I found it very strange to see this in my list of recommended books on Amazon’s home page.  Clicking through on the “Why is this recommended for you?” link pointed out that this book is written by David Allen.  No, it doesn’t appear that it is that David Allen, but obviously Amazon doesn’t know that.

I spent a bit of time importing some of my old OneNote notebooks into Evernote today.  There were some notes that worked well, but some didn't work quite so well.  I imported everything into Local only notebooks to ensure that I didn't blow over my 40MB allotment for the service.  This caused me to head to the Evernote forums to answer some questions, and I stumbled across something really cool.

The Windows Evernote client has the ability to watch a folder, import any new files which get created or copied into that folder, and optionally delete the file after it gets imported successfully.  This is huge.  I'm not sure how I want to use this yet, but I'm pretty sure I will be using it quite a bit, now that I've discovered it.

If you follow my Google Reader Shared Items, you probably saw the Live announcement that there would be Mesh updates today.  I awoke to the Mesh icon in the Dock on my MacBook bouncing away, wanting to update.  The update wasn’t automatic, and due to my not running as an Admin, and the application already existing, it actually took me logging in to my Administrator account (it seems that the Authenticate message got trampled by the do you want to replace this item message.)  Everything seemed to go smoothly.  The Mesh application remembered my credentials, and seemed to connect with no problems.

Connecting to Live Mesh with my Windows Mobile device prompted me to download an update as well.  The install went fine, however I did have to relogin to get logged back in.  Even though there was no indication that a Soft Reset was needed after the install, the log in process for Live Mesh never finished until I soft reset my phone.

I’m still happy with the Live Mesh preview.  Files are syncing as they should, and performance seems to be pretty good.  I’m still confused as to the positioning of Live Mesh, Live Sync (formerly FolderShare), and SkyDrive.  I need to write that blog post.

I juse finished reading the new FREE Productive! Magazine download, a digital magazine about David Allen's Getting Things Done.  The content was good, but reading a PDF formatted magazine on my 800 pixel tall MacBook screen was a total pain.  I will continue to read the content, because it seems like its worth it, but I may have to start printing it out (which isn't terribly green.)

For years, my employer has been almost anti-Microsoft.  Yes, we always had Windows laptops with Office on them, but the entire network backend was Sun.  My mailbox is on a Sun Java System Communication server, which I access via LDAP.  We also have a Sun online calendar server, but I've never used it.  I've actually always just had Outlook on my work machine also access my personal Exchange account.  Tasks, Calendar entries, and Contacts lived in my personal account, and was easily synchronized to my phone.

Now my employer is testing Microsoft Exchange as a mail and calendar environment.  I'm not on that pilot, but I do have a new laptop with our newly released Vista image, which appears to assume I'm on that pilot.  I attempted to add my personal Exchange account to Outlook, which ended up in a vicious cycle of authentication pop-ups for the Global Catalog on my personal network and the work network.  This has caused it to have a ton of trouble actually receiving any mail.  I usually take my Mac to the office, and Outlook Web Access works quite well, so I don't have an issue reading my personal mail, but I do only want to have a single calendar, which is available to my on my personal machines, on my phone, and on my work machine.

After a bit of Googling, I decided Google was the answer.  Google calendar and the Google Calendar Sync plugin for Outlook.  Basically what this does is on a scheduled basis, it synchronizes your Outlook calendar (in my case a local PST based one on my work machine, and an Exchange based one on a machine on my home network) with your Google Calendar.  It can either be two way or one way (you specify which one way.)  I'm using two-way on both machine.  So far I haven't had any sync issues.

My only complaint so far is that Google's calendar doesn't have any tagging, labeling, categorizing support.  Using the web interface only, you can create separate calendars, and they are color coded.  I suspect that this is how they intend people to segregate their different appointment types.  Unfortunately, the Outlook sync app can only sync one Outlook calendar with your main Google calendar.  I generally categorize (which color codes) all my Outlook calendar items.  Personal, work, Scouts, etc.  Unfortunately for now, all that data doesn't make it into Google's world, so also doesn't make it back and forth between the two copies of Outlook.

I was hoping that Windows Live Calendar would be a solution, but it doesn't seem to sync, that plugin seems to add Live as a new data store in Outlook.  Thread here.

With the new availability of the Mac client, I'm going to try Live Mesh again.  I was able to get logged in to my account, and download the Mac client.  I'm getting an error trying to log in, but I suspect the service is getting hammered right now.

Update: Looks like I'm not the only one getting this error.

On10.net has a good video on Live Mesh, and the Mac client.  If you're interested, it's worth the 10 minutes.

I finally installed Sugarsync, and it is mostly working as described.  I installed it on the MacBook and our Windows Server 2003 fileserver.  I still need to install it on my work laptop.  The Pocket PC client is next to useless (it only has access to the photo galleries, which it insists on creating, but I have absolutely no use for.)  The Mac client claims to be in beta, and it does feel that way.  None of the options which are supposed to interact with the website work (i.e. Versions and View in Online File Manager).  I've also got a problem where a bunch of files have refused to upload (314 to be exact.)  I'm still playing with it, but am undecided as to whether I will pay when the 45 day trial is over.

After seeing the news today that the Live Mesh Technical Preview was being updated to more people, and knowing that mobile phone and Mac clients were coming soon, I decided to give it a try.  I have to say that Microsoft is completely braindead.  I installed the app on our fileserver as an adminstrator.  I then logged in as my normal user account, as this is the account which owns the files I want to sync.  Under \Program Files\Mesh I found a few applications, but not the tray app.  I couldn't see to find it anywhere.  I logged back in as an administrator, to check the shortcut.  WTF?  They installed the app in \Documents and Settings\profile\Local Settings...  I can't believe that Microsoft actually installed an app in D&S that is intended to run on startup.  I'm included to think that apps should even be able to run from there at all.  A quick uninstall later, and I'm back to thinking about SugarSync.

I just finished installing SugarSync, and it seems to work ok so far.  (Mac and Windows Server.)  I'll play with it more tomorrow.

After Lifehacker's recent Hive Five on note takers, I decided that I should share a bit on how I capture information.

I used to use One Note a ton.  I really loved it, but found it to be much less useful when I killed my Tablet PC.

After that I switched to pen and paper.  I've recently settled on the perfect (for me) notebook.  It's the Black N Red A5 sized spiral bound notebooks.  The cover is quite tough, which allows me to use the notebook while standing.  The spiral binding also allows it to open completely, which lets me use both sides of the pages (when I want to.)  The paper is a really nice 24lb. weight, meaning that I can use both sides of the pages.  Occasionally, I can find them locally at retail, but usually have to order them.

Electronically, I'm using a number of different applications.  My main item is Evernote.  This is a great cross platform app, which works quite well on Windows, Mac, Pocket PC, and the web.  Both the desktop clients synchronize through the web service.  The Pocket PC app is basically a capture device, and a read-only note viewer.  The web service has a really nice OCR feature, where any image which is added to a note gets OCR'd.

For bookmarks, I'm using delicious.com.  The best thing about delicious is the Firefox extension.  I had sitebar running locally for a while, but delicious is much better, and requires absolutely no sysadmin time.

I read news feeds in Google Reader, which has a nice Sharing and Starring feature.  I've been tagging posts which I want to save as Shared, and then subscribe to them in Outlook 2007.  This adds the content to my Exchange account, saving it permantly.

I got to my office this morning to find the lights out in the parking garage, and a bunch of people milling around the lobby.  Security says that "something blew" around 4:45 am, and the building only had emergency generator power.  In theory the power company is on the way, so I decided to pop over to my local coffee shop, and get a bit of caffeine and work done.  Thank you AT&T and WMWiFiRouter.

My mother joined the Cult of Steve shortly before I did, buying the same Spring refreshed BlackBook.  She has been a long-time Palm user.  She recently retired from her public school district job, but will be continuing working as an educational consultant for National Geographic.  Upon her retirement, her IT department took back the most recent Palm that she was using, and although she has an older one she could use, she mentioned buying whatever the current model was.  I suggested that an iPod Touch may be a better choice as a stand-alone PDA.

My initial thought is that an iPod Touch will sync with iCal and Address Book.app without any Third party software.  I believe the Palm still needs Palm Desktop/HotSync manager to sync using iSync.  It seems that a bunch of people are doing this, so I need to read a bit more on it before suggesting a little more strongly.

I've been using FolderShare for quite a while to keep things in sync between my machines.  With the recent addition of the MacBook, I was quite happy to have FolderShare also supported there.  In the Windows world, I've actually been running it on Windows Server 2003, because I rarely log into my desktop, and all of the backups run from the server.  A couple of weeks ago, FolderShare stopped connecting on the server complaining that the version was too old (although we know they haven't really changed the back-end since the ancient Mac version still connects.)  This morning I attempted to update FolderShare on the server and was greeted with this:

Come on Microsoft.  I guess I'll be trying all those other sync apps I've been linking to.

A beta invite to Dropbox showed up in my email this morning.  This is another cross-platform file sync utility.  The big difference I see with this one is that it has a specific area where your sync'd files have to live.

I'll check it out.

I've just had one of my FolderShare libraries totally freak out.  It basically deleted every file in the library.  I know that the files were there last night, and I think even earlier today.  Of course there's backups, but it's still a total pain in the behind.

I only wish the FolderShare trash was a little more intelligent (similar to the Windows Recycle Bin.)

I have 10 invites to the Evernote beta if you're interested in checking it out.  Just comment here (make sure you give me a real email address) and I'll have them send you one.

I used to love OneNote on my tablet PC.  I haven't found it as useful on a normal Windows machine, so its not currently installed anywhere, but I do occasionally miss having its capabilities.  I'm currently using a mix of this blog, del.icio.us, and Google Reader's shared items to track online things of importance, but I worry about link rot. 

Enter Evernote.  It looks similar to OneNote, except cross platform and synchronized.  That's right, they support Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac OS X, the web, and even several mobile browsers, and your notes on all the devices are supposed to remain in sync.  They also have an email to note function (which should work great with camera phones.)

I've signed up for the beta, and installed it on the MacBook.  I've downloaded the version for my phone, an will install it at work on Monday.  I wonder if there's a One Note to Evernote conversion utility.

Lifehacker points out that Launchy is now available in its 2.0 form. 

Main enhancements include:

 

• Launchy has been completely rewritten with QT
o Your old plugins/skins will no longer work
o Your old configuration will be wiped
• A new look! New icons and skin thanks to Tyler Sticka
• Much better skinning support
• Options merged into a single, tabbed dialog
• Skin selection now shows previews
• Plugins much more configurable
• Launchy can hide when it loses focus
• Fade in/out effects
• Customizable transparency
• Optional shallow scan of directories
• Unicode support for Firefox bookmarks
• Vista support
• It’s just better.

 

I've been using version 1.25 on my PCs, and I really like it.  For the things I launch a lot, its much quicker to start them using Launchy than to try to find them in the start menu, on the desktop, or from an icon somewhere else.

I'm a little bummed out that this is really a complete rewrite, and nothing will still work.  I'm going to have to evaluate what I'm using it for and then figure out if it makes sense to upgrade. 

I just noticed that I had a "Hide This Menu" item on the Bookmarks menu choice in Firefox.  I believe the del.icio.us extension provides the support, because after selecting it, a "Show Bookmarks Menu" item appears on the del.icio.us menu item.  Very cool.

 

Check out this Jackson Fish Market post, which leads to Paul Senzee's account of Red 5 Studio's attempt to recruit him to be one of their new game developers.  Now game development is a tough market, and having the best may mean the difference between black and really red (no pun intended), so I can understand why Red5 would go to this kind of effort to recruit talent.  Its innovative and interesting.  And can you imagine working for the company that came up with this?

Working in the oil/technology industry has its own set of challenges when it comes to recruiting.  We're not leading edge like Google.  We're not flashy like a game company.  And we don't make $10B a quarter like Exxon.  Maybe I need to develop some interesting recruiting flair like this to find some really unique individuals.  8-)

BTW, I want to work for a company who is named after a Star Wars persona.

I've been struggling with a backup strategy for quite a while.  I back up our servers to each other, so hardware failure isn't a problem, but I'm worried about disasters as well.  Scott Hanselman's post made me decide to try Mozy.  $5 a month for unlimited storage of documents isn't bad.  I know I don't have the upstream bandwidth to store everything quickly, but maybe I can get the important stuff into the cloud.  Carl is trying S3 backup, we'll see how that goes.

Last night before I left the office, I started a reply to an email in Thunderbird, and included several attachments off one of our network drives.  My intent was to finish the reply at home, and send it off.  Well, that didn't work so well.  Apparently Thunderbird doesn't do anything with the files when you attachment, they are actually retrieved at send time.

To me, a temporary file wouldn't be located on a network drive.

Scott Berkun has a good entry on planning effective work morale events.

I use MS Money to track all our financial information.  I recently upgraded to the 2006 version, but it didn't go well.  The Activesync component wouldn't install correctly, so I've been unable to sync with my Jam (I use MS Money on my phone as basically an electronic check register - i.e. just for data capture.)  Last night I decided to try to get it all to work.  I uninstalled MS Money, the PPC component and ActiveSync.  Unfortunately, uninstalling MS Money didn't actually do a very good job of uninstalling.  If left a whole swack of stuff in Program Files, and in the registry.  I cleaned all that out manually, and attempted a reinstall.  Unfortunately, now MS Money won't install at all.  Crap.

My machine has needed a rebuild for a while anyway.  It won't recognize our video camera anymore, making archiving our videos a little tough.

Now I'm wondering if I shouldn't split my environments, and run all my general productivity stuff (Office, Money, etc.) in a virtual machine.  Two issues, can I move a virtual machine from an AMD machine to an Intel machine (I think the answer is no.)  This may not be a big deal since XP Pro has Remote Desktop.  The bigger question is whether I can get ActiveSync to work through VMWare with a Linux host.  VMWare's site seems to indicate that PDA syncing should work, but it may take a bit of tweaking.

Lifehacker has been posting a series of PC desktops, trying to find the most useful.  One of the desktops from user Rooze had a screenshot of their monthly calendar on it.  I've been thinking how useful this would be, but why does it have to be a screenshot?  I've got web access to my calendar through Outlook Web Access (OWA.)  If your organization uses Exchange, or you have a hosted Exchange account, you probably do too.  Heck, you can probably do something similar with a Yahoo calendar.

Thanks to KC Lemson's blog entry on OWA URL parameters, I was well on my way to figuring it out.

Calendar monthly view:
https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Calendar/?Cmd=contents&view=monthly

Calendar weekly view:
https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Calendar/?Cmd=contents&view=weekly

Calendar daily view:
https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Calendar/?Cmd=contents

For the tasks, I found the Next Seven Days view to be the most useful.  Active Tasks seems like it would make more sense, but it includes Tasks which don't have a due date, which to me means someday/maybe:
https://server.company.com/exchange/useralias/Tasks/?Cmd=contents&veiw=Next%20Seven%20Days

I will probably not keep this much information on my desktop.  For one, I usually have Outlook open, but this might be useful once in a while.  For another, the 1024x768 resolution of my Tablet doesn't lend itself to this much information.  Maybe I should just have the Monthly view?

Here's a screenshot with the monthly calendar view, daily calendar view, and tasks (yes that's right and actual productive day today with no meetings scheduled!!)

Click for a larger view

By the way, here's the wallpaper behind the calendars.