ConFigures » personal information management http://configures.sarahelkins.org Figure it out ... with me! Mon, 26 Apr 2010 15:35:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 Almost 2 Months on the Palm Pre Smartphone http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2009/08/01/almost-2-months-on-the-palm-pre-smartphone/ http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2009/08/01/almost-2-months-on-the-palm-pre-smartphone/#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:22:47 +0000 configures http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2009/08/01/almost-2-months-on-the-palm-pre-smartphone/ I picked up a Palm Pre the first day it was available, June 6.  I’m very happy with it overall. It works very well as a phone (both sound quality and override of other apps), and I love the easy flow and integration between the different apps and underlying software.  Designers put a lot of thought into usability.  Also, it feels good to hold (my sister was surprised by how much difference it made to hold it rather than just look at it), and it’s pretty.  The 3 megapixel camera is *great*.  Upgrades have come out pretty frequently, improving the battery performance and adding more functionality each time.  I don’t care so much about the M$ Exchange and enterprise security stuff that came out with the 1.1 release last week, but it’s probably good for folks who want to read their work Outlook email on their phone.

Right now I’m listening to my Classical Gas station on Pandora on my Pre, checking my calendar (without having to pause/close Pandora), and charging off my OLPC  XO laptop (where I’m composing this entry — the Pre keyboard works fine for me to compose short replies, up to a paragraph, maybe, but it’s not great for long compositions).  In a pinch, it works ok as a primary computer (there’s even a way to hack it to run a terminal window for command line/ssh joy, though I haven’t done that yet). I had pretty minimal wifi access on a recent beach vacation with my family, but I was able to keep up with my usual Web hangouts via the Sprint network my Pre  sees.  I’ve been able to read my email on my Pre inside a concrete auditorium.  Web rendering is fast and the landscape rotate and pinch/zoom and double-tap snap zoom (scrolling stays in the column selected) make it pretty easy even to read busy websites with 3 or more columns.

This is my first smartphone, but it’s hardly my first Palm — I started with a Palm IIIx pda, then moved up to a Zire after I dropped the IIIx on its corner.  I might still be on the Zire, but it started flaking out in March and pretty much went into a coma in April.  I was able to migrate my data each time.  The Classic emulator lets me run my favorite tools from my old Palm.  The Pre also syncs with my contact info from GMail and Facebook (after I enabled that), “stacking” the info from the different accounts so I can see it all together (automatically in most cases, but easy to link if it misses a connection between friends’ accounts). Most contact info is in the cloud, but there’s also an automatic backup of data I add to the Pre (though I haven’t had to restore from it yet, and it *doesn’t* save customizations such as settings tweaks to apps).

The Pre costs about $200 with a 2-year contract (Sprint, $70/mo for 450 minutes + unlimited data/texting/gps navigation).  With taxes and the insurance I signed up for, it’s running about $87/mo.  It’s not a must-have, but I’m having fun with mine.

Next, I’ll review the apps, and then the accessories.  In the meantime you can check out very detailed reviews and videos on PreCentral.net.  I’ve saved the most interesting articles from there and elsewhere in my links library with the Palm tag.

]]> http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2009/08/01/almost-2-months-on-the-palm-pre-smartphone/feed/ 0 Liveblogging the January NoVaLUG meeting http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2008/01/05/liveblogging-the-january-novalug-meeting/ http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2008/01/05/liveblogging-the-january-novalug-meeting/#comments Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:31:08 +0000 configures http://configures.sarahelkins.org/?p=67 This  morning I’m at the Northern Virginia Linux User Group meeting.  The topic is photo management software for Linux (presentation by Theodore Ruegsegger), but they also asked anyone with an  XO to bring it along, so Jonathan Blocksom put the word out on the One Laptop Per Child Learning Club – DC mailing list (and brought his).  The Oracle facility  we’re in is pretty swank!  An auditorium where each seat on each row has its own power outlet, microphone, tiny light (for taking notes), ethernet port etc.

Read more on the photo management software presentation:

Ted is presenting a relational DB management system he wrote which uploads photos in photo sets, groups in albums, allows derived photos, stores metadata, tags group photos arbitrarily , and allows fast searching.  Albums can  be exported to websites/media.  I don’t take that many pictures, partly because of  not being one to get around to doing much photo management.  I’m aware of Flickr etc. but do like the idea of photo management software I’d run on my own server.  Needs Apache, PHP, PostgreSQL etc.  But Ted’s Easy Foto Box package can be installed easily on a virtual (or real) machine.

http://www.tux.org/~tbr/easyfotobox/

]]> http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2008/01/05/liveblogging-the-january-novalug-meeting/feed/ 0 1 Laptop Per … Christmas? http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/10/02/1-laptop-per-christmas/ http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/10/02/1-laptop-per-christmas/#comments Wed, 03 Oct 2007 01:45:37 +0000 configures http://configures.sarahelkins.org/?p=52 I’ve been following the development of One Laptop Per Child with interest, even before I saw one up close in April. I like their Learning Vision, their open source approach to the hardware, software and content (freedom to tinker), and the hardware features (designed to be durable and useful in harsh environments). I’m not crazy about the project’s main site front page or navigation, but at least their wiki has a lot of details.
Now OLPC has announced a limited-time Give One Get One program which allows folks to pay $399 to send one xo laptop to a child in a developing nation (as part of a program, not just parachuted in), and another laptop to, as they say, your child at home. I’ve signed up to get a reminder when the program starts (November 12). I’m wondering if my siblings might donate similarly, so everyones’ kids could mesh with them whenever they get together (this Christmas, say?). Even without the social/collaborative/play capabilities of multiple xo laptops, though, they sound pretty spiffy:

Camera, video/voice recording, music-making, long battery life  and solar power / pullcord recharge, browsing, word processing, drawing, read in the sunlight, …

[Update:  might get a pullcord recharger, or a foot pedal, or a crank, but not a solar panel for G1G1 ]

]]> http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/10/02/1-laptop-per-christmas/feed/ 6 Fragmentation http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/08/03/fragmentation/ http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/08/03/fragmentation/#comments Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:15:23 +0000 configures http://configures.sarahelkins.org/?p=48 Catherine Devlin’s birthday wish list expresses a desire for a tag-based file access system, for (re)organizing her folder structure and tracking files to hang onto for migration and other purposes. Sounds good to me! I’d love to see a TortoiseCVS-style application I could run on top of Windows Explorer (on my work laptop), and a similar sort of thing for my Linux box at home. Tag things as I work on them, and then the ability to pull up items by tags/ tag intersections.

I see this as different from something like Google Desktop searching — sometimes I want to add my own (personalized) metadata to files, and tags work pretty well for that.

]]> http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/08/03/fragmentation/feed/ 5 Blogging Panels at Penguicon http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/04/30/blogging-panels-at-penguicon/ http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/04/30/blogging-panels-at-penguicon/#comments Tue, 01 May 2007 01:20:04 +0000 configures http://configures.sarahelkins.org/?p=45 After my Knowledge Gardening talk was accepted for Penguicon 5.0, Matt Arnold the Programming Wrangler copied me on email asking who was interested in co-panelling on [a list of possible topics]. I picked “Blogging Your Life Without Losing Your Job, Or Your Mind”, and emailed my co-panelists beforehand to work out who wanted to cover what. So, we had a plan, but due to some glitches, we ended up with Cathy Raymond and me doing “How To Blog Your Life Without Losing Your Mind” on Friday night, and then on Saturday Gini Judd and I did “Blogging Your Life Without Losing Your Job.” I wish I’d noticed the slightly different topics earlier, but I think we did reasonably well.

The audience Friday night was smaller than Saturday, but between Cathy and me, we got a lively discussion going anyway. One comment that interested me came after I mentioned how, in addition to standard text journalling, blogging software packages can make it easy to use them for other purposes (videoblogging for fun or work (installation walkthroughs), tying in with RSS for project management, or tying in with library catalogs to autogenerate a blog entry per book (with library patron commenting ability thrown in for free!)). One audience member said it reminded him of how VisiCalc revolutionized how people looked at and worked with data on computers, partly because what people could use them for was so open-ended.

At the Saturday talk, Gini talked about company communication policies and how to get involved in forming a blog policy if one’s company doesn’t have one. The audience had a lot of horror stories to relate. I mentioned a few articles I’ve read about how blogging can *help* your career if you’re techblogging. Recruiters may look for folks on blogs, or once you get to serious consideration, it may make a difference to your credibility (and show an ability to work with others) if you’ve contributed to discussions via forums or blogs. When the conversation got onto younger bloggers, it turned out Gini and I had both heard an interesting NPR interview with the author of Generation MySpace.

Lessons Learned:

  • I had the agenda on my Palm Zire, but it kept powering down (next time, print it or change from the 3-minute power save cycle).
  • According to the evidence (someone took pictures at one panel), I need to be more aware of my face and hands during a panel. Smile more, fiddle less.
  • Even on a non-controversial panel and with good intentions between panelists, a moderator could help (smoother transitions/time-sharing).

]]> http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/04/30/blogging-panels-at-penguicon/feed/ 3 Tags, Personal Information Management, and Beyond http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/03/05/tags-personal-information-management-and-beyond/ http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/03/05/tags-personal-information-management-and-beyond/#comments Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:40:10 +0000 configures http://www.sarahelkins.org/wordpress/?p=18 I tend to be more interested in topics that don’t fit neatly into one category: interdisciplinary, multi-faceted matters.  This is why I was so happy when I discovered tags (and social bookmarking, serendipitously) – a.k.a. “labels” in Gmail.   I like the way tagging helps me organize and recall information I’ve come across on the web.  No time need be spent deciding “which category is most applicable”.  Most of the 1600+ articles I’ve tagged into my links library have multiple tags to help me find them later (some put down all at once, some added/edited as my ways of organizing evolve), so multiple contexts and associations will work.  Using an online tagging tool lets me access my links library from any web-enabled computer … and easily share whichever links I choose with other people who may be interested, whenever they want to look at my library or follow my tags via feeds. 

I’m using Connotea because I like its feature set (including open source and data exportability, along with highly flexible RSS feeds of tags and tag combinations) and user base, but there are many tagging sites/services out there.  Because of the way they display my information at Connotea, it’s easy for me to discover how other users tag popular links I’ve already tagged, follow their activities, and find other articles, sites, and research angles.

Combining general-user tagging, auto-indexing, and metadata from experts would extend the flexibility, power, and longevity of information systems.  I’m looking forward to seeing that as more social software integrations come our way.

]]> http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/03/05/tags-personal-information-management-and-beyond/feed/ 0 LibraryThing and Information Management http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/02/14/librarything-and-personal-information-management/ http://configures.sarahelkins.org/2007/02/14/librarything-and-personal-information-management/#comments Wed, 14 Feb 2007 15:29:43 +0000 configures http://www.sarahelkins.org/wordpress/?p=11 Now that a handheld trigger-scanner is coming my way, I’ve created a LibraryThing account for myself. So far, I’ve just manually added books I had at the office; the major imports will come when I get the scanner and a friend helps me whip through my bookcases at home. I’m looking forward to organizing (and tagging) my books there, and using the site tools for metrics, social info (who’s tagging which of my books how?), and discovery. See “Book library” link under “More of Mine” on the right.

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