Another Neat Net Tool or NNT ....

I recently had to create a diagram for inclusion in a paper, this during the computerless period, so I happened on Gliffy - a neat new tool for diagraming and doing all sorts of drawing in a really presentation ready format ... this net based app will round out your toolkit to create useful work on the net ... there is a special offer for an annual subscription to the premium service of $20 for the year to have unlimited documents ... this could be handy for small business that needs to collaborate and share drawings and diagrams .... I actually prefer this program over others that reside on my machine ... take a look at their examples for ideas ....

The capture rather than printing using SnagIt makes for a great way to annotate drawings and capture them for use on the web or in brochures by jpg or gif ... another neat trick will be to include infor on mouseover points on the diagram using the SnagIt editor ... makes a really standout web item ...

The Death of Desktop Apps ...

I noticed an article on TechCrunch today that highlights a coming phase of web utility that should open up a whole new ballgame and has the potential to change the landscape of computing as we know it ...

It appears that we have several applications released and in the works that will accomplish the feat of allowing you to use web apps both on and off line. This would mean that all of the apps that I have been mentioning and using while computerless might be candidates to enter into this new universe. As we have been tied to the desktop application universe since day 1 of the PC era, the internet era may be ready to enter Web 3.0 territory or maybe even the beginning of a new era.

Picture the ability to do any of the work chores normally associated with a PC or even a Mac as the web does not differentiate originating OS ... once connected you could work on any myriad of tasks ... the magic comes when connection is unavailable ... you would still be able to work and the environment would not change ... save you work and the next time you hook up to the net, you are now saved back to your program there with a copy on you PC ...

The implications on hardware design and portability are incredible ... you could resurrect old laptops to become work stations with access, you could recycle countless old desktops in the same way ... the insane need for storage can then be shifted onto the net and away from your hardware requirements ... the list goes on ... it appears that in the coming months as this unfolds we are going to be treated to the emergence of a whole new internet utility ... maybe the FireFox 3 will be the poster child for Web 3.0 ...

Life as a Bedouin ... Rethinking Computing Power

The ongoing saga of the absent main computer and the article I read yesterday has led me to reflect on what it will take to equip my "office" going forward. Yesterday was a watershed day in the life of this cyber nomad ... I have come to the realization that it is no longer necessary to be have "power applications" readily available on my desktop to keep up with my work flow (tomorrow I will write on GWD ... work flow and getting work done) ...

My thought process created a basic flow pattern when things needed to be done ... this led me to focus on the related enabling technologies ... I had relied on my machine to basically house all of the applications that were necessary to generate normal work outputs ... brainstorming, papers, projects, proposals, etc ... I had come to rely on my key application, MindManager which is the starting point for most of my thinking and ideas. This was probably the biggest stumbling block ... in the last two weeks with the advent of both MindMeister and Mindomo, I am free of the desktop and the need to have my base computer with me.

I normally also work on spreadsheets and word docs to round out the arsenal ... this was addressed more than adequately with Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Zoho Office ... I am now using them to generate work and storing it online ... when I get my machine back from repair I intend to download my finished work onto my work directory which will then be copied over to my pocket hard drive so I can keep my key items in three places that are basically instantly available to me.

I can see how this will play out on travelling ... I have picked up on Ebay an old IBM Thinkpad X31 ... this machine was one I had considered a while back and was THE ultraportable executive computer for road warriors several years ago ... it is configured with a small hard drive (40G) but has Win XP Pro ... I think with it's long battery life and light weight can serve as my main machine while things get sorted out on the vista front. I will miss the tablet functionality, but for now will forego that luxury while awaiting the kinks to be worked out on vista enabled machines.

In reconsidering the power I will need to work, it became evident to me that all the key elements to make a machine travel friendly were more important than bells and whistles ... I can work effectively using a computer that does not have the latest and greatest hardware of speed ... and many things that I used to rely on the computer for are now better served by a browser and fast internet connection ... I still need to keep my old files available, but that too can be addressed in a myriad of ways now ... tomorrow I'll get into the concept of work flow in my environment and follow that with the continuing saga of creating a good fix to being computerless ....

GWD ... or On Becoming a Bedouin ...

I remember seeing for the first time "Lawrence of Arabia" and being awestruck by the desert and it's vast beauty ... equally striking was the Bedouin life where it seemed that all of life was carried and made into the next camp ... imagine also these memories being resurrected as I read this article today on the "New Bedouins" of the cyber frontier ... it struck home as today was another without computer and I am getting into the "GWD" mode (Getting Work Done) after suffering from paralysis and withdrawal ....

All of this was prompted by an inquiry and subsequent dialogue with a client that came into the picture through a web inquiry ... in my normal workflow I would reply by email, structure the situation on a mindmap, structure a proposal (collaborating with my partners on both) and then formally preparing a proposal for consideration ... this was GWD in my normal and previous computer aided life.

Fast forward now to this week as I have had to master the ability to GWD without basically having my trusted computer and files ... if you have followed this journey, you have seen how the recent surge in web based applications, especially the mind mapping genre, have been a boon to my ability to tackle a more or less normal GWD situation. Well, in this vein, I attacked this process with my present toolkit and wonders of wonders, it worked ... in fact, it worked almost too well ... the speed and simplicity of the web based applications take a lot of the extraneous dressing away from the task and allow an economical flow that allows for a different approach, but the same results ...

I took the email and defined the situation using MindMeister ... once I got the ideas down, I created a gif of the map and shared with my partners for comment ... once that was done and changes incorporated, it was a simple matter of exporting to a word file (rtf) which was the outline form of my map ... from there the work was flushed out in its final form to be presented to the client ... I would download or save to my desktop and use google docs for the word processing, so basically all I used to complete my flow was the browser ... all of my final work is saved on the net now and I will download later when I get my computer back ...

If anything good can be said about the situation, it is the lack of computer has caused a drastic rethink of the process of GWD ... I have now also started to question my need of computing power ... I will reflect on that aspect in the next installment ...

Creating a Starting Point ....

It is with always great anticipation when I first fire up the computer in the morning .. what wondrous things have transpired overnight and what do I have to do today ... makes everyday an adventure ... well, in the last few months of my journey I have become more enamored with the new breed of web pages that provide live feeds from all sorts of things ... used to be if you got news and stock quotes that was the start, then you needed to go to your emails, update todo lists, see the calendar .. etc etc, you know the drill ....

Well, I am down to my final two choices and they have been going at it with almost daily additions to my ability to monitor all things from one page and get going .... I am using Google and Netvibes as my two pages of choice .... here are examples of how I use them ...


Netvibes .... as you can see from this a lot of information in one area ... the main things are the Remember the Milk module that is my running todo list ... actually a lot more by going to the site for here for projects and notes, etc. I also have my Gmail being monitored along with weather and ebay .. notice the tabs at the upper left corner ... there is the RSS feeds that I monitor and I can go to read and the Meebo tab allows IM from this web page without having to load a client ... this is a great service and the modules are endless so you can design you own info portal ....

Now to the Google Home page ... very similar but with the integrated gmail, gcalendar, and the addition today of gtalk which gives me a good idea of who is online, this gets increasingly useful a service ... I have a countdown clock to make sure I have enough time to train for the next marathon, horoscopes just because ... notice the use of tabs here also for news and other information ... both pages have the Remember the Milk and Del icio us bookmarks ... I use both now daily and keep evolving in their roles ... they are both great, you can make them your own way to start your day ....

Comparing Mind Mapping Web Apps ...

I am still computerless (long story still being written) so today I thought I might share impressions as I am have more time on these two really good apps .... I took a mindmap from the Mindjet newsletter and saved it to my desktop to import into the two applications and here are the results ...

The first to go was Mindomo (both loaded quickly and without incident) ... the richness of the choices and the ability to add task info and a more visual layout are instantly appealing. You can see the Office 2007 like ribbon above for use and the export options are good (PNG, JPG, GIF) ... also notice the publish and print options that give you even greater flexibility especially if you have printer drivers like OneNote or PDF printing ... you could use this almost exclusively ... the app loads into a separate window to create a large piece of working real estate ... so far this has worked without incident ...

The second load went into MindMeister ... this application is not nearly as rich or visual, but it is quick and efficient ... as you can see by the capture, this presents a much more spartan choice of options ... this may be an example of the less is more school of thought ... I find myself less distracted and focused using this ... the strength though lies in the export choices .... as you can see below, you not only can use FreeMind (good freeware mind mapping tool) but go to text which would be an export in an outline for word processing and the other option to go to a MindManager file directly ... you have pretty much got it covered by doing this ... two compatibility with MindManager ...


Love both of them you can see where you could use one or the other depending on your mood and what you want to accomplish ...

So in keeping with the mobility issue ... having these two choices for your toolbox enables project management, brainstorming, idea forming and ??? on the fly from anywhere ... mission accomplished ....

Truly a WOW moment ...

In keeping with the latest advertising campaigns created by Microsoft, I had one of those moments today while getting my morning java ... I had seen on an ad for McDonalds last night that they have a unit now to preload their premium coffee ... I decided to stop in today and try this out ... well, in a way to do away with waste, they installed a dispenser system that you can tell them how many creams and sugars to put into the cup ... actually a great idea as all the little paper packages for sweetener and plastic tubs for cream can be done away with ... I applaud that and hope more will follow .... then the WOW moment occurred when I paid my bill ... a large coffee was $1.86

HMMMMMM ... things started to go around in my head and I remembered buying coffee at my local Starbucks just the other day ... the memory was that the charge was not too much north of what McD's had just tagged me for ... SOOOOO ... I stopped at my cafe in the local Borders just to check out this seeming incongruity .... there is was right next to all the latte mochiata frappacino double soy listings ... Grande coffee (read large) $1.85 .. in fact for 10 cents more you can get the mega Venti size and sit there for most of the morning sipping ...

What is this world coming to ... when you picture McD's and Starbucks you see two different cultures and related prices of admission ... how can this be ... I know McDonalds now has WiFi access, but somehow sitting in the McD's stalls does not have the same ambiance ... and I would think meeting a client for business would not go over too well in the face of Big Macs and fries ... truly a WOW moment ....

Mindomo ... A New and Rich Web Based Mindmapper ...

In one of my daily reads (The Mind Mapping Software Weblog) I read about a new application that really fit the bill, Mindomo ... I am thrilled with Mind Meister, but this one really blows the application space to a new level ... it is rich in formatting and fast ... creating a really good looking map is simple and easy to effect. It does not have all the functionality (map imports in particular) ready, but as a beta version it rocks ... I used it today to create a project board for some work that I am doing presently (see attached clipping) .... as you can see this interface really looks like a desktop app and it is deep as you change the menus by hitting the various items above .. this layout is very similar to the ribbon variety in Office 2007 ...

It allows for task management of resources and dates and allowing icons to show progress and priority ... this is enough for a down and dirty work and having it available from any machine makes it immenently useable ... one thing I find really handy as I create larger and larger maps is the ability to hide branches coupled with the shrink and grow view so I can look at a whole map or concentrate on just a branch ... repositioning the map is a simple matter of dragging and making the map fit the screen ... really essential to the way I like to work ....

This may be a beta version, but the promise the first look holds is amazing ... there will be several levels of service available starting with a feature rich free version that limits you to 7 private maps ... additional options open up this amazing app to maybe become a significant part of your tool box .....

A Great Experiment ....

Well, it has been a week now without my trusty tablet and I can say that it was a good week and full of revelations ... for one who has been stuck to a computer for over a decade, being without for this whole week was truly eye opening ... broadening my vistas (no pun intended), and has left me with a much calmer outlook on work and the related technology ...

And the winner is ... I do believe using an adedquate (8 Gig in my use) pocket hard drive to carry all my work and key working software has allowed me an unprecented ability to function and function well ... I do believe that this has all be made possible in the last few months by the bugeoning plethora of web 2.0 applications ... I know you are all tired of this phrase, but in real life some of the apps that have come our way are invaluable and have allowed this untethered work style. With the last piece of the puzzle being the mind mapping capability (more on another new app tomorrow) my tool box is now full ...

This week brought several moments of anxiety as I had to pull old files and get several reworks done ... using my google docs and sheets and uploading from my drive to the storage area, and then adding the collaboration have made this effortless ... in fact, I think this is even better than I used to do it, as the versions and rewrites are all on the site and can be undone and reworked with ease (once a final is done, I download and save on the drive again) ... works like magic and towards the end of the week, I was using this as a matter of course on both docs and spreadsheets ...

There was also a time where I had to make a product white paper, so my normal workflow is to conceptualize the project and presentation using MindManager before exporting to word and fleshing it out ... well using a web based mind map program and then taking it into google docs accomplished the same thing and then I was able to polish the document using open office to a final form .... all of this done on a computer (any computer with a hard drive) and not leaving any traces of work behind ... what a great way to go ...

I have populated the drive with apps from portable apps that will make you self contained ... that is a winner .... and all accomplished with just the cost of the drive ... double winner ... enjoy!!!