Notational Velocity

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I’m always searching for a better app. These days –for me– “better” means simple. Take word processors for example.

On one end of the spectrum is MS Word. The undisputed king of word processors for PC’s. Some people don’t even know they’re using Word. They just take it for granted that this is how you write something on a computer.

I haven’t used Word for years but just looking at the “ribbon” menu, it looks terribly complicated, but that could just be my lack of familiarity. And my guess is it does a LOT of things.

But I only need to do one thing: write. I don’t need any formatting or layout options. Just a few sentences. The fewer the better. I don’t want anything to get in the way of the ideas I struggle to put into words.

Google Docs works great for this. So does Simplenote. Both cloud-based tools. But some folks might want to keep their notes on their computer.

My new favorite tool for this is Notational Velocity, a free, open source application that stores and retrieves notes: “an attempt to loosen the mental blockages to recording information and to scrape away the tartar of convention that handicaps its retrieval.”

When you begin composing a note in Notational Velocity, the app automatically saves and date/time stamps your work. I’m a big fan of tagging and NV does this cleanly and simply.

I used to be a big fan of putting everything in folders. Within folders. Within folders. NV doesn’t do folders but you really don’t need them.

Each note is indexed in a database and search is lightening fast. So you just create your note and forget about it until you need.

I mentioned Simplenote, the cloud-based note-taking service (with iPhone and iPad apps). Notational Velocity syncs with my Simpenote account so I can create a note in NV and it will automatically be available on all my mobile devices.

If it’s important your writing be “pretty,” Notational Velocity isn’t for you. But if the idea of dropping notes into one “box” and knowing you’ll be able to quickly find them when you need them, it’s a great solution.

The State, the Press and Hyperdemocracy

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“Information flow is corrosive to institutions, whether that’s a record label or a state ministry. To function in a hyperconnected world, states must hyperconnect, but every point of connection becomes a gap through which the state’s power leaks away.”

“Script kiddies everywhere now have a role model. Like it or not, they will create these systems, they will share what they’ve learned, they will build the apparatus that makes the state as we have known it increasingly ineffectual and irrelevant. Nothing can be done about that. This has already happened.”

Mark Pesce is one of the early pioneers in Virtual Reality and works as a writer, researcher and teacher. You can read the full article here.

What will 2011 bring for journalism?

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“…syndication makes little sense in a world with URLs. When news outlets were segmented by geography, having live human beings sitting around in ten thousand separate markets deciding which stories to pull off the wire was a service. Now it’s just a cost.”

“Giving credit where credit is due will reward original work, whether scoops, hot news, or unique analysis or perspective. This will be great for readers. It may not, however, be so great for newspapers, or at least not for their revenues, because most of what shows up in a newspaper isn’t original or unique. It’s the first four grafs of something ripped off the wire and lightly re-written, a process repeated countless times a day with no new value being added to the story.”

Full article by Clay Shirky

How the bailout program works

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It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmers’ Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the pub. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him “services” on credit. The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money and leaves town. No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism.

Source unknown

Worried Nation

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“Millions of Americans are currently worried about two things that are, in their minds, emotionally related. The first of these is the prospect that white people will no longer be the majority in this country, and the second is that the United States will be just one among many world powers.”
— Christopher Hitchens

“Blog as a platform”

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Chris Brogan advises building something of personal or business value by starting as if you already have a platform.

“When I say “platform,” I mean this: a body of principles on which a person or group takes a stand in appealing to the public; program.” In this, I also mean build a presence, a place from which to share those principles and ideas.”

He goes on to describe his blog as…

“a place where people can come to get a taste of what I think and what I stand for, and it’s a place where people can match and measure their own ideas against what I put out there.”

Yes. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. I like having such a place. And, for better or worse, my blog is a “taste of what I think and stand for.” Even people who have known me for many years wouldn’t know as much about what I think and stand for as someone who reads these posts.

I’ll dabble in the social shallows of Twitter and Facebook but they cannot be (for me) the platform Mr. Brogan describes

20 Dying Technologies

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George points us to a list of technologies that are in various stages of dying. If you’re skeptical, you can get a little of the reasoning in this slideshow at Businessweek. Or is it Bloomberg? Whatever.

  • Combustion engines
  • Consumer video cameras—MiniDV, Flip cameras, camcorders
  • Credit cards
  • Desktop (tower) PCs
  • DVDs and Blu-ray
  • Digital music players
  • E-readers
  • Fax machines
  • Game consoles
  • Pagers
  • Dash-mounted GPS systems
  • Keys
  • Landline telephones
  • 3D television with glasses
  • Metronomes and tuners
  • PDAs
  • Point-and-shoot digital cameras
  • Power cords
  • Remote controls
  • USB memory sticks

I’ve already said goodbye to some of these and can easily live without most of the rest.

Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It’s your choice

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“What WikiLeaks is really exposing is the extent to which the western democratic system has been hollowed out. In the last decade its political elites have been shown to be incompetent (Ireland, the US and UK in not regulating banks); corrupt (all governments in relation to the arms trade); or recklessly militaristic (the US and UK in Iraq). And yet nowhere have they been called to account in any effective way. Instead they have obfuscated, lied or blustered their way through. And when, finally, the veil of secrecy is lifted, their reflex reaction is to kill the messenger” — via guardian.co.uk

The chickens just called. They’re running late but will be back at the roost shortly.

Just “get the bloody story”

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“Yet journalism’s stock-in-trade is disclosure. As we have seen this week with WikiLeaks, power loathes truth revealed. Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure. As Jefferson remarked, the press is the last best hope when democratic oversight fails, as it does in the case of most international bodies.”“The great American editor Oz Elliott once lectured graduates at the Columbia School of Journalism on their sacred duty to democracy as the unofficial legislators of mankind. He asked me what I thought of it. I said it was no good to me: I was trained as a reptile lurking in the gutter whose sole job was to “get the bloody story.”

via Simon Jenkins, guardian.co.uk