Reposted from Google+.

I’ve been satisfied with the free account so far but haven’t taken Evernote to the next level because tools like OmniFocus, VoodooPad, and Google Docs are more integrated into my daily routine. That might change a little thanks to The Evernote Podcast. A podcast about a single app? I couldn’t imagine having enough to say about Evernote in a long-form podcast; something short form like Quick and Dirty Tips might make more sense. Then again, a show about nothing could be entertaining from time to time. I gave it a try, and it paid off.

Podcast #10 mentioned how to send blog posts from Google Reader to Evernote, a way to archive entire articles without leaving Reader. I live in Reader, so the odds of me using Evernote more–and listening to more Evernote podcasts–just shot up dramatically, especially because I added The Evernote Blogcast to Reader. The feed includes links to the podcasts, so I’ll probably delete the iTunes subscription and listen from the web when a summary catches my attention.

The podcast also mentioned using Evernote data as a screen saver since each note has a thumbnail image rendition. It’s not terribly practical since I can’t imagine anybody (sober) watching their screen savers anymore; flying toasters are so 20th century. Still, it’s a neat hack, and chance picked a relevant reminder about last week’s gay rights victory in New York and tomorrow’s distinctly Philadelphian holiday:

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good, in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

– John Stuart Mill

How to use Evernote as a Screen Saver in Mac OS X:

1. Open “System Preferences”, choose the “Desktop & Screensaver” icon, and choose the “Screen Saver” option in the tabby thingie.
2. Click on the “+” under Screen Savers pane and choose “Add folder of pictures”.
3. Navigate to “{HOME}/Library/Application Support/Evernote”, choose the data folder, and leave that folder selected in the Screen Savers pane.
4. Choose the middle option from the Display Style option bar.

GooglePlus is dominating my RSS feeds today. My excitement about Circles has faded a little because of articles like this:

Google Plus’ Circles System May Not be Sustainable — ReadWriteWeb

I posted an abridged version of the following in the article’s comments:

Good categorization is an expertise most people lack: “Work” isn’t particularly meaningful, but “Coworkers”, “Headhunters”, and “Professional Acquaintances” are. It’s more work to apply and maintain a richer taxonomy, and I’d imagine even fewer people will get equivalently greater value from such effort in social networking. We’ve been trained away from finding exactly what we want by the search-and-browse approach of unstructured searches like Google, so wading through irrelevancy is a more common skill.

Grouping mechanisms in other social networking systems also have upkeep problems; I suspect most people just don’t bother doing it, and the same will probably be true with GooglePlus. Maybe adding a feature to display circles as Venn diagrams would help data geeks like me.  For most people, public versus private might be just enough categorization to avoid social networking faux pas without making the posting process feel like taking the SAT.

Existing social networks don’t have the concept of categorization on both ends, posting and reading, and I wonder if GooglePlus Circles has the same deficiency because it hides the names of circles I’ve been added to. I’d like to subscribe to (and filter out) people’s circles instead of people themselves to control the noise of their posts about unshared interests; I’d probably disagree with how most of my non-professional acquaintances would categorize me. It doesn’t sound like GooglePlus makes the distinction of subscribing to people’s interests or topics instead of people themselves. Relevancy has to be a two-way street.

Or, perhaps, a four-way intersection.

GooglePlus Venn: Relevancy is an Intersection

With all those brainy data geeks at Google, I’m optimistic that they could create a Venn diagram of Circles, Sparks, +1′s, Reader Likes/Shares that could define social graph relevancy in that oh-so-Google statistical way. How many licks would it take to get to the center of that tasty relevancy tootsie-pop?  Lots, probably, but it creates a new kind of payoff that Twitter and Facebook are incapable of delivering.

Hey, Google, are you listening?

On a related note, I tried posting my comment using my Twitter account. Twitter on the web is totally brain-dead about multiple identities, so of course I posted my comment using the wrong account. It’s a perfect example of the mis-post problem I referenced in the preceding post. Then I reposted my comment using Google, and Disqus allowed me to choose from the three Google accounts I’m logged into right now. Google gets the issues of identity and context more than anybody else in the field, so I’m (somewhat) optimistic about GooglePlus.

Official Google Blog: Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web.

This isn’t just about hiding potentially embarrassing facts from prospective employers; it’s about targeting content to the audiences that are most likely to find it interesting. Current social media systems like Twitter and Facebook don’t get this. With Twitter in particular, I try to work around it by having a half dozen Twitter accounts. I restrict who I follow and what I post by account based on theme–personal, professional, gaming, etc. Hacks like this make for more work and are prone to mis-posts; it’s as discouraging to posting as wading through live-tweeted baseball games or diaper anecdotes are to reading.

Identity is also an issue as services like Facebook and LinkedIn expose our real-life names to the virtual world, something I experience more acutely because of this eponymously-named blog and professionally-oriented Twitter account.  I can’t prevent noise in my professional channel no matter how clever and diligent I am when less savvy friends and relatives can’t remember to use my personal non-eponymous identity for personal messages. Social search, realtime results, and consolidated logins will make this everybody’s problem in a few years.

Google’s social networking track record isn’t great; i.e., Orkut, Buzz, and Wave. It looks like Google+ doesn’t suffer from the lack of look-and-feel sophistication that may have hampered earlier efforts, and features like Circles address some of the fundamental design flaws in established products. However, the better product doesn’t always win, and Google will have to convince people to leave existing services. That’s a Catch 22 because the value of a network depends on its size, and it’s compounded because members of those networks don’t understand issues of identity, privacy, and relevance.

Call me cynical, but I think the odds are stacked against Google+. How many people realize the value of regular backups before losing everything to crashed disks or lost laptops? Those same people won’t realize why leaving Facebook for Google+ makes sense until they lose jobs or spouses for lack of caring. Please, Google, prove me wrong.

(Full article on microsoft.com)

The is a logical evolution of the one thing I like about Windows 7 and use regularly, window snapping. It’s also one step closer to a desktop that works like the Eclipse IDE with various resizable panels for different elements like object browser, code editor, and compilation messages. Apple is also taking a tablet-inspired approach in Mac OS X Lion. It’s about time operating system vendors step up and do something about the sad state of application window management, but I don’t expect Windows 8 or Mac OS X Lion to bring perfect solutions because of their inspiration: Tablets make great content consumption devices, but I need something inspired by a content creation tool as my desktop.

In the meantime, I’m using a little open source app called Shift It to get something like window snapping on the Mac. It uses keyboard shortcuts rather than the Windows-style border collision which the Mac already uses for virtual desktop management, Spaces. Here’s my somewhat-Eclipse-inspired desktop with the Shift It menu exposed:

Dock and Twitter on one side, desktop files on another, and a perfect half-width browser window (with too many tabs as usual) in the middle. Sized and positioned Chrome by shifting it left then center with Shift It.

Shift It isn’t a perfect solution. It has some problems with window size or position being a little off sometimes, and the top/bottom options are practically useless on a widescreen display. Most people won’t mind, but my particular pathological need to organize (also expressed by my obsession with The Container Store) requires precision and symmetry and flexibility.  Steve Jobs has a similar affliction, so I’m hoping Lion will be like digital Paxil for my application window management OCD.

Don't google "dead horse" for images.

My response to Pie’s Quality of Documentum Over the Years bears repeating, even if I am beating a dead dmHorse:

I started with version 2, back when I was just a newly-minted UNIX geek. One thing you missed with the transition to 4i was the introduction of the DFC. DMCL had a very UNIX feel; a simple, open API designed to be glued into any programming language. DFC was just Java then, with a COM layer growing over it later. That was also the point where EMC became more marketing-driven and started chasing the Internet bubble at the expense of their existing clients.

Both were attempts to capitalize on hot topics of the time, Java and the Web. I never bought that the DFC would make a whole pool of talent available; Documentum’s about the model, not the means. However, the marketroids successfully reframed it. Hiring managers now believe they can take Java people and mold them into Documentum people, and I hear gasps of disbelief when I say Java or Visual Studio aren’t requirements to do Documentum–a good Java programmer is not necessarily a good Documentum developer.

This Java mentality did increase the number of people with Documentum on their resumes, but the talent didn’t increase as much as the volume. It just diluted (maybe also tainted) the pool. It became harder to find good people in the now-mirky waters.

The lack of focus then is what brings us to the lack of quality now. Innovation at the model and server level is rare, and frankly I don’t give Documentum much geek cred anymore because of it. Great ideas like BOF and Aspects are stapled into an API rather than made an inherent part of the product. Too much work up the stack (and on vertical solutions) has made the product top-heavy and tottery. EMC continues to chase markets (i.e., case management) rather than concentrate on making a solid core product.

Noted rumor-monger  Brilliant Leap speculates about Documentum in a world without EMC. Tongues were already wagging at EMC World about the SAP-EMC partnership leading to something a little more intimate. It has enough of the smell of truth to make an irresistible rumor.

As rumors go, I still prefer the Microsoft angle because of the obscene anatomy kissing that IIG is still doing.  Truth is it’s just to easy to dispel: Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free? I doubt Microsoft will be stamping shrink-wrapped boxes of SharePoint with Documentum Inside! anytime soon, but I’d bet they have an infinite number of code monkeys banging away to make their own document management Hamlet. Once they do, it’s bye-bye Documentum! Then all those monkeys will get down to business and start flinging feces IIG’s way.

Part of Documentum’s doom was being a software company bought by a hardware company; however, it won’t be saved if another software company buys it next. Such companies (SAP included) would buy Documentum to augment their flagship product, not eclipse it.  With no Fairy Godmother rescue from being passed around from one wicked step-mother to the next, this story’s ending will be more Le Boheme than Cinderella. Or worse, a more-jackal-than-wolf company that hasn’t innovated for decades might gobble it up to suck the last trickle of marrow from its cracked bones.  *cough* computer associates *cough*

I am no Wall Street cheerleader, especially after my time in Big Finance, but the closest thing to a Fairy Godmother out there is a technology-oriented private equity fund. Such a fund buys troubled companies to turn them around and sell them for a profit. Unlike most of Wall Street, they take the long view of years rather than a quarter or the milliseconds around a stock’s uptick.

Their methods can be harsh, but their goal unlike any step-mother’s would be to make Documentum the best product and most profitable (and saleable) brand it can be.  There may still be an ounce of brand left to save. By going private, the recuperating Documentum wouldn’t be burdened with public company regulation or the tyranny of speculative stockholders. It’s an imperfect cure for the age of gratuitous IPOs and acquisitions fueled more by irrational exuberance than smart business.

We have a test case with AOL selling Bebo to Criterion Capital Partners, LLC instead of just shutting it down. Taking Valdes’s animal shelter metaphor a little further, I’m sure Criterion will euthanize Bebo and reap their own “meaningful tax deduction” if the old dog can’t learn new tricks. Sometimes I think I’d rather see that happen to Documentum than sit through the EMC’s little opera until the consumption takes it.

I can’t find a video of the Mark Lewis keynote from EMC World 2010. Instead I’m depending on reporting from the event like Ron Miller’s article [Documentum group gets new name and new direction] and Pie’s tweets and blog posts. It’s probably for the better; I never had a taste for gruesome videos since Faces of Death, and this may be EMC finally decapitating the Documentum brand.  Rather than plunging into a pages-long diatribe about EMC’s unconditional surrender to the commoditizing of content management or the latest dish of scorn Lewis served up to Documentum veterans, let’s talk names.

Information Intelligence Group is EMC’s new moniker for the product that shall not be named. Lewis breaks down the name for us on his blog [Episode 91: EMC World 2010 - The Birth of the Information Intelligence Group]. It’s hard to read–let alone say–the name with a straight face, and this breakdown doesn’t help. At least the cumbersome and uninspired Content Management and Archiving accurately conveyed something about the product.  This new name is too broad and inherently meaningless; it will continue to erode mindshare for a product that was the de facto definition of document management. Let’s hope this new name doesn’t prove itself a compound oxymoron to boot.

The “Intelligent” product silos aren’t much better. Granted, this is a product that has to publish a separate guide with each new release to map old product names to new. Not a sheet or a few pages, a document. However, these new silos are so vertically restrictive that EMC had to toss the content server into case management.  Having done case management and having paid my dues in lines of server code, I’m perplexed. It’s like they had a very limited box of magnetic poetry to play with.

The continuing erosion of a strong brand means less mindshare among potential customers. Everybody knows SharePoint even though most don’t know what it really is. I’ve seen first-hand how good marketing trumps good product. Documentum had that name recognition–still does in many parts–and EMC seems determined to stamp it out without something sticky to replace it.

Here we go again!

I wanted Twitter lists about five seconds after I clicked my second “follow”. My life is about categories and contexts: I follow people for different reasons, and I want to group those people and their tweets around similarities. Search and hash tags helped a little, but full-text search and uncontrolled tag vocabularies come with a host of problems–I know that all too well from my day job.  In the meantime, a Rube Goldberg of RSS feeds and multiple Twitter accounts provided some degree of order. Now Twitter’s on the eve of releasing lists, and I can’t say for sure I’ll even use them.

Twitter needs to advertise their betas better.

There’s no telling when I got the feature because I don’t use the Twitter website. It’s all about the client: Tweetie 2, Tweetie for Mac, or Google Reader. I even stopped going to the website from email notifications because they don’t have anyway to handle multiple accounts. The email may be about “A”, but I’d end up as “B” because that’s who I last logged in as. Yes, this is another case of clients having it all over web apps in terms of context and state. I hate living in a buzzword-compliant age: Web 2.0 is roughly Client 0.2 in my book.

An API is no substitute for a conceptual model.

I found the API calls for lists easily, but I never found diagrams or narratives explaining what lists are and how they work. Lists don’t appear to be very complicated at first, but it’s not just twiddling the two radio buttons and one text box on lists that creates complexity.  How things interact with lists internally and externally can create unexpected conditions and counter-intuitive behaviors. That leads me to my biggest initial gripe and likely deal-killer …

Lists do not have RSS feeds; they are a walled garden, and not in a good way.

Lists were looking pretty neat until I noticed something. Actually, I noticed the lack of something–an RSS feed icon in the address bar of Firefox. RSS lets me consume and crosspost Twitter anywhere–Google Reader, my blog, Facebook, FriendFeed. Right now lists are only available through the Twitter website, and that’s fine for a beta release (unless you’re Google). However, even when clients start supporting lists, people will still have to come to Twitter. Maybe that’s a hint that Twitter’s getting ready to monetize, or maybe that missing conceptual model contains some details that make RSS problematic.

A little more experimenting is in order …

Unmentionable!

When Twitter changed their reply functionality, now called mentions, my initial reaction was unmentionable.  After a few weeks to ponder and play with it, I still think they made a big mistake.  A reply was originally a message that began with a twitter username, like this:

@zorak No, really?

Replies were public, but Twitter added a link so you could see just your replies and options to filter other people’s replies out of your friends stream.  According to the Twitter blog, the community came up with the convention that Twitter later embraced and enhanced.  Then Twitter added a separate API call and a “swoosh” button to their web site:

Just what I wanted! Twitter added metadata underneath so that a reply remembered which tweet it replies to.  Pretty soon every Twitter client included swoosh buttons and “in reply to” links.  This was a philosophical break for Twitter–whether they know it or not–because there was no way to distinguish swoosh and “@user …” via SMS.  Supporting SMS creates a larger potential user base, but it drastically limits functionality.  Until everybody has an iPhone, fledgling social networks like Brightkite must consider this trade-off.

The original reply syntax is still supported and continued to create confusion as Tweetie developer AteBits explained on his blog.  People put multiple names in the message or put the @ in the body of the message, assuming the right people would see the replies:

@me @myself @I Remember the milk.
Give @me some sugar, @baby!

Only @me sees the first tweet as a reply; nobody sees the second.  Search was already catching on thanks to other community-grown initiatives like hash tags; users and client developers began using search on @user instead of the reply API to catch such grammatically incorrect tweets.  Apparently this is a bad thing, or at least something Twitter discouraged, perhaps because of its impact on Twitter’s call throttling.  That and other scaling problems should make for a few good dissertations; I just hope Twitter is keeping the historical record and will be willing to share it.

This brings us to mentions which are basically just searches on @user.  Although it’s a good thing that Twitter learns from their community, the big mistake here was changing the functionality under the existing API calls.  I agree that instantly supporting new functionality in all Twitter clients is attractive to a provider, but it can–and did–create unintended consequences.  All those clients blessed with catching those malformed reply tweets were also cursed by all those side-bar mentions crowding the replies page.  Twitterati like @wilw get many more mentions than direct replies, and now there’s no easy way to sort out the two.

The lesson here is that it’s safer to create new API and UI elements for new-ish functionality and let the community migrate over than to replace the guts and hope nothing breaks.  As any API designer knows, developers will do all kinds of unexpected things once your API is released into the wild.  The Twitter community’s active, inventive role in shaping Twitter also provides for some real “They did what?” moments.  Tweaking reply functionality to support only swooshes and adding new methods for mentions would have made everybody happy.

There’s one thing I want from Twitter that they promise in the API FAQ; I want to see all replies for a given tweet.  I disagree the assertion in the Twitter blog post above that people don’t want to wander into the middle of an ongoing conversation.  Sometimes that’s the best way to discover new topics and interesting people.  When that happens, there is a need to go back and discover the source and all its tributaries.  Twitter is aware of the need, as this quote from the Twitter API Wiki FAQ shows:

How do I get all replies to a particular status?
For now, there’s not a great way to do this. We’ve heard the requests, though, and we’ll be providing a solution for it before too long.

Conversation functionality is cropping up in Twitter clients like Nambu and the soon-to-be-released Tweetie for Mac (20 April 2009).  Looks like Nambu constructs conversations based on cached tweets, building little trees as it discovers reply pointers to other already-fetched tweets.  This single-linked list structure makes it easy to find your immediate predecessor but difficult to walk up, across, and back down the tree.

Hmm, where have I seen this problem before?  Oh yeah, version trees in Documentum.  Every document remembers its immediate predecessor (i_antecedent_id) and the root of its version tree family (i_chronicle_id).  A single query on i_chronicle_id returns every version of that document.  That’s just what I want Twitter to do!

Twitter already has its own i_antecedent_id–with a better name I hope.  So add an equivalent to i_chronicle_id and a new getAllReplies API call.  I suggest topic_id since that’s what the root tweet of a tree of replies becomes.  It would be nice to go back and stitch up all the previous replies-of-replies, but I would understand if the hit on the database would be too big.  How many tweets are in there anyway?