It may then come to no surprise to you that I was excited to hear Merlin Mann was giving a talk at MacWorld. Earlier today I watched his talk "Toward Patterns for Creativity" on youtube and while I didn't find it to have much content I wasn't already familiar with, one thing stood out: The Banker's Box.
The Banker's Box is a place where everything relating to a project (or context) goes. This way, while juggling several projects it's always possible to find the materials you need. A great idea in the physical world but I wish I had something which could meet that criteria in the virtual one. As it stands I'm using several different applications, each with a specific type of content.
For example, I've been using Evernote as a way to collect notes for a while now, but as an all encompassing "Banker's Box" solution, it's fallen short. The main issue seems to be that the ways I can manage content with Evernote are very limited. These limitations fall into a few categories and are shared by every single piece of software I use:
The first is grabbing content. While Evernote is fantastic at grabbing a chunk of a webpage, it is significantly less good at doing the same inside a PDF file. It can hold any kind of text and so it's entirely possible to put code into it, but it lacks any syntax highlighting and so the code becomes difficult to read. Also, it integrates with almost nothing and is very proprietary. C'mon already Evernote, throw us a bone here. If you were actually able to get a plugin system going and some content sharing standards in place, I'd be willing to actually give you money.
My ideal content collection application would be able to reach into any app I was using, grab my selected content and associate with it the name of the app and the file/location the content was from. I also want to be able to click on something in my content manager and have it take me directly to that data if it's available. While you are at it, also cache the full source of the content. Disk space is super cheap.
The second is management of content. Evernote has a terrible interface for managing a large number of notebooks. I'm only up to 8 and it's already gotten difficult to deal with. It also does not allow any kind of grouping of notebooks. What Evernote needs is contexts. You put notebooks into a context and when you change to that context, it's all right there for you. I also want it to be easy to change contexts on the fly without having to navigate a GUI. I rarely use Evernote's Firefox capture because I'm never sure exactly which notebook it will go into. This is easy to fix with contexts. First make it obvious which context I am in. Second, send to a incoming queue for that context so that I can easily sort it into a notebook at a later time.
The third is archival. In any kind of content management system it should be easy to archive sets of data that may no longer be in use but also may still be useful someday. Really, storage is so cheap and search so good that we should never throw anything away unless keeping it has some kind of associated negative. Yet, I don't want the ghosts of projects past always cluttering what I am working on now. Take a cue from gmail and let me archive things to keep them out of my way but leave them searchable.
The fourth is integration. In the end what I want is a set of tools that integrate my entire life. Why is it that the idea of linking information been so prominent on the web yet on the desktop it's in it's infancy? Every chunk of data in my life should have a unique ID and be able to be referenced from any other chunk of data. I should never have to see or type in this ID, the system should be both implicit in information capture and also intelligent in letting me select from content I would likely want to associate.
Microsoft Office is getting closer (kind of). However, it infuriates me that I need to attach a contact or email to a task or appointment like it's some kind of file. Even worse, if I update that contact's information in my address book the copied information isn't updated. Also, if Microsoft wants to be the one to provide me with my life management solution, it needs to get it's act together around search.
As a software engineer I know that this is all a tall order but I also know that this it is entirely possible. I fear that the only reason we don't already is due to consciously erected anti-competitive barriers. What do we need to make it happen?
- Well defined standards for chunking data, referencing data and interchange of data. If I could pick applications I knew could talk and place nice with each other I wouldn't use anything else. I suspect that in general it would be a fantastic competitive advantage for anyone who opted in.
- A unique id for every chunk of data. Given a unique ID, any chunk of data in existence could reference any other. Computers are fast and have tons of memory and so these IDs could be quite large. Part of this ID could easily be related to a person and machine. In this way it would be unnecessary to worry about collisions.
- Caching in the cloud. In this case, I can't help thinking a system like Freenet is the best direction to move in. Everyone would just cache each other's data altruistically, with heavy encryption of course. Even if that's not possible, we could store in the cloud and cache locally. I'm sure many businesses would be willing to perform this service for a nominal fee. At the very least the metadata for everything would be in the cloud. In this way even if you couldn't find the specific chunk, you might be able to find a superset, subset or copy with a different id via search.
Like anyone else, the less I need to worry about my systems the more I can focus on the content I am generating. I'm completely fed up with filling my life with the tons of little steps necessary to move data between applications which simply, just refuse to share data with each other easily because the people who made them want to lock you in. I'm completely willing to jump ship to any products that fulfill my need for open integration and many other feel the same I'm sure. The future is tight but open integration and the sooner it happens the better off we will all be.
Phew, that was quite a rant.
Posts
