Microsoft opens source code to Russian secret service

Microsoft opens source code to Russian secret service | Security | ZDNet UK.

The above is a link to ZDNet on the fact that Microsoft has signed a deal with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) access to Windows Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, SQL Server, and Windows 7.

The thing to remember about this deal is, this is nothing new...  from the article:

"The agreement is an extension to a deal Microsoft struck with the Russian government in 2002 to share source code for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2000, said Vedomosti."

I'm not even sure that the United States Government has access to Microsoft's Source Code, although it stands to reason... If the Russians have it, the US has it too.

Inbox Zero is fail? Wrong.

Alyssa Gregory, blogger at sitepoint, clearly doesn't get it.

It = Inbox Zero, she says it can't be done.:

Merlin Mann, the de-facto creator of Inbox Zero offered a nice rebuttal, basically saying, "you clearly don't get it."

Then, Alyssa writes another post, basically saying "Uh, yeah, it still won't work."

Of course, this isn't my fight, it's Merlin's, however, as a devout follower of Inbox Zero, relying on it constantly as my day in and day out way of staying sane, I offered this rebuttal, which are basically my feelings about email.  (Which I doubt she'll post, but whatever.)  Here it is.

Merlin, you are still the man.

I believe you are still missing the point. The point in Inbox Zero is to become a “decider” and a “do-er” instead of an email processor. You receive email, you make a decision about it’s purpose, either A) Respond right now if it takes less than 2 minutes, B) If it takes longer than two minutes, Put it into a folder to reply later, C) Make a TODO to DO the thing that is in the email, and save the email, or D) Delete it.

Is the email that is sitting in my inbox right now, that I am staring at, actionable? Do I need to physically do something with the information that is front of me? Yes? Make to-do todo it, then DO it. No? Either file it, or delete it.
Follow this process until you hit ZERO emails in your inbox.
Then CLOSE your email. CLOSE it. And go DO the things that you made todo’s to, do.
Even if those todo’s involve answering the email that you put into a folder under “B", you need to DO them. Only check email about twice or three times a day, and you will be much more productive.
The point in Inbox zero is to process to ZERO, then CLOSE the inbox for the time being and GO CREATE. GO CREATE YOUR WORK BEING DONE.

Then, later, open it back up.

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

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.

Microsoft does something unoriginal

Blatantly stolen from TUAW.

“Microsoft's announcement that the company will open stores near the locations of existing Apple retail outlets came as no surprise to many people. After all, why not try to get a little overflow traffic from Apple Stores and sell a few Zunes in the process? Perhaps they'll have charming and pleasant retail employees like Lauren or Sheila from the "laptop hunter" ads...

TechFlash is reporting that the company has hired George Blankenship, former Apple real estate chief, to consult on securing prime locations for the Microsoft stores. Blankenship moved to Apple from The Gap, and he joins former Wal-Mart executive David Porter, who is now Microsoft's corporate VP of retail stores.

By consulting for Microsoft rather than being a direct hire, Blankenship can skirt many of the issues brought on by the NCA (non-competitive agreement) that all Apple executives sign. The demographic information that Blankenship might use to pinpoint Microsoft store locations is available publicly, and the techniques used by Apple to successfully open retail locations have been widely discussed since the first Apple Store opened in 2001.

While the locations, products carried, and general look and feel of the Microsoft retail outlets are still under wraps, the first stores are expected to open prior to the October 22nd launch date for Windows 7.”

Commentary:

Okay, Microsoft, seriously? Can you honestly think of absolutely nothing original in your strategy? Ever? You hire Apple’s guy to set up your stores. Oh, and from the slides that have been leaked your stores are going to be exactly laid out just like an Apple Store, in fact, you use pictures from an Apple Store for reference on how you are going to do it. Genius Bar = Guru Bar? Come on!!

Seriously? I am highly disappointed in you, and so will everyone that comes in your store. Especially if you put them close to Apple Stores. The public is not that stupid. You can try and trick them into thinking that you invented the GUI, or Spotlight, or this that and the other thing that you copied from Apple, but let me tell you what. When a consumer is standing in a Mall, and the Mall has an Apple store and a Windows store near each other, and they look exactly the same, they are going to know you are a bunch of cheap rip off douchebags.

Please, just do SOMETHING original? You know, like push Office 2010 to the web! You know, like no one has ever done that before!

Microsoft does something unoriginal

Blatantly stolen from TUAW.

“Microsoft's announcement that the company will open stores near the locations of existing Apple retail outlets came as no surprise to many people. After all, why not try to get a little overflow traffic from Apple Stores and sell a few Zunes in the process? Perhaps they'll have charming and pleasant retail employees like Lauren or Sheila from the "laptop hunter" ads...

TechFlash is reporting that the company has hired George Blankenship, former Apple real estate chief, to consult on securing prime locations for the Microsoft stores. Blankenship moved to Apple from The Gap, and he joins former Wal-Mart executive David Porter, who is now Microsoft's corporate VP of retail stores.

By consulting for Microsoft rather than being a direct hire, Blankenship can skirt many of the issues brought on by the NCA (non-competitive agreement) that all Apple executives sign. The demographic information that Blankenship might use to pinpoint Microsoft store locations is available publicly, and the techniques used by Apple to successfully open retail locations have been widely discussed since the first Apple Store opened in 2001.

While the locations, products carried, and general look and feel of the Microsoft retail outlets are still under wraps, the first stores are expected to open prior to the October 22nd launch date for Windows 7.”

Commentary:

Okay, Microsoft, seriously? Can you honestly think of absolutely nothing original in your strategy? Ever? You hire Apple’s guy to set up your stores. Oh, and from the slides that have been leaked your stores are going to be exactly laid out just like an Apple Store, in fact, you use pictures from an Apple Store for reference on how you are going to do it. Genius Bar = Guru Bar? Come on!!

Seriously? I am highly disappointed in you, and so will everyone that comes in your store. Especially if you put them close to Apple Stores. The public is not that stupid. You can try and trick them into thinking that you invented the GUI, or Spotlight, or this that and the other thing that you copied from Apple, but let me tell you what. When a consumer is standing in a Mall, and the Mall has an Apple store and a Windows store near each other, and they look exactly the same, they are going to know you are a bunch of cheap rip off douchebags.

Please, just do SOMETHING original? You know, like push Office 2010 to the web! You know, like no one has ever done that before!

Moving my network around

Today I moved my network around, so just a quick article about why, or what was the point.

It’s funny the little noises that irritate you. For me, there are a few, high pitches whines, buzzing sounds that are constant, when my wife clicks her nails together, and computer fans.

In my office, I have a PowerMac (Dual Core, with Dual Fans), a Linux box that I do a lot of Snort Testing on, and a 1U server that is older than my daughter.

The 1U was moved to the basement a long time ago, simply because the fans on the thing were so incredibly loud, you couldn’t sit in the same room as the machine. It was crazy. I can’t imagine a server room full of these things. The fan ran constantly too. Not when the processors got hot, but all the time. So very irritating! I moved this server to the basement by drilling a hole in the floor in my office and running a Cat 6 cable down there. Simple enough.

That was about a year ago.

As I’ve stated before on the blog, and on twitter, and go knows where else -- I’ve moved totally to using laptops as my primary machines now. I keep everything “in the cloud” except for things like Pictures, (in iPhoto), Music, (in iTunes), and random misc software.

I use my iDisk for my Document and File Storage, and am starting to use Google Docs for collaboration on documents. I use Evernote for jotting taking notes and keep everything in one place. I use Google mail for my email (eliminating the need for a local client), and I use Google Calendar for my Calendaring. (As opposed to iCal.)

So my needs for everyday computing are rather lightweight. Last week my company replaced my aging PowerBook G4 with a brand new MacBook Pro. I started to do the “laptop dance”, you know the one, where you transfer years and years of data that you have kept for God knows why over to your new computer. After about an hour of doing this, I decided that this was inefficient and stupid and stopped. Moved everything to things like iDisk and Evernote, and eliminated the need to have everything locally. (Technically I do have everything locally, it’s just synced for me.)

I brought my new MBP into the office here at the house and stared at my PowerMac for awhile.

My Powermac has served me well for years. It’s a Dual 2.0 PowerMac G5, liquid cooled, and has 4 Gigs of RAM in it. This thing is still pretty fast, and I bought it in 2004/5 ish timeframe. But what did I use it for?

It’s sitting here connected to my 20in Apple Cinema Display -- which by the way, Apple stopped making recently -- keyboard and mouse connected to it. But how often do I use this thing? How about, almost never! I’d rather use my laptops, because then I can wander all over the house, go to Starbucks, Panera, whatever.

So I thought for a while. I already have a Cat 6 cable running to the basement, what if I relocated all my computers, switches, and everything to the basement, and only keep my wireless access points (with their associated Ethernet cables plugged in) upstairs?

So I moved everything. Powermac, Linux servers, switches, hubs (for testing), downstairs. I even moved my FiOS connection end point downstairs, (which required re-running the cable, etc.).

All I have in my office now is my MBP, with the 20in Monitor attached to it, and I have my personal older model MBP sitting next to it. (It’s my “grab my computer and go to the bathroom for reading material” computer.)

You can hear a pin drop in my office now, and it is much less distracting.

I recommend, if you can relegate your computing devices out of your office, into another room, closet, floor, attic, or whatever, do it. It’s awesome.