I find it very handy to have “windows” rather than browser links to these applications. The windows remember their size and placement. Prism runs these applications as separate from the browser and even remembers login information separate from the browser. While I do not get “off-line” access, that’s not a concern since most of these web applications are for specific servers or very time sensitive (weather now not a few hours ago) so if I don’t have a network connection, the service would not be much use anyway.

all in all, it is one of the better productivity enhancements I’ve adopted over the past several months. It goes especially well with StandaloneStacks which I use to extend my taskbar!

The one thing that irks me is the lack of  of the middle mouse button  (aka scrolls wheel) feature that is intrinsic on Thinkpads.

The best (and for now reasonably acceptable) solution is the use a Firefox and Thunderbird plug-in called Grab-n-Drag. It only covers the scroll feature of browsing and email, but since one of my machines is predominantly just that, it covers things pretty well. I hope to figure our a configuration for scrol wheel support across the “now 4 thinkpads” sooner or later but in the mean time, one machine is much happier !

I found, after a little use, that there were times when I’d move the mouse to the edge of my screen - either going to the top of the screen to get to a menu on a maximized window, or just pushing the mouse out of the way. In it’s default settings, Synergy would move the next computer. I first tried setting a delay of 500ms then 1000ms before the switch. Both did OK. Then I tried the “must hit the edge twice” (or what I called bounce). This worked well too and had the added advantage of letting me have multiple virtual desktops (the Compiz cube on Ubuntu, Spaces on OS X, etc.)

First order of business was to build three laptop stands/risers. These things stand a laptop up vertically. I am without my workshop or else this would have been a no-brainer. I scrounged some metal rod (remnants of the political candidate signs that littered the yard back last fall) and dug out my shop Dremel and started cutting and bending. This yielded three new stands. Next, I had to clean my desk and re-route all the network and power cables. Lastly, I installed Synergy on all four laptops (my personal X60, my work T60 and old T40, and my M200 tablet PC). Synergy works across the different operating systems and is happy with Windows, Linux (Ubuntu), and Mac (which unfortunately I don’t posses to test). The T40 is “above” the X60 with the T60 to the “left” and the M200 to the “right”. When I move my mouse to the far right of my screen, it appears on the M200. Move it back and across the screen to the far left, and it appears on the T60. Similarly, moving the cursor to the top of the X60 show the cursor on the T40. (The top most monitor is the media player). Wherever the cursor appears, the X60’s keyboard and mouse are functional.

With Synergy, I have a four monitor & 4 CPU system !

I am currently trying out Transfz. While not exactly the same as what Firefox does, it’s close enough until I find something better. I bind a hotkey (in my case I used ALT+2). Then, I just select text anywhere and hit the hotkey. My browser of choice is launched with a Google search on the highlighted text.

I have found a bug or two. For example, while writing this blog post, I double clicked a work - there by highlighting it. Transfz did not recognize this method of selecting text and when I hit my hotkey, I got results from my previous search. I can live with that … for now.

I should point out, Transfz does a whole lot more. It’s extensions and plug-ins add a lot of interesting features. I just wanted Google search.
If you know of a better solution - sorry, I’m a Windows user at the moment - post a comment.

I got rid of all the cool UI space hogs like Docks. I added a virtual desktop solution (VirtuaWin) and my taskbar is only one row deep. The one thing I wanted was a quick way to get to a number of freqently used folders and applications. I couldn’t put them on the desktop becuse that was covered up 100% of the time and I didn’t want them on my taskbar since it was getting crowded already. What I wanted was the Stack UI that you see on the Mac and on Windows and Linux when you have a Dock running. I wanted Stacks from my taskbar.

StandaloneStacks gives me simple groups of shortcuts - either in a grid or a fan - direct from the taskbar. I now have a stack of “places” (ala Ubuntu); a stack of “work applications” (VPN, corporate email, IM, etc.); and a stack of “specialty apps” (internet tools, graphics software, etc.)

Now I need to find a utility that let’s me snap my IM client to the side of my screen and auto-hide it until my cursor touches the side. I know I saw something to do this before but I can’t find it now … @$%#$%@$.

Here is what my desktop looks like …

I am running Lotus Notes 8.01 (basic) with a little template tweaking to give me my 7 day calendar on the left. I then have places Sametime 8 *and* Sametime 8.0.1 on the right - each with different plug-ins and logged into different communities.

Eventually I’ll switch everything to Sametime 8.0.1 once our company enables support for it.

So you still need that face-to-face contact?
The best programming team is a “telephone call,” which is two people, you and I, programming together. The second-best programming team is, everybody fits into a single room. All other variants are bad.

What obstacles does Google face in continuing to innovate?
A problem that we face now is that we have people in multiple sites. It’s a problem that everybody faces, but we’re going to face it bad. We have, like, 50 locations.

Why aren’t many other companies doing this, too?
I think it’s cultural. You have to have the culture, and you have to get it right.

I work for a company which is truly global with a lot more sites than even Google. There is a significant percentage (and growing) who do not work in a traditional office environment. I am not saying this new work dispersion is bad. What is bad is believing “a distributed workforce it is just as effective at innovation and creativity as a collocated one”. How do you balance a disbursed work force and innovation ? Easy. “Get together”. I’m not say companies should move everyone back together because the entire life cycle of a project is not a creative process.

Projects need to account for travel and team building. “Account” is perhaps a dual chosen word. Companies regularly plead poverty and cut all but sales reacted travel with the goal of delivering better revenue quarterly results. This myopic view is one of the killing forces acting on many American companies. The log term view is gone. The result is a lot of crisis, reactionary, energy sucking behavior.

The best of both worlds - for both the employees and employers - is to leverage the improved work options for employees and savings for companies while setting aside some of those savings for team face-to-face activities. … As Google’s Eric Schmidt says; “You have to have a set of necessary conditions for innovation to occur.” I call this “culture”.

At Google, engineers spend about 20% of their time on projects outside their main job. “The story of innovation has not changed. It has always been a small team of people who have a new idea, typically not understood by people around them and their executives. [The 20% rule is] a systematic way of making sure a middle manager does not eliminate that innovation.”, says Schmidt.

I could not get away saying, “… I will give you everything I’ve got, 80% of [my time].”