaboration server
My customers use even more systems, some MS Team Services, others use Documentum

What do I use, in addition to all of the above:

I use my local disk for all my work in progress, archive, to read, to review, to watch etc
The family email is accessed using Outlook express
My personal email is accessed using Outlook, because I use Newsgator for RSS
I use Onenote for note taking and for my daily log
I use Radio for my blog
I use Office 2003 Pro most of the day

I have a range of different devices, which I talked about here and here.

I think this mess is pretty typical, but one thing I know - it certainly is not productive!

In pursuit of personal and team productivity

Sun, 29 Feb 2004 12:26:54 GMT

There is a conflict between people and the companies they work for, (well probably lots, but I'm only going to talk about one of them). The bigger the enterprise a person works for the more focussed that company is likely to be in central server centric computing, central support, consolidation, BPM, single sources of information etc. All very important for sure, but these companies will probably not even consider team productivity and almost certainly personal productivity as worthy of investment. These companies are on a crusade to save money, real money, i.e. savings off the bottom line. 1 hours labour saving per month for a big company project would be amazing.

Individuals on the other hand, especially information/knowledge workers will happily spend hours a month honing their personal environments to suite their needs, aggregating, storing, and restructuring the data that they are researching, or creating. They often invest their own money on Home PC's, PDA's, Task management Software, List Management Software, PC search software, Laptop to server file synchronisation tools etc. In the pursuit of personal productivity they probably spend more than 1 hour per week.

So how come individuals spends perhaps 4 times longer trying to make themselves more effective, than big companies are trying to save through server side business process reengineering projects, or major application upgrades.

In my view it comes down to three things:

The tools available to information workers are so poor that people live in a state of perpetual frustration, trying to find an environment that lets them aggregate, integrate, process and create information more effectively.
The people working on server side improvement projects assume people only work on their project, process or team. When often people are working with such a wide range of different web sites, document management systems, team sites, portals, networked file systems, personal file systems and trying to access them through a range of different devices.
The benefits that people perceive they will see if they could only get the two issues above resolved are so amazing, not just in raw productivity terms, but especially in quality and team coordination, that they feel very motivated to continue to strive for them.

Lots of peopole have tried to solve this problem.

Server side guys have taken the portal approach, which at best integrates a few processes, or a few fragments of information
The client side guys have created ever richer PIM's, but made the mistake of assuming everyone will work only in their PIM
The device guys have given us an ever greater number of devices to fragment our information across

Some players have realised that the only way to solve this problem is at the platform and standards level, on both clients and servers:

You can see some evidence of this with groove which provides a rich set of platform services, and some real application functionality on top that addresses just this area. But the platform is not popular enough to really transform the way people work outside a few enlightened environments, and of course the platform costs quite a bit of money, for bottom line centred enterprises to invest in it.
A slightly different approach is taken by the guys developing Chandler, which is an open source set of platform services, which will eventually be funded by layered application vendors building on top of the platform. However its unlikely to become pervasive with such a small team behind it, although the vision looks great, if a bit limited in its scope, (given the size of the team though a small scope is essential if they are to ever deliver).
Everyone continues to invest in full text search and its longer term accuracy as more metadata becomes searchable as data migrates to XML format, but search is still such a blunt instrument.
Microsoft have a grand vision with Longhorn at the client end, with WinFS as the store utilising the Shell and Avalon presentation services. Reaching out and integrating a vast array of server side environments exposed through Web Services, but its a long way off. Microsoft is certainly taking a platform centric approach, and of course will deliver a slew of compelling applications to exploit that platform. They are also in a unique position with the release of Longhorn to invest in the marketing of a new way of working, and to present the commercial opportunity for thousands of ISVs to exploit that platform to tempt people to upgrade their applications.

So what’s my take on the future, cautiously optimistic:

I think Microsoft has learnt some lessons in the past and will do a great job of delivering the Longhorn platform and some great applications that leverage that platform
I think Microsoft is the only company who has a vision of the future that takes an integrated and balanced view of client side and server side computing
I think Microsoft is VERY strongly motivated to re-invent client side computing, which has hardly evolved for nearly a decade
I think the Linux community needs to seriously look at what Microsoft is doing to the platform, and build standard services of the type provided by WinFS especially if its not to get left behind still trying to complete with XP when Microsoft has completely moved the goal posts.
I think Longhorn lives or dies by how good it is at aggregating and integrating a mix of client and server side information. Which means that it needs to be the premier client for aggregation using for example RSS as it evolves. All Microsoft’s applications need to start exposing their capabilities in a standard way, again RSS and Windows Sharepoint Services comes to mind. If WSS provided an RSS interface to subscriptions, lists, document libraries etc, and had come offline support it would be transformed.

Ray Ozzie, of Notes and Groove fame provides some good commentary in this area as well and Adam Bosworth's Weblog discusses some of the server to client interactions as well.

A releated area is support, almost everyone prefers to receive certain types of support from their friends and their peers, who they know to have particular expertise or who understand their needs and environment. In a survey I did about 5 years ago over 90% of people preferred to receive support from their local "super user" rather than call the help desk. However in the central/standards dominated corporate IT environment this support model is not encouraged, which means that it is not facilitated and made efficient. It still happens of course, (a 90% preference is too strong), it is just not done very well. This is a real shame because peer support tools like Microsoft's remote assistance, discussion groups, expert groups etc can be very effective. Again a few years ago I setup a support forum for my corporate, that provided both peer support and support directly from the developers and architects responsible for the environment. In many ways it was much like some internet forums today and like blogs, in that it put the developers and users in direct contact. The affects were amazing in the goodwill generated within the user community and the improvement in quality that the developers were able to achieve with this direct linkage to their users. I will blog more on this whole area soon.

Finally I would love some of these Longhorn Evangelists to start talking about the future for Knowledge workers, and not just about how Longhorn and Indigo will affect vertical business processes. However maybe that would mean revealing some commercial in secret stuff about the next version of the Office System and Longhorn Server.

Tablet PC Screen Layout

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:33:21 GMT

being a Pocket PC user, the first things I did when I got my tablet was to move the Start Menu/Task bar to the top of the screen. I then changed it to display small Icons, made the task bar two rows deep and locked it. This seems far and away the easiest configuration if you work in portrait mode as a slate.

I noticed that a few apps for example Zinio don't position themselves correctly, when maximised, ie they lay under the taskbar but I can live with that.

Tablet PC Look and Feel

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:26:14 GMT

I was looking at how a few people used their tablets the other day and noticed people don't seem to position their Office Toolbars vertically. This seems a real shame to me as they seem to take up no space that way and are so easy to reach with the stylus.

Too many PDAs

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:13:20 GMT

I have 2 pocket PC's, a Blackberry and a Tablet, all of them play music but I also have a Creative Nomad 20G. How did I get in this mess.

Well it started with one of the original IPAQ's which a few years ago I thought was a marval. I carried it everywhere and loaded it with loads of useless software and tried to squeeze a CD's worth of muisic onto it. After about 3 months I hardly ever used it because the battery life was too short and the synchronisation too much of a chore. My 11 year old daughter has it now, and after a month of enthusiasm hardly ever uses it either.

Then I got the Nomad, I copied all my CD's onto it and hardly made a dent in its 20GB, I converted all of the Tech-ED conference DVDs into WMA files so I could listen to them in the gym and out walking. It got used a lot for a few months, and still gets used perhaps once or twice a week. But if I lost it tomorrow it would not have much of an impact on my life, in fact I probably wouldn't even notice.

Then I got my first Blackberry, a dual band mono model with integrated phone, (headset only). I loved it, in my view almost perfect form and function for its purpose, Wireless Email and Calendar. I never did get tasks to synchronise with Notes properly. In fact after about a week the only time it ever went into its crade was to charge its batteries. I never synch it with my PC all synch was wireless. However the gadgeter in me wanted more so I got a colour 7210, triband model, with a bit more memory and a real phone. Its great, has fantastic battery life and the colour makes it look a bit livelier. its true that its adictive though. I use it every day, even though I work at home because it allows me to appear to be working when I am in a cafe or walking, or sitting on the beach. The fact that I never need to synch it, that its always on, always up to date, incredibly slick to use means I am never without it.

But then I was given a shiny new Pocket PC, from HP. It's tiny, has a fab display, bluetooth, 64MB, SD and CF cards. it syncs with my Tablet just great. But its not got a phone, I still have to take an action to synch it and it's just not as slick as the Blackberry. However I do still use it, but more as a complement to my Blackberry, one I can do without but is nice to have.

Finally I have my tablet, my only truely indispenable gadget. Its a perfect complement to the Blackberry though neither depends on the other they both keep in synch via a corporate Notes server wirelessly. One is there for real work, the other for instant on communication.

I have another phone, a Nokia 6210i in addition to my Blackberry because Blackberrys don't have a car kit and using them as a phone does eat into that fantastic battery life.

Tablet PC related Software I still use

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:43:38 GMT

I have played around with pretty much all of the software, but not much of it has survived the several rebuilds I have done for various purposes, eg HD upgrades, beta tests etc. This is what's left.

So why did these survive:

Zinio survives because in my enthusiasm I went and subscribed to a couple of magazines. My feeling is that its not quite there. Its a bit slow, the TC1100 screen size is a bit too small, and the 1024*768 resolution a bit too low. In addition it does not maximise correctly, if you have your task bar at the top of the screen as I do.

Top Desk is a real find. Its a bit of freeware, that sits in your tray and when you click it it shows you all of the shortcuts on your desktop. if you are anything like me you have far to many applications to fit on the Start menu, so this provides much more room. If you are ultra-tidy it also lets you hide everything from your desktop, which makes you look very organised. Its particular good in my view because on a low resolution screen I have no room for all of the additional toolbars that I used to display when I had a laptop with a 1400*1050 screen.

MyIE2 survives because of the tabs. It allows me launch say 20 different IE windows as I am browing through my blog entries, and then just click through them later. Its also great when I am doing research. I find the tabs so much better on the tablet than trying to navigate so many windows in the taskbar or a taskbar group.

Ultramon is essential if you use your tablet with two displays

I started being really organised with OneNote, with a very complex folder hierarchy. I am just not that organised. Now I just have a daily log and a few research areas. I find it has lots of limitatoins that have been discussed already. But used simply and regularly I have found it very useful. I would not have paid for OneNote but I get it free.

Virtual CD Control tool. Well I don't have a CD drive when I am mobile, but I can use this tool to mount an ISO image whenever I need one. Another good freeware find.

I already had Mind Manager, I tried the tablet PC version, and thought it was great, but the upgrade costs were just too high.

Office 2003. I use it extensively for reviewing and don't have too many problems, except that inking at the edge of the screen is a bit hit and miss when using comments. I have just started looking at the Image printer and Image viewer, the ink support in the viewer seems really good at first glance.

Journal, because its installed by default. I do find it useful though for marking up stuff that I printed to it.

of course I use loads of other SW, but this is the main stuff thats Tablet related.

Integrating my Tablet into my home office

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:13:25 GMT

In my home office I already have a desktop PC and Printer/Scanner, and I have a wireless keyboard and mouse. When I started to work from home I wanted to add the Tablet into this mix as easily as possible. Heres what I did first.

First off I only wanted one keyoard and mouse, and I wanted to use my Desktop PC screen. The easy solution to that was to use Microsoft's Remote Desktop, which allows me to effectively Terminal Serve my Tablet Screen to my Desktop. This was good but it had the disadvantage that my Tablet screen was not being used at all and that when I needed to make a VPN connection to work, I had to use the tiny tablet screen and keyboard.

So I put my tablet in its docking station, and used a KVM switch so that I could use one keyborad and mouse. Because of the dual monitor support in XP, I am able to extend my Tablet Display onto my desktop monitor as well so I can use both screens. To make the dual screen experience really slick I installed Ultramon which makes moving applications between displays really easy.

I put the Tablet and Desktop in the same workgroup, and that makes sharing hard drives, DVD players and printers easier as well.

When docked I use a 100MB wired network. When undocked I use my home wireless network.

Via the docking station I have USB connections to all of my gadgets, but I have also got a bluetooth connection with my Pocket PC, which works between my Living room and my Office.

The only other trick was to get a USB to PS2 keyboard and mouse connector so that I could connect the KVM swicth, PS2 only, to the tablet, USB only.

My Tablet PC

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 13:55:00 GMT

I have a TC1100 from Compaq which is a slate format with a detachable format. Because I work mostly from home I almost never have the keyboard attached, and just use it as a slate for reading or document reviews or dock it for everything else.

The Tablet itself has a 60GB hard drive and 1GB of memory and its a Pentium M 1.0GHz processor. I previously had a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 512MB, and I don't know how but this seems just as fast.

I have the standard docking station with an additional 40GB disk in it for image backups and stuff and an external DVD drive, which sits on top.

The Tablet has bluetooth and wireless

It really is a great hardware design, perfect if your main requirement when mobile is to use a slate. the keyboard is not ideal for extended typing.

Tablet PC's - Wow!!

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 11:13:14 GMT

I recently managed to get a Tablet PC. After the first day I thought this is the way to go, I was amazed at how natural it felt to use, especially as I have a TC1100 slate from Compaq.

I do a lot of reviewing and reading, and I like to do that outside my Office environment because its a lot more relaxing.

However I have toyed with it a lot, used lots of different software, tried out the 2004 beta, integrated it into my home office and gadgets. I have worked out a lot of things that work for me and they might be useful for others, so I thought I would blog on these a bit. Things I think will be useful are:

What HW configuration do I use
How have I integrated it with my gadgets
How have I integrated it with my home PC, home network and company network
What Software have I tried, what have I kept and wat have I given up on
Great web sites

I am sure that other stuff will spring to mind.