I understand the problem everyone is having with Google Wave. I really do. From cries of “I don’t get it” to “This isn’t going to replace email” there is a roar of dissatisfaction with the initial release of Google Wave. I think this comes from people trying to set it into their current modes and methods. Wave doesn’t really replace any existing product completely. Wave won’t kill twitter or get you away from email. But I think Leo Laporte put it best on several of his Netcasts “Maybe for a paradigm shift it needs to be a product that we don’t get initially”. This sums up the disconnect many people feel with Wave. They have a hard time fitting Wave into their current view of work and communication because it isn’t the same as the tools they have used before.

Just as “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” holds true for situations with a lack of tools, I believe that once you get a screwdriver you don’t ask “how do i use this to drive nails”. A new tool can complement, rather than replace, existing ones. A new tool can both give you a better solution to existing problems (not inserting screws by hitting them really hard) and give you new capabilities that the old tools didn’t (you can remove screws as well). I think this is the state of Google Wave. It’s a tool that will make some current processes better, not emailing 12 versions of word documents back and forth, and allow new ones to be developed. This second part is what really excites me, what new things will we start to do with wave once it finds it’s place in our current workflows. How will we leverage it’s unique many to many, real time model to create things we couldn’t easily create before. All of the wonderful examples in the oft linked Lifehacker article are using wave for things that are currently accomplished with existing communication tools, most using one to one or one to many methods (ie. phone calls or email). And while I think that wave will be a great new tool in these areas, I really want to see what things will we use it for that we aren’t doing today because the existing tools fall too short to be workable.

So yes it slices, and you can use it for dicing if you want, but it won’t make thousands of Julienne fries. It may, however, help you create a new way to carve up your work.

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The big development in IC social networking tools hitting the news recently is A-Space, essentially a mashup of Facebook, LinkedIn, and GoogleDocs designed to be an addictive work environment for analysts with access to sensitive human intelligence (HUMINT). A-Space will have status updates a la Twitter, subscriptions to updates, feeds and friends, activity streams, content management a la Sharepoint, a community grid tag cloud, RSS feeds from outside, drag and drop capability, discussion/question threads, a ’scrapbook,’ and widgets.

But most importantly he finishes with this revelation.

This system – frankly better than anything I know about in the private sector at the moment – should increase collaboration and analytical thinking.

A-Space’s launch is a great opportunity for the internal communications of the government to get a much needed upgrade. And I’m all for the US Government taking advantage of great ideas for social networking. I just want them to share with the rest of us. I know first hand how the lack of internal tools can motivate users to take advantage of public sites or implement their own solutions. I would love to make a resource like A-Space available to my users. Currently we are using an internal Wiki and an IM and IRC server and while these tools have served us well they are limited in scope. I can imagine how a locally hosted service with the above listed features could offer a great opportunity for increased collaboration, especially across different teams and business divisions.

More importantly than the affect that this could have on my own company, I think about all the other small and medium sized companies who could really benefit from an A-Space. Having a centralized, easy to deploy, managed social network that lives within the corporate firewall could quickly open communication channels and build the relationships that most of the actual work at companies is based on. It is the implementation of tools like these that give us IT professionals an opportunity to have a substantial and lasing impact on not only the company but the effectiveness of individual employees.

There are, of course, several commercial options including from tech giants Microsoft and IBM. These solutions are usually best suited for companies that have existing installations that already use these company’s technologies. There are also open source projects working in this direction but they don’t seem to be as feature complete and robust as A-Space sounds.

This leads to the ongoing discussion of open source and government. If the taxpayer’s money was used to create software, the argument goes, then the taxpayers should benefit from that investment. I think the reuse by other departments and the release from vendor lock-in are better reasons for government projects to be created under an open source license. I understand the government’s desire to keep some things out of the public eye and under raps. I know that many security related projects wouldn’t be open sourced for fear of someone finding an exploitable bug. Yet I think that A-Space is a perfect example of the kind of government project that should be open and available to the general public. The value in this system is the content, personal connections it allows, and it’s internal access controls not the code of the system itself. The government could benefit greatly from any outside development done by the open source community that would develop around such a product. I understand that any community code would be meticulously reviewed before use inside any government network. But this code review would still cost less, in developer time, than developing the same features from scratch.

So just as President-Elect Obama has embraced Creative Commons for the Change.gov site, I hope that A-Space is released as an open source project so that others can benefit from and contribute to this resource. In the absence of this unlikely event, I hope that the open source community takes this as an opportunity to step up and create the missing A-Space for me and everyone else.

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My friend is definitely a power user. While not a professional Geek, he certainly enjoys the learning and doing parts enough to have grown well beyond casual use. He frequently trouble shoots his own problems, customizes his software configs, and tweaks his system in interesting ways. I know that when I get a call from him, either he needs a sounding board to bounce an idea off of, or he has a real problem that will require more than a reboot or a reinstall.

He has had his share of Vista complications. Foremost of which is Cannon’s decision to support Vista on it’s combo Printer/Scanner/Copier/Fax systems starting with the model directly after his. He was able to get the XP driver installed and he can at least print. Alas, scanning and faxing seem lost to him. His other major issue, which others have repeated, is installing software. His work around to the access issues he has encountered is to use the “Run As” command on the Setup.exe in order to execute it as Administrator. This has resolved the majority of his issues, although it did require several reinstalls of software he has setup before discovering it.

In the end he is genuinely happy with both Vista and his new hardware. I hope that others find Vista as positive an experience as he has. Unfortunately from the reports I have read, he seems to be among the minority.

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I have just heard the first reports back and he described it as “Blown Away.” He seems to be enjoying Vista itself, beyond the new hardware benefits he is getting. I hope that my cautionary tales of Vista’s successes and failures helped him in having a positive, yet realistic, mindset for the transition. I will gather more in depth information tonight and we’ll see if the initial enthusiasm holds up under scrutiny.

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This system served me well through college and up until I got my first “Tech Support” job. I was working as a bench tech at CompUSA and one of the other techs was trying to sell his palm pilot pro. This was in 1998 and I already had a newton message pad. But it had never really supplanted the organizer for all my planning needs. Now I had an opportunity to get a pilot. It even had the “upgrade card” to make it equal to a Palm III. I don’t remember how much he wanted for it but I knew it was a great deal. I also had to get an adapter to plug it into my Powerbook 3400. But once I had it up and running there was no looking back.

I completely digitized my organizer. Every scrap of paper, every phone number, every note went into the palm. I swore that I would carry it everywhere, and I did. I searched for a great belt holder and pen/stylus. I was going to be fully mobile. I’ve always considered myself a road warrior with nowhere to go. The palm accompanied me to the mall, camping, on job interviews, and even doing the laundry. You see my paper organizer was always with me and significantly larger so the palm was easy to justify and carry. I just never became as easy to use.

I upgraded to newer models and constantly searched out better programs and accessories. I read palm pilot news sites and discussed them on some of the first forums dedicated to palms. Yes I was a true believer and followed in the way of the palm. I ever wrote a short story almost entirely in graffiti. My whole life was in there and I could find no fault in it.

No fault, but always a nagging feeling. I was still looked upon as the organizer, but doing so seemed harder. I felt more pressured to look at my palm. I was always trying to justify using it more or buying another accessory. It had become an extra step in everything. I had to force myself to look at it to see what I had to do. I stopped writing in it as much.

Now I don’t mean to portray this as an overnight change. I have been using a Palm OS device for 8 years now. I have always found it useful but never inviting, functional but not empowering. I always felt I should be using it more than I was. The most productive I ever felt with it was when I found a program called MacNoteTaker the let me sync a folder of text files to it, edit them on the pilot and sync the changes back. This was true power and one of the few things I really miss when I went from a mac to a Linux box.

Now I find myself looking at my palm pilot, which is also my phone, only when I have to. Things have been lost in it’s to do lists and the notes are almost completely empty. Only the calendar and contact list are regularly used. I feel that after 8 years I could get a non-palm phone, provided it syncs my calendar and contact list on Linux, which none of them do, and be just as productive.

So now I’ve gone back to paper. I have found GTD and it’s working well so far (2 weeks in). I’m carrying a hipster PDA based on the templates from DIYPlanner.com and joined the 43 folders forums. But the real proof of my return to paper is this writing itself. It his being written on my first Moleskine, or at least the first draft is. I rarely write and yet I have spilled out 6 pages so far and I feel better about it than The entire short story I wrote on the palm (As I add “Finish Short Story” to my next action list).

I feel that in returning to paper organizing has become about the information again. I am worrying much less about what I am doing with that information and more about what I am doing. Hopefully this will help me make the most out of GTD and stop missing so many of the things I need to be doing. Plus if I start writing more then writing behind the keyboard should get easier.

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• I need to clear out the Moleskine that this lives in before I finish it out and start another one.
• I hope that by finally transcribing the contents I can get some perspective on my views at the time.

I have one more long piece and a short one that I hope to get up soon. This is coming out in near first draft form. I have decided to do only minimal editing and just post it as it was written. I would love comments and feedback, as long as you remember that these were from a year ago and a lot has evolved since then.

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• Expansion of writing as both a skill and a habit within my regular routine
• Journaling my thoughts and interests for my own and others review
• Communicating my realizations and conclusions on certain topics
• Generating a conversation with others who may find my ideas compelling
• Chronicling my experiences and exploits so others may learn from my mistakes

I also think there is value in stating what this blog isn’t and what I hope to keep it from becoming.

• A Diary
• The complete chronicle and record of the insignificant portions of my life
• A list of web pages I think are useful (For this I suggest my del.icio.us page)
• Links to content without attempting to contribute to the topic or discussion
• A money making venture
• An Ego centric tribute to my own greatness and intellect

I hope this will give us both a better idea of what I hope to achieve and avoid with this effort.

For the sake of full disclosure, I have started this blog 4 times in the past, in different forms. None of them has taken off beyond a few casual posts on a semi-regular basis. I hope to hold myself to a tighter schedule this time. I would like to post three days a week as a minimum. I’m not sure how realistic that is but as least it’s a good goal to set initially.

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