Exploring AquaMinds NoteTaker

Introducing AquaMinds NoteSharePssst--Hey buddy, can I share something with you?

Let’s just pretend I’m not really here--okay?

As you may have noted, this blog has been on extended hiatus. But also understand that for weeks now I’ve been preparing for my Big Return: One of those swelling-soundtrack moments, where I do my best Gloria Swanson/Sunset Boulevard impression: It was the blogs that got smaller. . . That sort of thing.

However, events have transpired to upstage my usual, appalling self-indulgence. Just as I was getting ready to once again talk about, well, me (we all have to have a hobby), I find myself obliged to address much larger, more important news.

My old buddies over at AquaMinds have let the cat out of the bag regarding a new, genuinely jaw-dropping product. (I call them “buddies;” they, on the other hand, usually refer to me as “stalker” or, more charitably, as “Cease-and-Desist Boy.”) Where was I? Oh yeah--I opened my Sunday New York Times in an attempt to ignore the biochemical and neural havoc from New Year’s Eve and there it was, this article by Jim Fallows about the Next Big Thing from AquaMinds. And until I carefully reviewed what I could recall from the previous evening--who I might have talked to and even how I managed to misplace my underwear while still wearing my tux--I was profoundly afraid.

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, NoteShare, NoteTaker, Web20

Pond Scum Spotlight: In Which Idiots Who Pollute Cyberspace Get the Level of Attention They Obviously Crave

Hi There. I’ve just spent the past hour or so scrubbing spam comments off this weblog. Big, dumb, robotic intrusions into a discourse space with the sole purpose of shoving unsolicited ecommerce past the eyeballs of unsuspecting visitors.

Let’s be clear: This is not the equivalent of email spam--which, loathsome as it may be, is merely junk mail with no barriers to entry. Spam comments, on the other hand, can only be compared to annoying, psychotic non sequiturs that interrupt conversation. Imagine yourself at a party speaking intensely with two other people about something all three of you care passionately about. Now imagine this asshole--slightly sweaty, bug-eyed, in a cheap suit--muscling his way in, screaming Excuse me! Excuse me! I want you to buy a prom dress from me!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen--we’re talking about Business Pond Scum here. People worse than those electronic stores that have 30-year-long going out of business sales; people more creepy than those guys with less than full sets of teeth, who want to sell you stereo speakers off the back of a U-Haul; impolite thugs who basically need to be bitch-slapped into silence and then sent to military school.

Any one who follows the arc of this weblog must realize by now that my politics are not those of the sitting government. However, this morning I had an epiphany: I could finally wrap my head around and fully get behind capital punishment--I’d like to see the cretins who spray-painted this weblog with bad, even misspelled self-advertisements marched before a firing squad. Up Against the Wall, You Mothers. . . Bam! Next?

Of all the guerilla merchandisers who visited like burglars in the dead of night, my personal favorite is the search page which promises “Search Without Junk.” Yeah, that’s right, the hypocritical bastards are spamming to promote an allegedly spam-free search engine. Do me, yourself and every other legitimate Web citizen a favor--don’t patronize this service provider--ever. Forget about some kind of metaphysical rationalization for a boycott--it simply comes down to lying in public: They are junk merchants who say they don’t abide junk. Uh, good luck with your next search with them--you know, that critical one on which your job depends . . .

Honey, Has the Blog Been Fed? Transforming Google Mail Into a Research Database Embedded In NoteTaker

Now time and distance
melt away
No digital delay
And some things
can be written down
that we're too shy to say
Send me an email
that says "I love you"

--Neil Tennant/Chris Lowe

Yesterday, I had one of those 2001: A Space Odyssey Moments. You know--like the ape, downstream of touching the Monolith, looking at a bone and slowly understanding its tool-cum-weapon potential. In my case, however, the Monolith wasn’t that minimalist piece of alien alloy (which, in retrospect, resembled a high-end kitchen counter top), it was Google, the new mothership in town.

While it's already becoming fashionable to look askance at the burgeoning ubiquity of the Big Polychrome G, I've always perversely enjoyed the early days of any first-class invasion—whether Pod People, cicadas or Windows v.3. There's something Very Casablanca that appeals to me—the whole "We'll always have Paris" thing, respectively recontextualized as Earth, Our Gardens Next Summer and Cupertino. And let's face it, Google is beginning to resemble Thomas Jerome Newton's World Enterprises ("I don't believe it. I can't believe it. You have nine basic patents here. Nine! That's basic patents. Do you know what that means?"). But like Farnsworth, I'm not looking the gift horse in the mouth, content instead to queue-up at Google Labs to eagerly use the inevitable next step of the Occupation (which for a brief moment was GoogleX—presumably before the Apple legal department stirred and woke).

So you folks over in the Resistance might as well save the e- cards and letters; I'm simply not ready to be Turned at this point: See me as a Digital-Age Louis—content to play both sides in a state of amoral grace.

Do You Wanna Talk About It? How To Run Your Mouth (Or At Least Your Fingers) Without Leaving NoteTaker

It was a quietly brilliant plan: Publicly proclaim my ardor for Uma Thurman and then--in the same post--make all six-feet of her swoon at the Indisputable Cleverness of my NoteTaker-as-metadatabase theory. After that, all that remained to be done was hunkering down by the phone on Valentine’s Day. (Yes, even the timing was given extensive thought.) But tragically, Uma failed to call. Granted, many of you did contact me about the Metadatabase Thing--and while I encourage you to keep sending those e- cards and letters, let’s be clear: None of you were Her of the Fabulous Face and the Non-Photogenic Feet.

And so, as the sands of Valentine’s Day trickled into the lower chamber, I felt a deep need to speak of my rapidly breaking heart: To reach out to others similarly scorned by Movie Stars Who They’ve Even Never Met But That Doesn’t Matter. After pouring my feelings into the Loathsome Middle-Age Diarist section of my NoteTaker notebook, I suddenly thought, Hey! This is a Swiss Army Knife-cum-Metadatabase. If I fail to use it as such, I’ve played to what was certainly Uma’s serious doubts about my discovery. Later, when she comes to regret missing this quicksilver opportunity to know me, I don’t want to have inadvertently handed her an easy excuse like “See? He opened up another application to find the solace of contact.” God knows, my failure to commit to a single application was the number one complaint of most of my ex-girlfriends--and as Yogi Berra once sagely suggested, who needs deja vu all over again?

And thus, for all three of you out there who regularly read these occasional screeds (hi mom, hi dad, hi sis!), let’s talk about the various kinds of online astral projection that are possible inside a NoteTaker notebook. However, at the outset, know that computer-predicated communications give lie to my geek stance, exposing me for what I really am--a digital dilettante; a gentleman tinkerer. Think of Thomas Dolby around the time of his first release; that’s me: She's tidied up and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions. So yes--Science! indeed.

Pimp My Notebook: NoteTaker Metaphor Modification And Why a User Interface Should Be A Point of Departure and Not a Destination

Welcome to the Machiavelli Edition of Blogging With AquaMinds NoteTaker--it's Any-Means-To-An-End-Day, mousketeers! Particularly because the end in question is efficient, effective information capture and processing.

If you'll recall, just prior to my flirtation with the Talkies, I examined the myriad ways NoteTaker can be used as a database of other databases. Of course, this was a transparent and, in retrospect, pathetic plan to get Uma Thurman to notice me (which, by the way, forced her lawyers to rewrite the restraining order to include blogging). Desperately playing the Clever Card in my bid to impress her, I compared NoteTaker's ability to become a database of databases--a metadatabase, if you will--to those 400-plus special inserts that FiloFax sold at the peak of its Reagan-Era popularity.

And you know, I haven't been able to shake the appropriateness of that comparison--even if it was mine. It just goes to show you that Lust and Insightful Thinking are not necessarily mutually exclusive male modalities--despite what endless episodes of Ally McBeal would have you believe. I think I may have backed into one of those highly useful Idea-Objects--an abstract concept that, even though understood, can't fully be played around with until embedded in something that's generally comprehendible. (Those following along at home are undoubtedly bracing for the now-ceremonial wheeling out of the Richard Saul Wurman adage about only understanding something in terms of what you already know. And while this does have applicability, in truth, I'm intellectually strip-mining someone else this time around--Sherry Turkle, who talks about this concept in her book, Life On the Screen.)

NT Audio Blog Proof-of-Concept

Welcome to yet another crazed bit of research from the Bansai Institute in the wilds of New Jersey.

Those early adopters among you will clearly see where this little experiment is headed, but Baby Steps First is advisable. While I'm loath to over-promise, I think the chance of further forward motion over the weekend is good.

From my perspective, I see the glimmer of an opportunity to regularly assault you in ways that push beyond scrolling text and yet remain NT-predicated. As Henry Frankenstein might say, "It's Alive!"

I expect that as NoteTaker-driven blogs morph into talkies, it may be the downfall of many Silent Era authors. So sensitive was I to this fact--and so anxious was I to avoid the fate of John Gilbert in the early '30s--I considered doing the proof-of-concept clip with a Greta Garbo accent, based on the fact she both survived and thrived in the talkies. But then I thought First Impressions being important, introducing myself in Audio Drag was clearly Not a Good Idea . . .


MP3 File

Friday, March 4, 2005 10:47:24 AM

The Right Kind of Eyes: Hunter Thompson Has Left the Convertible (Having Nothing and Everything To Do With This Site)

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel lightheaded; maybe you should drive . . . “
--Hunter S Thompson
--Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas

This morning I find myself careening across the American landscape, a passenger in a driverless candy-red convertible called the Great Red Shark. Me and an embarrassing number of other writers. The grim news washing in with the East Coast dawn is that Hunter S Thompson is dead. Evidently, he finally decided to let others take the wheel.

If you want a NoteTaker blogging tip, you’ll want to check back another time. Because this post has nothing to do with the topic of this site, but--curiously--it points to the essence of the site itself. Without HST this site wouldn’t exist or, indeed, my decades-long, ongoing and dubious arrangement whereby people actually compensate me to screw around with words.

I want to talk about HST, but I’m loath (fine word, that ) to do The Profile Piece. For that, look no farther than this serviceable overview in The New York Times. Or simply Google the Thompson of your choice, God knows they’re all there: Sporting Editor HST, Rolling Stone HST, Drug-Addled HST, Scotch-Abusing HST, Counter-Culture HST, Iconic HST, Failed Sheriff HST, Woody Creek Denizen HST, Doonesbury Cartoon HST, Violent HST, Fearful HST, Arts-and-Letters Class Clown HST. All these and dozens more.

In his purposely smudgy 65/67 years, HST made Citizen Kane look simplistic. His Rubik-Cube personality makes the neat distillation of four or five facets impossible. Except that the Media will try to do precisely that--and, adding insult to injury, will couch the whole biased picture as Objective Reporting.

But, like HST, I don’t believe in objectivity--never have and never will. After all, even quantum mechanics holds that simply observing an event changes it. The genuine, albeit grim, fun will be to watch the Media profile Thompson in a way that proves they still don’t get it. HST once wrote, “No point mentioning the bats . . . the poor bastard will see them soon enough.” Except that the Bastardly Media won’t. And so, as Hunter also wrote: Fuck these people . . .

NoteTaker As Metadatabase: Oblique Strategies For Enhanced Information Management (A Conceptual Road Trip)

A meditation on metadata, Uma Thurman, multi-solution applications, the American Film Institute, search engines, Keith Olbermann, information management, drug-addled trips to Las Vegas, regressive databases, writer’s block, recombinant software features, Brian Eno, embedded Web browsers, technology-as-Meat-Loaf-songs, the nature of blogging, Hunter Thompson, WebKits, Citizen Kane, pre-blogging, Myst, Web notebooks, camera obscuras, live chat inside a notebook, Alice in Wonderland, templates, The Matrix, and--oh yeah--NoteTaker; definitely NoteTaker . . .(Did I mention Uma Thurman?)

It's poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm - but she blinded me with science
"She blinded me with science!"
And failed me in biology
--Thomas Dolby

Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place
In which the Author grapples with the present Work

A confession: As unbelievable as it seems, sometimes I’m at a loss for words. And since much of my living is predicated on my ability to stare at a blank word-processor window and conjure-up something, these Now What? Moments can be more than disconcerting. After all this time, I’ve never worked out where the words actually come from and thus, at the start of every new piece of jangled prose, there’s an instantaneous crossing-of-fingers and the hope that my mental tuner is still able to pick up WRIT (Good morning, Writers! You’re listening to All Inspiration All The Time, and this one is going out to Kevin Sheridan in Washington, DC!).

My regularly occurring scrutiny of the authorial abyss has, of course, given rise to a craftsman’s superstition: I keep a deck of Oblique Strategies on my desk. I got my first set of these cards in 1975 and they’ve since become a serious and pricey collector’s item. This cool factor has necessitated a stand-in deck for everyday use; an easily available reissue.

The creators of Oblique Strategies, composer/producer Brian Eno and the late artist Peter Schmidt, describe them as “Over One-Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas.” The cards are further categorized as “a set of possibilities.” They are intended to be used when a problem occurs in a working situation. I use them in this way: When I’m stuck, I draw a card and attempt to apply its advice to my work. The beauty of this ritual is that should every atom of my writer’s being rebel at what’s being suggested, I simply ask myself why the card is definitively wrong. Answering this involves articulating what the piece is about and where it’s going--which invariably jump-starts the prose.

The Silence and the Fans

Can't you hear me talkin' to you
I'm callin' you one more time
All night operator
Dial me a better line
--Bryan Ferry
"All Night Operator"

It's all rather like an Ingmar Bergman film, isn't it? Those who are kind enough to leave commments on this site only to seemingly be faced with The Silence. Well, actually it's not like that at all.

Given the nature of this site, it's understandable that many of the comments focus on the nitty gritty of set-up and configuration. Because of this, I usually choose to answer my new best friends via email. To do so with a responding comment runs the risk of turning this site into a knowledge base affair, which means it would soon have to grow up and behave itself. After all, would you want tech support from a wild-eyed, Bryan-Ferry-Spouting eccentric with a tumble-down haircut? Nah--and neither would I.

To do with credibility would mean Growing Up. And in terms of this site, I'd simply rather traverse the universe in a police box, offering jelly babies and unsolicited ideas to anyone I encounter. (And indeed, you'll notice that no one ever asked the Good Doctor what precisely he was doing with that sonic screwdriver--so I rest my case.)

Oops! Off course yet again. The point is that all comments are answered--but many privately, where the fact that I don't always use Annoying Capitalization and overwrought italics won't be observed.

Are we clear? Good. Now would you like a jelly baby?

The composition of this entry was made possible in part by Ornithology from the album "Broadcast Performances" by Charlie Parker

Monday, October 25, 2004 12:30:28 PM

MarsEdit and NT: My Blog, My Rules

Years ago--eons actually--when I was a callow college student, I hung around Washington's Old Ebbet Grill so much, I seriously considered having my mail forwarded there. It was two doors down from the inn where the British met to coordinate their plans to burn Washington during the War of 1812. In retrospect, I think that appealed to my insurrectionary younger self.

To be clear, we are not talking about the "new" old Ebbet Grill--an odd Hollywood set iteration of the original (which was finally torn down). The "new" Old Ebbet Grill is a hang out for yuppie scum and often featured in films and on The West Wing as a "Washington Hot Spot"--as if such a thing existed in the New York sense. My Old Ebbet, however, was a hang out for preppie scum and managed not to be historical, opting instead for a sort of Raymond Chandleresque ambiance.

I'd Tell You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You

Honey, I'm home. . . . Now someone much smarter than myself would simply reach for the Dallas Dream Season Stratagem: I could simply pretend that this was indeed September 1st and hack the posting dates to mess with your collective minds. But of course, That Would Be Wrong. Suffice it to say, I can't tell you what I've been up to in the past five weeks because many of my associates would wind up behiind bars or worse. However I can tell you that the seriously bent incident concluded with me waking up in the back of a 1954 Chevy in Rio with no clear idea how I got there. And there is the other small matter of a tattoo that says Res Ipsa Loquitur in the precise Old English typeface of The New York Times. Indeed. If I needed any further evidence that my Speedo days are over, this is certainly it.

And that takes care of that--or will have to until certain statutes of limitations run out. Now, in the immortal words of Pink, "I'm comin' up so you better get this party started . . . "

Enhanced Support for Ecto & TypePad In New Verision of NoteTaker Blogging Script

Stop the Presses! Remake the Front Page! Seriously consider sending genuinely fawning email to the crack development team over at AquaMinds: The company today released a free updated version of the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript. Script version 0.8.4 offers enhanced connectivity for Ecto's support of TypePad's Continuation/Summary input field. Continuation/Summary enables a posting to be split into an introductory section which is featured on the main weblog page and a continuation or "spill" of the rest of post on a second blog page.

The benefit of TypePad's Continuation/Summary is the ability to feature more postings on the main blog page without making it overly long and unwieldily for visitors to navigate. TypePad is among the first blog service providers to offer the unique continuation capability, which thus places NoteTaker and Ecto on the cutting edge of weblog development.

When creating an entry in a NoteTaker notebook, the use of three right-pointing carrot symbols signals the NoteTaker/Ecto script that all text that follows the symbols should be moved to the TypePad Continuation/Summary field. The three right-pointing carrots are then automatically removed and do not visually interrupt the posting.

To recap, the NoteTaker/Ecto blogging script now supports the creation of post headlines, introductory text and the continued text of the posting.

How the Pieces Fit Together: A Visual Review

We've recently covered a lot of ground that has much to do with stitching together meta-applications from the parts of separate ones. Perhaps this is why I've been stifling the urge to scream It's Alive! It's Alive! each time I launch NoteTaker and NoteTaker launches Ecto. The story of my life: I set out to be Cary Grant but somehow became Colin Clive . . . Enough of my paltry problems.

Below is a chart that quickly and efficiently reprises the past few postings. Think of it as Page 2 of the virtual handout that started here. As always, double-clicking (© Microsoft) on the art, opens a larger, more legible version. Depending on your on the speed of your connection, this will happen instantly--or you may have time to begin a book. (I recommend Stranger Than Fiction, Chuck Palahniuk's new collection of essays.)

I'm wondering if a future improvement to these charts--yup, I go back and change things on this blog with impunity--may be to create image maps from the illustrations--but I need to workout the implications of TypePad creating thumbnails of them. Would the links work in miniature, like some sort of Barbie Dream House webpage? So many loopy ideas, so little time.

Sunday, June 20, 2004 2:01:32 PM

A Closer Look at Tagging Service

Yesterday I pointed out that Tagging Service by MonkeyFood provided fast, fast, fast relief for any one flirting with text-tagging-induced repetitive stress injury. Since then, I've had a chance to more fully explore this nifty little applet and I'm pleased to inform users who respond to angle brackets the same way Dracula responds to crucifixes that my new best friend, Tagging Service, also handles the creation of links that convey without a hitch to Ecto and TypePad. TS (yes, our bond is now so strong, I'm on nickname basis with the utility) additionally allows the timesaving creation of image addresses (img) and URL identification (url).

TS works its magic by inserting open and close tags based upon a single-letter trigger that is followed by a colon. This letter-colon trigger is placed directed next to the first word that the tag is to act upon--with no space between the letter-colon and the word. (Explained in prose, the process looks more complicated than it is. It's best to simply download the freeware service and play with it. Complete mastery takes about 30 seconds--I promise.)

Everything You Need to Know and Do to Begin Blogging with NoteTaker and Ecto; Well, Except for the Having-Something-To-Write-About Bit and, Okay, the Finding-Time-to-Post Part and--Look, Just Read This

Beyond the sexy industrial design, apart from the breathtaking innovation, Apple Computer's business model is based on the endless refinement of a single concept: Creating an utterly mediated computer experience for the user. This is why it has become a cult and this is also why, despite its recent embrace of Unix, Apple continues to be bitch slapped by Deep Geeks. As an Apple user who can trace his computing lineage all the way back to Lisa, this has always fascinated me. Two high-water moments in the history of Apple Mediation was the "There Is No Step Three" campaign that launched the original iMac and the beta build of OS X with default prefs set to show no desktop icons and and also to hide the dock (which, of course, proved to be far too much mediation for most user tastes).

I bring up mediated user experiences because I'd love to to tell you in friendly Jeff Goldblum-esque tones that there's No Step Three with regard to blogging with NoteTaker. But, hey, there is. And depending on how you count, maybe a Step Six, too. The good news is that (a) its not rocket science and (b) unless you change blog service providers, it's pretty much one-time-only effort. This also may help: While the process described below is not precisely plug-and-play, it will still earn you the aggressviely arrogant sneers of Deep Geeks--so, really, how hard could it be?

Visual Quick Start Guide To NoteTaker Blogging

Well, I fired-up a drawing program--so be afraid, be very afraid. Actually, the result is a fairly succinct distillation of the major things to keep in mind when you begin blogging with NoteTaker via the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript. The next posting will feature a step-by-step overview of what you need to purchase and how you should proceed--basically, all the other important stuff that would have disturbed the quiet Zen of the chart. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from taking a gander at the chart now in preparation for the next post--think of it as homework . . .

And remember: Double-clicking (© Microsoft) on the art will open a larger, more legible version. Be aware, however, that depending on modem speed, this may take a while to load. Sorry about that--I'll be optimizing the size later today.

Monday, June 7, 2004 4:39:33 PM

Once Upon a Time . . .

This weblog is designed to be proof-of-concept with regard to using AquaMinds' NoteTaker application and Ecto for directly posting entries to TypePad blogs. Additionally, it is intended to be an Index of Possiblities: Tricks, tips, work-arounds and enhancements that can be when working with these three applications.

The concept of blogging has resonated with the general public because, paradoxically, it's seen as the easiest way of creating a website--even though the real revolutionary breakthrough is that a weblog is a cheap and effective content management system.

Blogs have proliferated across the Internet with almost viral speed. But even though they are ubiquitous, there has so far not been a simple, feature-rich and powerful way to blog. At one end of the spectrum, professional blogging clients undermine the idea of blogs as "easy websites" by demanding significant levels of HTML knowledge and experience. At the other end, there are simplistic, WYSIWYG diary-based blogging clients that do little more than put a friendly face on weblog input screens.

But what if blogging could be pursued via a virtual notebook? A notebook that has the power to clip and save items from the Internet? A notebook that allows content searchs of itself? A notebook that can be structured to mirror the organization of the user's weblog? A notebook with entries that are transformed into blog postings with a mouse click?

What if this blogging notebook enabled a user to search the Internet from inside of entries, enabling her to gather information that can then be used in a blog posting? What if this notebook could also clip passages from other documents on the user's hard drive that could similarly be used in entries that are then seamlessly posted to a weblog?

This is what the blogging enhancements of AquaMinds NoteTaker promise to do. These capabilities are now made possible by an AppleScript that allows NoteTaker and Ecto, the premier blogging client, to interact with each other. That sudden draft you feel is the arrival of increased weblog ease and possiblities.