dougist.com

I’ve posted a complete outline of my File System Based Info Manager. It’s the tool I use to manage all my writing, notes, reference material, bibliographies, and records. It’s based on Alex Payne’s architecture ideas, Noguchi Yukio’s organizational systems, and input from my pals over on the Scrivener Forums.

So far it is one of the most popular posts on dougist.com.

David Pogue, the Technology Editor at the New York Times, has caused a stir with his last email update. In it he described a short list of his productivity secrets and to the gasps of GTD/David Allen proselytes the world over he declared that he uses his email inbox as his todo list.

I thought I heard the followers of Merlin Mann and his 43 Folders InboxZero program clutch their collective chests.

I joined in by posting…

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blockquote>I love todo list so much I had dozens – Omnifocus, iGTD, iCal, Things, legal pads, 3×5 cards, all of it. Then I relized the wonder of the one inbox, and I have made my email that box. Like Pogue, anything that comes in is filed, replied to, or tossed a la basic GTD principles. What is left over are todo/project emails.

The problem with using the inbox…

Are we better off with all the writer’s and researcher’s tools on our PCs?

I look down at my MacBook’s desktop, and staring back at me is a monster. A jumble of incomprehensible and expanding piles of electronic icons spill and shuffle around as if the sorter cubbies on top of a roll top desk had just collapsed. I think, if Mark Twain had a laptop this is what it would have looked like.

The nice thing about the physicality of books, printed pdfs, and paper journals is their hard edged presence and volume. Having them piled up around you reminds you of things; like how much you’ve done, and how much you need to do. That volume of paper communicates what you have to do, and more importantly, it gives you a gauge of what you can do.

So where does that leave Sente, Zotero, Pages, EndNote, OneNote, DEVONThink, Together and Journler…

CNN Technology gets swamped on inauguration day, and isn’t sure what to do in “The Moment” with Photosynth. Perhaps they can take few lessons from the new tech savvy White House who is showing some chops in cyber space. PWND!

Buzzing around the web has been the story that Google CEO Eric Schmidt called the internet a “Cesspool”. Cnet reported that “the Internet is a “cesspool” where false information thrives…Schmidt gave the magazine publishers hope for their future. Brands, he said, are the way to rise above the cesspool”

Really? Old media is the answer?

Looking to the mainstream media brands as a model of fair and accurate reporting is like looking for a pacifist at a prizefight. Here’s why…

For about a week now my Macbook has been at the doctor’s having its failed hard drive replaced. Since I do most of my writing in Journler, I’ve taken this little interuption as an excuse to play way too much Ogame.

Along the way, between launching space fleets and building colonies, I’ve been thinking about whether this simple but wildly popular game is a harbinger of the future of gaming environments or a remnant of the past, and what it tells us about the formation of the Web 2.0 organizations that will increasingly be in our lives.

I wrote

“The inflection point of web 2.0 is not about the progression along a path of increasing functionality, where each subsequent development leads to more and better. Web 2.0 is about a whole new way of interacting, with conection and interpersonal interaction trumping the output of processors and their supporting databases. At its core the technology has gotten powerfull enough that we can be simple again, and in that simplicity find a vastly new level of complexity.”

Oh, and I’ve certainly increased my level of Ogame addiction, because well, what else am I going to do? They don’t cal it O-crack for nothing….

I’ve been chatting with the folks over at digital complements + about Journler and they pointed me to Karl Stolley’s The Lo-Fi Manifesto.

Reading it reminded me of when I was serving my time in the land of technology management. Back then the Architecture and Planning group reported to me and we were pretty sure that the age of applications and hardware was over. The future was about data. We spent most of our waking hours trying to find ways to undo the mess left from just about five decades of applications dumping data into siloed databases…

I lost Saturday, Sunday and Monday to the cutest little game called Tower Defense. It completely mesmerized me for three days. I was told that during that period I hardly moved and there is no question that on Friday when I looked down to start playing it was morning, and when I again looked up, it was night. I haven’t been this engrossed in a game since Stronghold devoured weeks of my life back in 2002.

What is it about this game and why is it so cool…

Productivity consultant Matt Cornell starts a conversation about “Blogruptcy”. It’s really all about the metaphor we use of being on “the shiny edge of an ever expanding bubble of posts”. But that can change…

Getting through your juvenilia is tough, especially when you’re 45…

…especially when your critics actually criticize you.

Sal and I talk about it…

My ‘friend’ Amanda belittles my blogging in a defense of the traditional world of New York publishing…

“Writing pornography again, Doug? That’s rather sad” Amanda said.

“No, no, its not about you, dear”

I use Journler, Mark Twain would have too…

Someone asked me the other day “how can you be so careful about your writing, and still make so many mistakes” and since the questioner was not an Obama supporter, I found it safe to assume she was talking about my grammar, not my content.

In a lighting quick reply I said “It’s not easy. You have to work at it”.

I’ve been spending a remarkable amount of time messing with css code, blog catalogues, and discussion boards.

Wouldn’t t-shirts and coffee mugs be easier?

So what’s this web site all about? Here are a few ideas. (Somebody alert the New Yorker, or at least Merlin Mann…)