Adventures in home working

As a keen user of multiple displays - Excel really frustrates me, with its inability to open multiple windows on different displays. 

I found a hack that involved manually resizing the Excel main/parent window so that it spanned multiple displays and manually dragging Excel child windows onto other displays, which is ok, but not perfect for me.

However I also found that if you have Excel running that you can launch a second copy just fine so long as you launch it from Internet Explorer. 

Since I use Maxthon I then realised there was an even easier way, just define a new external tool as follows:

1. Open the tools menu
2. Open the External utilities sub menu
3. Click +
4. Browse to Excel.exe
5. Save

And that’s all there is to it.  Now you can launch as many copies of Excel as you want and place them wherever you want

Tags: multiple monitors, Productivity

There’s a flurry of articles today about email overload, and I read a few prompted by a tweet from ChiefTech.  I fancied a break so I thought I would jot down my strategies for dealing with Email, which right now mean I DON’T suffer from Email overload.

Setting the scene:

1. First off, I don’t find Email to be the root problem,  instead I lay the blame more on email clients.  I find that the RSS post scanning, reading, flagging, sharing, and actioning experience in FeedDemon to be far superior to the equivalent in Lotus Notes.
2. If anything I find I suffer much more from RSS overload than Email overload, but RSS readers are designed from the get go to help people cope

Getting back to email:

1. I scan read every email that arrives each day
2. By the end of the day I always trim my inbox to about 15 emails, these are all emails that require an action, essentially these 15 emails are my to do list for the next day or so.  15 emails fit on my laptop screen with the preview pane open, so I can scan them all with a single glance to choose my next action
3. I email myself to do items, often from my Blackberry so I have only one place for to do items.  If I have more than 15 to do items I know from experience that I will never get around to them, so I tend to be pretty ruthless.   I keep a list of future projects that I’m not currently actioning separately
4. I colour code emails from key people and key customers so I can see at a glance things that need special attention
5. I create rules which move large volume email into folders so that they don’t clutter the inbox, and can be easily scanned and block deleted.  These tend to be subscriptions to lists or automated notifications.  I sometimes prefer this to RSS feeds, depending on the follow on action required.
6. I redirect emails to RSS where I can,  however for RSS feeds that must be read or that have a high importance, but low traffic I prefer to get the update as an email
7. For anything I need to read while mobile, I like it as email on my Blackberry
8. I don’t use many folders.  Most emails get filed under admin, long term file, short term file and projects.  For projects with high levels of email I sometimes create a folder, but it’s rare that I access it.
9. I almost always find emails by going into “all documents” and sorting by the name of the person who emailed me, or who I emailed.  My Brain works better by associating with people than projects.
10. I often turn emails into calendar items, but almost never into to do items
11. I do most of my email processing, deleting, filing, forwarding etc on my Blackberry.
12. Once I have replied to or forwarded an email, I delete it.  I find it much easier to find it again in my sent folder, which I keep a full archive of.

Tags: email, rss

Out of the box I had a few issues with my Thinkpad X60T running Vista:

1. After a morning working by the beach the wireless network was often disabled when I plugged in at home,  I needed to do a “Diagnose and repair” to re-enable it
2. After a not so useful windows update I found that my display was often switched off when I resumed from sleep,  I had to cycle through sleep again to get it back
3. Active rotate has never worked reliably and now doesn’t work at all

The first two of these are now solved - or at least I have a workaround

1. For wireless, go into the advanced power settings and configure it so that the wireless adapter isn’t powered down.  What seems to have been happening is that if available battery power dipped below some value the wireless adapter was disabled.  Now if I want to save power I use the mechanical switch to disable wireless, but I hardly ever need to
2. For blank screen, I found out that provided I suspend BEFORE I close the lid, when I resume the screen is always on.  Slightly annoying but much better than before.
3. Fix to get Active Rotate working reliably anyone??

Tags: gadgets, Thinkpad, vista

Over the Christmas holiday I boarded out the loft and insulated the rafters.  We now have a great space up in the loft, but unfortunately it’s already full with all the stuff we’ve accumulated.  I’ve got to the point now where I really hate “stuff”. 

About 10 years ago we were living in a small flat while hunting for a house and most of our things were in storage.  I still remember that time very fondly, it was so liberating to be free of all that clutter. 

Unfortunately sharing my current much larger house with my wife and 4 girls I’m pretty much surrounded by other people’s stuff so not having much myself doesn’t really make that much impact.  My current strategy therefore is to cut back on my spending, save my money until I can afford to by some space that can be just for me, hopefully this year sometime.

Anyone else suffering from the same problem, might appreciate this great essay.

Tags: family

I’m currently working on our Mobile working strategy and by chance I happened to be reading Hominids which has a wonderful description of a mobile Companion device and sensors.  The concept of use was pretty inspirational and reminded me of the even more futuristic vision of “Jane” in the Ender books.

Anyway the point of this post is to point out this very interesting article about a concept that Apple has for making the iPhone even more of a lifecycle companion.  It’s only a small step towards the companion described in Hominids, but its a good early indicator.  One can only admire Apples Strategy and Execution and this article makes a good case for why they will be very difficult to beat in the rich mobile experience space.

My conclusion is that it’s definitely going to be personal use cases that dominate the selection criteria for mobile devices for the majority pretty soon and that enterprise integration is just going to be a nice to have feature.  That’s not the case yet for me, because the Blackberry still provides such a superior Mobile Lotus Notes experience, but it won’t be long (hopefully) before this evolves to a similar plug and play experience (ie most Smart Phones are enterprise as standard and just need to plug into the appropriate enterprise service) that Microsoft ActiveSync provides.

Tags: mobility

Everyone knows I love multiple monitors,  I have 3 * 19″ all the same model and type and all cheap ones that are just fine for my simple needs (ie not Gaming).  Here are a few things I’ve learned in the 3 years I’ve used them:

1. A laptop - single screen - is just fine if all you want to do is read, or process email, or scan your RSS feeds.  I use a laptop for all these tasks and I prefer it to my desktop because I can do these things anywhere, and I like the focus (multiple monitors can distract).
2. Multiple monitors are perfect though for creative work, analysis, collaboration, etc where you need to access more than one application at a time, or multiple copies of the same application.
3. Three monitors is great, but with hindsight I would make my central monitor larger than 19″ and I would consider a small 1024*768 display as well for web conferences.
4. Your second priority investment after buying multiple displays is to get Ultramon, which now works fine on Vista. 
5. You can open multiple Excel windows on different screens by manually resizing Excel (or use Ultramon) to span multiple screens and then opening up additional windows and dragging them between screens.
6. PowerPoint seems to only support a single screen, You can use OpenOffice to open up multiple copies of PowerPoint.  You can use it for Excel too, but I don’t.  I sometimes also use SnagIt (screen capture) to quickly grab a PowerPoint of Excel window that I need to reference while working on another display
7. Use synergy to allow your to use one keyboard and mouse to access your laptop/tablet if you use a desktop PC with multiple monitors like me.  Much better than a hardware KVM.
8. Use some of the screen real-estate to dock a few key applications that you need to reference frequently.  I dock the Vista sidebar on the far left and Pidgin universal IM client docks on the far right.
9. If you use Lotus Notes,  Open up separate windows on different displays.  I have my Email on my centre display, Calendar on the right and highlight report and personal database on the right.  Much easier to work that way
10. Coding horror blog has the best discussion on multiple monitors, eg http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001076.html
11. If you need to convince the boss,  Quote the Wall Street Journal, http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/03/10/bigger-computer-monitors-more-productivity/
12. In rare cases a very large single display might be better, I personally think a Large centre display and two 19″ displays works best. But if you like the large display idea, you will need some extra utilities, http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000928.html

Tags: Productivity

Check out the wiki and help spread the word about “The Enterprise RSS Day of Action”.  This seems like a great way to create some buzz around the concept of Enterprise RSS, gather some useful information and get people together.  The wiki has more details,  but this is a key snip:

The purpose of the Enterprise RSS Day of Action on the Thursday 24th April is to help raise awareness for the potential for Enterprise RSS. This wiki will provide Enterprise RSS champions with materials and information they can use to run their own awareness campaigns inside their own organisations.

Tags: enterprtise 2.0, rss

I’ve been experimenting with desktop video conferencing for years, but my enthusiasm never persists for more than a few days because the experience is just too unpredictable.  Sometimes it’s a image quality issue, sometimes it’s firewalls, right now it’s unstable drivers and poor lip synch.  It’s not far away though, in theory Skype and Logitech already offers HD conferencing (not reliably for me due to driver issues on Vista 64), and there are several high quality - but too expensive - desktop HD solutions (LifeSize for example), but it’s still not quite real for me - what will it take?

1. Good multi-party video support in web conferencing systems
2. Multiple screens and multi-screen support in the software, you need at least 2 screens and maybe three to have a multi-party web conference with video
3. Faster home networking or perhaps just more consistent bandwidth (most people are not going to video conference in an open office)
4. Better camera’s that offer an optical zoom so that it’s possible to really see expressions and lip synch
5. A price point that’s viable for the enterprise, less than £150.

The recent announcement that Microsoft is working with Tandberg to deliver a $300 high-definition video camera by next year is a good early indicator that maybe we are approaching a tipping point.  That said the first step is to win the ongoing battle to convince enterprises to invest in multiple monitors.

Tags: desktop, Productivity, video

VDI is a pretty cool for a whole host of use cases, but what we really need is a single infrastructure for virtual and physical PCs.  We are nearly there:

1. Citrix provisioning server can stream a base operating system to virtual and physical PCs
2. Application virtualization and streaming can stream the applications into this base operating system to customize it for the user
3. User environment “virtualization” can deliver the users profile and other per user or per group customizations

All of the above are key to VDI, but also not far away from being viable for physical desktops and portables.  Microsoft’s acquisition of Kidaro points the way to how some of the gaps might be filled since Kidaro includes:

1. Kidaro vDNA : to “save” all of the user specific data when the user logs off the VM
2. Kidaro TrimTransfer : optimising the transfer of the virtual image by doing a block level compare and only sending the delta’s or the stuff that is not there yet.

For those of us like me who want to deliver their enterprise desktop experience integrated with their personal desktop and laptop experience they add:

1. Kidaro ToGo : which allows you to run everything from removable media like a iPod or USB drive
2. “Workspace”: that allows you to have “published” applications from a VM. This means that if you run Lotus Notes from a VM you can only show only Notes instead of the whole VM.  VMware 6.5 will have this feature on Windows and VMWare and Parallels already do it on the Mac.

Finally Intel with their vPro capabilities greatly reduce the need to visit the desk for support. 

Within a couple of years - once Solid State Disks are cost effective and encryption routine - we should expect to see physical desktops and laptops that have all of the desirable flexibility, management and security characteristics of VDI/Thin clients, supported by the same infrastructure. 

At that point just choose the client device that suits your workstyle and get productive.

Tags: desktop, SBC, VDI

I’ve long known that a significant number of projects fail and that even more don’t succeed and I’ve read plenty of books that try to dig into why.   Oft cited are poor requirements, poor customer engagement etc but I liked this snipit that seems to sum up my experience:

The reason these applications don’t succeed is that the majority of implementations don’t focus on succeeding but rather they focus on not failing.

Tags: Project management