quilting ruler and roller cutter pad

A picture is worth a thousand words. How many times have you said or heard that?

Here is a real world example …

While cleaning the shop, I came across a couple things. So I took a picture with the iPhone and immediately sent it in an email.

Hi Mom, is the the type of ruler you need for quilting?

Within just a couple of minutes I get a message back.

Yes, that one is good. I’m at the machine now. Later.

Looks like Mom has a handle on using her iPhone too !

Q: What do you get when you combine email threads, [nearly] instant messaging, photos, blog-esque, wikis, to-dos, document editing, presentations, spreadsheets, file storage and sharing ?. ?

A: Lotus Notes.? .. oh wait, that was early 1990′s ?. Groove ?.. no, that was late 1990′s, ?. Adobe ?no, that was last week ? it must be Google Wave.

It looks like Google Wave could be very pleasant to use but like so many new tools, it only works when everyone uses Wave.

Is Google big enough to change everyone ? Probably not.

I look at micro-blogging as an interesting example. Services like Twitter understood that micro-blogging needed to work with the tools people already had and work in the style that people already were comfortable – browser, desktop clients, smart phone apps, and all they way down to legacy SMS.

There is a bit of a difference with Google Wave. You don’t install a server and so you don’t need to have everyone in a directory or identified up front or all with the same email addresses, etc. It’s Google, so the servers are “out in the Google Cloud”. You also don’t need everyone to have installed the same client – just as long everyone involved has an HTML5 browser (I’m not sure how many users currently use a compatible browser).

This is not to say Wave will have limited appeal but it won’t replace email for those who only need/want email and it wont replace micro-blogging given how many use simple SMS and it won’t replace corporate wikis and collaborative editing given the concern with privacy and security that still exists with cloud based services [update: it would be possible for a company, willing to deploy open source, to install a base version of the Wave software].

Skepticism aside, I will definitely find some opportunities to run Google Wave through it’s paces (when it is publicly available). Who knows, it might actually be useful <sigh>.

In reading a blog post about the Blackberry Storm touch screen smart phone there was the inevitable comparison to the Apple iPhone on one side and the traditionally Blackberry phones with keyboards on the other. Not too long into the comments, came a note about new Windows Mobile and Nokia phones and services.

It was not too long before I added my depreciated 2 cents. I quickly realized that I was the lone voice saying "throw them all away". I coined the phrase "untether altogether" to signify we might be better off giving up our Blackberries and smart-phones, and other digital leashes – at least part of the time.

Of course, I could not leave well enough along and end my comments with the idea we might … just might … be too entwined with those beeping, buzzing, interuptus maximi. I had to suggest I should keep my colleagues abreast of breaking news through the use of smoke signals. Oh, silly me.

I recently saw how a virtual team of a few hundred people chose to share information.

1. setup a “community” to manage membership and let participants choose to subscribe and un-subscribe. GOOD
2. setup a Wiki to establish a calendar of meeting topics. OK
3. setup a “quick” file sharing site for posting presentations. GOOD
4. email out the links to the above three sites. BAD, BAD, BAD

The email is not ideal but it is one way to get out the work to likely participants. The really bad part is the the three different spaces were not integrated. There should have been a single place that all of the content appeared – even if it were in three different tools.

The community makes self-registration easy. The Wiki supports simple group editing of the calendar topics. The file sharing means there is no need to email or forward slides and demo files around.

A mashup of all three capabilities would have given all users a single URL to bookmark. Ideally, there would be a small number of RSS/ATOM feeds for new content – one for everything, one for everything but community changes, one for meetings and files, etc.Users choose how much information they get. The “team space” appears as a single solution and functions as a single solution – not as separate pieces left to the user to manage.

Editorial: I don’t think this is too much to ask. If you want people to use your soluitons, you need to make then user friendly.

If you are a Microsoft Windows user and need a “relatively” simple solution for screen capture and editing – say, for uploading to YouTube – then you might find the combination of Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder and Microsoft Movie Maker a good place to start. There is a tutorial on how to use the two together but it is not that difficult.

I used this technique for my “spiral staircase” video.

I’ve been biting my tongue for weeks …

I’m had the enviable position of enjoying a pre-release version of Sametime 8.0.1 online meetings. I know Adam Gartenberg has already written about the latest release of Sametime but I wanted to write about three features I really like: much improved audio, the new push-to-talk option, and the ability to remove uninvited (or disruptive attendees).

new GIPS audio codec option, “Push-to-Talk” interface, and “remove a user”
The use of the GIPS codec has been available in the Sametime Connect client and is now an option for meetings. This is great news. For those not familiar with what a codec is, it is what makes voice communications over computers possible. As for the GIPS codec, it is what makes Skype and GoogleTalk possible. One huge advantage of the GIPS codec is that it does a great job of handling bad audio – echo, dynamic range, etc. It is so good, I often use just my laptop microphone and speakers for short conversations and skip plugging in my headset. It may not be idea but the new GIPS codec makes it all possible.

One other benefit to the GIPS codec is that integrated audio in meetings works great from Linux and Mac OS-X too !

The Push-to-Talk feature – or PTT for short – is very helpful when I have large meetings and still want to use integrated audio. The automatic-microphone is very handy for small group meetings but for larger meetings and meetings where we have one or two presenters and then times for Q&A, the PTT is easy to use and makes the meetings go more smoothly. The presenters can use the PTT-lock button so they can talk more freely. Sametime is still fully interactive (i.e. full duplex) with PTT so individuals can simple “push and talk and release” and the presenters do not have to release their microphones. Sametime handles all the mixing.

Sametime has also added the ability to remove a user from a meeting. This might come in handy if an uninvited attendee has “inadvertently” joined your meeting or someone has left their computer on in your meeting or you need to discuss sensitive content and need to remove undisclosed attendees.

There a many new and improved features in this latest release but these three were big hits for me and my team – Thanks Sametime !