Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on tools http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic tools Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Tool review: Summarizer Thu, 04 Jul 2002 11:33:27 +0100 I've added <A href="http://www.copernic.com/products/summarizer/index.html">Copernic Summarizer</A> output to some of my recent posts.  It's a fabulous tool recommended to me by Joe Rotello that I am using more and more. Here's how I use it. Often when I am browsing I come across a long article that I'm not sure I want to read.  If I have it in front of me I can click the summarizer button on the IE toolbar and let it go to work.  If it's a link on a page I'm on I choose "Summarize target" from the context menu.   Summarizer also has a live in-browser summary option. Summarizer opens and downloads the page.  It does a statistical analysis of the text to determine the key concepts.  Then it works backwards to identify the sentences that are most important in the document based on those key concepts.  It presents this as a summary list.   At this point I can read the summary, email it or print it.  I can also save it as an XML document (using Copernic's summary XSD scheme). I get to control how large or small the summary generated is using a simple controls like 10% of the text or 200 words and Summarizer will adjust the summary as I do so.  I can also remove concepts and have Summarizer re-jig things to reflect the new order of things. I was a little skeptical at first but that quickly changed when I saw the quality of summaries it was generating.  I usually use the 10% summary as a quick precis, then 25% for a little better understanding.  If it seems worth it I then go on to read the whole article. Summarizer also plugs into Adobe acrobat, Office and a number of other tools.  For those not directly supported you can summarize text copied to the clipboard or dragged onto it's system tray icon. There are things I would like to see developed for this product.  For example there is no easy way to jump from a summary line to that line in the original document (to obtain context) and the in-browse live summarizer seems a little buggy to me.  But all-in-all I think this is a great tool for the information professional and well worth $60. [Note I am not affiliated with Copernic in any way, I'm just a satisfied customer] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » As a taster here is a 100 word summary of this posting: <UL> <LI>If I have it in front of me I can click the summarizer button on the IE toolbar and let it go to work.</LI> <LI>It does a statistical analysis of the text to determine the key concepts.</LI> <LI>Then it works backwards to identify the sentences that are most important in the document based on those key concepts.</LI> <LI>For example there is no easy way to jump from a summary line to that line in the original document (to obtain context) and the in-browse live summarizer seems a little buggy to me.</LI> <LI>But all-in-all I think this is a great tool for the information professional and well worth $60.</LI></UL>    </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000097.html Coaching tools Thu, 15 Aug 2002 12:31:02 +0100 <OL> <LI>Follow my coach. </LI> <LI> <DIV>Someone else keeps up on all this nerdy stuff more than I do. Let me subscribe to almost all of his changes, adopting them automatically or at least putting them in a queue for approval. This way I focus on my content and let my coach pick/tweak tools, macros, templates, style sheets, news feed subscriptions, etc. </DIV></LI></OL> <UL> <LI> <DIV>I can unsubscribe bit-by-bit (perhaps tweaking my own templates) as I learn more and follow my own path. </DIV> <LI> <DIV>This may be the default for a company, department, community, hosting service. </DIV> <LI> <DIV>Affiliate one or more coach URLs with a "Radio Community Server". </DIV></LI></UL> From [<A href="http://dijest.com/aka/2002/08/11.html#a1917">a klog apart</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Wow, here's a powerful idea.  I'm blown away by this. You could apply it in so many places.  Almost every time you start using a new package and meet up with someone who you would like to mentor you in it.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000333.html Klogging up the intranet Sun, 18 Aug 2002 23:26:04 +0100 Just thinking about intranets and klogs. I think klogs bring the role of a web or intranet editor sharply into focus. Much as the users of a Wiki should occasionally re-factor pages that are becoming "busy" I think that a good intranet editor should be grooming the klogs in their organization and drawing together useful strangs to form part (or all) of the static intranet. I wonder what kind of tools would make this easier? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000351.html Six Degree's of Freedom? Well maybe... Tue, 20 Aug 2002 16:25:22 +0100 Ron Lusk <A href="http://home.netcom.com/~luskr/weblog/radio/categories/kLogs/2002/08/16.html#a545">posted recently</A> about a program called <A href="http://www.creo.com/sixdegrees/">Six Degree's</A> which they call "Time-freeing technology."   It's a pretty simple idea.  An application that links together all the emails, files and people in your outlook database.  Example: you click on an email in Outlook and in the Six Degree's window you can see all the related emails, the people involved in those emails and any files exchanged in those emails. It certainly fits into my category of information tools for personal effectiveness so I was interested to and downloaded it.  The tutorial presentation was very slick, but I hit a snag when it came to try and index the contents of my Outlook folders. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "An unexpected exception has been caught in initTroll"</BLOCKQUOTE> not what you want to see, but better, I suppose, than not catching it.  The advice was to restart, but that hasn't solved it. I'm in two minds about whether to give it another chance.  At the back of my mind I am not convinced this is a technology that will be effective due to it's dependence upon file attachments.  I am not a believer in using email to handle projects, nor in sending/expecting attached files.  There are better technologies out there. So Six Degree's seems a bit like a band-aid when what we need is a vaccine. However lot's of people do manage projects via email, and are attachment junkies.  This technology could very well work for them and it might be a good transitional technology.  A way of organizing a projects assets in order to migrate it to something more sensible. Maybe I'll give it another go tomorrow. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000380.html Keep your tinder dry Thu, 05 Sep 2002 12:44:21 +0100 When I came across it again today I remembered that <A href="http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/">Tinderbox</A> is the application that got me into weblogging. Although I couldn't use it (it's Mac only) I consumed the website with great interest and a certain amount of jealousy.  It was also the first reference I had seen to weblogging and from there I got to Radio Userland. I'm really hoping they port Tinderbox to Windows soon. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000492.html Find tool for Radio developers Mon, 09 Sep 2002 20:47:20 +0100 Although Radio includes a Find & Replace facility which lets you search the database I often find it more annoying than useful.  This is because it too much power with too few controls.  Most of the time I want to search for a specific table or script.  But with Radio's built-in find any occurrence of my search term in any object, I also get to iterate through these interactively in little windows that popup in random spots on the desktop, and I'm never quite sure whether that beeps means my search is finished or not. Tonight I snapped and and wrote a findObject() routine to search the database for object names, and then added a mechanism to allow specifying the object type: table, text, outline and so on. Drop <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/gems/tools/utils.root">utils.root</A> into your Radio tools folder & restart Radio.  You will have a new menu Utils in which will be a find sub-menu.  It takes the current target as the start point for the search, or the root if you have no start point.  Take a look at utilsSuite.findObject() if you want to see the guts. Happy searching.     http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000517.html Updated find tool for Radio Thu, 12 Sep 2002 20:19:00 +0100 I've updated the <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/gems/tools/utils.root">find tool</A> for Radio to fix a subtle bug that would cause it to skip some tables.  I've also added menubars as a search type and an option to use an exact name match rather than a substring match (the tool is still case insensitive, but then Radio table names are case insensitive anyway). To install just drop the .root file into your Tools directory.  The Find menu will appear until Utils on your menubar. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000540.html Choose your vendor carefully Tue, 17 Sep 2002 23:02:23 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/2002/09/17.html#a637">What a Great Essay: Do Da Scoble!</A>. <H3>What a Great Essay: Do Da Scoble!</H3> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> But, as someone who was a Borland developer for 9+ years, I'm not at all certain I'd go back.  Don't get me wrong -- Delphi is awesome but Borland burned a lot of people.  I'd say their key marketing challenge is restablishing trust.  Before I buy a tool these days -- for anything -- I know that the cost of the tool is the smallest part of the equation.  The real cost is in using the tool; learning it and then being orphaned by the vendor and having to move on.  So as much as I agree with Scoble that Borland does a good job, choosing tools is something that we do more wisely now than in the old days.  Thinking ahead to the future is much more common now than it once was.  So before Borland could lure me back, they have to make me trust them and that's awfully hard.  </BLOCKQUOTE> [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0103807/">The FuzzyBlog!</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Hard won wisdom on selecting your vendor carefully.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000558.html How ActiveWords should have been done Thu, 19 Sep 2002 17:01:10 +0100 Just musing on <A href="http://www.activewords.com/">ActiveWords</A>.  It's a good idea, a sort of meta-application.  But it's expressed in the wrong way.  I found it both intrusive (it would popup as I was doing something, but I was trying to do something and it wasn't talking to ActiveWords) and the wrong expression of the idea. Here's how I think it should work: <UL> <LI>It should have a calendar where you specify when you want to talk to AW.  All the bits of training data it accumulates should be saved and processed then.  At that point AW should make it's recommendations about things it things it could help you with. <LI>It should be based upon video recognition and should be triggered by gesture.  I hated having to type the keywords.  It was a bore, if I could have just made a sign to my (well I don't have one but you get the idea) webcam and have my browser popup and load Google.  That would actually be cool!</LI></UL> Maybe I didn't give it a fair chance, but I just felt ActiveWords was a nice idea, implemented without much imagination.  Have I been unfair? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000559.html Software tools for information overload Fri, 04 Oct 2002 12:40:23 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108194/2002/10/03.html#a409">Tinderbox, Mind Map Pro, and Inspiration 7 overview (v0.1)</A>. <BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE> [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0108194/">The Universal Church Of Cosmic Uncertainty</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Mike's review of Tinerbox, Mind Map Pro and Inspiration is too long to repost here but is a fascinating insight into three interesting pieces of software. I have been interested in <A href="http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/">Tinderbox</A> for some time.  It was through Tinderbox that I got into weblogging in the first place and I wait with anticipation for the Window port to come out.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000634.html I'll set fire to your tinder for you! Tue, 15 Oct 2002 15:03:13 +0100 <A href="http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06959">TidBITS: Light Your Fire with Tinderbox</A>. Quote: "Tinderbox is, as I hope I've implied, an inspired piece of work. With its Web capabilities, outliner hierarchy, hyperlinks, lightweight database abilities, and snippet keeping, Tinderbox will surely have something to intrigue you. It's small, it's easy, it's fascinating, and it's cool. I strongly recommend that you download the demo and see for yourself. You may not understand the program fully at first, but keep experimenting; this is a powerful program with many uses, and the possibilities will start to dawn on you as you work with it." [<A href="http://instructionalTechnology.editthispage.com/">Serious Instructional Technology</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » You rotten swines keep on with this "Tinderbox is great" stuff even when you know I can't run it.  Damnit Eastgate where is that Windows port! Any donations to the "buy Matt an iMac" fund greatfully received :) (joking)</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000723.html It's a conspiracy I tell you! Wed, 16 Oct 2002 14:04:27 +0100 <A href="http://www.boswell.com/html/home.html">Boswell</A>. (SOURCE:<A href="http://www.whiterabbits.com/MacNetJournal/">Mac Net Journal</A>)-Sounds like a <A href="http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/">TinderBox</A> competitor <quote> Did you ever wish you had an assistant who would keep track of all your research, writings, notes, appointments, contacts, and e-mail so you wouldn't have to? That is what Boswell does -- organize, archive, manipulate, and retrieve all your text. It will be preserved for you so you will never, ever lose it, mislay it, overwrite it, or accidentally delete it. Boswell will not only organize your text for you but will do so automatically. That means you will not have to spend lots of time "filing things away." And then Boswell will easily retrieve any text you gave it any time you want it. </quote> [<A href="http://www.rolandTanglao.com/">Roland Tanglao's Weblog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » It's a blasted conspiracy.  Another interesting tool that is Mac only. Given the paucity of such tools for Windows you would have thought these people would see a big market that it would be in their interests to address.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000746.html Radio Make Tue, 22 Oct 2002 12:27:28 +0100 Quick note: I have updated my <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/gems/tools/utils.root">utils</A> tool for Radio (and Frontier I guess) to add a "Make Root" function.  When invoked this will make sure that every script in the targetted root is compiled.  Actually make is a misnomer really since I don't know how to detect whether a script is already compiled, so I just compile 'em all. I can now confirm that all 175 scripts in liveTopics compile properly.  They may not work, but at least they compile! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000761.html Visual Thesaurus Mon, 28 Oct 2002 21:14:58 +0000 Two weeks old link from <A href="http://www.downes.ca/news/OLDaily.htm">OLDaily</A>: <A href="http://www.visualthesaurus.com/index.jsp">Visual Thesaurus</A> for playing with meanings of English words. This is definitely something useful for improving my language skills :) [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0109961/">Mathemagenic</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » What a fun tool (think TouchGraph GoogleBrowser).  Thanks for the link.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000788.html e-mail response management Tue, 05 Nov 2002 18:51:35 +0000 I've just had a chat with the guys from <A href="http://www.neotonic.com/">Neotonic</A> who make the <A href="http://www.neotonic.com/trakken/">Trakken</A> e-mail response and FAQ management software.  A lot of the intelligence that makes Yahoo groups work is at work behind Trakken.  If you need e-mail management I suggest you check 'em out. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000814.html You know a good idea when you see one Tue, 05 Nov 2002 21:37:17 +0000 IdeaTools Weblog day 2: <A href="http://paolo.evectors.it/ideaTools/2002/11/05.html#a1087">Quick tour</A>. [<A href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Paolo's showing off IdeaTools: <UL> <LI>Stories and news</LI> <LI>Product catalog and shopping basket</LI> <LI>Events management</LI> <LI>Discussion group</LI> <LI>Rss News Aggregator</LI> <LI>Customer/Contents profiling</LI> <LI>Search engine</LI></UL> and that's just for starters.  Definitely worth taking a look.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000816.html 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.  I've tried it twice and both times I've been fairly irritated with it and not found it terribly useful.  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.  Maybe this time it will click... http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000840.html So long ActiveWords Thu, 05 Dec 2002 14:41:06 +0000 I gave up on <A href="http://www.activewords.com/">ActiveWords</A> yesterday.  I know a lot of bright people seem to think it's great but it just doesn't work for me.  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 <A href="http://www.truelaunchbar.com/">truelaunchbar</A>.  Although the idea of launching documents by name makes sense in theory, in practice it wasn't that useful.  In fact if I was going to do this I think I would put the documents in <A href="http://www.thebrain.com/">Personal Brain</A> same thing only better metadata and all linked together. And then there are downsides.  I found the trainer very irritating.  It weights foreground and background activations of folders and documents equally.  This meant that it was forever popping up folders and documents that Radio was scanning in the background.  The only solutions seemed to be turn up the thresholds or turn it off - both of which negate one of the more powerful aspects of the product.  If I have to manually tell AW what i'm interested in then I really would rather use Personal Brain.  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.  I believe they are working on that. Also I found they way AW would popup while I was typing disconcerting.  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...).  There were problems with my IDE as well which meant having to choose a different keyboard activation code. In short this tool is not for me, and this time after a few weeks I can say I gave it a fair shake. 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.  Just because it doesn't work for me doesn't mean it won't work for you. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000951.html Another IDEA convert Sun, 08 Dec 2002 10:24:57 +0000 When <A href="http://www.intellij.com/">IDEA</A> v3.0 was released recently I thought I would evaluate it again and I'm glad I did.  This is a good software. I've used every version of JBuilder and seen it mature from a piece of crap, to a great IDE, and on to a rather swollen mess.  I don't think the IDE part of JBuilder has improved much in the last few releases, Borland have choosen to concentrate on other areas. IDEA on the other hand is impressive.  It works very smoothly, it's features are intelligent (like folding that works, and fantastic code completion).  It also has the best refactoring support I've seen so far.  As a coders tool IDEA looks very good. About the only significant downside for me is the lack of a GUI builder. I guess if you're only doing J2EE based (I'm not qualified to evaluate the J2EE support) that's not a problem.  For me, it is.  I don't particularly like the JBuilder GUI designer or the code it creates, but it is better than nothing. So, in short, IDEA goes on the wish list. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000961.html RssDistiller: vital tool for Radio Users Sun, 08 Dec 2002 10:43:53 +0000 Last time I checked out <A href="http://store.evectors.com/itproducts/story$num=1&sec=3">RssDistiller</A> from evectors I wasn't really into RSS very much.  It was just after I started using Radio and, frankly, I was more interested in messing around with it and what it could do.  What did I care about feeds?  Also creating patterns to distill sites is a bit of an art, who has the time? Well of course I'm a little older and wiser now.  RSS has grown to be very important to my thinking and to how I think business should be done.  So important that tools to get non-RSS delivered content into feeds are vitally important.  Of course, this is exactly what RssDistiller does. To create a feed from a website you point RssDistiller at the site and specify patterns marking the start and end of the areas RssDistiller should look at, and then the start and end of each "item" it should create.  RssDistiller will then turn that into a valid feed. For example the following patterns are how i configure a feed for a website that I use: <UL> <LI>ignore text before: <body <LI>ignore text after: </body <LI>start pattern: <LI>end pattern: <LI>item template: ##text##</LI></UL> fiddly, but worth it. RssDistiller is definitely worth <A href="http://store.evectors.com/itproducts/story$num=1&sec=3">checking out</A>.  http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000965.html Google Views: looks good from here Tue, 10 Dec 2002 23:18:50 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://google.blogspace.com/archives/000753">New Google Labs!</A>. <A href="http://google.blogspace.com/archives/000753">New Google Labs!</A>: "<A href="http://labs.google.com/">Google Labs</A> has two new projects: <A href="http://labs.google.com/gviewer.html">Google Viewer</A> lets you view the web pages of your search results, in a slideshow fashion. [<A href="http://archipelago.phrasewise.com/">Archipelago</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> I think the Google Viewer is going to become a powerful tool.  It takes the power of Google much closer to the overall functinality provided by desktop tools like <A href="http://www.copernic.com/">Copernic Agent</A>. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000980.html Another A for IDEA Tue, 10 Dec 2002 23:28:47 +0000 Another <A href="http://techupdate.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t481-s2123240,00.html">good review</A> for <A href="http://www.intellij.com.">IDEA</A>. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000982.html Personal Brain 3.0 Tue, 24 Dec 2002 09:00:41 +0000 <A href="http://www.thebrain.com/">TheBrain</A> have today released the first <A href="http://www.thebrain.com/products/personalbrain/support/downloadPBbeta.html">beta</A> of version 3.0 of PersonalBrain. This is fantastic news in as much as many of us had written PersonalBrain off as an abandoned product.  Better yet, Version 3.0 definitely delivers on many of the must haves that I and others have been sending them over the years. Well done to the TheBrain! Here's the skinny: <TABLE border=0> <TBODY> <TR> <TD width="100%">System Improvements</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>Support for over 1 million thoughts per Brain - 32 times previous versions. <LI>Support for Windows XP. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">Thought and Link Types</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>Thought types let you create categories of information, such as people, projects, or places. Typed thoughts are color coded and separately searchable.  <LI>Link types let you label the connections between thoughts to give them meaning. For example, you could create a link type called "friend" and use it to show which of the people in your Brain are friends.  <LI>The use of Thought and link types allows you to create a much more sophisticated Brain. <LI>Thought and link types allow an extra layer of semantic meaning to placed on information in your Brain. <LI>Types can be setup via the Options menu or the "Edit types..." button on the properties pane. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">Link Types</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>Right-click on a link to set its type. <LI>Typed links are color coded and named - the name shows on mouseover. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">Thought Types</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>Thought types can be created with name, description, and color. <LI>Types can be set via right click menu or via the Type dropdown in the properties pane. <LI>Thought types are displayed on mouseover. <LI>Search tab contains new indexes for lists of each thought type. <LI>Find dialog can filter thoughts based on thought type. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">Fast Brain Access</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>Get instant access to your Brain with the Brain Hot Key - hold down the Windows key and type the letter B [Windows+B] to show your Brain.  <LI>To jump quickly to any thought, just type the first few letters.  <LI>The Brain Hot Key can be turned on and off in the Preferences menu. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">Faster Access & Search</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>The Find Thoughts feature, which lets you perform advanced searches, is now available via F9 or through the Options menu.  <LI>Find dialog box is easier to use and allows searching by thought type. <LI>Focus (keyboard input) returns to instant search window immediately after any dialog box closes. <LI>Instant search analyzes more history to determine best match. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">General User Interface Improvements</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>Thoughts in lists (Search, History, Instant Search, & Create Dialog) are drawn using thought type colors. <LI>Notes now contains a "Paste as Text" function in the edit menu or via [Ctrl+Shift+V]. <LI>Auto hide feature is animated, so that the window slides on and off screen. <LI>Built-in list of search engines now contains: AlltheWeb.com, AltaVista, Google, Lycos, Yahoo and a customizable setting. <LI>The progress window is smaller. <LI>Menu items have better keyboard compatibility. <LI>The PersonalBrain program directory now contains default folders for color settings and wallpapers. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">Plex User Interface Improvements</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>Thoughts in the plex are ordered by thought type first, then by name. <LI>Right-click menu allows unlinking of the selected thought from the active thought. <LI>The plex resizing circle is enabled with maximum and minimum sizes preventing unwieldy fonts sizes. <LI>The search box is smaller to show more thoughts in the Past Thought List. <LI>F2 renames the highlighted thought, not the active thought. <LI>F4 now uses the highlighted thought for Web searches. <LI>Improved Properties layout. <LI>Thought text color is more consistent - highlight and central text colors removed. <LI>Hints do not appear unless the mouse is held still for 1 second. </LI></UL></TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%">Bug Fixes</TD></TR> <TR> <TD width="100%"> <UL> <LI>The Web search dialog does not accidentally pop-up when closing other Windows. <LI>Filenames in PersonalBrain no longer get a "2" appended to them unless there is a name conflict. <LI>Dialogs are never hidden by the main window when in always on top mode. <LI>Removed listing of *.brs files from open dialog (these files are not supported). <LI>Wallpaper does not change when loading colors. <LI>Distant thoughts always draw in their correct color. <LI>Instant Brains are no longer included. <LI>Display of Brains with many links from a single thought is more stable. </LI></UL></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001012.html Making TagSoup (add salt) Thu, 09 Jan 2003 14:39:51 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> This announces the first public release of TagSoup, TagSoup 0.8. Those of you who heard about it at either the November NYC XML SIG meeting or at XML 2002 can now download it from the TagSoup home page at: <A href="http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/XML/tagsoup">http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/XML/tagsoup</A> Currently available are the source and object code, and the presentation slides in Powerpoint format (but created by OpenOffice.org 1.0). From: <A href="http://lists.xml.org/archives/xml-dev/">xml-dev</A></BLOCKQUOTE> This announcement for TagSoup is from about 3 weeks back, but hey, it's still good.  TagSoup is an HTML parser that <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> parses HTML as it is found in the wild: nasty and brutish, though quite often far from short</BLOCKQUOTE> and provides a SAX interface to allow standard XML tools to grok the parsed HTML.  Very neat! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001057.html New-fangled XML gubbins Mon, 10 Feb 2003 15:07:13 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2003/02/07.html#a730">Matt Mower</A> takes a look at <A href="http://xplusplus.sourceforge.net/index.htm">Superx++</A>, an OO programming language with an XML syntax, and finds it a bit new-fangled. I agree it looks terribly verbose, but I think there are some terrific advantages possible from this approach. XML is both easily human and computer readable, and sensible, lowering the technical bar to understanding. A terrific development toolset for manipulating XML programs could evolve from the format. Incorporating other XML documents is natural, whether they specify Data, Instructions, Web Services, or UI widgets. There's plenty of action is this area. <A href="http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/">Apache Cocoon</A> is "an XML publishing framework that raises the usage of XML and XSLT technologies for server applications to a new level." <A href="http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Data_Formats/Markup_Languages/XML/Applications/XUL/?tc=1">XUL</A> is Mozilla's XML UI language. <A href="http://www.laszlosystems.com/">Laszlo</A> is a Rich Internet Application Framework, utilizing XML for development, and piggybacking on Flash for execution [From the look of their <A href="http://www.laszlosystems.com/img/p_c_environment.jpg">screenshot</A>, it seems <A href="http://myway.com/">myWay</A> may be interested]. <A href="http://www.xwt.org/index.html">XWT</A> is a gui toolkit based in XML (mentioned in the great article <A href="http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/htmls_time_is_over_lets_move_on.php">HTML's Time is Over. Let's Move On.</A>). There's even been <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0100875/2002/12/17.html#a791">rumors</A> of Microsoft pursuing XML programming languages. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0100875/">Brain Off</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> I'd like to make a couple of clarifications: <OL> <LI>I didn't really take a look at SuperX++.  Or rather that's exactly what I did.  I looked at that chunk of code on the page and went "ugh!" <LI>I don't agree with the statement "XML is both easily human and...".  Computer readable?  Yes.  Human readable, gods no.  Not that example anyway.</LI></OL> I've had this argument before but so far I haven't seen any good reason for XML programming languages.  In conversation with the author of <A href="http://www.o-xml.org/objectbox/">ObjectBox</A> I wondered about using such a language for building advanced coding toolsets but I sure as hell don't want to be typing this stuff in!  You, of course, may type in whatever you like :) http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001145.html Great concept, well implemented Sat, 14 May 2005 08:19:40 +0100 <img align="left" width="105" height="82" style="padding: 10px;" src="http://matt.blogs.it/images/mini_cmap.jpg">I'm very grateful to Dave Pollard for <a href="http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/05/07.html#a1137">blogging</a> about <a href="http://cmap.ihmc.us/">IHMC CMapTools</a>. I used it to draw these <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2005/05/13.html#a1826">study aids</a> and I think it's the program I have been looking for ever since I realised that I often want to think at a different level to Mind Maps (for which I use <a href="http://www.mindjet.com/uk/">Mind Manager</a>, but not Mind Manager X5). It fulfills a need that PersonalBrain never could. It allows me to concept map on a grand scale. PB always tightly constrained your focus which didn't suit me for many tasks. (BTW have <a href="http://www.thebrain.com/">TheBrain</a> gone out of business?) When I first looked at the IHMC website I was a little suspicious. The history of Academically developed software is littered with programs even a mother couldn't love (I should know, I wrote some of them). Even though the IHMC home page was a map exported from their tool, was it a tool that normal people would ever choose to use? In fact the answer is a resounding yes! CMapTools is a polished Java application. In 2 days of heavy use I've come across no bugs and, whilst it is a bit of a memory hog (routinely running around 170MB on my system) it's acceptably responsive (P4 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, ATIRadeon7200 GPU). I do have some issues with the interface, when I have a little more time I'll try and get in touch with the developers. The ones I've listed so far are:<ul><li>I haven't quite got the hang of getting text & line control how I want them. Especially when I want everything one way with a few exceptions.</li><li>I'd like a way of creating anonymous propositions. That is I want to link two concepts but not have to describe how they are linked. You can leave the text for the proposition blank, but it doesn't look right and the connecting line is still jointed.</li><li>I'd like to see improved window management. When you have a bunch of maps open you need some way of herding them sensibly. Something like <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/">Apple Exposé</a> would be perfect.</li><li>You can insert diagrams by making them the background of a node but it's quite fiddly and I've not been able to make it look good. I'd like to see more direct support for including diagrams (one idea that occurs is an auto-zooming icon: have a small iconic representation of the diagram in the node, which zooms to the full diagram on mouseover). I'm thinking now that nested nodes might also be a solution.</li><li>The collaborative facilities look as intriguing as they do baffling.</ul> There are also features I haven't experimented with so far:<ul><li>The most intriguing is nested nodes which allow you to create expandable sub-maps. So far I've been using ability to cross-link maps to sub-divide a topic but nesting might be more effective. I'm not sure how it will work in the HTML version which uses image maps (bonus marks would be available if this was implemented with DHTML).</li><li>As well as adding sub-maps as resources you can link map nodes directly. The linked nodes will be included in both maps and a shortcut icon jumps from map to map.</li></ul> I'll conclude my capsule review by giving CMapTools 9 out of 10. Oh, and did I mention it's free? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002605.html Grok it Thu, 19 May 2005 23:46:30 +0100 I just installed the latest version of <a href="http://www.grokker.com/">Grokker</a>. It's name has changed to MyGrokker but functionally it appears much the same as the previous version. I confess i've never gotten as much use from Grokker as I'd hoped I would. I think this is partly because the maps, at the end of the day, don't go anywhere. I can't do anything nice with them and it's not soo much more powerful a search tool for the kind of searches that I do that it's worthwhile starting it when I can be in Google in 2s. <img src="http://matt.blogs.it/images/tree-map-grokker-search.png"> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002630.html Grok it faster Thu, 19 May 2005 23:49:04 +0100 Pretty though. <img src="http://matt.blogs.it/images/tree-map-grokker-search-2.png"> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002631.html What's on your desktop? Thu, 23 Jun 2005 10:12:14 +0100 As part of my practice for being a new Mac owner I just installed <a href="http://www.otakusoftware.com/">TopDesk from Otaku Software</a> which is an <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/">Exposé</a> style tool for Windows XP. It seems to work quite nicely.<blockquote><img src="http://matt.blogs.it/images/posts/topdesk_sc.png"></blockquote>Link from <a href="http://farm.tucows.com/blog/_archives/2005/6/13/934522.html">Joey deVilla@TheFarm</a> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002679.html There has to be a last nail Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:57:44 +0100 After 3+ years of near-regular service <a href="http://radio.userland.com/">Radio</a> has now started issuing me warnings about damaged free lists in it's database. So far as I can see I've not lost anything but this kind of thing is just one more reason to get my act together and find a new blogging tool. The main things which make me not want to think about this are:<ol><li>Migrating nearly 2000 posts</li><li>No it's not that simple because I need to edit several hundred of them to fix my crappy HTML</li><li>Breaking a shit load of permalinks</li><li>Or duplicating Radio's all posts in a day with anchors funky permalinks</li><li>Choosing what tool to use anyway damnit!</li></ol> I need a de-inertia ray... http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002915.html Drag'n'Solve Thu, 13 Oct 2005 12:36:48 +0100 In response to my <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2005/10/12.html#a2034">plea for advice</a> about my KeyNote problem <a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0001017/">Andy Fragen</a> wrote to tell me about <a href="http://www.yellowmug.com/easycrop/">EasyCrop</a> by YellowMug software. Whilst it won't do the whole job automatically it made it very convenient. I was able to drag the images from KeyNote (recording size and position on the slide) into the EasyCrop drop-zone. Click Cmd-A to get it converted into a JPG of the same dimensions then drop it back into KeyNote and set size and position. All in all it took me about 15 minutes to get the job done. I'm very grateful once more to Andy who is a source of unfailingly sound & practical advice. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003028.html Putting the Dock in the dock Fri, 14 Oct 2005 11:09:37 +0100 Okay it's less of an issue now that I have <a href="http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/">Quicksilver</a> but I am pretty irritated with the way icons disappear off my MacOSX dock. I installed Microsoft Word yesterday, dragged the icon from Applications to the dock and it was fine, click it and up comes Word. It was certainly there yesterday afternoon. This morning when I looked for it the icon had gone! The principle of learned helplessness is beginning to kick in now. I'm thinking of removing all the icons from my dock so it doesn't compete, mentally, with Quicksilver. Is there a way to get rid of the dock altogether? Update: So, more or less as soon as I posted I thought "oh what the heck, let's just get rid of all the dock icons" and proceeded to do just that. In the process I discovered that applications I had removed yesterday had come back! I had weeded out 3-4 apps I don't use often, those icons are in my dock this morning. Great. The stupid thing seems to be rolling back to a previous point. I wonder if it's related to <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2005/09/23.html#a1999">all these Dock.App crashes</a> I see in the log. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003033.html Chat transcript searcher Tue, 10 Jan 2006 13:09:13 +0000 One of the few things I miss from my Windows days is the <a href="http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/">Trillian Pro instant messenger client</a>. These days I sit in IChat for AIM and ICQ and Colloquy for IRC. Although I rarely start it, I have AdiumX to handle MSN, Yahoo, and the like. IChat is okay but the whole thing is a mess compared to Trillians integrated approach. In particular I find that trying to search transcripts is a real pain. Both IChat and Colloquy make their transcripts practically impossible to search. Colloquy's own search function doesn't seem to work. XML formats all over the place. Yuck. Don't even get me started about Trillians beautiful <a href="http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/features/index.php?select=5">Activity History</a>. Unsanity are addressing this issue with their new <a href="http://www.unsanity.com/ctm">Chat Transcript Manager</a>. Right now it's $10 (down from $20) and despite my thinking some sort of Spotlight integration is in Aim, Colloquy, and Adiums future I think CTM might make a good solution today. I already use Unsanity's FruitMenu and WindowShadeX and think they are great tools. Chat Transcript Manager looks nice and does most of what I need. For $10 it's hardly got to save me much time to pay for itself. Downloaded! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003175.html Taming QuickSilver Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:18:34 +0000 Alcor's excellent tool <a href="http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/">QuickSilver</a> has become the constant companion to my PowerBook. If I could keep only one (among the many excellent tools I've discovered since becoming a Switcher) it would be QuickSilver. One thing that was bugging me though. When I'd use the phrase 'it' it would bring up iTunes as the first choice when 99% of the time I'd be wanting iTerm instead. The worst part is that I've gotten so automatic in my use of QS that I would hit 'it' + <CR> confirming for QS that I did want iTunes and hence making the problem worse. Yesterday one of the kind denizens of FreeNodes #quicksilver told me how to get around this and it's a handy trick to know. When you use your trigger to bring up the app selector bezel (I use Cmd+Enter which on the PowerBook keyboard is the two keys to the right of the spacebar) and type your phrase, e.g. 'it', you then press the down arrow to drop down the menu of choices and, from there (not the bezel), right click the application you don't want. In that menu will be an option "Decrease Score" which when you select it should descrease the weight of the association between 'it' and iTunes. In my case it allows iTerm to beat iTunes and now iTerm is the default choice and I am happy. QuickSilver truly is an outstanding tool and it has many tricks to teach me yet! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00003199.html