Curiouser and Curiouser! on productivity http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic productivity Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Giving ActiveWords another go Thu, 21 Nov 2002 08:03:35 +0000 Okay I'm hearing a lot of positive things about <A href="http://www.activewords.com/">ActiveWords</A> again and being something of a tool freak this makes me want to take another look.&nbsp; I've tried it twice and both times I've been fairly irritated with it and not found it terribly useful.&nbsp; However Jim's <A href="http://www.mcgeesmusings.net/2002/11/18.html#a2694">comments</A> suggest that maybe I haven't given it a fair shake.&nbsp; Maybe this time it will click... http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000839.html So long ActiveWords Thu, 05 Dec 2002 14:41:06 +0000 <P>I gave up on <A href="http://www.activewords.com/">ActiveWords</A> yesterday.&nbsp; I know a lot of bright people seem to think it's great but it just doesn't work for me.&nbsp; I just didn't find myself using typed shortcuts that often, I have a reasonably uncluttered machine and don't have problems launching programs thanks to&nbsp;<A href="http://www.truelaunchbar.com/">truelaunchbar</A>.&nbsp; Although the idea of launching documents by name makes sense in theory, in practice it&nbsp;wasn't that useful.&nbsp; In fact&nbsp;if I was going to do this I think I would put the documents in&nbsp;<A href="http://www.thebrain.com/">Personal Brain</A> same thing only better metadata and all linked together.</P> <P>And then there are downsides.&nbsp; I found the trainer very irritating.&nbsp; It weights foreground and background activations of folders and documents equally.&nbsp; This meant that it was forever popping up folders and documents that Radio was scanning in the background.&nbsp; The only solutions seemed to be turn up the thresholds or turn it off - both of which negate one of&nbsp;the more powerful aspects of the product.&nbsp; If I have to manually tell AW what i'm interested in then I really would rather use Personal Brain.&nbsp; Also AW really needs to give you enough context to work out which document or folder it is talking about - the name is not enough.&nbsp; I believe they are working on that.</P> <P>Also I found they way AW would popup while I was typing disconcerting.&nbsp; Most of the time I'd rather spell check at the end of a period of writing than "as I go" (maybe I make more spelling errors than most...).&nbsp; There were problems with my IDE as well which meant having to choose a different keyboard activation code.</P> <P>In short this tool is not for me, and this time after a few weeks I can say I gave it a fair shake.</P> <P>However I would say that Buzz and Peter were very responsive to my issues, and enough people get value out of it that I would still recommend it to others to try.&nbsp; Just because it doesn't work for me doesn't mean it won't work for you.</P> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000950.html She canna take it anymore Tue, 20 Apr 2004 21:27:22 +0100 <blockquote><a href="http://chocnvodka.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2004/4/20/37107.html">The unblogged blog is a blog not worth blogging</a>. You know one of the worst things about going away for a few days? You get back to a whole backlog of blog posts that you want to write but which feel like they'll take forever so you put off starting them because you have work and emails and stuff to do first. Then you discover that everyone else has been astonishingly productive whilst you were away and the already huge list of blogs that you try to peruse on a daily basis have stacked up the unread entries in Bloglines and suddenly your criteria for which blog to read next is not 'which author do I like the best?' but 'who's been lazy this week?'. How I smile when I see a blog with unread entries still in single figures. <br> <br>And I have a cold. Ok, so it's not quite the unfettered snotfest I suffered a few months ago, but it makes me feel slow and stupid. (Anyone who comments that I actually am slow and stupid will feel the full force of my sneeze, I promise you.) <br> <br> So, early night tonight and blog first thing in the morning. Honest, guv. [<a href="http://chocnvodka.blogware.com/blog">Chocolate and Vodka</a>]</blockquote><p>Yep.&nbsp; My aggregator is full, I have a bunch of blogs to read, documents, presentations, <sigh><br> </p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002084.html Dr. Frankenstein would use Longhorn Thu, 14 Jul 2005 12:26:52 +0100 <p><blockquote><p>Take a look at this <a href="http://elliottback.com/wp/wp-content/lh2r8ad.jpg">beta image</a> of Microsoft’s latest operating system. It makes me want to throw up. I am so happy I own a mac. First of all, having everything transparent makes it hard for my eyes to focus on the content, they are going all over the place trying to look for solid ground.</p><p>Second, there are artifacts of the old look and feel WITHIN THE NEW ONE. How confusing can you get when you have a pair of X’s, both which look like they should close the window and both in different styles. It is amazing how little can get done with billions in the bank. [<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/rufytech?m=54">Microsoft’s Complete Lack of Taste - Technoblog</a>]</p></blockquote>All the previews I have seen of Longhorn have looked terrible. The Windows UI is like Frankensteins monster in the movies. The special effects get better but it still looks like your worst nightmare come to life. I think it was Freewheelin Franklin who used to say <blockquote>"Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.".</blockquote>for Microsoft <em>dope</em> could read <em>vision</em>. Longhorn appears to be a testament to the failure of throwing money at a problem.</p> <p>At the risk of <strong>confirming</strong> my status as another boring <em>born again Mac zealot</em> I'm finding the Mac UI a very productive environment (Okay Terry you can shoot me now!) Switching from Windows has largely been a matter of relief rather than confusion. This thing works.</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002758.html