Info Underload?

Are information delivery systems causing us to take in less as we glance over more?

This article discusses Google dumbing us down. I wouldn't know, I didn't have time to read it- only caught the Lifehacker article stub on my RSS reader... I think he might have a point.

Wish Granted - Sites Create Link

Sites adds the wiki-like functionality of creating a link to create a new content page.

I can happily knock something off my most recent Google Wishlist. Perhaps I've been overlooking it for a while, but I'm fairly certain this is a relatively new feature. Now when you create a link on your Sites page you have the option of creating a new (internal) page for the link to point to. This saves the "create page -> step back -> link" process necessary before. The new page is generated without content but available through the link you've created. Sweet.

Close a window, open a door

I hinted in my last post that I have a tendency to prematurely close windows I'm trying to work in. Then I checked my weekend backlog of feeds to find this hack to solve just that problem. Haven't had much opportunity to use it, but I foresee positive results. Now if only I had the same sort of history mechanism outside the computer...

I'm seriously considering key finders for every one of my hand tools.

Corporealy Deficient

Managing information in the digital and physical world. Is my relationship with technology making me less capable of functioning without it?

I spent this weekend away from my wired world. For the most part it was blissful. Between hobbies and a home remodeling project, I have plenty to keep me busy when away from the systems I tinker with throughout the week. I made an observation of myself, though, that has me a little disturbed. In the wired world I've become efficient, indexed, and easily referenced through the various tools I utilize- mostly thanks to search capabilities, religious tagging, and extensive documentation. But standing in the center of my bedroom this weekend- the only clean spot of floor in the entire room- I realized my physical world was in shambles. I couldn't even find a notebook on which to make a shopping list or prioritize my tasks. Have I swung too far into digital dependence? Am I letting myself get wrapped up in my information cocoon?

I have several users who are technologically deficient. They're extremely bright, educated, creative, and capable. Put them in front of a computer and you have a mess. Their document is lost as soon as they click Close. The internet might as well be as consumer-only as television. Business cards are wonderful for keeping track of and sharing contacts. Calendar events are written in pencil unless the importance of ink is applied. It's not a problem (for them), it's just another way of working. They're on top of their job and their means to do it without the aid of technology. The ability to quickly and easily share and distribute information is the only shortcoming of this sort of work and lifestyle.

But what about being so technologically dialed in that we forget to function in the corporeal world? Or worse how to? My desk is a cluttered mess. Papers, notes, business cards, manuals, all sorts of things I never reference. I avoid paper like the plague- I grimace every time someone hands me hand-written notes or document edits. E-mail the a note (or better chat). Use change tracking and notes in your word processor or use something version controlled. If it comes to me in physical form, don't expect to see it ever again (and expect the "turnaround time" to quadruple). Fortunately it's my job to motivate this type of attitude toward inefficient means of communication and collaboration at the office.
Unfortunately this manner of operating is having a more wide spread impact on me. I have a set of tools at the office- an online work suite, desktop applications, etc.- a set of quickly accessed utilities I keep on a shortcut bar for instant access. I have a set of tools at my home remodel project site as well- screwdrivers, hammer, blades, pliers, measuring instruments- and places to store them- a tool bench and a tool belt.
I don't think about setting down an information tool- I close a program or a window without giving it much thought (sometimes it even happens accidentally when I'm really not paying attention). No problem- websites are easy to find, folders are always in their tree on the server, documents can be found in the "Recent Documents" lists.
And now I've stopped thinking about my offline tools. I set down my screwdriver when I'm finished with it. Ten minutes later I'm hunting for it. Of course it didn't make its way back to the tool belt where I originally retrieved it. Where is my wiring diagram? I didn't put it somewhere easily accessible. What was the purpose of this circuit? I forgot to label it.

I guess it's just an observation of habit. I can teach myself how to be more organized in the physical world again (the tool belt used to be my arm's muscle-memory for putting down a tool) just as I've taught myself to be organized in the information world. But all weekend I found myself frustrated by missing tools, forgotten items, and disappointments in my organization. It's a new perspective for me- if working in the corporeal world can be this frustrating for me, working in the technological world I'm creating for my users can be this frustrating for them. It's two different worlds with completely different methods and resources for achieving things.

I guess this is why mind hacks have become so important to those of us trying to balance our functionality in both worlds.

Up to my Eyeballs in Sites

Using Google Sites versus Wiki for a company's internal resources and intranet.

Google Sites is what I'm up to this week (among other things). I'm finally finding the time to make a full migration from the firm's internal Wiki to the Google Sites service bundled with our Google Apps suite.

I installed MediaWiki on the firm's web host in early January, about a month after I started with the company, as a quick and easy way for me to organize and distribute information, documents, and frequently requested instructions. Instead of re-hashing to every person where to find a certain research study then watch it bounce from e-mail account to e-mail account, I started hosting documents online. Rather than talking through setting up Outlook with POP3 settings over and over, I directed users to the e-mail setup page.
It was easy for me to quickly publish private company content in an organized, intelligible format with links and directories as needed. Unfortunately... it was only easy for me. The wiki has its shortcomings.

• Editing pages requires a rudimentary understanding of formatting code/language (in this case HTML and Wiki)
• File uploads are capped at 2MB (a PHP limitation)- not nearly enough for the presentations and PDF's we pass around the office. I learned to get around this, but it was a chore and required every user to send the file to me first.
• Searching is... worthless. Only recently did searching Wikipedia stop being a hassle (heaven forbid I mispel somthing even slightly) with the introduction of Powerset.
• Sending a user a link to a page is like speaking a foreign language. For example: http://www.mycompanys.web/mw/index.php?title=Calen
  dar#Navigating_Days.2FWeeks.2FMonths (there's no way I'd ever print that in a document or manual)
  
• Security is lacking. Not that it was much of an issue, but the wiki was never completely private. I had to set it behind a .htaccess login so every user knew the same username and password (which matched no individual's username and password so of course they constantly forgot). I could have designed a better way to control access, but luckily we switched streams before anyone cared.
  

We finally made the switch to Apps in late March and I've been drawing people deeper and deeper into its functionality every since. Sites immediately interested me, but I've been busy with other tasks. Rather than placing new articles and files on the wiki, I'd slap them into Sites and send the Sites link (and just hope the recipient would understand how to access the page and maybe take an interest in the difference).

It wasn't until just recently that I really started to explore Sites functionality and now- impressed as I've become- I'm making a concentrated push to migrate the wiki and all office resources to sites.

Aside from being integrated with the rest of the Apps we're using (namely mail and calendars at present), there were quite a few huge advantages to Sites as a company intranet resource:

• Search. I can't say enough about it. It's Google search, after all. Type it in the search bar and you're bound to find it. You don't need to match a phrase exactly like wiki searching, you just toss something out there and it lands on a result.
  
• Search documents- this one blew me away and will (hopefully) make Sites' popularity
  go through the roof in our office. Any PDF or word document uploaded to on Sites will instantly start showing up search results. Forget searching for the page that might contain the document you're looking for, search for the document itself!
• File uploading- any format up to 10MB. It's not perfect (I see a lot of 15+MB .doc's and PDF's), but it's close. Our Premier account has a 10GB+ 500MB per user cap that I'm not too worried about reaching.
• Super Easy WYSIWYG. Most of my users were scared off from the prospect of collaborative pages when they hit the wiki edit link and found the mess of alien code underneath. Sites is as user friendly and intuitive as a common desktop publisher. Sure it's prone to the same formatting nuances as any CMS, but that's where the next great feature comes in:
• HTML edit option. It love this almost as much as I love document searching. For the most part I don't need my Sites pages to look great or function at a high level, but occasionally I do and here's my option to tweak things out. Not to mention adding all the functionality of notepad (replace all) and easy migration from other sites.

It's not without fault, though. Sites has a few shortcomings I can't ignore...

• No batch attaching. You can only upload one file at a time- which means plenty of wait time when you're trying to attach several files to page.
• No easy file linking. I find this one a bit ridiculous considering the system for inserting pictures. Attachments- even at the footer of a page- have to be linked through a "web link" and a full URL.
• No cross-page image linking. Images can be queued for simultaneous upload (not quite batch, but close!) and linked very cleanly and easily... but only on the page they've been uploaded to. If you'd like to access that image on another page, go get the full image URL and insert with a web link.
• No easy link-and-page generation. I loved this about wiki- streamlined content creation by making the link then the page (by clicking the link you've just made). With sites I create the page then have to go back to parent page and create a link. Yes linking to pages within the site is easy (unless two pages are named the same) and yes the link is automatically generated in the parent footer (but that's a crappy place for them), but it could have been done better.
• No welcome page. This one really bugs me. And I know it's going to confuse my users. My wiki had all the most pertinent links on the first page to greet the user as they accessed the site. There is a search box in the upper right... but it's just not the same as a three to five piece set up "Click me! I'm useful!" links.

All in all, so far so good. This Friday I'll be walking a few of my users through the basics of finding things on the Sites I've already set up and how to create their own collaborative work/project site. That means I have about 34 more hours to get as much as I can migrated to Sites and come up with a song and dance routine to show of its functionality (if only this had a song or dance).

I stand by a firm belief that I can't introduce a system prematurely. If the users can't find what they're looking for in the resource pool that I develop the first time they visit... they're not likely to ever come back or try again. It's a matter of making sure the system answers their question is less time than it would take for them to pick up the phone and call me or walk over to my desk. If if fails, it's just another distraction in my day.

Unfortunately I haven't had the time to get this system to that level of comprehensiveness so I'll probably be awake trying to get it up to speed before my introduction presentation.

Google Wishlist

Top additions and changes Google can make to improve my experience.

As a long-time GMail user, newly converted Apps Admin, and Calendar junkie, my life has begun to revolve around Google and the services it provides. In fact I'd say at this point a good portion of my life depends on Google. Google consistently impresses and amazes me with the services they provide and the level of quality, intelligence, and design with which these services are developed. And of course there's the fact that most of these services are provided completely free of charge. I'm not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth and I especially can't complain about services available considering the modern state of open development and customization (if you don't like it: fix it or do it better), but that's not going to stop me from listing a few things I think Google could (should?) improve. I guess being spoiled for several years by Google's developments has left me feeling entitled to nag:

1. Get the Porn off Start Page [Google Apps Premier]
• Within a week of launching Google Apps for my firm, a coworker stumbled upon (it's really not even hidden or out of the way) the adult-oriented and office inappropriate content available through Start Page's Add Content feature. At the dismay of many of my users, I've had Start Page disabled ever since. I've submitted service requests with no response. And if it it's a big deal for my small firm, what about all the educational institutions encouraged to use Apps?
• See the long running discussion at the Google Apps groups (Feb 11, 2008)
• Mentions (in responses) that iGoogle doesn't list the inappropriate content unless specifically sought (and even then preview pictures aren't displayed)
  
• Another request without response (Feb 1, 2008)
• The same issue on the education version discussion page
• The appropriately titled "Google, Pornography, and Children?"
• featuring the first response I've ever seen from Google on this topic dated April 28th.
  
2. Shared Contacts [Google Apps]
• This was a primary goal of moving our firm to an advanced communications suite. Users wish to dig through each others' digital rolodex to find partners, services, clients, and sometimes even each other. It's great that Users are automatically populated in every other users' address book, but why can't we access other address books?
• Bummer. Do it better.
  
3. Improve Apps Sharing (calendars, sites, etc.) [Google Apps]
• It's great that we can share everything created within our domain- calendars, sites, documents, you name it- it's all shared in one easy to navigate service pack... but only if users show each other how to navigate to it through invites. Specifically, if a user creates a new calendar and makes it available to all users in the domain... none of the domain users will ever know it exists unless the creator invites them to use the calendar. And we're not talking an easy "invite all users" - the process consists of individually adding every user through the "Share this calenar" page. Manually adding 50+ users to a firm-wide calendar is obnoxious. Same goes for Sites.
  
• Useless:
  
• 
• 
4. Universal Labels (aka Folders & Tags) [Google Accounts, Google Apps]
• I have Labels in GMail, Labels in Notebook, Folders in Docs, and Folder & Tags in Reader. Why don't any of them sync? Often the Docs I'm working with correspond directly to the mail I send and receive (some are even generated by the mail I receive)- couldn't the mail and docs all appear under the same label (or folder) in both interfaces? I gather articles and announcements in Reader that go nicely with my collection of news and articles in GMail, but I have to reference both separately when compiling a newsletter. I think Reader got it right with use of both tags and folders- now if they'd all just sync up in all services.
• While we're at it- sub-labels in GMail? Sure I can double-label things, but my label list is getting huge. Nested folders in Outlook are fantastic (one of the very, very few things I appreciate about Outlook).
  
5. Sites Navigation (welcome page, auto-links) [Google Apps]
• I moved my firm's internal wiki to Google Sites because a good majority of Sites functionality is amazing (user-friendly WYSIWYG, document searching, user access), but it's lacking in one area: navigation.
• When users log in or click the Sites link in another Google App, they're presented with... nothing. Or at least nothing useful. There's no start page or list of available Sites (aside from the ones created by the user or shared, see above). The search box is available- up in the corner- and users can click through to "Browse sites within [domain]" but browsing only shows categories (basically tags) which are optional for each site and fairly obscure. Wikis come with a welcome/home/start page by default which can be used to link to other available pages- it would be a huge improvement for Sites.
• I also miss the quick linking functionality of MediaWiki- create a link to a page that doesn't exist then follow the link and the page is created and immediately ready to edit. You can easily link to Sites pages (pages within the site you're developing), but only if the page already exists- thus I'm constantly backtracking to my index pages to create new links after I create a page.
• There's also the general disconnection of pages and sites within Sites. Linking pages between different sites requires full URL's (no inter-site quick page linking even for other sites within the domain or created by the same user). Images and files uploaded to a page/site aren't available for other pages/sites.
  
6. To-Do List [Google Accounts, Google Apps]
   
• I see this come up everywhere. We love Google for GTD features- mobile access, sharing, calendar reminders, etc. but where's the basic To-Do list? I'm using Remember the Milk and it integrates okay with Calendar and GMail through Firefox extensions, but it's another account and another service that doesn't sync with my other established labels, folders, tags, etc. (see above).
  
7. Accounts Integration [Google Apps]
   
• My Google Apps account also has a vanilla Google Accounts alter ego to take advantage of Google's other services not implemented in Apps. It's silly that I manage my mail, calendars, docs, etc. through my domain but have to create a separate, independent Google Account to use Alerts, Analytics, Reader, Notebook, and Maps. Actually, after the process of porting my calendar (created with my user and domain name before I moved the firm to Apps), I'm scared to see what will happen to my Google Accounts services if/when these services are integrated into Apps.