Exploring AquaMinds NoteTaker

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.

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.

Going Postal: Putting Email and RSS Feeds Inside NoteTaker

It’s snowing out there. Granted, it’s a Washington, DC kind of snow--so we’re talking about, what? two inches? In short, a Weenie Blizzard. But this is DC, an inherently multicultural town--and a city that also has traffic circles designed by a guy who really wanted to do Paris (architecturally speaking--to clearly differentiate him from Debbie’s very different relationship to Dallas).

So before calling me a wuss, let’s take a moment and plug all the variables into this brutal little equation: Newly minted diplomat from a sunny clime (with diplomatic immunity--ie, American laws--traffic or otherwise--don’t apply to him) while driving to his embassy encounters the first snow he’s ever seen and the first traffic circle (vicious merry-go-rounds of careening, high-speed metal-plastic-rubber). Comprehend? I like to think that driving in a DC snow storm has only one true soundtrack--Bowie’s Low, a CD that features “Breaking Glass” and “Always Crashing In the Same Car” (on reflection, there’s also “Sound and Vision,” sounding like ice-rink music).

Thus, when it snows in Washington, the city hunkers down, deeply afraid of itself. It’s time to make sure there’s scotch and firewood and a shopping bag full of DVDs (blessedly, the Age of iTunes has enabled me to continue shopping for music in white-out conditions).

Me, I’ve got Miles Davis’ Tutu angularly unfolding from the speakers, I’m staring at the steadily increasing amounts of snow outside the windows of Sheridan World Headquarters and, in the distance, I can hear the faint-but-tortured sound of colliding diplomatic vehicles. But I pay it no mind, for I am hard at work making NoteTaker even more useful for you--Reader Who Did Question My Fortitude With Regard To Snow Storms. This vehemently denied fact does not offend me because I know that by the end of this post, you will be so indebted to me, the guilt over doubting my steely resolve in blizzards will nearly drive you to suicide.

Pulp Blogging: Getting Stuff Into NoteTaker (In Which Mr Sheridan Takes An Inordinate Amount of Time Getting To the Point, Gambling the Tips Are Worth the Ride)

Well I got this guitar
And I learned how to make it talk
And my car's out back
If you're ready to take that long walk
From your front porch to my front seat
The door's open but the ride it ain't free . . .
--Bruce Springsteen
“Thunder Road”

The holidays are finally over and once more I’ve miraculously survived. True to tradition, the year-end celebrations often had dodge-ball dynamics. This time, however, I somehow managed to miss the commemorative Last Standing tee-shirts. They must have been handed out when I was in the middle of that six-hour drive to Philadelphia (usually a tad over two hours at my admittedly lawbreaking pace). Or while I was doing that weird Kramer dance around the strewn pieces of my nephew’s new Transformer army. Or maybe as I swarmed Fresh Fields with the rest of the free-range crowd on a kamikaze mission to pick up the turkey (no, wait--that was Thanksgiving; or was it?).

In retrospect, I’m actually thinking of pitching Fox on making The Holidays the premise of next season’s 24: Kiefer Sutherland racing against time, grappling with last-minute shopping, running out of wrapping paper, et. al. As an elevator pitch, I actually think it’s quite compelling . . .

But as usual, I digress. With all the festive horror behind us, it’s once again time to get down and geeky with all the blog-ish things you can do with v1.9 upgrade), here are the simple rules:

I cheerfully stitch together NT blogging solutions, often blowing up things along the way ("So You Don’t Have To" ^TM). The price I extract for this basically useful service is your acceptance of my luxurious disregard for linearity. After all, Time and Logical Progression are highly overrated concepts. As I see it, my mission is to ensure that this blog’s utility ultimately outweighs its off-the-meds, free-associative self-indulgence. In short, it’s pretty much the same implicit deal that’s struck when listening to a Robyn Hitchcock CD.

Wham! Bam! Bam! Bam! In Search of the Lost Shortcut

Here we go again, playing the fool again.
Here we go again, acting hard again.
All right!
Well, I'm beginning to see the light!
I wanna tell you, ooh-oh-oh!
Hey, now, baby, I'm beginning to see the light!
--Lou Reed

This is an instructive tale about hubris, human interfaces and hidden helpful features. But let's start at the beginning. My entanglement with Apple computers goes all the way back to Lisa. Say Hello, indeed. It was love at first sight and from then onward, the soon-to-be Mac OS and I matured together and even made some very cool side excursions like reveling in HyperCard. Because I love to tinker, the jump from OS 6 to 7 and from OS 7 to 8 were more traumatic then they needed to be. But as a result, I learned most of the nooks and crannies of Apple's operating system and the importance of backing up. While on no occasion did I ever proclaim myself a Mac Deep Geek, I confess I thought of myself in those terms--secretly smiling about my secret identity.

A few years later, OS X entered the picture and (flexible, if nothing else) I scrambled aboard as a beta tester. Though business sense led me to keep my magazine OS 9-based, I personally never passed through the OS Luddite stage of other Mac users. I embraced the new interface and was not philosophically bothered by Unix living in OS X's basement.

Truth be told, however, my Mac Deep Geek appearances have become infrequent and much narrowed, like a superhero in retirement--think Mr. Incredible. I did not grow up with Unix and so my relationship with OS X is less deep. For a number of reasons (all of them my responsibility), I am essentially under house arrest at the interface level. Not for me (until now, at least) the deep juju of the Terminal. After all, the last time I seriously interacted with a command line was the C: prompt in DOS.

Today's Tangelo Tip: Hybrid Solution or Devil's Spawn?

It's like this: I'm in the midst of overhauling the structure of my blogging notebook in preparation for the next installment to this, the techno-equivalent of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. And, as I was working out the pre-fab structure of my newly minted page-per-day approach, well, my attention wandered down to my desktop's dock. Lurking there was a brace of Graphic Visualization Stuff, including the NovaMind and the superlative OmniGraffle (which has produced most of the charts on this site).

I looked at the simple outline I was creating in NoteTaker and then at the GV Stuff. I looked at the GV Stuff and then at the NT outline. And even though I realized I was meddling with things Man Was Meant To Leave Alone, the urge clearly had me--there was no going back: I had to see my NoteTaker outline in glorious Technicolor and CinemaScope.

Future Shock: Beyond Yesterday's Tomorrows

No Future.
Punk Manifesto, circa 1978

During Thanksgiving--no doubt abetted by the extravagant cigar and the fine single-malt scotch--I resumed pondering blogs and their overly defined place within the time-space continuum. Recently, I ranted about the crypto-fascist temporality of current blog structures, but somewhere between cutting a V into the cigar crown and searching for wooden matches, it struck me that blogs (as currently crippled) are not temporal enough for those who buy into their Reverse March of Time model.

A typical weblog is the ultimate review mirror: This is what I've previously written, in the order I wrote it. But it's pretty useless for signaling authorial intent. In other words, while it does a too efficient job letting you know what I wrote last Tuesday, there is is no elegant way to communicate what I plan to post next Tuesday--and the Tuesday after that. In order to do so, I'd have to create an instantly and automatically archived post about, well, the future. And while the National Archives building informs me that The Past Is Prologue, forcing visitors to dig through historical content to discover what next week promises is conceptually dissonant; a weird online exercise in Back To the Future.

May The Blog Backgrounders Be With You: Another Use For The Blog Book Concept

I've finally gotten around to exploring another promising use for the previously discussed Blog Book. Imagine the idea being brought to bear on a specific, potentially complex topic. The weblog and site references in this type of blog book would be tightly integrated aspects of a single argument. This variety of blog book would be less 3-D blog roll and much more a literal backgrounder that could be used to efficiently reference a complex topic without having to skim its surface within a weblog post.

No Getting Jiggy With the Architect: Assumed Blog Behavior As Weblog Reality

There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept . . .
As you adequately put, the problem is choice.
The Architect
The Matrix Reloaded

The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.
Brian Eno / Peter Schmidt
Oblique Strategies Card

And how could it be so wrong
When it was so right?
Lloyd Cole
"I'm Gone"

In the wake of my circumlocutious posting about Miles Davis, jazz authenticity, studio composition and--oh yeah--blogging, I've continued to ponder its implications. Which goes to show that even left-field rambling can trigger logical and argumentative dominoing that end at surprising destinations.

An embarrassing product of a Jesuit education (certain members of the Society are still blushing at the dubious achievement of me), I nevertheless had Big Intellectual Fun in school and am particularly grateful that the concept of Right Questions being more important than Right Answers was driven so deeply into me that it merged with my DNA.

It's a simple and somewhat obvious thing, but also enlightening in a Zen-like way: Perfectly correct answers to Wrong Questions paradoxically result in the self-satisfied adrenaline rush of being Absolutely Right at the same time you are Utterly Wrong. But being a pleasure-seeking species, we rarely look beyond that satisfied high. This goes far in explaining many--if not most--of humanity's screw-ups: Smartly reasoned responses to thoroughly stupid queries.

Archiving Revisited (Or How I Learned To Start Worrying and Love Second Thoughts)

I'm not predisposed to revisiting previous work. My relationship with writing is a bit bipolar: Massive focus up until publication and then, well, I wish the work luck and success Out There and turn my attention to the next nascent prose at hand, thinking little--if ever again--about the finished piece. I suppose my philosophy about my own stuff is like the old Frito Lay tag line: "We'll make more."

Earlier today, however, as I was preparing to add MarsEdit and BlogAssist to the sidebar resources, one of my earlier riffs caught my eye--the one that pointed out NoteTaker could also be used to archive the actual posted blog entries as proof against some sort of Blog Service Provider Armageddon. In retrospect, it's basically my weblog version of Dr. Strangelove's subterranean plan for survivors.

Confessions of a Utilities Slut:All Hail BlogAssist, King of Workarounds

I'm not a proud man--I freely admit that I'm a slut for utilities that are beautifully crafted, laser-focused one-trick-ponies. The guilty secret of my childless condition is that I gave away my first-, second- and third-born for mission-critical applets like FastScripts, MenuCalendarClock and DragThing.

NoteTaker's integration with Ecto2 and MarsEdit currently does not support on-the-fly HTML conversion of text formatting. In earlier posts, I managed to create multi-component workaround by using Tagging Service in combination with iPaste. It was admittedly kludgy, but it sure beat hand-tagging all the text formatting and hyperlinks. The constituent apps in this solution are excellent and I plan to keep using them as they were originally intended. However, I've been seduced by a more elegant solution to HTML conversion when handing off entries NoteTaker entries to Ecto2 or MarsEdit: All hail Dejal's amazing freeware, BlogAssist.

Cataloging Your World: Creating "3-D" Blog Rolls

Blogging with NoteTaker via Ecto2 or MarsEdit raises the question of how NT-driven weblogs work with NoteTaker's own ability to create web notebooks. The easy, knee-jerk answer to sagely intone "Right tool for the right circumstances," which implies that NT blogs and NT web notebooks can't or shouldn't be combined. Recently, however, I thought of a powerful, integrated use of the two.

With Keystrokes, Less Is Indeed More:Another "Helper App" to the Rescue

Okay, I admit it: Keystroke Reduction corrupts--and absolute Keystroke Reduction corrupts absolutely. And if you're feeling uncomfortable about me revealing this Inappropriately Obsessive side of myself, just imagine how I must feel. But let's move beyond the mysterious ways in which I'm seemingly hardwired. Save your pity and instead help yourself to anything that's useful. (Proving that no-strings-attached generosity trumps neurosis--or at least balances the equation.)

As I was bashing out yesterday's post and wielding Tagging Service like the time-saving weapon it is, I found myself getting petulant. Sure Tagging Service is a lifesaver (and if you're using it on my recommendation, I genuinely hope you have deeply thanked the freeware developer)), but, Man, those letter/colon triggers--that's two keystrokes! Surely, I thought, we can do better than that . . . And with a little surfing, indeed we can.

I am now the proud owner of a highly affordable little app called iPaste. Here's the executive summary: It's a multiple entry clipboard which enables you to keep much-used inserts readily on hand. But the best thing about it is that it assigns a keyboard shortcut to each clipping.

Do I need to tell you what I did next? (Mwah-ha-ha! Keystroke Domination is mine!--Why does this come off as much more Dr. Evil than Auric Goldfinger?) Yup: I made each of the Tagging Service triggers a clipping. Now by simply hitting Ctrl-Opt-1 followed by Cmd-Shift-\, I have my beloved overwraught italics.

Can I imagine seamless, WYSIWYG input eventually? Well, yeah. But until then, I'm productively hunkered-down with the one-two combo of Tagging Service and iPaste--sort of Batman and Robin for minicoders like myself. Okay, I admit it, this pretty much has made my day--and in response to the inevitable superior laughter, I can only say, "Cut me some frickin' slack." It's hard being an evil blogging doctor . . .

The following music helped make this post possible: "These Foolish Things ( Remind Me Of You )" from the album Chet Baker In Paris (2000) by Chet Baker

Friday, July 16, 2004 11:50:09 AM

Armageddon Week Continues: More Fun With NoteTaker Archiving

Appearances to the contrary, I have not become a techno-survivalist. While I proudly practice "safe computing," I'm not particularly obsessive about it--a couple of backups a week and I'm good to go. Thus, I'm at a loss to understand why I'm suddenly having so much fun archiving my blogs with NoteTaker.

I suppose part of it is the fact that as a genuine NT freak, the clipping service feature has always been a full-fledged obsession with me. It's allowed me to cruise through cyberspace at adrenaline-pumping speed, happily whacking to a notebook page pretty much anything that captures my attention. I then review, weed-out, distill and reorganize at my convenience. Put it this way: The Internet is an information and knowledge smorgasbord, I'm wired to be perpetually hungry and NoteTaker, in effect, has given me an infinitely large plate. So out of my ways, boys--I'm going back for thirds! My dependancy on the NoteTaker clipping service is so total that I find myself trying to Cmd-click while reading the ink-and-paper interation of The New York Times.

And let's face it, while I call it "archiving" in the context of blogging, NoteTaker is simply doing its indispensable Clipping Thing. (In the words of newly fashionable Cole Porter, "do do that voodoo that you do so well.") Perhaps it's simply the fact that archiving is inherently Clipping With A Cause that fascinates me so. The psychological syntax of archiving is "saving this is useful," whereas with straight-forward clipping it's more a more a matter of "saving this may be useful." Whatever it is, all I know is that it's damn satisfying to archive--much as Northwest coffee satisfied Agent Cooper.

Dealing With Your Intellectual Kodak Moments:Building and Leveraging Better Archives

"Memories. You're talking about memories!"
--Harrison Ford
Blade Runner

Over the course of a multi-decade career, I've come to realize that, for organizations, there's something more toxic--and more insidious--than Not Invented Here: it's the proudly touted Invented Once. This is stealthily toxic because it gives the illusion of embracing innovation rather than resisting it--even as it poisons progress. It's the Hero Story enterprises tell themselves, hoping to once again catch lightening in a bottle--but in reality it has the hermetically sealed sacrosanctity of a religious reliquary. Put another way, if you think a prehistoric fly embedded in amber is wondrous, just ask the insect its opinion . . .

Oops--drifting already. If I ever needed proof of the massive resistance to caffeine that's I've built up over the years, this is it. Nearly a full pot of coffee in me and the patented Sheridan Drift Factor® is still in effect . . . What that first-paragraph amble is trying to say is that I've recently revisited my idea about using a NoteTaker blogging notebook to also (and very cleverly, I might add) archive final-draft posts as they appear on the weblog. Upon second and third thoughts, I've refined the concept. Call this Invented Again--the progress-friendly antidote to Invented Once. (Even though I do drift, it's usually in the right direction.)

Here, in no real order, are some additional observations on archiving posts within your NoteTaker notebook. (I suggest you revisit the linked entry cited above to refresh your memory about the mechanics of creating archival clippings.)

NoteTaker Support of Blog-Based Publication Structure and Workflow (Repeat After Me: The Web Is Publishing, Not Broadcasting)

Hey, wait a minute--yeah, you! The one who glanced at the head and said to yourself, "Jeez, I don't have an online publication; I'll check back tomorrow." Well, you don't want to do that for three reasons. First, your parents always told you to try new things to broaden yourself, right? Second, this posting is an meta-story--a natural convergence of NoteTaker blogging advice and many of the themes running through this site. And most importantly, it features a Full-Color Chart--and at the end of the day, who doesn't like a good full-color chart? So hang around--this posting might be up your alley after all.

But having said this, I also advise you to settle in. We need to take a philosophical side trip on our way to the tips. No, strike that---we don't need to, but we really, really should. It's always bothered me that most tech-tip resources are weirdly context-free. The supposition, brutally valid as it is, seems to be that the Enter key does the same thing whether you're writing the Declaration of Independence or Mein Kampf. Which is unfortunately true.

Very Personal To My Dim "Friend:" The Easy Way To Create Links in Entries and Posts

While we wait for the American visitors to recover from fireworks smoke inhalation, the unpleasant aftermath of the dodgy potato salad left too long in the sun and the startling revelation that Barry Bostwick--who played a politician on Spin City and also starred in The Rocky Horror Picture Show--looked more naturally at home in the midst of the patriotic hullabaloo than, well, everybody who's running for president this year, here's a simple but very effective tip regarding entry and blog links.

(Note: For those of you still in school and bitterly complaining about studying William Faulkner, applied analysis of his works will one day enable you to write monster sentences like the lead of this posting. I assume that's glee you're trying to contain.)

The current challenge of blogging with NoteTaker is that it's not yet WYSIWYG--to which I advise patience; who knows what lurks around the corner. In the meantime, however, using Tagging Service as a helper app allows you to easily insert HTML tags with keyboard short cuts. So far, so good. But an additional stumbling block occurs when pasting a URL into a Tagging Service-created link--that is, if you dimly persist in using Safari (or other default browser) to laboriously copy and then paste into the link tag. (Someone very, very close to me was actually doing this for a longer period of time than he will admit to before, well, his brain engaged--but identifying me him will would only cause embarrassment.

Bug In Posted Version of NT/Ecto Script

Remember Murphy and his Law? Well, in the US, this is a long holiday weekend, with business not resuming until Tuesday, and--natch--I've just determined there's a bug in the version of the NT/Ecto script currently posted (July 4th) on the AquaMinds site.

The good news is that erstwhile AquaMinds programmers fixed the bug on the Fourth of July. The bad news is that, realistically, the fixed NT/Ecto script won't be available for download until this coming Tuesday, during California business hours.

In the meantime, here's a work-around for those of you planning to blog with NoteTaker during the next two days. For various arcane reasons, the current script works just fine if you only post messages that continue in the manner supported by TypePad. This means--until Tuesday--even if you want to send a simple two-sentence post, use the "continuation" trigger (three right-pointing carrots) and then add anything after the trigger--even "goodbye." By doing this you'll be able to successfully post until Tuesday.

The new script fixes the problem--both integral and continued posts are recognized flawlessly.

One last thing: In case it hasn't been obvious, I've taken pains and pride in making this a not-biz-as-usual site. I'm genetically encoded to question tradition and up-end useless rules. In cases like this buggy script, Conventional Corporate Behavior would be announce an "issue"--in antiseptic terms that cooly avoided taking responsibility for it ("issues" seemingly appear by magic). The other Big Dumb Ploy would be to fob off the problem on users or their computer configurations or onto hardware manufacturers.

I say nonsense to all of this "avoidance marketing." (Actually, I normally use a much more colorful synonym for "nonsense.") I was the primary tester of the flawed NT/Ecto script and I demonstrably screwed up: I tested the support of "continuation" postings, but did not double-back and retest the previously working features. So if you've been frustrated with the NT/Ecto script over the past two days, don't blame AquaMinds, don't blame Ecto--blame me. It's not your hardware, it's not your computer configuration and its not an "issue" that magically appeared. It's a flaw let through by an actual person with an actual name: one K. Sheridan. And what's more--he's promised to do better in the future.

So maybe the silver lining of this little storm cloud is that an example of sorts has been set for the computer industry. No matter how much some companies pretend, there is no such thing as infallibility. However there does exist something called responsiblity. Wouldn't it be cool if actually saying "Oops, sorry!" started a trend that eliminated evasive support people, blank stares and instructions to call The Other Guy, et. al.? Yeah, I know--okay. But I can dream, can't I?

Once again, sorry for the my screw-up. Sit tight with the work-around and check back with the AquaMinds download site after Tuesday.

PS: This post is being sent using the fixed script; I'm purposely not splitting it to demonstrate the problem is licked.

Sunday, July 4, 2004 1:32:48 PM

"That Tip About Archiving Was Really Dope!""Well, There Is Another"

Sorry Yoda; Sorry George; Sorry Eminem. No--wait! After the last two Star Wars films, it's George who should be apologizing to me. So, sorry Yoda; sorry Eminem. (Name another tech-tip site that begins posts by groveling to muppets and rappers in the same breath--it may not be much, but, hey, it's my market strategy.)

After yesterday's posting, some refining experimentation ensued. We all have an ultimate goal--for Arthur's court, it was the Holy Grail; for Stephen Hawking, it's the Unified Theory of the Universe; for Morpheus, it was The One; and for me, well, it's doing whatever it takes to remain inside the NoteTaker application as much as possible. My confession--the one that's been struggling to get out for about two years now--is that I view NoteTaker in pretty much the same way guys who watched X-Football see their La-Z-boys: Armed with remote controls and preplanning, few if any unnecessary extra-chair trips have to be made. That's basically me and NoteTaker. (Has anyone else noted the stylistic similarities between the capital "Z" in the center of La-Z-boy and the capital "T" in Notetaker? It's a sign, I tell you . . .)

So after my revelation about archiving blog posts in the same notebook that created them, I naturally wanted to see if this could be accomplished while remaining snug inside NoteTaker. (In La-Z-boy terms, this is probably the equivalent of wondering how the swank minibar built into the arm rest could be automatically refilled. An often overlooked corollary to that old saw about Power is that absolute comfort also corrupts absolutely.)

The Formal Absences of Precious Things

The title of this post is a William Gibson image from All Tomorrow's Parties (he gets genuine hipster bonus points for naming a novel after a Velvet Underground song). It refers to the empty windows of closed jewelry shops--the dramatically lit black velvet drapes are still in place, but the gems have been removed. (To blog is to write, to write is to try to do so well, and this Gibson phrase is good writing: descriptive, evocative, resonant. While you may not achieve Gibsonian perfection, as a blogger, it's something you should aspire to.)

But great writing or not, what's that cyberpunk scene-setter doing at the top of this post? Well, formal absences of precious things is nothing any blogger wants to contemplate with regard to his or her weblog. Let's be honest here--if you're doing it right; if you're actually breaking an intellectual sweat when it comes to posting to your blog, you're spending a great deal of time and effort making it smart and--paradoxically--seem effortless. But what if all that work went away in the space of a computing cycle?

We're not talking doomsday scenarios here. In case you missed it, wrap your mind around this recent item about Weblogs.com. The word that immediately sprang to my mind was Yikes! Blog today, as it were, gone tomorrow . . . The formal absence in this instance is the rigorous syntax of your former blog's URL--and, well, you're in a better position to tell me about the missing precious things.

And yeah, the whole Weblogs.com thing will sort itself out; Dave Winer may relent. Or maybe there's a point being made here--who knows? After all, Bruce Sterling has noted that all effective blogging is performance art. So perhaps the Incredible Disappearing Weblog Site is the the equivalent of Laurie Anderson laced into skates, the blades of which are frozen in a block of ice, playing her violin on a street corner until the summer sun frees her. Or maybe not. But it is a cool theory.

The patented Sheridan Roundabout Point ® that's being made is simply that shit happens--even in cyberspace. If it's not the seemingly petulant actions of a founding father of blogs, then it might be a virus unleashed by a blog-hating hacker that takes down weblog servers. (If that ever happens, and only diary sites are targeted, I'm really, really gonna need an alibi--so, preemptively, I was with you, okay?) Or, far less X-Files, it may simply be the error of Fly-By-Nite Blogs--a provider that offers low fees because, among other things, it is casual in its approach to backups.

What's Direct-To-Blog and What's Not (Part Two)

The gratifying number of visitors to this site in its first the three weeks is forcing me to grapple with asethetic/communications issues that will affect its proof-of-concept status. Thus, as my own niggling perfectionism occasionally outpaces the current performance of the NoteTaker/Ecto script, I'll let you know. It's not so much, "Don't try this at home" as it is something along the lines of "Here's how to further tart-up your blog."

In the first installment of this random series of Tell-All, I pointed out that I post everything on this site as direct-to-blog, using the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript. And a good thing too: If I breathlessly encouraged you to use the script and yet created this blog in another way, you would be right in acting like angry villagers in a Frankenstein film. So, yes: All posts to this site are first written a entries in a dedicated NoteTaker notebook, the structure of which has been discussed earlier. And using the additional helper applications I've also described, all of the text formatting and links are also created within the NT notebook entry--but as HTML tags.

(NoteTaker does feature WYSIWYG text formatting and HTML conversion, but--currently--only for its highly useful Web notebooks. It also has an elegant link maker that works within notebooks, between notebooks and also functions in Web notebooks--but, again, currently not when sending to copy to Ecto.)

AppleScript Shortcuts: Additional Convenience for Notetaker Bloggers

Make no mistake about it: Using NoteTaker as a powerful and flexible blogging client is a newborn capability. So young, in fact, the AppleScript which connects NoteTaker to Ecto has not yet reached the status of a 1.0 release.

This means that the situation is both fraught with possibilities and limitations. Possibilities are prevalent because the circumstances are so fluid. Everyone is still working out (a) what is possible in terms of AppleScript and (2) what is genuinely useful for users. For now at least, the NoteTaker/Ecto combination has created the most powerful and deeply featured blogging client available. Others such applications may be developed, but right now the field belongs to NoteTaker/Ecto.

Because of this, much of the initial exploration is improvisational. Early Adaptors are pretty much pressing buttons and noting what happens. And, increasingly, this experimentation is focusing on the classic (and classically American) Could/Should dichotomy: So great is the power of NoteTaker, there may be things that are now become possible that have no real-world benefit for a weblog--at least not now. It's a matter of not knowing we want something until we work out that it can be done. This improvised exploration will undoubtedly become part of the feedback loop that, in turn, will help refine the NoteTaker/Ecto script.

At the same time, improvisation will also begin to map the current limitations of the NoteTaker/Ecto script. How do you know something won't happen until you try to do it? Note that limitations are not bugs. We aren't talking about malfunctioning or underperforming advertised capabilities. Rather, it's those situations where users have boxed themselves into an operational corner; where the immediate response is "Look, I just need to be able to do that"--whatever that is. And it may be that what's being asked for is eminently doable--in time. But when you really, really, really want to do it now, well, that's just not the answer you want to hear.

Email In Blogs: Maybe Not Snow or Rain, But Sometimes Compatibility Can Complicate Things

In general, the idea of weblogs is still overly narrow (see yesterday's post for a taste of My Favorite Rant). Feedback to a posting is still seen to come primarily in the form of visitor comments. And while most blogs dutifully feature an Email Me option, there is no seamless way to integrate email with blogging: Annoying cut-and-paste seems to be the only way. And, as usual whenever I stare at weblogs, I simply ask "How come?"

In making it easier for blogs to incorporate real-time comments than email responses, weblogs once again speciously suggest that when they are not busy being diaries, they are a broadcast medium--or at least a weird, nonprofessional's idea of broadcasting. Imagine that your only effective response to a radio show with which you took exception was to call into the show. While you might be encouraged to write the station, all mail was treated as some ambient, after-the-fact focus group thing; not seen to be directly engaged in dialog with the broadcast content. That's pretty much my take on how email currently relates to blogging. And, again, I'm here to say it doesn't have to be this way--especially when using NoteTaker in concert with Ecto as a powerfully enhanced weblog client.

Theoretically, NoteTaker should do a bang-up job handling mail; it has proven itself many times over as a peerless organizer of multimeda content. And after all, what's email but one more medium to be thrown into the mix?

Blogging With a Virtual Virtual Notebook

Sometimes being left to one's own devices can be both productive and clarifying. Over the weekend, I had occasion to spend way too much time in environments where wireless Internet access was not allowed. Not being smart enough to have anticipated this little wrinkle, my trusty 12-inch PowerBook was with me--albeit useless for posting purposes. After I finished hyperventilating, I told myself I could handle doing time in an Access Free Zone--even though secretly, I knew these circumstances had broken better geeks than me. However, I had seen The Birdman of Alcatraz more than once and I knew how best to use my time in solitary confinement . . .

And so as I was sitting there, I decided to collide two ideas--just to see what sort of creative fission would be released. The first idea is that not only do weblogs not have to feature reverse chronology (and yes, I do tend to bang that idea like a gong), there is also nothing stopping blogs from treating time as something malleable.

What if I simply decided that the events/statements/jokes/confessions of, say, June 14, werenot carved in temporal stone, simply because the reigning Reverse-Chrono metaphor of online content management encourages such assumptions? What if on June 16, I went back to the June 14th posting and changed it? Not merely touching it up or correcting a typo or fine-tuning a reference. No, what if I put significantly new stuff in the June 14th posting? And what if other things written on June 14 were simply removed--ex cathedra--by me? What if the important thing about the June 14th posting wasn't the date, but the subject matter? Further, what if that subject matter was dynamic, changing from one day to the next?

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.)

Text Formatting Tip: An HTML Tagging Service

The current version of the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript does not send the text formatting of NT notebook entries to Ecto. But sterling application that it is, Ecto quite happily reads HTML tags. So here's a very cool work-around:

Go to MonkeyFood. com and download their mind-bendingly useful Tagging Service. (It's freeware, so please, while you're there, drop them a heartfelt thank-you note.) Install Tagging Service in Library>Services and restart your computer. After that, you'll find a Tag Text option in the Services menu--an option that works perfectly with NoteTaker. And--best of all--Tagging Service can be invoked with a keyboard shortcut: Cmd-Shift-\ (note: it's a backslash!).

Now, as you're writing a blog-bound NT notebook entry, simply indicate where you want italics to start by typing i: for italic, b: for bold, etc (all of the triggers are listed in the Tagging Service documentation).Don't put a space between the the colon and the word where the formatting should start. Then simply select the word or phrase or paragraph, trigger included, and press Cmd-Shift-\ Voila! Instant text formatting tags that import into Ecto. The text formatting of this entry was generated by MonkeyFood's great little service. You gotta love small developers!

PS: This system enhancement works with any word processor that supports services. The one proviso is that the keyboard shortcut may already be used by the app and therefore will be unavailable. While the shortcut is modifiable, the default setting works perfectly with NoteTaker, so don't get too ambitious.

Wednesday, June 9, 2004 11:14:23 AM

Notebook Structure: Mirror vs Parallel

In the previous post, I examined the impact of blogging behavior on the structure of a dedicated blogging notebook. And earlier, the current capabilities of the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript were outlined. These limitations will also affect the shape of a blogging notebook. For instance, it was noted that the NoteTaker/Ecto script only managed so-called "main entry" posts. This creates another structural quandry: Is the blogging notebook seen as simply driving those parts of the blog it can actually affect or should it be seen as a hard-drive-based archive/mirror of everything on the site?

Similar to the connection between blogging behavior and the kinds of sections in the notebook, the answer to this is situational. Personally, I see the blogging notebook as fully mirroring the content of its companion blog. My rationale goes beyond archival tidiness: The impresssive gathering and organizational powers of NoteTaker can be brought to bear on sidebar content if it is also contained within the blogging notebook. In this scenario, an addtional "sidebar" section is added to the notebook, with individual pages in that section associated with various sidebar content areas.

Overview: What The Current Script Is Capable of Doing

Before discussing the structuring of dedicated blogging notebooks, it's helpful to understand what the first release of the NoteTaker/Ecto AppleScript can and cannot do.

At this point in its development, the script enables you to chose either a text selection within an entry or the full entry itself for posting to a blog. The script further allows you to chose whether this posting is sent to Ecto for additional work or directly to the blog "as-is," using Ecto as a kind of conduit. (In either case, Ecto is automatically launched if it is not already running.)

The script creates a headline for the blog posting from the first full sentence of the NoteTaker entry. The script bolds the first sentence, drops the period from it and then begins the body of the posting with the second sentence of the NoteTaker entry. Further, the script retains the block paragraphing of the NoteTaker entry when it posts to the blog via Ecto.. Important reminder: That period after the first sentence is critical. The script will make a headline out of anything and everything prior to finding the first instance of a period. If you forget to use one, well, unintended and surreal headlines will result.

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.