Idea Trackers

Yesterday was my last day at Palm, inc. It was an interesting time and I learned some things, but this entry isn't so much about my time/work there, although it will overlap some with Palm products.

I've never been much of a cell-phone guy -- the phone they gave me to test with was "my" first ever cell phone. It was a "smart-phone" -- a Treo 650 (I later got a 680, I think it was. I was never very good at marketing names, although I know the internal code name for it) -- so that means it's both a cell phone and a PDA, an organizer that can do email, surf the web, chat/IM/SMS, camera, take notes, etc.

Being "not much of a cell phone guy", I tried to get the hang of it -- I carried it almost everywhere, and tried to integrate it into my life. The cell phone part was somewhat convenient, but it seemed that more than 95% of my calls were to 911 to report accidents or roadside brush fires. Actually, I think the first "real" call I ever made (not counting calling my wife to tell her "write down this number, since I can't remember it") was to call the fire department to report a chimney fire we witnessed while out on an after-dinner walk. That was a pretty nice feeling! (NOTE: if you see flames shooting out of the top of someone's chimney, that's A Problem. If it's not wrestled under control in a matter of seconds, the entire house can be lost rather easily.)

But the fact is, I never really saw much non-emergency use for having instant access to a cell phone. I guess I'm one of those guys who likes to put some thought into the near future, and who enjoys dealing with people who can make commitments and actually keep them, and I've too much experience with people using their cell phones as a way to be sloppy (read: "discourteous, disrespectful and/or down right malicious") in their interpersonal relationships (heh, there's a two-dollar phrase for you!) and, given the prevalence of highway call-boxes (every mile on the interstate!), I guess I just don't have anything in my life that requires that I get in touch with someone in the next hour or two, and I can typically plan to be near a phone, if necessary, sometime between now and the next time I either eat or go to the bathroom (conveniently, places to eat and restrooms often have a nearby phone!)

Some folks ask "well, what if I want to get ahold of you?!" and, I have to say, this is perhaps the worst possible argument for carrying a cell phone. In fact, it's a pretty strong argument against carrying one, if you ask me. These folks offer a plethora of examples as to why my carrying a device that allows them to summon me at any moment they find convenient is "necessary", ranging from "what if I'm going to be late to meet you?" (clue: don't do that. Do it again, and it will weigh in my ability to make appointments with you) to "what if a close relative dies?" (clue: close relatives have been dying for long before the late '90s, and everyone managed pretty well.)

It's not that I don't want to be social -- in fact, I like being social! -- I guess it's just that I don't see the need to carry a social-spam-conduit on my person and, to be honest, if whatever message it is that we have to tell each other isn't worth the effort to actually get ahold of the other one, then it can probably be safely dropped, or at least wait until we see each other, next. "Hey, I wanted to let you know that I have a new, insightful blog entry up" is something that can probably safely wait a week without severe negative impact on the planet.

Before anyone gets it into their heads that I hate cell phone users: I don't. I do have a dislike for rude or unreliable people, but it doesn't matter much to me whether the medium for their annoyingness is cell phones, toy drums, email or their own voice. So, if you own a cell phone, but somehow manage to remain polite, pleasant and reliable, then hurrah for you! I just don't think I need one, is all.

I also tried to use my mobile email device and, despite being up to version 3.5 (and I occasionally used pre-release version-next) of the email software and a "full" qwerty keyboard, I just couldn't manage to do anything "real" with it. I managed to get out a few "hey, I'm sending this via Treo!" mails, and reply with one-liners to a few work mails but, by and large, I didn't find the ability to send mail from anywhere too useful. My friends thought it was neat that I had pocket-google/imdb/etc. and, the first few times, that was fun but, after the novelty wore off, I have to admit that it was a bit of a pain. Reading mail on a handheld was pretty cool, I liked that! But, of course, using it to formulate any sort of thoughtful reply was a pain, so half of the reads ended in frustration, anyway.

So that brings us to "notepad." I really wanted my handheld to be a way-cool electronic notepad -- I've wanted one of these for years (decades!). And it was "ok." I mean, lists & reminders are the kind of a-few-words things that are pretty easy to thumb-type, so I kept grocery lists, gifts-to-buy, ideas-to-pursue, etc., in the little memos program, and that was pretty cool. Sort-a. It was a bit of a hassle, though. I don't know if I was expecting too much (thinking about how cool it would be to have some technology or another for decades can do that), or if I could just never get the hang of the thumb-typing (I was pretty good, though!) or, really, editing (while initial-typing, even <delete>ing, was pretty easy, going back and selecting text, then copy/pasteing was pretty painful) or what -- but I never got to the point where I was fully comfortable using my handheld as a notepad.

I often wondered if it would've been easier if the current units supported Graffiti, Palm's stylus-scribble-recognition system[1]. It seemed to me that if I could write on the screen with a sytlus & scratch-out text & drag a pen across it like a mouse to drag&drop things here & there, it might've clicked in my head. But I guess I can only speculate, there.

Back in the early '90s, when I was still at Apple, some friends & I came up with the "Nut'n", a bit of plastic with a form-factor similar to the Newton (Apple's pocket-sized PDA) but, where the screen would normally be, there was, instead, a cut-out into which you could insert a pad of paper. Then we wrote-up all sorts of humorous (to us) "ad-copy" for it explaining how the Nut'n was fully programmable, high resolution, full-color ("colored pens not included") pen-based computing with wireless data transfer (crumple a sheet & toss it to a friend), encryption (tear up your sheet), full undo/redo support, etc., all at "a fraction of the price of a conventional PDA." "...And hilarity ensued."

As I grew dissatisfied with my handheld note-keeper, I tried other solutions. Carrying a pen & half-sized pad worked pretty well -- I certainly managed to fill several sheets of half-sized yellow paper with ideas & to-do lists -- but even that had flaws: it was sometimes inconvenient, especially if you wanted to use both your hands for something; sometimes the pen would get lost or otherwise become inconvenient, etc.

Finally, I settled on a pocket-sized pad-holder. I think it's made by Mead, or one of those school/office supply aisle companies, is hard-bound (stiffened cardboard), durable (leather-bound), small (just larget than the 2.5x4.25" pad it holds) AND I found the coolest pen to rubber band onto it. The pen collapses to be normal-pen-diameter, but only about 3.5" long -- about like a mini-golf pencil -- but you "pull it apart" to open it for writing, and it becomes a full-sized (i.e., comfortable for writing) ball-point pen!

I've been using it for several weeks now; it's smaller & lighter than a smart-phone, and gets far more use, largely because of its simplicity -- it just does what I want without any hassles. (Well, ok -- I have to somehow manage to read my writing, days or weeks later -- but that's not significantly worse than deciphering thumb-typing-in-a-hurry...) AND the whole thing cost less than eight bucks, including the way-cool collapsable pen with spare ink cartridge.

So that's what I've been using to track my ideas for blog topics as they come to me, which is way-faster than how often I blog them, which is a good thing because, eventually, I'll be able to sort through my 100s of ideas and pick a "top-10" list of actually good, interesting ones. This means that my low-tech solution should, over time, improve the quality of this blog.

(Heh, it can't get much worse, right? ;)

"I'm not a real luddite, I just play one on the internet..."


But the really cool thing about all of this is: I recently started using an idea-keeper pad, and I'm totally loving it! Over the years, I've jotted down this or that idea here and there, or started a small notebook to collect ideas on some project or another (i.e., Ted Lord) but, by and large, my fleeting "deep thoughts" have been lost to the ether.

When I was younger and had substantially more spare time (or is it just fewer thoughts? :), I could explore most of my ideas until either they turned out to be dead ends and I could safely discard them or I could mull them around, develop and evolve them until they got pretty well burned into my brain. But, lately, it seems that a lot of my passing "I should think about <whatever>, some" type thoughts have resulted in me, several hours later, thinking "what was it I was going to try to think more about, again?" It was actually in blogspace that I was reminded by several authors, businessmen and in-general-smart-people that I have come to respect how simple and useful it is to have a small pad to jot down instantaneous ideas for later mulling. Of course, this idea isn't new -- I've heard it repeated throughout my life -- I guess it was just the combination of realizing that I felt I'd lost some important ideas along with the reminder of how well this simple & inexpensive system works and my finally giving up on the idea (at least for now) of trying to find a techie/geeky solution has led me to finally keeping an idea-keeper.

<Don Adams voice> "...And loving it!"</Don Adams>


[1] I may have the ownership/attribution incorrect, but the idea is the same.)