July last year I learned about a program called Belvedere from Lifehacker that helped keep Windows desktop file and icon clutter managed. This morning, thanks Betsy, I learned about Fences from Stardock which is another free program (this one in beta) that allows you to manage groups of files on your desktop. The short video walk-thru explains the various features of Fences, but the most attractive one to me is the double-click to instantly clean your desktop.

While Belvedere is good for getting the clutter off the desktop and into other organized places, there is no quick hotkey way to bring it back. This is where Fences shines gives the ability to group the clutter and decide right down to file by file what you want to do. I was hopeful that Fences would allow me the ability to group off the desktop items in one fell swoop like Belvedere, but after installation and checking it out that doesn’t appear to be an option. Maybe that will be added in future update?

When you run Fences for the first time a handy option is included that will auto sort your icon clutter. Here’s the before and after shot of my desktop.

Before Fences:

After Fences (auto organize on first time program run):

Note: in the screenshot above to the right is the program Rocketdock and not a part of Fences. Rocketdock is a handy Mac-style program launcher.

The auto sorting fences created are as follows:

• Quicklinks – contained folder shortcuts and one game shortcut misidentified by Fences (should have gone into the ‘Programs’ fence)
• Recent Things – most recently accessed files on the desktop
• Programs – click to launch these programs. Redundant for those using Rocketdock, unless you have programs you want to try out (like Fences) and then once you decide you will use them regularly enough to add to Rocketdock.
• Web Links – Mine was empty since I almost never save web links to the desktop. I deleted this group.
• Folders – I would have thought the folder shortcuts placed in Quick Links would have gone here, but not the case. I deleted this empty fence too.
• Files & Documents – this fence was the only one with a scrollbar and sort of a catchall for everything else. So now instead of having my entire desktop fill up with junk from left to right, this would catch everything? Nope. When you add a new file it goes to the desktop and must be sorted. Bummer.

If I’m not going to take time to delete or move the file on the desktop to a folder off the desktop, it’s doubtful I’d move into a fenced off area. It’s really a bummer that Stardock didn’t add a feature which captured anything saved to the desktop and auto sorted. Without that feature, it’s sort of a non-starter for me. It’s not a bad start.

The best solution is not having to run program(s) like these at all. Just be neat and not clutter your desktop, but that doesn’t seem to work for me who likes saving things to the desktop for quick access versus navigating to a file. For example, when I want to save a picture that I’ll use in a blog post I’m working on like this one, I’ll save it to the desktop and then drag it into Windows Live Writer. The step that I neglect all too often is the cleanup of this image file. That’s where Belvedere has come in handy. Good news for fellow Belvedere users, you can still run alongside Fences.

I’m going to try using both Fences and Belvedere for awhile and see how it goes. My early opinion? This adds another step to the process of organizing the clutter and if I’m going to organize, why rearrange dust? Instead, it should be cleaned away like Belvedere does, right? That said, the double-click for quick clean desktop could come in handy and I liked how I could make organized fences around my desktop image of the notes on the guitar fretboard. Only problem there: as new stuff is added, I have to reorganize, which I probably won’t do. I’m mixed on this one, but curious what others think. Grade: C+

I’m sure there is a Windows application out there that sorts desktop files into folders automatically already and if there isn’t then somebody should develop one post haste. I complained about desktop clutter almost three years ago, ouch. It’s been on my development to-do list for some time and this morning after staring at my desktop I decided to ask the rest of the world if such an animal already exists. Here’s a picture showing the problem:

What I’ve been doing for far too long is manually sorting these desktop files by type into folders. Like image files are sorted into a ’screenshots’ folder and .txt files are sorted into a ‘writing’ folder. It wouldn’t be that involved having a program that watches the desktop folder and then auto sorts any file by type (or custom definition rule) into custom directories defined by the user. It could also be run as a scheduled task once a day to clean out the icons of the day and sort into date stamped archive folders also customizable by the end user. Like say I wanted to have the program auto sort each day’s desktop files into monthly folders like July2008, Aug2008, etc., but the default should be to just sort into one folder so one doesn’t have to make too many clicks to get to the file.

If you’re reading this and have the perfect Windows application in mind — freeware, donationware, shareware or commercial — please pipe up in the comments section below with a link. If it’s a commercial or shareware application feel free to use your own affiliate code and if it looks good to me and you’re the first to mention I’ll buy the program through your link. Or write a blog post and trackback in, your choice. If I only hear crickets on this one I may just have to break out Visual Studio and get this done. I need a useful little app like this.

If it does cost money for this application, it shouldn’t cost very much. This isn’t Photoshop. I’m thinking $20 or less. Thank you in advance for the help.

Update 10:16am PST: Wow, that didn’t take long. Major props to Dean in the comments below for pointing me to Belvedere by Lifehacker’s Adam Pash. Now look at my desktop (right). As the screenshot displays in the upper left corner I’ve got the recycle bin (emptied) and four shortcuts to the following directories:

icons - this contains shortcuts to all programs with the word ’shortcut’. Windows, by default adds the word shortcut to each shortcut on the desktop.
screenshots - all files matching .jpg, .gif, .png and .bmp are automatically moved off the desktop by Belvedere to this directory.
software - zip files are moved here
writings - .txt, pdf and html files moved here

My most commonly used programs are stored in Rocketdock which is right aligned and takes up a very tiny amount of screen real estate. I linked to my original post about Rocketdock in the comments area below. This is on the short list of useful programs I regularly use on Windows plus it gives it a little of that Mac flavor.

For Mac Readers, Belvedere is based on the Mac program Hazel ($21.95, just about the price I suggested a program like this should cost). I’m not sure what is out there for Linux, but a desktop auto clean-up program should be a standard accessory in every OS. If anybody knows of something similar that will help Linux users keep their desktops tidy, feel free to use the comments below to share.

Jim Kukral is getting drowned with messages from Twitter and is considering quitting for awhile. He’s looking for suggestions for how he can better manage the flow:

Anyone have any tips for Twitter information overload?

I checked out how many people Jim is following as of this writing: 195. While he might have cut this number back, I’ve been using Twitter regularly for the last 45 days or so and am up over the 300 follows mark, so I have an idea of quantity of message flow Jim has been receiving. I still consider myself a bit of a Twitter newbie and learning more about how to tap the signal and let the noise flow by, so if you’re looking for tips from more established Twitterers please keep this in mind.

My piece of advice for Jim and others who feel similarly burdened by the number of messages (Twitter vernacular: messages = tweets)? Setup a system where the messages flow freely like he might tune into a favorite radio station. I have satellite radio in the background and tune in here and there. Don’t let Twitter eat up valuable business flow space like your email client. Jim tried that and found some 800 messages waiting which made him feel overwhelmed.

In the comment section of Jim’s post he’s receiving tips like cut down the number of people he follows. That’s a bit silly if you’re also trying to use Twitter as a networking tool. If that’s a worthwhile goal, the idea should be to grow your network, not reduce it, correct? I think Jim’s problem is he is attributing too much priority and importance to every message. Twitter isn’t like reading a blog or news source you’re subscribed to, it’s more like being part of an IRC channel. I’ve made this comparison to IRC before and people have disagreed, but to me the two are very similar as far as the flow.

With that in mind, my preferred Twitter client is part of an IRC bot I wrote which brings me the messages as a private message in the channel. The bot also keeps track of the number of messages and some other stats so if I’m away and want to catch up on messages missed — again, I don’t feel obligated to do so — all I need to do is navigate to the number I left off at and read forward. I’m planning on refining this system even further to be able to quickly search through messages from people I’m following. This way I can follow interests within the messages of those I follow, similar to subscribing by keywords to RSS feeds. This way I won’t miss things that are of more interest to me.

One thing I’ve decided in my Twitter experience was that I didn’t want or need to read every. Single. Message. Readers might remember that my original reaction to Twitter was like many others: what’s the point? It was less than two months ago that my eyes opened to a way to utilyze the service that seemed worthwhile. Since this time, I’ve been using the service regularly and am growing both the number of people I follow and those following me.

So I don’t feel obligated to read every single message from every person I’m following, nor do I expect every person following me to read all of my non direct or non reply messages or follow all the links I’m sharing. Is this the best way to utilyze the service? For me it’s working.

My system has the messages flowing by and while I will go back and read many of the archived messages, I stopped feeling like I must read every single message after following 200 people. I do watch for and try to respond to every reply so if I’m following somebody reading this and you want to be certain I’m seeing your really important message, send it as a direct message or reply. Otherwise, expect me to be tuning in periodically throughout the day. I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty treating Twitter message flow like what’s playing on the radio.

Liberate your flow.

Good signal Twitterers
Occasionally I see people asking for recommendations of good people to follow on Twitter. My preferred follows to date are people who are interactive.

If I send you a reply and you reply or acknowledge in some way, that’s interactive. Conversely, I’m not as interested in following people who don’t reply and/or have a lot more people following them than they follow. There are exceptions like people I’ve met in person, but for me anyway, communication and microblogging tools like Twitter don’t work nearly as well if communication is only one way. In some ways, I’m treating Twitter like trackbacks at this blog: two-way trackbacks are preferred.

Another plus for people to follow are those who are actively using the service. The reason somebody being active is important to me is because what if I’m looking for feedback or something or vice versa? The likelihood of getting a good response is better with people who are actually using the service.

One of my friends asked me what was too many messages? I replied that there wasn’t a solid number as far as I could tell, it’s subjective, but a message an hour (24 messages a day) would be considered very active by most people. Maybe too active for somebody in Jim’s situation who is reading every message. Since regularly using Twitter I’m averaging around 15 messages a day but suspect this number will fall off a bit when my experimental time with the service ends (3-6 months planned).

Take control of your stream
To recap: it’s important to remember that it’s your flow. You, and only you, get to choose how much attention and time gets attributed to your flow. While I don’t consider myself selfish, I am definitely selfish when it comes to how much of my time and where is spent. I encourage others who are interested in being more productive in their lives do the same. This doesn’t mean you’re being like Guy Kawasaki and too busy to read other people’s blogs but want them to read yours (having a high follower to follow ratio might mean that). Rather, it’s a way for you to be able to read and follow in a way that fits your life. I’d rather have somebody reading my non-direct non-reply messages who doesn’t feel obligated to read them as opposed to somebody who does and critically judges every message. Life is too short, really.

For Jim and others feeling overwhelmed: take control of your microblogging reading and make it convenient for you. Make it fit your schedule. Don’t become a slave to the stream. For those who enjoy Twitmas Music: let it flow, let it flow, let it flow.

One trait shared in abundance by successful people is their ability to manage time. We’ve covered a few online tools here in the past that proport to watch what applications you’re using and show you the time. There’s a new one on the block called RescueTime (freeware Windows, Mac). I didn’t waste any time registering, downloading and trying out the Windows version on Vista.

Once the application is activated you must login with the email address and password used for registration. Now visit the RescueTime dashboard and the updates will start appearing within 30 minutes. If you grow impatient like I did, just right click on the red icon in the system tray, choose the “advanced” tab and click the button that says “Send Update Now” — if you see the response “Update successful” then you should be able to refresh the RT dashboard and see your stats.

Now you can begin tagging the applications you use. If an application hasn’t been used for at least five minutes then it won’t show in the RT tags page and RT recommends:

You should really only tag apps & sites that you’ve spent a lot of time with or that you’ll use again in the future.

Despite the RT message about applications , after an hour, I still didn’t see anything on my manage tags page. Maybe that takes more time ?

If there is no keyboard or mouse activity for two minutes, then RT goes to sleep and reports this downtime as “The Rest” on the dashboard. As for memory consumed, on Vista RT hovered around 10,000 K. By comparison Firefox is using between 75,000K and 250,000K.

If you want to take this further, I previewed pageaddict that monitors and reports back the time spent at individual websites. For a to-do list program previewed see Rough Underbelly. Another web-based timer previewed in the past here is SlimTimer. Project budgeting? See the post on Tickspot. Just checked and seems like all these competing services are running, so maybe there’s room for another.

I like the idea of a program that runs on the computer tracking, versus in the browser, and have mentioned ActiveTimer on the Mac several times in the past. I’m going to use RT for a little while and see how it goes.

I’m not sure what the business model is for RescueTime as I didn’t see any ads. I hope it’s not to hijack my search or browsing experience with advertising when/if they leave beta. At the official RT blog RT founder Tony Wright explains they’ve taken VC funding from YCombinator which gets them by for the “Winter 08″ season.

If you need help or answers about using RT, they use the third party service, getsatisfaction.com, which points out things like why they don’t have Linux support yet:

Our sincere hope is that some enterprising young linux geek out there will reach out to us with an interest in building a data collector. Our data collectors talk to a REST web service, so it wouldn’t be an overwhelming task for a sharp coder, and we’d be glad to offer a lot of support.

Why does the person in mind have to be a “young” Linux geek? Talk about stereotypes, sheesh. Seriously, looks like they are working on documenting an API so RT tracking functionality could be added elsewhere.

November is becoming the month for writers of all shapes and sizes. Literally and figuratively.

In November every year a bunch of writers take place in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge: write 50,000 fiction words in the month of November. I tried this in 2004 and, despite having previously written and completed seven novels (unpublished), came up short. Also, bought the book by the creator of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, and joined a bit in the NaNoWriMo forums. Every year I think about the NaNoWriMo fondly, it’s a great writing exercise. If you’re a fiction writer, published or unpublished, it’s worth checking out.

Now comes the idea to run National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo.com — hat tip to a strangled duck) concurrently with NaNoWriMo. The concept: post every day to your blog — no required word length — in the month of November. It’s not by the same folks as NaNoWriMo from what I can tell. They are using Ning for the social network platform surrounding NaBloPoMo.

Must admit, and this is only my own writer perspective, that I’m not as excited about NaBloPoMo as NaNoWriMo. Why not? The goal is less challenging writing on a blog without any monthly word count or genre requirement versus writing 50,000 words of fiction in a calendar month that has a holiday (Thanksgiving) and only 30 days. Heck, writing 50,000 words of anything that makes at least some sense in a single month is an achievement.

The NaTwiTweMo idea
The cynical voice anwers: how long before somebody comes up with a National Twitter Month (NaTwiTweMo) where the goal is to Twitter every day for a month? Don’t laugh too hard, if 50,000 characters was a goal in this hypothetical and fictional (as far as I know) NaTwiTweMo, that would be a mere 358 Twitter messages, or using the cornier term tweets with the full 140 characters over the course of a month.

140 characters x 358 tweets = 50,120 characters
358 tweets over 30 days = 12 tweets a day (rounded up) of full 140 characters

Let’s assume you’re not full on 140 characters with every Tweet, that’s maybe 15-20 tweets per day, every day in the month of November. I believe there are many Twitterers doing that right now.

Confession: I’m not being completely serious on the NaTwiTweMo thing, but if anybody wants to run with that idea, have at it. The domain is probably still available. Let’s get back to being serious.

A more challenging monthly blog goal
Writing 50,000 words on a blog and posting every day in the month of November would make the NaBloPoMo more challenging, but that’s not how NaBloPoMo rolls. Word length does not matter.

Hmm. Why couldn’t it be? Warning: navel gazing alert!

Curious, I looked over these blog archives to date to see how many months I’d reached 50,000 words. Had I ever done that? According to my TD Word Count plugin, yes, twice before: September 2005 with 53,103 words in 125 posts and then again in June 2006 with 51,591 words in 120 posts. Most words in a month in 2007 thus far has been May with 37,501 in 75 posts. My number of posts has decreased over the last year. The average number of words per post is actually higher, but the quantity of posts has decreased. Still averaging over a couple posts a day, but it’s been over a year since there has been more than 100 posts in a month published here (July 2006: 108 posts 47,045 words).

(Sidebar: looking at the plugin screenshot, I’m seeing a month sorting bug I need to sort out.)

Time to set a new single month word goal.

Goal: 53,104+ words in November 2007
Rather than suggesting blogging every day over the course of a month is easy — and hopefully that’s not how this is coming across because I don’t think it is — I am suggesting it is easier for me than writing 50,000 words of fiction in a month. But talk is cheap, right? So I’ve decided to challenge myself and have joined the NaBloPoMo challenge for next month.

I’m joining the 1,354 others taking the challenge of writing and posting at least one blog post every day in November 2007.

However, I am adding one additional goal for myself that is not required by the NaBloPoMo: beat my best personal word count at Hmm to date by posting at least 53,104 words.

I’m also considering a contest where readers can get involved and either cheer along with or jeer at me next month. It’s past time to do some sort of contest with one or more prizes here anyway and this sounds like it could be fun and engaging. Even if I don’t succeed with the writing goal, it will be a good writing exercise and hopefully a little interactive for readers. Readers who enjoy my longer, more pensive pieces, or enjoy a higher volume of posts with varying lengths should hopefully get treated to that in November if the goal is achieved.

Maybe I was too constrained by my past fiction writing experience instead of letting the words flow freely when I failed completing the 2004 NaNoWriMo challenge. In this blogging challenge, I won’t feel remotely as constrained however, 53,104 words is still an average of 1,770 words per day (rounded down). That’s not an unrealistic goal, but a good challenge.

I encourage fellow blogger readers to challenge themselves with some sort of writing goal in November 2007, either by joining NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo or just telling your readers: here’s my writing goal for November 2007 — and then charting your progress. One of the main goals behind National Novel Writing Month is to teach participants that the novel you’ve been saying you always wanted to write will never get written unless you sit down and stroke those keys.

Blogging is fun, but can be work too. Words used and time spent are both mechanisms by which we can judge progress. I’m not suggesting that by merely writing 50,000+ words in a month one is any better writer from a quality standpoint than somebody else who writes 5,000 words the same month. It’s possible the blogger who carefully vets and edits those 5,000 words will be more successful in the craft than the one writing 50,000. But in both cases there’s one important similarity: both writers are doing something.

When you stop and think about the difference between people who are successful versus those who aren’t, you can usually spot an abundance or lack of effort and activity (practice, practice, practice). Action versus words. We can sit around and talk about all the things we might have done or could have done or want to do in life — or could be out there spending time actually doing all of them. Checking them off a list. One. After. Another.

Action equals results while inaction equals decay and eventually death. When you’re staring down death in those final fleeting sands of time, how do you want to look back? As the person who had many wonderful unfulfilled dreams or someone who did everything in his/her power to make those dreams come true?

The future
Some year, health and spirit willing, I’d like to try that NaNoWriMo challenge again — and I will try my best to be victorious next time. Positive thinking, right? I have been working behind the scenes on a few fiction-oriented projects and that still remains an unfulfilled dream on the list. I’m sure readers here will be among the first to know if/when this dream is realized. Hopefully it’s not posthumously.

Lights, cameras, action.

Looking for a single place to keep track of what you’re doing on the following sites: Amazon, Flickr, Google Reader, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Netflix, Picasa Web Albums, SmugMug, Yelp, a single RSS feed, del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Google Shared Stuff, iLike, Last.fm, Pownce, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube and Zoomr? Then FriendFeed, currently in private beta, might be of interest to you.

FriendFeed (FF) Developer Brett Taylor kindly sent me an invite to FF which seems more useful to me as an aggregated activity tracker than as it’s being promoted: a social network aggregator and twitteresq automated system. Before anybody asks, I don’t see any way yet to invite anybody else and share the love, am I missing this option somewhere, Brett? You can request an invite on the FF main page like I did if you’d like to check this service out before it hits prime time. My invite arrived within a day. If you want to friend me, go ahead, I don’t bite.

(not too hard, anyway)

From a technology standpoint, I’ve been impressed so far with how fast FF stays updated. A refresh during the writing shows music I listened to less than 10 minutes ago. Geeks have to appreciate the amount of pinging going on behind the scenes. Whether or not FF can scale, time will tell. Also, FF smartly doesn’t make new entries for each new song listened to unless you have activity elsewhere in between songs. Example of last.fm entry:

listened to Van Halen – Good Enough, Van Halen – Amsterdam, and 10 other songs on Last.fm
8 minutes ago

There is an optional Facebook application that will include your FriendFeed info automatically which could be an easier way to update those in your friend’s list on Facebook what you’re doing online.

Is FF useful to others?
I’m curious if this would be useful to friends and family? The problem I have with FriendFeed is it’s an all or nothing proposition with the individual entries/updates inside sites you add and that sort of firehose probably wouldn’t be useful to even my closest friends online. Before shelving the service, I’m giving it a serious try this week. Maybe there is some value in sharing a raw activity stream with others online? The concept fascinates me.

You don’t need Facebook to follow my FriendFeed, you can find that at friendfeed.com/tdavid. I also added the widget to my TD Goodliffe VTOR author profile page. The widget color scheme sort of fits the VTOR design colors nicely.

Suggestion: more focused activity tracking
Must admit from a productivity standpoint, I find activity trackers helpful in managing time. Maybe FriendFeed when it launches should/could (or will) focus more on that instead of being a web service aggregator. You can make your web service activity private if you want and choose what services to add to FriendFeed, so you can control what others will see. There is nothing stopping people from going to the individual sites if you are sharing it there though, so FF is just making it easier to allow others and yourself to keep track of what you did recently.

If FriendFeed was tied into something that could keep track of the time spent using different services that would be another handy optional feature. Maybe something like SlimTimer, or perhaps less technical by just calculating a generic — configurable, even better — amount of minutes for each task tracked. This way us web working types can see where time is going. Some tasks like music playing in the background via iLike or last.fm may not contribute to a loss in productivity, but others might.

More than one RSS feed, please
FriendFeed only allows adding one RSS feed, which means that you’d need to use something like FeedBlendr to combine multiple blogs you post into one feed to share through FriendFeed. One bummer about having only one blended feed is that you can’t separate the blended feeds into categories of multiple feeds. Say for example, I wanted to have one blended feed for technology blogs on FriendFeed and another blended feed for personal blogs. Can’t do it with only a single RSS feed. If they increased the number of RSS feeds to say 5 or 10 that would be plenty.

Overall, FriendFeed provides some useful functionality. Doubtful I’ll be using the social functions like commenting on aggregated entries very often. I need less places to check for comments, but do enjoy the ability to check for a quick aggregated snapshot of what I did with the services included for the day. Maybe that will be of use to some readers as well. What do you think?

Last night Google added support for presentations to Google Docs. Nathan’s on top of the game and offers a solid walk-thru with screenshots and along with some help from Matt Cutts shares how to embed presentations in your webpages using IFRAME.

Remember September 18, 2007 as The Day The Earth Stood Still for Microsoft Office non-enterprise customers.

For those who haven’t seen the 1951 black and white sci-fi flick, it’s about an alien named Klaatu that comes down to deliver an important message to earth about the importance of maintaining peace. As with many alien encounters with earth in movies, Klaatu is met with suspicion and is shot by a scared soldier. A robot with amazing, unworldly powers called Gort appears to protect Klaatu. I won’t spoil the ending, but the movie is so good that it’s being remade for release in Summer 2008.

Now what does this movie have to do with Microsoft Office? Let’s put Microsoft in the role of the skeptic and overreacting military and politicians. They are holding onto a model with one of their two cash cows: Office as an overpriced suite of applications for non-enterprise customers. Google appears to be the benevolent Klaatu, offering all of us the ability to use Office-like applications online for ‘free’ (ad-supported): Word vs. Google Write, Excel vs. Google Spreadsheets and now Powerpoint vs. Google Presentation. And who are you and I?

We are Gort, the powerful robot army of the future, able to choose to enforce document peace here on earth and the internet. Able and willing to choose Google over Microsoft or vice versa.

Ok, yeah, I’m stretching with this analogy but the underlying idea is that while the Google Office suite isn’t an Office killer (I’m not saying that), it is a strong warning that Microsoft needs to do something to compete on the non-enterprise front against Google with Office. They need to get off their butts and offer an Adcenter ad-supported version of Office to compete to a new era of documents creation, management and collaboration that Google continues to grow.

As someone who owns Google stock, you’d think I’d be in favor of Google domination, but I’m not in favor of any company too far in the lead. Competition breeds excellence and I’m hoping today’s sober reality that Microsoft is fading fast from being Joe Consumer’s friend will be the wake-up call. Vista adoption isn’t what Microsoft hoped for no matter how they spin it, the Xbox 360 is now looking at the Nintendo Wii bumper stickers, Zune is a distant second place and Redmond’s soldier of fortune Office is seriously wounded.

My biggest criticism for Google Docs to date — and that is their new official title, BTW — has been the lack of offline connectivity. If you don’t have internet access, it disables the value of most web-based applications. Wise beyond their years, Google continues to work on and refine Google Gears. I wouldn’t call Gears a success yet, more like a work in progress. The day when omnipresent internet exists, Google appears to be in a stronger position than Microsoft for non-enterprise customers.

For the non-enterprise readers, how many are using Gmail more than Outlook? Google Docs and Spreadsheets more than Word and Excel? Do you even see the text ads?

It’s important to separate enterprise customers from non-enterprise because that’s an area where the tables are turned. Google’s suite doesn’t compete with Office for enterprise customers. Before telling me, I’m all wet in the comments, please keep this context in mind.

Does Microsoft doesn’t want to deal with non-enterprise customers any more? What are they doing to prove that? Maybe us Gort should freeze Redmond campus for a day to prove how powerful we are. Google seems to be going for the masses, while Microsoft focuses on the classes. To that strategy, Microsoft best heed the following immortal words:

Klaatu barada nikto [reference].

My favorite day of the week Friday has fast become the epicenter of activity around our office. As I write this I have little more than 30 minutes before our weekly live (2 hours) radio show, have had an in person appointment that went over their scheduled time and I’m just now starting to peer at my daily reading. Oh, and my planned Hmmcast for 420 today needs to be scrapped because what I shot video of has an NDA covering it. And I don’t have any video replacement recorded yet. Doh!

Maybe I’ll have to take a vacation day for the Hmmcast today. If you don’t see one published at 420, then that’s what I decided to do.

Haven’t done any Hmm quickies for awhile, but might have to make an exception later today. Putting this one in the productivity category because, well, it’s sort of anti-productivity.

The devil in the 300×250?
In the meantime, one of the things we’re batting around on today’s show is the omnipresent 300×250 ad. I received an email from a Google Adsense rep about adding a 300×250 ad here somewhere. I looked at the current design and don’t really see a good way to do it and have passed on the prospect for the time being, but we just started running one at our group VTOReality.com blog. We’re wrestling through where to put the beast — or if we even want to continue to use it at all over there. Very experimental at the present.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the 300×250 ad size but the Google rep explained this was their “most popular” format and one that allows videos and other creative ads. There are some design changes I’d like to see here at Hmm someday and maybe in certain cases the 300×250 could/would be used, but I like a clean reading experience and those 300×250 ads seem kind of obnoxious to me as a reader. For example, the Hmmcast should be more video-like. I’ve noticed many video bloggers only have one video per page which is something I’m interested in exploring.

I’ll throw this out to readers: what do you think of the 300×250 ads? Do they bother you? Do you use ad blockers already or read primarily through the RSS reader (and thus don’t care)?

Back to the mines. If my canary dies, somebody send help.

Disclaimer: I’m being paid to write this review.

Earlier today I admitted not knowing exactly what beer goggles were but something potentially more mind-bending awaited in Flucidity.org which self-describes itself too many times:

“It is a meta-language (or, language of languages) for a lack of a better way to describe it.”
“Flucidity is a new way of thinking.”
“Flucidity is a completely ridiculous idea until you actually begin to use it.”
“You can think of Flucidity as a language.”
“Or, in plain English, we can create a map to what we want by creating a small representation of it, making our own set of rules for it, then letting it loose to interact with our world. Doing this will brings us much closer to what we actually want.”
“It itself is a simple representation of how everything works that we can actually make use of.”

Intrigued? After perusing the mostly text with a few image .org Flucidity website I was somewhat but I was also suspicious. Far from convinced. Dig deeper.

The Flucidity Theory is the work of self-described “high school dropout” A. Sorel:

Unable to focus at school, he subsequently dropped out of 8th grade. Eventually making it to high school he, again, dropped out before completing the first semester. During this time he sought solace in the early Internet and at the library. He also wrote a 100-page manuscript entitled, “The Nature of Existence”, at age 16, which he promptly burned upon completion. During this time he developed the predecessor to Flucidity Theory, calling it the “Chaos Engine.”

Flucidity licensing
Flucidity is licensed with an attractive Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License which is interesting considering a “coming soon” category is listed for Flucidity Economics. Does this mean later an ebook or something else will be sold showing how Flucidity can make the author money, but not anybody else? If Flucidity is intended to be completely open, then why not just make the theory open to commercial application?

Aye, there’s the rub.

Is Flucidity BS?
But I’m getting ahead of myself and probably most readers, let’s try and figure out what Flucidity is first and how it can/might be used. The verbose Flucidity website somewhat reminded me of a typical Steve Gillmor rant and pretty much everything that is and was the AttentionTrust.

What we need as human beings at the most basic level to understand something are real world examples and applications. Fortunately — or unfortunately depending on one’s opinon after reading it — Flucidity offers at least one:

George wants to meet a smart girl. So, he starts by creating a representation that signifies his intent. Any will do. In this case, he decides to get a pair of reading glasses for himself. The new reading glasses will serve as his representation. He adds 2 simple rules to this. 1) Whenever he sees a girl he likes, he will put his glasses on and, 2) just before he introduces himself to her he will take his glasses off. Adding this structure to his new representation will focus potential energy his way. Thus, his desired interactions will be much more likely to take place, according to Flucidity theory. The result of this process will be a new represenation which, for George, could be discovering her name or telephone number (both of which are representations themselves) which, if utilized properly, will lead to further and more complex interactions and representations.

I read this example multiple times and thought it would read much better as: George wants to meet a smart girl. He thinks by wearing glasses and taking them off just before introducing himself this will motivate some brainy babe to offer her phone number and address. Loser.

Is this an example of Flucidity or a dating scheme? I figured I’d ask my wife if this would have impressed her if I had tried some cheesy move like this on her.

She responded with great sarcasm: “Oh yeah, removing your glasses would have made a big difference.”

My wife went further offering her opinion on Flucidity which we’ll get to shortly, but first let’s try and analyze the four typers of the universe and how they relate to this theory. Don’t worry, I’ve just begun to make fun of dating magnet, George.

Flucidity four typers of the universe
On the Flucidity introduction page the “basic premise” of Flucidity is described that everything exists with one of the four typers of the universe, with my attempt to shorten the description following:

* Representation - your intent to do something (”George wants to meet a smart girl”)
* Potential Energy - your emotions that compel you to do something (why George wants to meet a smart goal: companionship)
* Measurement & Structure - specific rules and/or guidelines to follow to obtain your goal (what George needs to do specifically to get a date with a smart girl)
* Interaction & Association - the action required to carry out your intent (George taking his glasses off when he meets a smart girl and introducing himself)

The how it works page offers more examples of each of the four typers. Here are merely two that again, I’ve shortened and perhaps over-simplified (intentionally):

Representation
- wealth: read a magazine you think wealthy people read.
- a new car: take pictures of a car you want

Structure and measurement
- wealth: find one interesting article in to do more research on in the magazine you think wealthy people read
- a new car: take five pictures from the driver’s seat, take photos of the color car you want, print them out and carry around with you (Look Ma, here’s the car I want to buy if only I had Bill Gates money).

Potential Energy
- wealth: the bookstore or magazine shop to buy the magazine you think wealthy people read
- a new car: take pictures at a dealership (Just what every dealership wants, dreamy mobloggers)

Interaction and Association
- wealth: company you read about with a promising opportunity
- a new car: test driving the car (and then pissing off the salesman when the hard sell turns up that you don’t have the money to buy the car)

Ok, I’ve had enough and didn’t even get into advanced Flucidity. Wish I was joking about that one.

Let’s skip the Flucidity nonsense and get to the meat of how to create wealth and get the car of your dreams. If you want wealth, go to work, stop reading magazines that Bill Gates reads. Passion creates energy and that creates results. If you or I aren’t passionate about the work we’re doing we won’t create good results. And without good results we’ll eventually be shown the door. In the case of the self-employed that means less customers and less revenue. Less revenue means less profits and less profits eventually means it is time to go back working for the man.

You or I don’t need to practice some long-winded Creative Commons licensed theory in order to achieve what we want to achieve, we just need to find something we enjoy doing and work hard at it. Some over-analytical type will show up in the comments and tell me how stupid I am and that I don’t see the genius here. Have at it, I don’t. Uncle!

That’s right I think Flucidity is exactly what it is italicized in one of the quotes on the theory website: A completely ridiculous idea.

Here’s what my wife thinks:

What an unbelievable crock of crap. A waste of time, instead of trying to apply some idiotic logic to a situation just set a goal and work hard to obtain it. How is flucidity going to help a person say get a new car? The average person is going to find this absolutely laughable.

Another reason I love my wife. She’s real and practical and doesn’t try to be some genius with some not so clever scheme, plan or theory. The only redeeming thing about this site and theory is that it’s not coming from some egotistical professor trying to blind us with his brainpower.

Maybe I should register my own .org and Creative Commons license my own theory. The TDavidicity Theory would be very short on content as I really only have one great theory on getting ahead in life and business:

Work hard, work smart, play hard, play smart.

If you want wealth, a new car or to meet a smart girl like studly George, you don’t need Flucidity, you need a good work ethic and love for doing something, anything. Sorry A. Sorel, Flucidity gave me a headache, but it isn’t a complete failure. Anything Creative Commons Licensed, even a pile of dog excrement doesn’t deserve complete failure. I’m sure this theory — and any theory — will work for somebody in the world and achieve great things and if so, that’s always a good thing. Go tear up the ladies sans those horn-rimmed specs, George. Grade: D-

Earlier this week I received a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Standard ($99.99 USD, affiliate) from a blog contest at thatedeguy.com. Thanks Shane. I don’t remember winning any contests inside blogs before, so this might be a first. The last software I remember winning from any sort of contest was a full retail version of Visual Studio 2003 in a drawing at a local developer event for .NET.

The last experience with the Dragon Naturally Speaking product I had was version 7 the preferred version which I paid $199.99 USD for plus tax at the local Best Buy. It got used for a little while but never part of the regular workflow.

My Tablet PC already has voice recognization on it and although I like the idea behind this type software, I’ve never been able to get it to work in a practical situation very well. My last serious attempt to use speech recognition (SR) was back in May of this year. It seems I get the energy to try and make speech recognition a couple times a year.

I’d love to be able to use SR for blogging, but the too frequent need to correct what the software thinks I’m saying rather than what was actually said has spoiled my enthusiasm in every case to date.

Is Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 any different?
I doubted DNS9 would be better than what’s already installed on my Tablet PC, but was curious to see what was new and at least try it out. I believe someday a speech recognition program will help make me more productive.

Unpacking notes
The included headphone (nice touch) fit very tight, almost painfully so, when you first put it on out of the box. Like breaking in a new baseball glove. I went through the initial training which proceeded relatively smoothly, only having to stop a half dozen times to speak words or sentences over again.

And then was on my way to dictating my first text.

The following text was created with Dragon Naturally speaking:

I’m testing out the Dragon NaturallySpeaking Dictation box. My first sentence didn’t go over too well and good to make multiple changes. Whatever reason and it didn’t understand “I’m” thinking that it was “eine.” That’s been a typical problem with speech recognition programs for me in the past.

A lump of heavy coal for DNS9 for putting an icon in the systray at startup during installation without giving an option to remove. I didn’t try “custom” installation though, so maybe that is where I could stop it from launching in the systray.

By default the gray DragonBar sits atop your screen and controls access to the various functions and allows easily toggling on/off the functions. You can right click and use systray icon mode only.

When you are inside a text box or browser window that supports editing and insertion of text via DNS9 you will see a green indicator.

The “Tools” menu has an accuracy center for training, command browser for commands to do things inside certain programs like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Word, a dictation pad and DragonPad which is a DNS9-powered text editor that is almost a carbon copy of Wordpad. The “Words” menu allows easily updating with custom words like “blog” as well as viewing recognition history.

There are five different modes to choose from: normal, dictation, command, numbers and spell. Moving in and out of the modes is as easy as saying: “__ mode.” For example, if you want to go into numbers mode you’d say: “numbes mode” which would then spell out numbers like 423 (useful for saying phone numbers, for example).

I plan to try and use it DNS9 throughout the rest of the week and see if I can work it in. It doesn’t seem any better (or worse) than the speech recognition that comes with the tablet thus far, but I need more time to truly compare. If I’m still talking about speech recognition in two weeks you’ll know I’m pretty pleased with DNS9.

Upcoming Hmm reviews
My list of other things to check out is growing and soon I should be kicking out a review for the Rocky Balboa movie, the new “Rehab” CD by Quiet Riot that I finally found in store (been looking for that for awhile) plus some software and web services.