WebWriting.com

I’m trying out a new blogging mashup tool called Zemanta. It installs in your browser and automatically detects when you’re posting a blog entry - whether on one of the popular blogging sites or using any of the tools on your own hosted blog. In wordpress for example, after you enter 300 characters, a widget on the right starts to look up related information. For example, the sixth and seventh items in the list ate the articles listed below.

As for whether this will provide useful links when blogging about something other than Zemanta we shall see…

One of the interesting talks at BarCamp was on visualizations. Matt McKeon talked about a service they’ve developed at IBM Research called Many-Eyes. He recently put together a tag cloud of the BarCamp registration page. If there was any doubt as to the preferred e-mail provider for BarCamp attendees, this visualization makes it obvious.

Twitter’s Down Again

I just grabbed flock 1.1. As best I can tell the only downside is that everything seems to run via flock.com, which slows down the web browsing experience.  If flock really makes it easier to share then you’ll see more postings here in the coming weeks (that and I’m on vacation in a couple weeks).

I’ve been playing with Xobni off and on for a number of weeks (at one point it stopped loading and it was a few days before I had time to re-install, we also had some exchange server issues and I had to stop using Xobni for a while to diagnose). That being said, as beta software goes it’s very stable. Rare symptoms are CPU spiking and when it once failed to load and turned itself off. Given the quality of the product and polish I fully expect that by the time they go public beta it will be very solid. With that note…on to the review.

If you haven’t checkout the website, Xobni is an e-mail add-on for searching and managing e-mail and relationships. The primary interface is an outlook sidebar that, when minimized shows you your next meeting and some information related to the person who sent you the currently selected e-mail. When open, Xobni contains a myriad of contextual information and links.

There is a search box and two top level panels in the Xobni side bar: E-mail, which shows you information related to the currently selected e-mail and Organize, which displays upcoming appointments, to-do items (including flagged e-mails) and a stay in touch panel listing contacts with whom you have not communicated in a while.

E-mail

I used to have to pause my current “e-mail train of thought” and search for e-mails from someone. Xobni gives me another view, but that’s just the first step. In addition to finding a person and e-mail from the, Xobni shows related people, conversations with threaded e-mail chain, attachments and quick links to schedule a meeting, send an e-mail or skype. It’s extremely useful for drill-down searching. I can click on a conversation, show various levels of detail, identify an e-mail, click on another recipient and repeat. Xobni stacks the context in small bars at the top of the screen so I can quickly jump back to any point in my search.

E-mail analytics is interesting but not immediately useful as a productivity booster. I can see how much I have communicated with someone and sent vs. received quantity. Xobni also shows me when an individual tends to send me e-mail in a nice histogram.

Organize

The organized bar shows upcoming appointments (but not the current one – minor inconvenience) to do list items (including flagged e-mails, which is great) and a “Stay in touch list” of people Xobni says you haven’t communicated with in a while. For those of us who are e-mail whores, this is a great tool. If you hate talking to people this is either a gentle reminder that you should keep in touch or an annoying list of names that you don’t care about.

Props to Xobni for minimal usage of space. These are lists where I want to see as much as possible and scan with my eyes, not with my mouse.

I’ve found that when I need to get in touch with someone who sent me an e-mail a while back, Xobni is a top notch replacement for the “sort by sender, scroll till you find the last e-mail” approach. With Xobni I type in a name and I instantly get links to call (via skype), e-mail, schedule time, list of related contacts, last conversations (no matter how old) and files exchanged (both sent and received).

Conclusions

Xobni is a very nice addition to Outlook. It gives you an orthogonal view both for your current context and more interestingly to pursue a tangential train of thought. If you’d like an invite, I’ve got four left (as of 3-21-2008) so drop me a line.

I was initially taken aback by this blog’s High School rating at the Blog Readability Test. Certainly this puts me in my place compared to Concurring Opinions which clocks in at College (Undergrad). I then posited that I might better judge my level of sophistication based on the blogs I read until I saw their ratings at Middle School and Elementary School levels (links withheld to protect the innocent). Perhaps this means I read blogs that are accessible or perhaps I’m just lazy in what I choose to read.

Checkout my twitter profile.

Flags of the world by area of color. Click a flag to see which country.

May is a treacherous time in Harvard Sq. The Harvard Seniors, confident with their new diplomas and more careless than the day they were accepted roam the streets of the Square with complete disregard for the commercial and residential traffic that has not miraculously paused in awe of the revelation that they have successfully navigated the halls of Cambridge’s westerly college.

Coincidentally I noticed for the first time on my way home a sign posted: “Caution Seniors.” As any fan of “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” will quickly point out, what the fine city of Cambridge intended to do was warn motorists of elderly that may also be roaming the streets of the square. But it is always amusing to take signs at their word, and so without hesitating to appreciate the timing I Caution all newly graduated Harvard College Seniors: “Watch out for that truck!”

I just found out that I can post to my blog from Word 2007. Very cool.

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” - A. J. Liebling (1904 - 1963)

A. J. Liebling knew why blogs would be important, even if he never lived to see the “press” liberated.

Gustave Flaubert

“The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.”

Sacha Guitry

“You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty.”

Unknown

“Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.”

Evan Esar

“A husband is like a fire, he goes out when unattended.”

George Bernard Shaw

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.”

The EFF reports that the Copyright Office has in it’s third review of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Circumvention clause granted six new exemptions.

If you missed it, Bruce Schneier wrote about the Library of Congress’ request for comments back in October of last year.

Teresa over at Making Light writes about the “convential wisdom” that publishing is a “winner-takes-all-contenst” where only the best sellers matter. “It’s not true, and it’snot becoming true.”

I was up late with some old West Wing in the background when a phrase caught my ear.  Season 4, Episode 17 while Sam Seaborn is running for Congress he is sparring verbally with Toby Ziegler who has just taken over running his campaign:

SAM: I can just cut any change I have for victory.

TOBY: No. The story’s going to be that you actually stuck up for what you believed in, you didn’t cut and run.  And people are gonna remember that, I’m gonna make sure of it.

This thought crossed my mind: does Karl Rove watch West Wing?

The New York Times chose not to publish Bruce Schneier’s way to avoid the next 9/11 so he did.

Ten big news stories you aren’t hearing

I’m catching up on Meet the Press and listening to the Casey Santorum “Debate,” which had some promise of being an interesting discussion of views on the important issues facing Americans today. Unfortunately none of them can get past the first 5 minutes: Casey with accountability, Russert and his Iraq vote fetish and Santorum reciting the GOP 2004 platform as written by the post-Sorkin West Wing writers. Do we get to vote for a new media this November?

Security Concerns Divert Fla. Jetliner

Two Asian men forced to leave plane

‘Suspicious’ pair taken off plane

Mutiny forces passengers off plane

Pair taken off plane because of “suspicious” behaviour

Passenger detained; bomb squad sweeps plane at Texas

Passenger, plane detained in San Antonio

Plane diverted due to locked bathroom doors

Bomb note on plane was ‘false alarm’

Plane diverted over fuel odour

Plane diverted after bomb scare

Plane Searched After Arriving at Midway Airport

AA Flight Delayed By Drinks

U.S. Flight Delayed After Passengers Bring Drinks on Plane

‘We feared jet would explode’

Men removed from jet for ’speaking Arabic’

Finally, a commentator who gets it: Terrorists change airport security, provide comedy