My Personal Information Management

Update 1/18/10: This is the first part of a two part post.

Organizing one's personal information can be amazingly complicated, especially if you want fast and light weight access to commonly used information, and you access information across devices and operating systems. It is even trickier if you want to future-proof yourself so you can access all of your information in the future as well. I have tried many solutions including Outlook Notes, OneNote, my own NoteLens, and EverNote. However, I think I have a solution that works for me (based on this solution by dougist) - at least for my basic unstructured stuff. And the solution is both simple (relying on the most basic of storage systems - a folder of text files) and complex (relying on multiple syncing services and end-user UIs). Note that even though I still use Windows a fair amount, I run it in a VM on a mac, so this software is all Mac, but of course since the data is all text files, everything is also accessible on the PC side. Here it goes:

• Everything is stored as individual text files in a single folder. Sure, I lose fancy formatting and images, but I get guaranteed future-proofness, I don't waste time formatting, and it turns out that I don't really need images. And tagging is supported if I wanted to add a bit of structure.
  
• I use Microsoft's free peer-to-peer Live Sync cross-computer cross-operating system syncing solution. I've tried the others (SugarSync is unreliable, and DropBox requires all the synced files to be under one directory - ugh!). Live Sync is fast and reliable. I love it. (Although I got mad at Microsoft when they didn't update it for Snow Leopard for 2 months).
  
• I use my buddy Jesse Grosjean's free SimpleText program to sync the text files to a free Google-based web service that he runs. Note that this has one flaw which is that it sends stuff up to the web whenever there is a change, but only pulls stuff down when you sync manually - so one option I am considering is to use it on one computer, and then use my existing Live Sync solution to sync those files across all my desktops (while I wait for Jesse to add auto sync down from the cloud.
  
• I use Jesse's WriteRoom for iPhone app ($5) to sync those files to my iPhone and access them there.
• I use Jesse's WriteRoom for Mac app ($25) for full screen, distraction-free text editing.
  
• I use the open source Notational Velocity program on Mac (which is remarkably similar to my earlier NoteLens app)
• I was able to export my notes out of EverNote as HTML, and then used the freely available HTMLAsText (for Windows) to convert to text. (I wanted to like EverNote - it has a great feature list, but in practice, it didn't work for me. The UI was too heavyweight, layout changed between operating systems which was a nightmare, the UI was quite different between operating systems which was annoying, and I didn't like the Windows UI which had a weird scrollbar, and made a vertical list of all the notes rather than a notebox that just displayed a single note).
  

Update 1/15/2010: Some other bits - I use xmarks to sync my bookmarks and passwords across computers (and VMs). This coupled with Firefox's master password to protect passwords is crucial - it means I no longer have to manually save passwords. Coupled with Firefox's fantastic URL bar with one-click bookmarking, my webpage re-finding is dramatically better (direct comparison to Safari and Chrome upcoming - but firefox definitely wins).

I also use Microsoft OneNote for my meeting notes (with the data synced across computers with Live Sync). This makes me uncomfortable because it is Windows only and the data is totally locked in to OneNote. But the UI for note-taking that combines very flexible formatting of notes along with images, embedded files (like PDFs) and ink (when I occasionally use a tablet) make it unmatched - so far.

Notational Velocity UI
(Note: screen capture and annotation with Skitch)

1/13/2010

Making Information Visualization work

Information Visualization is all about helping users develop insight. It isn't enough to show beautiful and amazing pictures - even interactive ones. The key, as with all interfaces, is to think about specifically what tasks a user will be able to perform with the tool. Yet, all too many visualizations fail on this most important and fundamental test.

Stephen Few (of Perceptual Edge) wrote a beautiful 10 page report on this issue - critically analyzing a visually simple visualization by Ben Fry of healthcare spending (see pie chart above). The key is that it doesn't actually enable you to learn anything. He then goes on to create an interface that actually does enable you to discover all sorts of things. The new interface is not simple. Well, each component is simple, but there are lots of components and it may take a minute to figure them out. But no more than that, and then you discover that it is conceptually simple, and you can actually use it.



Here are the take-home lessons from the article - but go and read it - it is well worth it.

1. 2-D position and the lengths of simple objects such as bars encode quantitative values in ways that are easy to perceive; angles and areas do not, and therefore should be used only when you can’t use better means.
   
2. We cannot build a picture in our heads of a pattern that is formed by multiple values (such as the average cost of healthcare for patients of each age from 1 to 79 years old) by looking at one value at a time.
   
3. Lines do a good job of showing the pattern formed by a set of values across a continuous range such as patients’ ages, and do so in a way that allows us to compare patterns when multiple data sets are represented at once (such as one line per disease).
   
4. Multiple graphs shown together are often a better solution than a single graph, especially when several variables are involved.
   
5. Several simultaneous views of the same data set, each showing the data from a different perspective, make it possible to see relationships that can’t be seen from one perspective only or from viewing different perspectives independently.
   
6. The ability to easily fi lter out data that doesn’t concern
   

1/13/2010

Microsoft Live Sync vs. SugarSync (Live Sync wins)

I've been a long term advocate of file syncing software. It keeps all of my personal files in sync across my 3 computers (2 desktops and a laptop), even going across operating systems (windows and mac). But over the last few months, I have been doing a shootout between Microsoft Live Sync (free) and SugarSync (pay).

I had used, loved and evangelized Live Sync for years - since before it was a Microsoft product (they acquired "FolderShare" from ByteTaxi in 2006, I think). But when Snow Leopard came out for Mac, Sync just didn't work. There was very little response from Microsoft and no ETA for a fix. After waiting a few weeks and growing increasingly desperate, I looked at several other solutions.

One popular one is DropBox, but it has a design showstopper for me. Everything that gets synced has to be in a special folder that gets synced. That isn't the way I work. I want to keep my current file system and choose which subfolders get synced to what, so DropBox was out.

The other major competitor is SugarSync. It lets me control what and where I sync and it has a nice UI. There is one major annoyance which is that it isn't peer-to-peer (like Live Sync). It syncs to the cloud, so all your files sit on their servers. This adds backup and safety, and lets you sync between computers that aren't on at the same time. But you lose privacy, and you eat up their cloud-based disk space - and you have to pay for that. I pay $5/month for 30 GB. Not too bad, but annoying since I am forced to pay for a feature that I don't even want. But I had no choice, so for the last few months, I've been living with SugarSync.

However, that experiment was a failure. I *wanted* to like it, especially since the user experience was quite nice. However, the service was just unreliable. At least a half dozen times over a period of a few months, the synchronization would stop. It would get blocked on some file and I had to go through their technical support to fix it. I'd have to delete some cached files, or they would jiggle something on their server, and in a day or two, we would get it working again. But it kept happening. Sometimes it was a result of me making a configuration change (i.e., reinstalling an operating system), and sometimes it just happened. In addition, when it got into this bad state, it would sometimes replicate files and I would find several versions of a file one machine - ugh.

Fortunately, Microsoft came through and after two months, they posted a solid version of Live Sync for Snow Leopard, and I switched back. It is working beautifully. It is free. It is fast (since it doesn't go through the cloud). And I don't have to give my files to someone else's cloud.

Go Microsoft. In this battle, you are the clear winner.

1/6/2010

Droid Responsiveness and Ergonomics

Much has been made about Verizon's new Droid phone on Google's Android platform, and I agree with the reviews looking at the myriad details. But it seems that not enough has been made about the Droid's responsiveness and ergonomics.

Everything about actually holding and using the Droid is just a bit uncomfortable and sluggish. There are many examples, but here are a few that popped out in my first experience (in comparison to a long time with iPhone).

• To wake up the Droid you have to press the on/off button on the top right. There is no natural grasp that lets you do this. It requires several seconds to regrasp the phone, press the button, and then regrasp again so you can unlock it. Compare with iPhone - press the home button with your thumb with the phone in your natural grasp and then immediately swipe with the same thumb.
• Whenever I press any of the buttons on the side of the Droid (power, volume or camera), the keyboard slides open a bit making it harder to press the buttons you were trying to press.
• The keyboard is oriented over an inch from the right side of the device, so not only do you have to type with your thumbs off center, but you have actually reach with your right thumb - making the much lambasted keyboard even more unpleasant.
• All the graphics are slower, the touch screen is less responsive, and everything is less smooth. Yes, the display is sharper due to the higher resolution screen, but the actual experience of using that display is worse. iPhone is almost magically responsive to a very soft touch. This detail is crucial to people's enfatuation with iPhone. Every single interaction with iPhone is sensually pleasant. Android is, well, just sort of ok.

The Droid is a fine device, and if I didn't have an iPhone, I would be happy to have one. But after my first day of playing with it, I don't think there is any chance I'd trade my iPhone for it. On the other hand, Android is catching up fast, so a year from now it might be a pretty close battle.

Oh, and Droid turn by turn Navigation really is great. Part of the reason it is so good is because it uses a beautifully rendered perspective map view which I haven't seen the equivalent of on any online map - whether it is iPhone, TomTom, Google Maps or Earth.