Sam's World Of No

Lately I find myself using a lot of paper at work – this is partly because a new PM at a client produces a lot of the stuff and partly because I fancied a change from a lot of notes on computer/iPhone. Let’s face it, there’s not a whole lot more usable than a pen and paper.

Previously I have spurned pen and paper because it feels very messy and can be difficult to keep track of. All of a sudden your centralised task list is split over various scraps of whatever you could lay your hands on at a particular moment, and my Backpack isn’t seeing the stuff it should be.

My new solution is unbelievably simple but still seems to have turned a few heads.

1. On any piece of paper, anywhere (spec document, chart, graph, list of tasks), draw an empty circle next to any ‘actionable’ item. What do I mean by ‘actionable’? I mean anything that you would miss if this piece of paper was lost. A lot of notes you make you will never read again; they are just to help you think. For everything that you need to do something on, draw a circle.
2. Once the item next to the circle has either been completed or graduated to another list, fill in the cirle.

Yep, that’s it. This means that any piece of paper I may have on my person may have these little circles on them. Once I’m done reading a particular document, or I’m back at my desk, I complete the tasks I can (in five minutes or less, GTD style), and graduate any items that can’t to Backpack. Once the paper has no empty circles, file it or (better) throw it.

This idea is not new by any stretch, and it’s certainly not anything clever, but it does help me keep things in order. The key to it really is the graduation. If you force yourself to keep all pieces of paper with a pending task or piece of information floating around (most likely on your desk), you will quickly go mad.

The other key is to have a ‘buck stops here’ list – that’s what Backpack is perfect for. Its email dropboxes also mean you can add stuff directly to this last-stop list easily. For me, the best thing about the dropboxes is that I can send tasks straight from my phone. This means that whilst I lay awake at night remembering all the stuff I need to do, I can send off a series of emails and turn my mind to other things like going to sleep.

Who knows, maybe Backpack is helping my insomnia!

Oh, and do yourself a favour when trying the pen and paper system – buy a nice pen, nice paper and instigate a recycling bin under your desk.

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This is under the category of ‘useful stuff I’ve found which might save someone else some googling’:

1. Log in to Facebook
2. Add the Twitter Facebook App
3. Register your Twitter account with said app
4. Click ‘Allow Twitter to update your Facebook status’
5. Click yes to Vista-esque security settings to allow Twitter access to your Facebook status

Done!

Should you later want to stop Twitter updating your Facebook status:

1. In Facebook, hover over ‘Settings’ and choose ‘Twitter Settings’ from the menu
2. Click on ‘Additional Permissions’
3. Uncheck ‘Update my status without notifying me.’

NB: Apparently @reply tweets won’t turn up. Probably for the best; they wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense!

Anybody else think that with all the @, # and RT: syntax, Twitter is turning into an obfuscated language of its own? It reminds me of the weird format we used to have to send to roaming GPS boxes, back when I worked on a project that involved involved such things, and debugging problems with the message syntax got really quite difficult!

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… at the Matchbox!

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If you make websites, take this survey. It’s quick and helps to create a statistical reality about our still-new industry!

For those of you who are interested (and a surprising number were at the time), you can also check out my comments on the 2007 survey.

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GPS, 3G, Exchange support and an online software store. Oh, and calculator that rotates to become a scientific calculator. And a load of corporate IT stuff.

Put it like that, and the iPhone 3G/iPhone 2.0 update doesn’t sound like much. Plus, you still can’t copy and paste. You still can’t take video, and you still can’t send MMS. No, really. You can’t even send a vCard (my biggest iPhone gripe). But all of this will eventually change, and in the mean time the iPhone, whilst ostensibly doing less out of the box, empowers users by doing what it does much better than its competitors. Simply put, it’s a better piece of kit than anything else out there, by miles and country miles. It’s even creating a new economy, in a time when new economies are hard to come by.

But this release should be giving sleepless nights to all sorts of people, and not just those involved in making phones. The breadth of the platform means that the competition that the iPhone is taking on is now much more extensive. Check out this quick list of companies which, frankly, now mostly suck. We’ll start with the direct competitors, and then we’ll look at the new targets on Steve Jobs’ world domination radar.

1. All Windows Mobile phones – “This is nuts”, proclaimed Scott Forstall at the iPhone 3G announcement, while discussing the program manager that Microsoft considers acceptable behaviour on their mobile platform. Opening a can of whoopass on Windows Mobile is hardly a challenge; there’s a reason that the enterprise software giant already lost the mobile OS battle to BlackBerry. Every used ActiveSync? Yep, me too. It was hardly the best time I’ve ever had.
2. All BlackBerry phones – Oh dear. We’ve got enterprise support on the iPhone. Push email, push calendar, push this that and another. I don’t work for a massive corporation, but when sitting in business class I see the poor souls on their BlackBerrys, whittling their fingers to a sharp point as they frantically type emails on a tiny screen. I want to give them a hug and an iPhone. Now I can. BlackBerry are advertising a lot at the moment – perhaps that is the answer to being totally outclassed by a device that does the same as you, and then a whole truckload more as well.
3. All Nokia phones – Now the second best phone manufacturer in the world, Nokia is still streets ahead of the lesser competition. It has by far the best usability of non-iPhone phones, and its models boast a healthy feature set and a broad range of designs. 5 megapixel cameras and, yep, copy and paste, are serious features. But pick up a Nokia. Welcome to the feeling of cheap plastic. Touch the screen to operate it. Oh wait. No touch screen for you. You have fun on those tiny buttons. In terms of how tactile the handset is, the iPhone makes every Nokia look like a maiden aunt. But hey, the Nokia still has loads of features. Have fun trying to use them. Have fun trying to connect to a wireless network. Worst fun ever.
4. All Motorola/Samsung Mobile/LG Mobile/NEC/Sagem Mobile etc phones – See above. But with no consolation prizes. Let’s send these fail champions home. People are now paying for iPhones instead of having your free alternatives. Sure, they’re paying less than they were, but still. You’re screwed.
5. All Portable Sat Navs – How long until a serious Sat Nav solution comes out for the iPhone 3G? Not long, I would imagine. I’d buy it – the iPhone screen is plenty big enough to run Sat Nav, and yet again, I’m not forking out for a new unit with a brand new interface that was probably programmed by blind monkeys.
6. All portable games consoles, especially the Nintendo DS – Nintendo have been doing an excellent job at expanding their consoles to a much broader market, and the Wii and DS have been massive commercial successes. I know this, because 2 years later and it’s still not the easiest thing in the world to get hold of a Wii. Hardly the same story for XBOX 360 or PS3. You’re practically driving over them in the street, as they sit there, constantly lowering their own prices. The DS is the same story as the Wii, as it focuses on a market that appreciates simple, useful and mobile applications. But the iPhone does all this too. And it does it on your phone. Ouch.
7. Every page of Google SERPS after the first page – Google’s iPhone search web app only shows the first page of results. Below this list, it offers a small ‘more results’ link, that bounces you to a second window containing a normal Google search page. It’s kind of a “well, if you really MUST” option. Now, we all know that Google page 1 is where it’s at, and that the percentage of people going to page 2 and above is paltry. The iPhone brings every page after the first page one step closer to never, ever, being seen.
8. Your home phone - Apple haven’t quite killed off the cellular networks – iPhone 2.0 only allows VoIP apps to run over wifi (so you can’t take advantage of unlimited data tariffs by routing all your voice calls in their direction) – but when you’re within range of a reliable and secure wifi connection (like the ones we now all have at home), you now have the ability to use your favourite handset to make free calls.
9. Every Apple remote – I’ve never felt the love for this flimsy and surprisingly powerful piece of white plastic (ever tried to use an Apple remote in a room where more than one device is in range?), and the remote app for the iPhone does its job so much better. I’ve used remote controls on Windows and Symbian mobiles for a few years now – Apple’s solution is so far ahead it’s unbelievable.
10. Every digital guitar tuner and every set of those stupid panpipes that people use for guitar tuning – My last example is small but indicative of a wider point. For £3, you can put a guitar tuner on your iPhone. £3 to never have to try to tune a guitar with panpipes ever again is like a Christmas present. There are lots of Apps like this – the most expensive app of all is a great example.

I’m sure there are more.
Apple have, yet again, taken a massive step forward by doing a lot of things that, once you see them, make a stupid amount of sense. The apparent simplicity of it all is sickening, frankly, but it’s deceptive. It’s not just selling software and phones that plug in. It’s selling software and phones that plug in every time, work everytime and generally make the rest of the electronics industry look like they spend their days scratching their heads aimlessly.

One thing I haven’t spoken about is Mobile Me; for me, this is the biggest question mark. Of course, it’s more than a paid-for email/calendar service, but with so much excellent competition out there (I can’t see me moving from Google Mail any time soon…), can Apple really charge people for something that has been free for longer than most of us call recall?

But I forget, this is Apple. Their software will be better, and its value will follow naturally.

Put it like that, and it sounds so simple, but what Apple have done is far from the easy option. Naysayers seem to think that the logic of “Better product, more sales”, is somehow too obvious and facile a goal to bother with. What they miss is that creating getting more sales is really easy, compared to the near-impossible goal of joining a new industry and promptly becoming its technology leader. Even if you think that Apple are all hype, you can’t deny the industry position that they now hold.

Some of this, of course, is hyperbole. Putting a clock on mobile phones didn’t render the watch obsolete overnight. Other manufacturers of mp3 players still, miraculously, sell mp3 players that aren’t iPods. And yes, I suppose I have been, as Americans put it, drinking the Kool-Aid, whatever that means. But you have to admit – this is a pretty interesting day.

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