So I have yet to find the PIM solution that fits the way I think, work, behave, and interact with the information around me. After thinking for a while that maybe I was just crazy, I’ve come to the conclusion that the PIM concept is really just different for everyone. The reason I think that the “Personal Information Management” idea breaks down is that everyone has a different “Personal Information Model” that is unique to their life, circumstances, and goals. I find it a constant struggle to try to bend tools to fit the way I work and live. With the thought that there just plain isn’t a tool out there that is going to fit, I need to revisit how I might meet my information mgmt needs. Maybe I’ll ramble about all the stuff I’ve tried later and all the nooks and crannies of technology where I expect a solution to fit .
6 months ago
So after hearing all the buzz about Google’s Street View functionality, I looked up my address and sure enough there’s my house. Based on changes I made in the yard last year, I know that the photo is fairly recent. At first it was a little freaky but after I sat back and thought about it, I think it is pretty cool. I understand some of the concerns about things like seeing people’s faces or license plates but other than that I don’t know why anyone would have privacy concerns. I have no idea who may drive down my street on any given day and I don’t have any record of them having seen my house. As long as there isn’t a way to link who I am to where I live, the photo of my house is meaningless to the average person. Given that in the online world today there are plenty of ways to find my address, nothing stops anyone from using that to find my house for themselves. Bottom line is, I don’t think Street View is giving out any information about me that someone couldn’t have found with a little effort anyway.
1 year ago
In the past week or so I’ve gone back to using Twitter much more. I used it regularly last year during RailsConf and have always been fascinated with watching the public timeline flow by. It is strangely addicting to me but I think I’ve gotten past the “bright shiny object” stage and have settled into checking it here and there and posting off and on through the day. I’ve heard a number of people who look at Twitter and say “I don’t get it” and I have a hard time articulating the draw it has for me but let me try. I like the fact that you can pick up on random thoughts of people you “know” from your industry (software development in my case) and follow along a bit of what they are up to. I also like the interaction involved in finding new friends. In some ways Twitter reminds me of good ol’ chat but with the differences that the conversations are persistent, the lag between responses is expected, and it is easy to be involved from anyplace. It gets closer to intertwining the stuff you do in your day with your Twitter friends. Twitter doesn’t come without some impact to my day to day life. On the one hand it is occasionally an easy distraction to turn to rather than to focus on the things I should be doing. On the other hand, it is strangely comforting to have the lull of the conversation “always there” and I also find it makes me a bit more outgoing in general. Perhaps this one sounds corny but if you think about the number of people you come into contact with in a day, most of whom you really only have 140 characters worth of dialogue with anyway, Twitter affects those “live interactions” for me as well. The guy in line at the grocery store, the lady in the elevator, the receptionist at the doctor’s office. Having those small, friendly, twitter-like interactions makes my day much more pleasant (I like to think for them as well
). As hectic as life is these days, those little personal interactions are easy to miss. The fact that Twitter reminds me of that is plenty of reason to keep tweeting! 1 year ago
About three years ago, I had a blog by the same name that I maintained for a good two years. I hit a number of things at once that caused blogging to fall entirely off my radar for a while. I started a new job someplace that while being a great employer, is pretty conservative still when it comes to things like blogging. I’ll keep this pretty separate from my work life and that’s also why I don’t have my picture or name screaming in the face of any visitors. I had some personal life experiences that made me pretty much drop everything and focus on higher priorities for a while as well. It was the sort of stuff I don’t want to talk about but that has had a profound impact on who I am. I’ve decided it’s time to get back to blogging again but in the meantime, realize how much blogging has changed in that time. Many blogs now are really more about publishing full-blown articles on a topic rather than the impromptu, personal touch that they used to carry. I think that is what has drawn me to
tumblr. It has a neat, clean, simple feel to it. It works great from my Mac, my iPod Touch, and heaven forbid my Windows machine. While I can post a big long discourse if I so choose, it seems to cater more towards shorter posts with a variety of media that I think I’ll like more in the long run…so with that I’m on my way!
1 year ago
