Usability participants needed for Outlook:Mac

go ahead, mac my day : usability participants needed for Outlook:Mac study in March.

Blog entry from one of the developers that works on the Office:Mac suite at Redmond, asking for usability testing volunteers to test Outlook for the Mac.  (To be released this year IIRC.

If you are in or near Mountain View, California, and you wish to participate, you need to be eligible by:

• use a Mac for work purposes


• connect your Mac to an Exchange server


• use mail and calendar on your Exchange server several times per week

Bottom Posting

Recently was chastised for Bottom posting on a Mailing list, so I thought I'd write a few words about it.

I bottom (or inline post) mostly because I like the email to be a message. You read a message or a letter from top to bottom, from left to right. It wasn't until email clients started top posting (looking at you Outlook/Lotus Notes) that email was written in the top-posting format, forcing you to read an email backwards.

So I looked it up, basically looking at two different information stores.

Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
RFC1855 -- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1855.txt

These two places will define how to write email and how email should be written, on mailing lists, use groups, or any other email transaction.

The particular part to pay attention to is in RFC1855 --

"- If you are sending a reply to a message or a posting be sure you
summarize the original at the top of the message, or include just
enough text of the original to give a context. This will make
sure readers understand when they start to read your response.
Since NetNews, especially, is proliferated by distributing the
postings from one host to another, it is possible to see a
response to a message before seeing the original. Giving context
helps everyone. But do not include the entire original!"

Summarize the email at the top, and post below it. In other words, bottom-posting is the correct way to write email, as per RFC.

Things I wish about Email

Someone asked me:

"Joel,


I read your last post on Thunderbird and noticed you said [...] that you were "over client based email".  I use Thunderbird.  Why do you say that?  What don't you like about [...], client based applications?"  -- Yes I paraphrased.  But spelling is intact.

Mail.app
-- I would like the ability to shut off Spotlight indexing.  Meaning, I don't want Mail.app to download all of my Mail locally.  It's IMAP, that means keep it up in the cloud.  I don't want it here.  Also?  Very slow when dealing with Gmail.
-- I would like the "new" ability to "archive" an email with a keyboard shortcut.  In Thunderbird 3.0, I can mash the "a" key and the Email that is currently selected is archived.
-- Threading.  Threading is awful.  It works GREAT in Gmail, and is perhaps Gmail's best feature, bar none.
-- No way to bottom post.

Thunderbird
-- Same as Mail.app as far as the Spotlight indexing goes, except, I can shut it off in Thunderbird (awesome!).  But I don't want the client to download my email.  Period.  I want it kept in the cloud with no local copy.
-- Slow.  SLOW.
-- Threading, same as Mail.app, Threading sucks.  Again, Gmail has this down.
-- Too much CPU
-- Too much RAM.  (600 Megs?  Are you kidding me?)

Mutt
-- Slow
-- Can't open attachments, (yes, I know what you Mutt guys are going to say, but still, I would like the ability to just click (or tap a shortcut key) and open an attachment.  Not having to do a bunch of crazy nonsense to tie apps together.
-- Threading, I rather like the threading that Mutt has, and the customizability of Mutt beats everything else, bar none.

Outlook
-- Seriously, Outlook sucks.
-- Why am I including it here?
-- No way to bottom post
-- Inconsistant GUI
-- Slow
-- No way to bottom post.  Check out this fix (http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/)
-- No addons
-- No archiving
-- PST size limits
-- Bad rule granularity.


I solicited feedback from Twitter, regarding the above, and these are the responses I got.

"Lack of keyboard for control wrt to moving from folder to folder.. GMail makes that very easy." -- @jasonish


"The difficulty in working with the OS address book - Thunderbird vs Windows 7 contacts comes to mind (complicates my iphone sync)"
-- @tomsellers


"haven't found one with a conversation view on par with gmail."
-- @jjarmoc


"1) Folders < Labels (ability to 'symlink' emails to multiple tags) 2) i use 3-4 devices to check mail 3)Gmail's thread handling"
-- @jamesjtucker

and in the interest of fairness.  I'll get on Gmail too.

Gmail
-- I want the ability to mark two conversations and make them thread together.  For instance, let's say there is a thread, then someone answers that thread, but the mail client for that person adds "UNCLASSIFIED" to the thread.  The Thread is then broken, visually, but it is still the same.  I want to be able to combine them.
-- Your IMAP implementation really sucks.  Bad.  Oh, and it's slow as hell too, almost artificially.  Seems like you really don't want people using any other email solution except for the web.
-- Drag and drop of attachments.  This should be possible in HTML5, or at least with Google Gears
-- Lack of Google Gears (and thusly, no offline gmail support) for Safari/Snow Leopard.  Can we get rid of Gears and be HTML5 compliant please?
-- Lack of Bottom Posting option.  No, addons through Greasemonkey do not count.  Want to really impress me?  Reformat an entire email (when I hit reply), to flip the thread around based upon indexing, (come on, you guys can figure that out), to read top to bottom.
Check this out Google.  Do THIS and all would be awesome -- http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/
-- GPG/PGP support.  I don't use it, simply because it's a pain.  So I don't.  I probably would if I could.
-- The ability to filter on more headers.  Ideally, I'd love to be able to perform regex on headers.  Similar to procmail.
-- Label based signature blocks.  Or at least account based.





Please leave comments below.

Things I wish about Email

Someone asked me:

"Joel,


I read your last post on Thunderbird and noticed you said [...] that you were "over client based email".  I use Thunderbird.  Why do you say that?  What don't you like about [...], client based applications?"  -- Yes I paraphrased.  But spelling is intact.

Mail.app
-- I would like the ability to shut off Spotlight indexing.  Meaning, I don't want Mail.app to download all of my Mail locally.  It's IMAP, that means keep it up in the cloud.  I don't want it here.  Also?  Very slow when dealing with Gmail.
-- I would like the "new" ability to "archive" an email with a keyboard shortcut.  In Thunderbird 3.0, I can mash the "a" key and the Email that is currently selected is archived.
-- Threading.  Threading is awful.  It works GREAT in Gmail, and is perhaps Gmail's best feature, bar none.
-- No way to bottom post.

Thunderbird
-- Same as Mail.app as far as the Spotlight indexing goes, except, I can shut it off in Thunderbird (awesome!).  But I don't want the client to download my email.  Period.  I want it kept in the cloud with no local copy.
-- Slow.  SLOW.
-- Threading, same as Mail.app, Threading sucks.  Again, Gmail has this down.
-- Too much CPU
-- Too much RAM.  (600 Megs?  Are you kidding me?)

Mutt
-- Slow
-- Can't open attachments, (yes, I know what you Mutt guys are going to say, but still, I would like the ability to just click (or tap a shortcut key) and open an attachment.  Not having to do a bunch of crazy nonsense to tie apps together.
-- Threading, I rather like the threading that Mutt has, and the customizability of Mutt beats everything else, bar none.

Outlook
-- Seriously, Outlook sucks.
-- Why am I including it here?
-- No way to bottom post
-- Inconsistant GUI
-- Slow
-- No way to bottom post.  Check out this fix (http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/)
-- No addons
-- No archiving
-- PST size limits
-- Bad rule granularity.

I solicited feedback from Twitter, regarding the above, and these are the responses I got.

"Lack of keyboard for control wrt to moving from folder to folder.. GMail makes that very easy." -- @jasonish


"The difficulty in working with the OS address book - Thunderbird vs Windows 7 contacts comes to mind (complicates my iphone sync)"
-- @tomsellers


"haven't found one with a conversation view on par with gmail."
-- @jjarmoc


"1) Folders < Labels (ability to 'symlink' emails to multiple tags) 2) i use 3-4 devices to check mail 3)Gmail's thread handling"
-- @jamesjtucker

and in the interest of fairness.  I'll get on Gmail too.

Gmail
-- I want the ability to mark two conversations and make them thread together.  For instance, let's say there is a thread, then someone answers that thread, but the mail client for that person adds "UNCLASSIFIED" to the thread.  The Thread is then broken, visually, but it is still the same.  I want to be able to combine them.
-- Your IMAP implementation really sucks.  Bad.  Oh, and it's slow as hell too, almost artificially.  Seems like you really don't want people using any other email solution except for the web.
-- Drag and drop of attachments.  This should be possible in HTML5, or at least with Google Gears
-- Lack of Google Gears (and thusly, no offline gmail support) for Safari/Snow Leopard.  Can we get rid of Gears and be HTML5 compliant please?
-- Lack of Bottom Posting option.  No, addons through Greasemonkey do not count.  Want to really impress me?  Reformat an entire email (when I hit reply), to flip the thread around based upon indexing, (come on, you guys can figure that out), to read top to bottom.
Check this out Google.  Do THIS and all would be awesome -- http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/outlook-quotefix/
-- GPG/PGP support.  I don't use it, simply because it's a pain.  So I don't.  I probably would if I could.
-- The ability to filter on more headers.  Ideally, I'd love to be able to perform regex on headers.  Similar to procmail.
-- Label based signature blocks.  Or at least account based.

Tungle Makes Cross-Calendar Scheduling Simple

This is a great idea.

Tungle Makes Cross-Calendar Scheduling Simple [Calendars]

via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 9/30/09

If you're looking for a web-based application for scheduling meetings, you'll find no shortage. Want that application to sync to common calendar applications like Google Calendar, Outlook, and iCal? Prior to Tungle you were out of luck.
Tungle combines the best features of a variety of calendar syncing and meeting scheduling tools and rolls them all into one. With Tungle you can quickly jump from your existing calendar application to sending invites to your team members, checking their calendars even if you all use different applications, and optimizing everyone's schedule for the best meeting times. Check out the demonstration video below to see Tungle in action:



Tungle is a free service and is accessible by the Tungle site, an iPhone app, a Firefox plugin for Google Calendar, and a variety of apps for various social calendars.

Tungle [via Mashable]

Tungle Makes Cross-Calendar Scheduling Simple

This is a great idea.

Tungle Makes Cross-Calendar Scheduling Simple [Calendars]

via Lifehacker by Jason Fitzpatrick on 9/30/09

If you're looking for a web-based application for scheduling meetings, you'll find no shortage. Want that application to sync to common calendar applications like Google Calendar, Outlook, and iCal? Prior to Tungle you were out of luck.
Tungle combines the best features of a variety of calendar syncing and meeting scheduling tools and rolls them all into one. With Tungle you can quickly jump from your existing calendar application to sending invites to your team members, checking their calendars even if you all use different applications, and optimizing everyone's schedule for the best meeting times. Check out the demonstration video below to see Tungle in action:



Tungle is a free service and is accessible by the Tungle site, an iPhone app, a Firefox plugin for Google Calendar, and a variety of apps for various social calendars.

Tungle [via Mashable]

Rambling on Productivity and Email (Part Three)

The Calendar

The essential part of any productivity system is the calendar. Managing your time for your projects is probably one of the most vital portions to getting anything done. Without disruptions, without the cruft of the day, you can focus on your problem.

The essential problem with any environment is poorly set expectations. If you think you are going to be able to have your coworkers and boss read your mind, you are grossly mistaken. They don't know that you may be behind on a certain project, they don't know that you may need more time with whatever it is you are working on. They know what you tell them. In most big corporate environments, one of the ways they can find this out is by looking at your calendar.

I use Google calendar for my organizational skills, because that's what I have integrated into my system, its what our company uses, and it works. However, these ideas should work perfectly for your Microsoft Exchange calendaring system (or whatever calendaring system you happen to use).

Set aside some time

Begin by setting aside some time, usually Monday and Friday, to yourself. This is your time to be able to get things in the proper order and organize your thoughts into a coherent structure. I like Monday and Friday because Monday allows me to plan for the week, Friday allows me to review any last minute details that MUST be done this week, cannot wait for Monday, and gives me time to knock them out.

Obviously the times to do this on Monday are first thing in the morning. On Friday I like to set aside the hour of 3-4. I call this "Review Time". There are no meetings scheduled during this time. This is your sacred time to balance your thoughts. As David Allen says in his seminars on GTD, anything that goes on your calendar is a contract, a hard bet, a commitment. The calendar is sacred. Don't put things on your calendar you "might" do. Put things on your calendar that you are going to do. If you aren't going to do it, make it a "Todo", file it under "someday", and take a look at it in your daily review time.

Right now, go to your calendar on Monday and Friday and block off an hour to yourself, go ahead, we'll wait here.

During this time on those days, you do exactly what I stated above, and see if it helps. I find it useful to set aside, just a half hour, right after lunch to see where I was at for the day, review my To-do list, and then accomplish everything that needed to be accomplished for that day.

Do your best to schedule

You will be surprised how well this works. I ask people, even my wife, to her greater annoyance, anything that I need to be at or participate in, needs to go on my calendar. I need to remember it, and I need to be there. My calendar is how I schedule things and is my organizational tool. My Google Calendar is synced between my desktop and my iPhone, and the web (so my wife can get it). If it's not on my calendar, either I don't know about it, or I can't be there (I've declined). Make sure it's on my calendar and we'll be good. Force your coworkers to be the same way. Stick to the time limits.

Scenario: Some guy comes to your desk.

Them: "Hey Bob -(you)-, Do you have a few minutes to talk about project x?"

You: "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of something right now, let's set aside a few minutes to talk about that this afternoon (tomorrow, friday). Can you send me an invite for that at 3?"

Bam. Interruption gone, scheduled time to talk about project x, and you move on with what you were talking about. This isn't perfect. Sometimes you'll have to deal with little interruptions.

Wow. Talk about a perfect example. Seriously. Right after I finished the previous paragraph I received a phone call. Wanting to schedule a furniture delivery. Now, had I not answered the phone, it would have went to voicemail and I then I could have called them back at my convenience, scheduling the furniture delivery time at on my terms.

However, when it comes to furniture delivery, the sooner you book the delivery date, the faster you will get your stuff. So I took the call. I sat down in front of my Google calendar, blocked off the date that my furniture will be delivered. They say they are going to call the day before with the exact 3-hour window of delivery time, which is slightly annoying, but I'll deal with it. Now I know on that furniture delivery day, I will be available.

Back on topic, even though that really wasn't a deviation. Wife just called. Of course I had to take that call.

Scheduling YOUR time is on YOUR terms. Sometimes you can't help it and you have to work around other people's schedules, so you have to be flexible. But don't be flexible once you put things on the calendar. People are expecting to meet with you, you are important enough to have a meeting with and talk about a dedicated subject. Don't disrespect another persons time by saying you'll be at a meeting and then not showing up. If you have a conflict, decline the meeting.

The tricky part is the "maybe" response to a meeting invite. If have to respond with Maybe, and I try very hard not to, I write an email and explain why I replied with maybe. If the person can possibly reschedule for a more convenient time for both parties, then that is fine, however, give the person you are responding to the common courtesy o understand why you replied with Maybe. Then, maybe, then can move the meeting to a mutually beneficial time.

Example: I have a meeting at 1pm that usually runs over. If you send me a meeting invite at 2pm, I'll respond with "Maybe" -- by the way, Outlook calls this "Tentative". Then I'll write you an email saying something like this:

"Dear Bob,

I apologize for having to respond to your meeting invite with "Maybe". I have a meeting at 1pm that sometimes runs over time. If there is another time you'd like to push the meeting to, say, 2:30 or 3pm that same day, that would be good with me as well. I have an opening on my calendar at that time.

Thanks in advance,

Me"

Meetings that run over time are evil. If the time is going to run over, schedule a followup. Or ask the meeting attendees if they can stay, or need to go. If anyone needs to go, let them go. Don't disrespect their time. They didn't disrespect yours by attending your meeting.

Out of Office

I personally am not a fan of the "Out of Office" message. It's a bad security practice. Especially for the security and network personnel. It allows someone sending you an email to know that you are not in the office right now, and right now would be an excellent time to attack the network. Instead, I like to use the calendar for this. Block the time you are going to be Out of the Office out as "Out of Office". I believe in Outlook, they color the "Out of Office" time differently, purple I think. Of course this only works for people in your domain, (exchange wise), or people that have access to your calendar, (say, Google Calendar). But, I believe this to be a more secure and more polite way of handling your Out of Office. If it's important, someone will schedule a call, talk, or meeting, but you have to train your coworkers to do this. If it's not important, you'll get back to the email when you get back. Besides, if it's THAT important, they should just pick up the phone and call you.

I write these articles to give you a broad overview of what works and how to structure it. You have to apply it to your own life and situation. This method doesn't work for everyone, but it sure does work for me.

I just want to echo something that Merlin Mann has said. I hate that the default meeting time in an hour. I wish you could change that in some way. In Google Calendar, iCal, and in Outlook, the default meeting time is an hour long. I want to be able to say the default meeting time is 30 minutes. If I want to expand it, I can. But blocking a whole hour of my time? Working approx 8 hours a day, that's not very much time. Anyway, sorry, pet peeve.

Please leave comments below.

Rambling on Productivity and Email (Part Three)

The Calendar

The essential part of any productivity system is the calendar. Managing your time for your projects is probably one of the most vital portions to getting anything done. Without disruptions, without the cruft of the day, you can focus on your problem.

The essential problem with any environment is poorly set expectations. If you think you are going to be able to have your coworkers and boss read your mind, you are grossly mistaken. They don't know that you may be behind on a certain project, they don't know that you may need more time with whatever it is you are working on. They know what you tell them. In most big corporate environments, one of the ways they can find this out is by looking at your calendar.

I use Google calendar for my organizational skills, because that's what I have integrated into my system, its what our company uses, and it works. However, these ideas should work perfectly for your Microsoft Exchange calendaring system (or whatever calendaring system you happen to use).

Set aside some time

Begin by setting aside some time, usually Monday and Friday, to yourself. This is your time to be able to get things in the proper order and organize your thoughts into a coherent structure. I like Monday and Friday because Monday allows me to plan for the week, Friday allows me to review any last minute details that MUST be done this week, cannot wait for Monday, and gives me time to knock them out.

Obviously the times to do this on Monday are first thing in the morning. On Friday I like to set aside the hour of 3-4. I call this "Review Time". There are no meetings scheduled during this time. This is your sacred time to balance your thoughts. As David Allen says in his seminars on GTD, anything that goes on your calendar is a contract, a hard bet, a commitment. The calendar is sacred. Don't put things on your calendar you "might" do. Put things on your calendar that you are going to do. If you aren't going to do it, make it a "Todo", file it under "someday", and take a look at it in your daily review time.

Right now, go to your calendar on Monday and Friday and block off an hour to yourself, go ahead, we'll wait here.

During this time on those days, you do exactly what I stated above, and see if it helps. I find it useful to set aside, just a half hour, right after lunch to see where I was at for the day, review my To-do list, and then accomplish everything that needed to be accomplished for that day.

Do your best to schedule

You will be surprised how well this works. I ask people, even my wife, to her greater annoyance, anything that I need to be at or participate in, needs to go on my calendar. I need to remember it, and I need to be there. My calendar is how I schedule things and is my organizational tool. My Google Calendar is synced between my desktop and my iPhone, and the web (so my wife can get it). If it's not on my calendar, either I don't know about it, or I can't be there (I've declined). Make sure it's on my calendar and we'll be good. Force your coworkers to be the same way. Stick to the time limits.

Scenario: Some guy comes to your desk.

Them: "Hey Bob -(you)-, Do you have a few minutes to talk about project x?"

You: "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of something right now, let's set aside a few minutes to talk about that this afternoon (tomorrow, friday). Can you send me an invite for that at 3?"

Bam. Interruption gone, scheduled time to talk about project x, and you move on with what you were talking about. This isn't perfect. Sometimes you'll have to deal with little interruptions.

Wow. Talk about a perfect example. Seriously. Right after I finished the previous paragraph I received a phone call. Wanting to schedule a furniture delivery. Now, had I not answered the phone, it would have went to voicemail and I then I could have called them back at my convenience, scheduling the furniture delivery time at on my terms.

However, when it comes to furniture delivery, the sooner you book the delivery date, the faster you will get your stuff. So I took the call. I sat down in front of my Google calendar, blocked off the date that my furniture will be delivered. They say they are going to call the day before with the exact 3-hour window of delivery time, which is slightly annoying, but I'll deal with it. Now I know on that furniture delivery day, I will be available.

Back on topic, even though that really wasn't a deviation. Wife just called. Of course I had to take that call.

Scheduling YOUR time is on YOUR terms. Sometimes you can't help it and you have to work around other people's schedules, so you have to be flexible. But don't be flexible once you put things on the calendar. People are expecting to meet with you, you are important enough to have a meeting with and talk about a dedicated subject. Don't disrespect another persons time by saying you'll be at a meeting and then not showing up. If you have a conflict, decline the meeting.

The tricky part is the "maybe" response to a meeting invite. If have to respond with Maybe, and I try very hard not to, I write an email and explain why I replied with maybe. If the person can possibly reschedule for a more convenient time for both parties, then that is fine, however, give the person you are responding to the common courtesy o understand why you replied with Maybe. Then, maybe, then can move the meeting to a mutually beneficial time.

Example: I have a meeting at 1pm that usually runs over. If you send me a meeting invite at 2pm, I'll respond with "Maybe" -- by the way, Outlook calls this "Tentative". Then I'll write you an email saying something like this:

"Dear Bob,

I apologize for having to respond to your meeting invite with "Maybe". I have a meeting at 1pm that sometimes runs over time. If there is another time you'd like to push the meeting to, say, 2:30 or 3pm that same day, that would be good with me as well. I have an opening on my calendar at that time.

Thanks in advance,

Me"

Meetings that run over time are evil. If the time is going to run over, schedule a followup. Or ask the meeting attendees if they can stay, or need to go. If anyone needs to go, let them go. Don't disrespect their time. They didn't disrespect yours by attending your meeting.

Out of Office

I personally am not a fan of the "Out of Office" message. It's a bad security practice. Especially for the security and network personnel. It allows someone sending you an email to know that you are not in the office right now, and right now would be an excellent time to attack the network. Instead, I like to use the calendar for this. Block the time you are going to be Out of the Office out as "Out of Office". I believe in Outlook, they color the "Out of Office" time differently, purple I think. Of course this only works for people in your domain, (exchange wise), or people that have access to your calendar, (say, Google Calendar). But, I believe this to be a more secure and more polite way of handling your Out of Office. If it's important, someone will schedule a call, talk, or meeting, but you have to train your coworkers to do this. If it's not important, you'll get back to the email when you get back. Besides, if it's THAT important, they should just pick up the phone and call you.

I write these articles to give you a broad overview of what works and how to structure it. You have to apply it to your own life and situation. This method doesn't work for everyone, but it sure does work for me.

I just want to echo something that Merlin Mann has said. I hate that the default meeting time in an hour. I wish you could change that in some way. In Google Calendar, iCal, and in Outlook, the default meeting time is an hour long. I want to be able to say the default meeting time is 30 minutes. If I want to expand it, I can. But blocking a whole hour of my time? Working approx 8 hours a day, that's not very much time. Anyway, sorry, pet peeve.

Please leave comments below.

Rambling on Productivity and Email (Part Two)

Managing To-Dos

As I promised a follow up post to my previous blog post here.

I stated, I try to manage things through Todo lists. When I read an email that I need to take action on, I make a ToDo out of it. Simple to complex, I make a ToDo out of it. Not just emails either. If I am in a meeting and I hear an "action item" for me, I knock that out. If I get a shopping list from my wife, I put that in my Todo list as well.

There are several tools that I have evaluated and used over the years, let me go over a few of these and see if any of them help you. The one that works for me is not the one that may work for you. You have to figure it out for yourself. Make the ToDo list work for you, not you working for your ToDo list. If you find yourself spending most of your time in your ToDo list "managing it" (prioritizing, categorizing, contexting... You are doing it wrong. Managing your ToDo's should not be a ToDo within itself.)

1) Google Tasks

Google Tasks is a built in Task manager into the Gmail interface. It is accessible on the left hand side of your Gmail interface near the labels. (Look for the obvious word "Tasks"). I like this method, it's keyboard accessible, works great, and is accessible from the web.

However, There are two reasons I don't use Google Tasks. First is templates. If I want to make a standard "Group" of tasks. Say, 10 things that I must do with each client, I want to be able to template these 10 things, copy the template and use it over and over for each client. The second reason is, for some reason, right now, Google for Domains doesn't support an iPhone version of tasks. This sucks. It works in the regular Gmail, but not in Google for domains, yet. If you have the luxury of using Gmail for your primary email, I'd suggest checking out Google Tasks. Learn the keyboard shortcuts for it, and you'll whiz through it. Best feature? Being able to create a ToDo related to an email (So you can go to the ToDo and get back to the exact email). Shift-t.

2) Remember the Milk, GTDAgenda, Backpack

All three of these are web based services that you can use for ToDos. I tried several of these, however, most of these require an extra step, or an extra website to log in to and maintain. To me, that's not reducing the amount of work I have to do, that's increasing it. I shouldn't have to increase the amount of things I have to do in order to manage a ToDo list. Each of these has their own merits. I think Remember the Milk is the most extensible. (Meaning it has an iPhone app as well.) GTDAgenda was fairly nice. In the interest of Full Disclosure, I was asked to evaluate GTDAgenda and received a free account. I used it very little because of the above reasons. Backpack is overkill. It's like a Wiki, on crack.

3) Omnifocus

Or OmniOutliner.

This is what I use, it's an OSX only application, but it allows several things that I find vital. The only thing that I don't like about it is that it's a separate app on my system (As opposed to Gmail Tasks, which is built in.) If I have an email (or damn near anything on my computer) I can highlight it with my mouse, and mash a keyboard shortcut (which is customizable) and Omnifocus takes what I have highlighted and makes it a Todo. This is the best.

I am able to assign contexts and projects to everything, assign due dates, make reoccurring tasks... etc.

It also allows me to use templates, as I discussed in Number 1. I can set up a series of tasks, then copy the series of tasks by right clicking and saying "Duplicate".

It allows me to Sync between my computer and my iPhone. Now, the way this takes place is, Omnifocus takes it's DB and puts it up on MobileMe's iDisk. The iPhone, with it's accompanying app then syncs with the DB up on the iDisk. Not a big deal, but it can be a pain to have to keep two in sync. I'd rather just use Google Tasks.

Pain in the butt part? It's expensive. Stupid expensive. It's 79 dollars for the OSX app, and it's another 19.99 for the iPhone app. I think this is bull.

4) Things

This is another program similar to Omnifocus. Simpler to use. (Less complex of an interface), but also, it's 49.95 for the App, plus another 9.99 for the iPhone version. It syncs, but not with MobileMe. Your computer that has the app on the desktop must be on the same Wifi network in order to Sync. That's fairly annoying.

5) ToDo.txt

This is a shell script, basically, that allows you to simply manage ToDos in a simple fashion from the command line. You can barely do contexts and project tagging, but you can't do subordinate projects or anything like that. It's a pretty cool little tool if you are one of those people that likes to manage everything you possible can in a command line. I have several friends like that, and I like to be like that too, but this program just doesn't have enough of the features I need to be able to manage it.

6) Tasks in your email client

Outlook, Thunderbird (with addons), and Mail each have their own ToDo system.

A) Outlooks works like this. You can drag an email over to the right pane (in Office 2007), you can also drag an email down to the "tasks" icon in the left pane at the bottom of the screen. Problem with either one of these solutions is, if you move the mail out of the inbox and into a PST, poof. The ToDo is gone. Seems counter intuitive to me. Anyway...

B) Thunderbird has various plugins for Managing Todos. I didn't put many man hours into investigating the use of the ToDo system within Thunderbird, because I didn't use Thunderbird for more than about five minutes.

C) Mail.app -- This is the only Mail program on OSX that has a ToDo system worth a crap. But even it has it's own problems.

You can create a todo based off an email, highlight the text you want and tap the "Todo" button. Mail will create a Todo based on the email. This Todo is stored in a central db that is shared between Mail.app and iCal. Problem is, as of right now, there is no way to get those ToDos on your iPhone. Come on Apple. Plus Mail.app is dog slow when dealing with 200,000 emails. (And gmails imap implementation sucks)

So, currently I am using Omnifocus until the second best (Google Tasks) comes along. At which point I will probably abandon Omnifocus, even if Google Tasks doesn't allow me to template, I will gladly ditch Omnifocus for a less "sync-y" built in, Cloud managed Task manager. I paid the full retail price for both of the Omnifocus apps (basically totaling about 100 dollars for two apps... to manage Todos. (Seriously Omni Group. The Pricing?)) It's a good pair of programs, but it's a bit overweight and expensive for what its use is.

After my Todos get into my Omnifocus program, I arrange them in two methods.

1) Project

2) Context

If the Todo is work related, I put it under "Work". If the Todo is home related (ex. Get new lightbulb for Microwave), I put it under home. Context is the "Where" portion of the todo.

So if I need to email Dave about that thing we were working on, the Project will be "Work" but the Context will be "Email".

That way, if I have a few minutes, I can take a look at my Todo list under the context "Email" or "Phone" or something, and knock a few of them out. This allows me to fit in ToDos that I have time for. Which will bring me to my next post on productivity, using my Calendar. But that's for another day.

Please leave comments below.

Office Etiquette (what not to do)

How to toss your co-workers up underneath of a bus:

"John Doe has been out of the office for a few days, but I understand that John will be in this afternoon."

Lesson one: Never tell anyone when someone else will be back in the office, especially when that someone is returning from vacation! Oh, and the fact that this person (John in my example), is not coming into the office this afternoon, but is actually getting off the plane from their vacation this afternoon.

Do you really expect people to drive from the airport directly to work and check their email?

Office Etiquette (what not to do)

How to toss your co-workers up underneath of a bus:

"John Doe has been out of the office for a few days, but I understand that John will be in this afternoon."

Lesson one: Never tell anyone when someone else will be back in the office, especially when that someone is returning from vacation! Oh, and the fact that this person (John in my example), is not coming into the office this afternoon, but is actually getting off the plane from their vacation this afternoon.

Do you really expect people to drive from the airport directly to work and check their email?

Using your tools to focus

Recently I've put up a couple posts talking about refocusing on Getting things Done and making sure you are working as efficiently as you can in life.  I've focused on vim, mutt, and Mail.app.  

But what about the other apps?  Outlook being the primary one?  Basically my point in the posts was to get you thinking about what tools you use and what tools can make you more efficient in your life.  Are you using those tools to their fullest potential?  Are you using your to-do system in Outlook?  With yourself?  Are you using it with other people?  How about the calendar?  The Journal feature?  The Note system?  Are you using those?

How do you use your tools.  Can you use them better.  That's what I want to inspire you to think about.  Now, some of you will go, and you will say "hey, Joel has a thought here, let me try and use the to-do's"  But how many of you will reform the way you work around it?  

I challenge you to do so.

The other part of this post is a question for my readers.  Thunderbird.  By show of hands, how many of you use Thunderbird?  Probably alot of you judging by the statistics on my web page hits. (mostly firefox.)  Now, out of those people, how many of you use any GTD plugins for Thunderbird?  Care to share what they are?

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Getting Things Done (GTD), Mutt, and Vim

I've Googled about 100 articles in the past couple days detailing how people best use Mutt to implement their theory of how GTD works for them. I found alot of good articles, but many implemented alot of scripts and extra headers, and tagging... yuck. Way too much!

The point of GTD is to make the world and your email in particular work for you, not you work for it. I don't want to manually have to edit a "X" header everytime I want to tag an email with "Defer" or "Reply". I want to just hit a one or two keystroke combination and be done with it.
The major point of GTD is to navigate through life easier, not have alot of things pending in your mind. Get it out of your mind and get it on paper, (or whatever) and be done with
thinking about it. Just have it in a trusted bucket where you can store stuff.

So I have a different theory. First off let me preface this by saying that I do not keep my To-Do list and "Next Actions" list in Mutt. I use a VIM outline. This is an excellent way for me to keep up on how things are going with my actions simply by looking at them. I know what needs
to be done next, I know what things I am waiting on, all at a glance.  This is how I envisioned it.

My contexts are simple:

@home -- All the tasks that could be done at home, Cleaning the Garage, organizing the basement, getting the taxes together, being an awesome dad. You get the picture.

@work -- All the tasks that could be (should be, have to be) accomplished at work. Doing Timesheets, filing bug reports, answering email, talking with a coworker about a project.

@waiting -- Stuff I am waiting on someone else for. Do I need to ping them? No, but I reguarily review my @waiting list to make sure that people get back to me on items, and if they don't then I make a next action item to ping them back @work or @home.

@someday -- Someday/Maybe. All the things I'd like to accomplish someday. Clean out my Closet, Finish that Snort paper i've been working on.

@review -- Weekly/Daily tasks. This is usually the first thing I check. Things I need to do "today". If I need to do something on a particular day, I'll make an appt in iCal to do it. Nothing goes on the calendar unless it WILL get done that day. The Calendar is sacred territory. Then I make a reminder in iCal to alert me. Things I need to accomplish that are "next action items" in @home or @work, I'll simply say "check @work" in my @review list. Simple.

@phone -- Phone calls I need to make. These can be done anywhere.  Whenever I have a chance to do them, I'll make a couple phone calls.  Things rarely go in there because I basically loathe talking on the phone. I'd rather do everything through IRC, IM, or email. I keep records of stuff this way.

That's it. Under the contexts, if I have a particular project I'll indent it. For example.
@home
Clean Garage
-- Go to Lowe's
-- Buy Shelves
-- Assemble Shelves
-- Make time to clean Garage
-- Clean Garage

Simple enough. When I indent once, it's a project, any indents under the project are next action items. Now, next to the Next action items, I have lines. "--". Let me define my lines.

-- To do.
++ Cancelled.
\- Done
-> Deferred or assigned to someone else
?- Waiting on this.

That's it. No need to get tricky. Now I can easily glance at my list and tell what needs to be done, what has been done, and what I am waiting on.

KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid!

Now, for the other part. Email, mutt (or muttng -- which I use) and how I have it implemented.

Before I started the GTD philsophy, I used the folder method. You know the one.. "All email from Sourcefire goes in the Sourcefire folder." "All email from snort-users list goes in the snort-users list folder." What do you wind up with? A hundred folders! This isn't the most
efficient way to do anything. So I had to get away from that. I started thinking, what is the most efficient way of sorting email? I got a hold of a friend of mine Emory, and asked him what he did (he's a big GTD guy as well), and he gave me a couple thoughts. So I took his ideas, combined them with a couple of my ideas, and here we are.

I made 4 folders.
_Read -- Emails I have read.
_Reply -- Emails I need to reply to, but it will take me over 2 minutes to do so. (GTD's philosophy is, if it takes >2 minutes to do something, you need to alot some time to do it. If it takes <2>

_Waiting -- Emails that I am waiting on someone else to get back to me about the contents on.

_Defer -- Emails that I assigned to someone else but I need to stay in on until completion (things rarely go here).

I have another folder called "lists" that I already had. Under the folder lists I had about 20 subfolders with all the listservers I subscribe to. This.. was too much for easy sorting.

First thing I did was move all the email from all the subfolders under "lists" and put it in "lists". Of course, I wound up with about 13,000 emails in here, but who cares? It's all in context and it will make more sense in a second.
Second thing I did was change all my procmail recipes (or rules) to instead of putting everything in subfolders of "lists", just dump it all in "lists".
Third thing I did was get rid of all the auto-processing rules to sort emails by sender. I had rules in there, if they came from sourcefire.com to put into a folder called sourcefire. If it came from apple.com or mac.com, put it in apple. Too much. Put it all in the inbox. Pretty
simple so far.

The next thing I did, since I am going to have more email coming into my inbox now, is to have a way to easily process it. I wanted to be able to read an email, mark it, and know exactly where it is. "Hey that email from Billy-bob, is it in sourcefire? is it in snort-users? In defer? Where
the hell did I put that". Spotlight on the mac makes this very nice, however, I am using mutt. So I needed a better way. Finally I came up with my answer. Macros. I wanted to be able to mash a key or two and have my email sort automatically after I get done reading it. So I made
some muttng macros.
macro index,pager \1 "=_Read" "Save Message to _Read"
macro index,pager \2 "=_Reply" "Save Message to _reply"
macro index,pager \3 "=_Waiting" "Save Message to _waiting"
macro index,pager \4 "=_Defer" "Save Message to _defer"
macro index,pager \5 "=lists" "Save Message to Lists"
macro index,pager \6 "=spam" "Move Message to spam"

Now, when I mash "esc 1" the email is copied to _Read and marked for deletion in Inbox. No selecting the folder, no hitting "yes" no hitting enter. I just mash Esc-1. Done.
Same thing with 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I don't have to change headers or anything. They are sorted by folder, and I don't have to worry about it. I use the sidebar patch (built into muttng) to see how many emails I have in each folder at a glance. If you use mutt and you don't use the
sidebar, I suggest a look. Very handy.

That's it. In my sidebar I have 6 folders. Now my workflow is simple.

Email comes in, do I need to respond, or assign it to someone else? Yes or No?   If yes, will the response take longer than two minutes. If Yes, file to _Reply, if No, respond. If I do not need to respond file to _Read. If I need to assign it to someone else, forward it. If I need to
track it, the email goes to _defer until tracking is done, then it goes to _read.

All listserv traffic goes to lists. I check this a couple times a day just to skim through.

The spam folder is for spam (duh). And I get ALOT of spam. Fortunately for me, I have built some really bullet-proof spam rules in procmail and they do 95% of the sorting for me. However. Everyone once in awhile, a real email will get sent to spam (empty subjects, people who write in all caps, people who send me subjects with all Caps, or a whole bunch of
!!!!!).

The only other folder that is automatically filed is a folder called "big". All emails that have attachments that are over 3 mb/s in size go to this folder. This rarely happens and 100% of the time people will ask me "Hey I just sent you an email with a bunch of pictures in it, did you get it?"  I'll go check big. Done.

I think this system will work for me. Let me know if any of it works out for you.

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Getting Things Done (GTD), Mutt, and Vim

I've Googled about 100 articles in the past couple days detailing how people best use Mutt to implement their theory of how GTD works for them. I found alot of good articles, but many implemented alot of scripts and extra headers, and tagging... yuck. Way too much!

The point of GTD is to make the world and your email in particular work for you, not you work for it. I don't want to manually have to edit a "X" header everytime I want to tag an email with "Defer" or "Reply". I want to just hit a one or two keystroke combination and be done with it.
The major point of GTD is to navigate through life easier, not have alot of things pending in your mind. Get it out of your mind and get it on paper, (or whatever) and be done with thinking about it. Just have it in a trusted bucket where you can store stuff.

So I have a different theory. First off let me preface this by saying that I do not keep my To-Do list and "Next Actions" list in Mutt. I use a VIM outline. This is an excellent way for me to keep up on how things are going with my actions simply by looking at them. I know what needs
to be done next, I know what things I am waiting on, all at a glance.  This is how I envisioned it.

My contexts are simple:

@home -- All the tasks that could be done at home, Cleaning the Garage, organizing the basement, getting the taxes together, being an awesome dad. You get the picture.

@work -- All the tasks that could be (should be, have to be) accomplished at work. Doing Timesheets, filing bug reports, answering email, talking with a coworker about a project.

@waiting -- Stuff I am waiting on someone else for. Do I need to ping them? No, but I reguarily review my @waiting list to make sure that people get back to me on items, and if they don't then I make a next action item to ping them back @work or @home.

@someday -- Someday/Maybe. All the things I'd like to accomplish someday. Clean out my Closet, Finish that Snort paper i've been working on.

@review -- Weekly/Daily tasks. This is usually the first thing I check. Things I need to do "today". If I need to do something on a particular day, I'll make an appt in iCal to do it. Nothing goes on the calendar unless it WILL get done that day. The Calendar is sacred territory. Then I make a reminder in iCal to alert me. Things I need to accomplish that are "next action items" in @home or @work, I'll simply say "check @work" in my @review list. Simple.

@phone -- Phone calls I need to make. These can be done anywhere.  Whenever I have a chance to do them, I'll make a couple phone calls.  Things rarely go in there because I basically loathe talking on the phone. I'd rather do everything through IRC, IM, or email. I keep records of stuff this way.

That's it. Under the contexts, if I have a particular project I'll indent it. For example.
@home
Clean Garage
-- Go to Lowe's
-- Buy Shelves
-- Assemble Shelves
-- Make time to clean Garage
-- Clean Garage

Simple enough. When I indent once, it's a project, any indents under the project are next action items. Now, next to the Next action items, I have lines. "--". Let me define my lines.

-- To do.
++ Cancelled.
\- Done
-> Deferred or assigned to someone else
?- Waiting on this.

That's it. No need to get tricky. Now I can easily glance at my list and tell what needs to be done, what has been done, and what I am waiting on.

KISS principle. Keep It Simple Stupid!

Now, for the other part. Email, mutt (or muttng -- which I use) and how I have it implemented.

Before I started the GTD philsophy, I used the folder method. You know the one.. "All email from Sourcefire goes in the Sourcefire folder." "All email from snort-users list goes in the snort-users list folder." What do you wind up with? A hundred folders! This isn't the most
efficient way to do anything. So I had to get away from that. I started thinking, what is the most efficient way of sorting email? I got a hold of a friend of mine Emory, and asked him what he did (he's a big GTD guy as well), and he gave me a couple thoughts. So I took his ideas, combined them with a couple of my ideas, and here we are.

I made 3 folders.
Archive -- Emails I have read.
Listservs -- Emails from Listservers, I don't read these as often and all the listserv traffic is put into this folder on the server.

Waiting -- Emails that I am waiting on someone else to get back to me about the contents on.

First thing I did was move all the email from all the lists under "listservs". Of course, I wound up with about 13,000 emails in here, but who cares? It's all in context and it will make more sense in a second.

Second thing I did was change all my procmail recipes (or rules) to instead of putting everything in subfolders of "lists", just dump it all in "listservs".
Third thing I did was get rid of all the auto-processing rules to sort emails by sender. I had rules in there, if they came from sourcefire.com to put into a folder called sourcefire. If it came from apple.com or mac.com, put it in apple. Too much. Put it all in the inbox. Pretty
simple so far.

The next thing I did, since I am going to have more email coming into my inbox now, is to have a way to easily process it. I wanted to be able to read an email, mark it, and know exactly where it is. "Hey that email from Billy-bob, is it in sourcefire? is it in snort-users? In defer? Where the hell did I put that". Spotlight on the mac makes this very nice, however, I am using mutt. So I needed a better way. Finally I came up with my answer. Macros. I wanted to be able to mash a key or two and have my email sort automatically after I get done reading it. So I made some muttng macros.
macro index,pager \e1 "<copy-message>=Archive\ny<delete-message>" "Save Message to Archive"
macro index,pager \e2 "<copy-message>=Listservs\ny<delete-message>" "Save Message to Listservs"
macro index,pager \e3 "<copy-message>=Waiting\ny<delete-message>" "Save Message to Waiting"


Now, when I mash "esc 1" the email is copied to Archive and marked for deletion in Inbox. No selecting the folder, no hitting "yes" no hitting enter. I just mash Esc-1. Done.

Same thing with 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I don't have to change headers or anything. They are sorted by folder, and I don't have to worry about it. I use the sidebar patch (built into muttng) to see how many emails I have in each folder at a glance. If you use mutt and you don't use the
sidebar, I suggest a look. Very handy.

That's it. In my sidebar I have 6 folders. Now my workflow is simple.

Email comes in, do I need to respond, or assign it to someone else? Yes or No?   If yes, will the response take longer than two minutes. If Yes, file to Archive, if No, respond. If I do not need to respond file to Archive. If I need to assign it to someone else, forward it. If I need to
track it, the email goes to Archive and I create a todo in Omnifocus to track it until tracking is done, then it goes to Archive.

All listserv traffic goes to listservs. I check this a couple times a day just to skim through.

The spam folder is for spam (duh). And I get ALOT of spam. Fortunately for me, I have built some really bullet-proof spam rules in procmail and they do 95% of the sorting for me. However. Everyone once in awhile, a real email will get sent to spam (empty subjects, people who write in all caps, people who send me subjects with all Caps, or a whole bunch of "!!!!!").

I think this system will work for me. Let me know if any of it works out for you.

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Mac versus Windows vulnerability stats for 2007

byte_bucket over in the #pauldotcom IRC channel turned me onto this article, simply because I am a self proclaimed Apple fanboy. Sounds good, I don't mind, I like it when people point me to articles. I read alot of news during the day, but sometimes I don't get to see all the news articles.

Anyway, George Ou writes on zdnet.com an article comparing the amount of vulnerabilities for XP, Vista, and OSX. At first glance we look at this column comparison and say "holy crap, osx had a hell of alot more vulnerabilities than Vista or XP combined!"

True. Now, in my usual Microsoft punditry and OSX defender stance, let me point out the less obvious in these three operating systems.

1) OSX hasn't had to deal with a bunch of hackers before, now that it's being increasingly targeted, especially Quicktime, Apple is dealing with it.

2) XP and Vista are closed platforms. Apple, save for their internal binaries, is pretty much open. You can see how it all works.

3) and probably the most critical, OSX is built, and contains a TON of open source software. Cups, apache, pcre, mysql, the list goes on and on and on.

So not only does Apple have to patch their own stuff, but they have to wait for the open source community to patch, then get the communities patch, tie it into their products, test test test test and test, then release their own patch. Makes sense so far right? OSX Server even contains software owned by my company. Sourcefire. OSX Server contains ClamAV.

Are there more vulnerabilities in OSX then there are in Windows? Yes. But you are comparing apples (no pun intended, okay, well, slightly) and oranges. Windows has 94% marketshare! Just one vulnerability for Windows has the potential to cause alot more damage than 30 vulnerabilities for OSX.

Then you have to look at the security models of the two. OSX, most everything runs in "userland". Whereas in Windows, applications and services run at alot of different permissions, system, admin, user, etc...

One thing I don't like about Leopard is the same thing I didn't like about Tiger. The firewall. There is no "DENY ALL". There is a "Deny all, um.. except stuff that will break osx". Which is fine, as long as there aren't any vulnerabilities in things like mDNSResponder. (port 5353) But, there have been remote vulns in mDNSResponder! The other thing I don't like about the Leopard firewall? It's OFF by default. Granted, there is only one port open by default in OSX (5353), as opposed to Windows where there are at least 3.

So, yes, OSX has more vulnerabilities then Windows, but does it matter?

UPDATE: From the comments: iamnowonmai says "I would like to see a list of all the vulnerabilities in Xthe third-party software that people commonly use on XP. Since Acrobat is not a part of the OS, it doesn't count? Or Word? Outlook? And at least the third-party software gets updated on a Mac. How many fools are out there still using Acrobat version 4?"

Brings up a good point. Windows doesn't have to patch all the "other" software that is on it's system. Apple does. Apple includes alot of software to make their user experience better and more seamless. Windows relies on 3rd party developers for this. Say what you will, but these are things you need to take into thought when you read this article.

Outlook and Mail.app

At the client I am working at, they actually use the Outlook calendar how it is supposed to be used. Scheduling appointments, conference calls, and inviting people to them, using the Accept, Decline..etc buttons within Outlook to actually schedule conference calls.

I am baffled by the use of this technology, since most offices that I’ve worked at don’t use Calendars on their computers as they are supposed to. I have no idea why this is so hard for people to grasp.

Anyway, I have noticed that when people send me an invite in Outlook and I receive it in Mail.app, it basically looks like this:

When: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:30 PM-9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Which, is annoying. I want it to look like an iCal icon, allowing me to click on it (or even do what it’s supposed to and automatically import into iCal) and add it into iCal. Well I Googled.

Found these two: OMiC and MailTags, but I didn’t want to install an app. Why should I have to install a third party app!? i don’t want to do that. So I started looking some more, and decided I should poke around the menus. After looking for a bit I found that by hitting the “Command-[“ key combination Mail.app would switch the format of the mail around and I got what I wanted. No third party app.

Why isn’t it ALL that easy?

Outlook and Mail.app

At the client I am working at, they actually use the Outlook calendar how it is supposed to be used. Scheduling appointments, conference calls, and inviting people to them, using the Accept, Decline..etc buttons within Outlook to actually schedule conference calls.

I am baffled by the use of this technology, since most offices that I’ve worked at don’t use Calendars on their computers as they are supposed to. I have no idea why this is so hard for people to grasp.

Anyway, I have noticed that when people send me an invite in Outlook and I receive it in Mail.app, it basically looks like this:

When: Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:30 PM-9:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada).
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Which, is annoying. I want it to look like an iCal icon, allowing me to click on it (or even do what it’s supposed to and automatically import into iCal) and add it into iCal. Well I Googled.

Found these two: OMiC and MailTags, but I didn’t want to install an app. Why should I have to install a third party app!? i don’t want to do that. So I started looking some more, and decided I should poke around the menus. After looking for a bit I found that by hitting the “Command-[“ key combination Mail.app would switch the format of the mail around and I got what I wanted. No third party app.

Why isn’t it ALL that easy?

WWDC

Well, as you can probably guess, alot of people have written me asking what I think about the stuff that Mr. Jobs presented this morning at the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in San Francisco, CA.

In case you are sleeping in a cave, he announced a few things: A new desktop, new Finder, Safari on Windows, Dashboard, Time Machine, Spaces, blah blah, and some other stuff.. Let me talk about a few of these

New Desktop: Thank God. Unified them, transparent menu bar, reflective Dock. Stacks? Um, okay. I’ll use it, it’ll be nice, but didn’t someone else have that?

New Finder: THANK GOD. The present Finder sucks, so I am glad they did this. However, it occurred to me that some of the stuff like searches that are for ‘Today’ and ‘Yesterday’ can already be done with Smart Folders in Tiger. Seriously, give it a shot. I’ll wait.. Well, maybe I won’t. The things I did like alot were the features to be able to instantly search via Spotlight and ‘browse’ via Finder the other computers on my lan (which you can do now, it’s just alot better in Leopard), and the ‘Back to my Mac’ feature. The ability to connect to your home PC no matter where you are. NICE. I will be using THAT one alot. Cover Flow? mmm.. okay. We’ll see.

Quicklook: Nice. The ability to look at files w/out having to open their app. Nice.

iChat: Nothing new here except the picture superimposing. Kinda nice. I already use iChat alot, so these features will be nice. I use iChat to communicate w/ my wife and baby while I am on the road. Makes up for me being gone (a little bit).

Safari on Windows: More on this later, but this is kinda cool.

Dashboard: Steve, we saw this last year. Boring.

Time Machine: Nice feature, except, again... we saw this last year. Boring.

Spaces: Multiple Desktops? Um, how long have Linux/other *nix’s had this? A long time? yes. How did Mac make it better? They made it prettier. That’s all. Boring.

All the other stuff: Boring. I’ll talk about what I think about Safari on Windows in a sec.


Things that WEREN’T Covered, and probably should have:

Mail -- Yes, we saw a bunch of this last year, Stationary (whoop de do, Outlook has had stationary for years, and it’s irritating, Apple just made it easier to use and prettier) However, Mail supports Notes and ToDo’s now (this we knew last year) it also integrates RSS feeds (nice), and it auto-recognizes Addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses in the text of an email and allows you to auto-create an Address Book entry for that person (nice). It also recognizes dates and auto-creates (with the help of a drop down) events in iCal. Nice. Watch the video linked to see. Leopard++

iCal -- Another one of my daily apps, iCal got better. Inline editing (instead of in the side PAIN -- pane), unified interface, nice. Like it. Leopard++

Parental Controls -- Nice. Alot better. I don’t know how this lines up against Vista, but this will be a welcome addition. Leopard++

Boot Camp -- Ehh.. Kind of expected native Windows apps running parallel w/ OSX ones. Not having to reboot to use Windows Apps. I tried to predict this, apparently the Leopard developers don’t read my blog.

Photo Booth -- Ehh. I don’t use it. I don’t care.

DVD Player -- Good. The other one was ‘just okay’

Overall -- okay. I’ll buy it for 129.00.

Now, why do I think Jobs introduced Safari for Windows. Lets look at the situation here. Let’s say Windows people are afraid to switch to a mac because they don’t know how to operated the interface. Okay. Safari and iTunes are the Mac apps on Windows. Both are different in their own special way, each having a nice interface.

The new Finder in Leopard is just like iTunes. Compare em, go ahead. Safari is exactly the same on both platforms.

IMHO -- I think Apple is making a play here for switchers. Don’t be afraid to switch to OSX, have you used iTunes before? Then you know OSX. Done. Everything in OSX will look like an app you are already familiar with.. okay? No more excuses. Oh, you have an app that doesn’t run on OSX? Boot camp, thanks.

I think this is targeted at the potential switcher audience. Good luck.

I’ll still buy Leopard, and I’ll still buy the iPhone. I like them both. But I am buying Leopard for the Back to my mac, intra-network computer access in Finder, Time Machine, Mail, and the new iChat. That’s it.

What did you guys think?

WWDC

Well, as you can probably guess, alot of people have written me asking what I think about the stuff that Mr. Jobs presented this morning at the WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) in San Francisco, CA.

In case you are sleeping in a cave, he announced a few things: A new desktop, new Finder, Safari on Windows, Dashboard, Time Machine, Spaces, blah blah, and some other stuff.. Let me talk about a few of these

New Desktop: Thank God. Unified them, transparent menu bar, reflective Dock. Stacks? Um, okay. I’ll use it, it’ll be nice, but didn’t someone else have that?

New Finder: THANK GOD. The present Finder sucks, so I am glad they did this. However, it occurred to me that some of the stuff like searches that are for ‘Today’ and ‘Yesterday’ can already be done with Smart Folders in Tiger. Seriously, give it a shot. I’ll wait.. Well, maybe I won’t. The things I did like alot were the features to be able to instantly search via Spotlight and ‘browse’ via Finder the other computers on my lan (which you can do now, it’s just alot better in Leopard), and the ‘Back to my Mac’ feature. The ability to connect to your home PC no matter where you are. NICE. I will be using THAT one alot. Cover Flow? mmm.. okay. We’ll see.

Quicklook: Nice. The ability to look at files w/out having to open their app. Nice.

iChat: Nothing new here except the picture superimposing. Kinda nice. I already use iChat alot, so these features will be nice. I use iChat to communicate w/ my wife and baby while I am on the road. Makes up for me being gone (a little bit).

Safari on Windows: More on this later, but this is kinda cool.

Dashboard: Steve, we saw this last year. Boring.

Time Machine: Nice feature, except, again... we saw this last year. Boring.

Spaces: Multiple Desktops? Um, how long have Linux/other *nix’s had this? A long time? yes. How did Mac make it better? They made it prettier. That’s all. Boring.

All the other stuff: Boring. I’ll talk about what I think about Safari on Windows in a sec.


Things that WEREN’T Covered, and probably should have:

Mail -- Yes, we saw a bunch of this last year, Stationary (whoop de do, Outlook has had stationary for years, and it’s irritating, Apple just made it easier to use and prettier) However, Mail supports Notes and ToDo’s now (this we knew last year) it also integrates RSS feeds (nice), and it auto-recognizes Addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses in the text of an email and allows you to auto-create an Address Book entry for that person (nice). It also recognizes dates and auto-creates (with the help of a drop down) events in iCal. Nice. Watch the video linked to see. Leopard++

iCal -- Another one of my daily apps, iCal got better. Inline editing (instead of in the side PAIN -- pane), unified interface, nice. Like it. Leopard++

Parental Controls -- Nice. Alot better. I don’t know how this lines up against Vista, but this will be a welcome addition. Leopard++

Boot Camp -- Ehh.. Kind of expected native Windows apps running parallel w/ OSX ones. Not having to reboot to use Windows Apps. I tried to predict this, apparently the Leopard developers don’t read my blog.

Photo Booth -- Ehh. I don’t use it. I don’t care.

DVD Player -- Good. The other one was ‘just okay’

Overall -- okay. I’ll buy it for 129.00.

Now, why do I think Jobs introduced Safari for Windows. Lets look at the situation here. Let’s say Windows people are afraid to switch to a mac because they don’t know how to operated the interface. Okay. Safari and iTunes are the Mac apps on Windows. Both are different in their own special way, each having a nice interface.

The new Finder in Leopard is just like iTunes. Compare em, go ahead. Safari is exactly the same on both platforms.

IMHO -- I think Apple is making a play here for switchers. Don’t be afraid to switch to OSX, have you used iTunes before? Then you know OSX. Done. Everything in OSX will look like an app you are already familiar with.. okay? No more excuses. Oh, you have an app that doesn’t run on OSX? Boot camp, thanks.

I think this is targeted at the potential switcher audience. Good luck.

I’ll still buy Leopard, and I’ll still buy the iPhone. I like them both. But I am buying Leopard for the Back to my mac, intra-network computer access in Finder, Time Machine, Mail, and the new iChat. That’s it.

What did you guys think?

Are CAC (Common Access Cards) worth it?

A buddy of mine Richard Bejtlich, a known security blogger and consultant, had this article on his blog... I made a big long comment about it.. displayed below, and linked above...

--- begin ---

Yes. The CAC is used for signing on, email signing and encryption, web authentication, basically anything that can be done, or is done with a certificate.

It's only being used in NIPR (Unclassified) systems. It has a magnetic strip on the back that is blank, and can be coded for swipe doors at whatever location you are currently working at.. (problem is, most DOD facilities have proximity cards).

Could this be implemented in a commercial setting? Yes. But at what cost? What what expense? What do you gain out of it? When I worked for DOD, all I got out of the deal was a headache... implementation, it became our ID, which.. only SOME people accepted (like, the gate guards on post wanted our Drivers License sometimes -- grrrr) going to get a new one every three years, using it for sign-on, using it to get in the building. Here's the kicker. Say you left it in your computer at night, your computer would screensaver lock after a while, no problem.. but you couldn't get back in the building the next day!

Annoying is the key. I never liked it. The Email signing and authentication never worked across all platforms with ease. Doesn't work with ALL email clients. (and IMO, trying to say something like "well everyone MUST use OUTLOOK" is not an answer, it's a 'way out'.) Ours didn't work with sign on to the network. The only feature about the CAC that I DID like, is when I walked away from my computer, I took the CAC out of the reader, and viola... my computer locked.

That was about it. Now. You know whats kinda cool (but involves us going back to terminals), is Sun's (yes Sun Microsystems, as much as I hate Sun...) card that you can carry from machine to machine and wherever you plug it in.. you can call up YOUR desktop. That's a descent idea. However, no one likes dummy terminals. I digress.

Could it be done? Yes. Is it worth it? No. Not in my opinion.