Inspired by a couple of posts by Bruce Keener^[1] regarding reduction of unnecessary information inputs and a short email back-and-forth with him which mentioned the value of reducing Twitter time as well, I went into my 3-day weekend by editing my hosts file and pointing the domain twitter.com to my own computer.

Other computers in the house remained able to access the domain and at one point I did lapse, snacking on some non-essential RSS stories and using the Share on Twitter ability of my6sense’s interface to post a number of them to Twitter.

The Result

What I noticed almost right away was the number of times I wanted to media-snack "just in between".

Similar to "I’m just checking my email", I noticed a desire to detour to especially Twitter just before wanting to do something on the computer.

Not able to go there certainly left a feeling of a loss of destination, a feeling of "OK… so now what?" akin to the one experienced when your Internet connection or – worse — the electricity goes down.

That did force my thinking in other directions. Longer, more focused.

It definitely was calmer inside. In an odd way the weekend had more structure to it, felt less hectic. Less scattered.

Vacation

The last time I felt calm and relaxed like that was during my two vacations last year. When I was camping for example. Thinking, eating, making coffee, providing, doing some reading.

Think about it. When left to your own accord, when you have all the time in the world; what do we do?

We expose ourselves to less inputs each of which provides less input, the effect of which is that we have longgggg stretches of time to enjoy and just … be.

What’s Going On?

There’s something addictive with social media; the rapid stimulus, rapid feedback pattern makes it so.

Whether it is the "check in, post, reply, wait for reply – repeat" of Twitter (or Facebook, a forum, Usenet, email, etc.) or the flicking through stories until something interesting is always sure to catch your eyes – it is self-reinforcing behavior.

In a way it reminds me of those late night cable TV evenings. Remember? Flicking through the channels until somehow you find yourself watching an infomercial or a documentary on the white shark. It’s not necessarily bad – but it’s not what you want to be doing with your life either.

1. Reflections on 2009 and Adjusting Your Information Flow part one & part two

For slightly deeper data digging some of us might be tagging our notes and use the [tag:] query to get to very specific notes.

The problem begins when you need that note with that Word document attached to it. Or when you want to pull all your notes with .ppt attachments.

Go ahead, give it a try. I’ll wait.

“Finding” Files the Evernote Way

You won’t find any guidance on how to do this in the Evernote help files. The information is buried deep inside the developer notes and reads something like;

resource:[MIME type string] - will match notes that have a resource with a MIME type that matches the argument.

Which is almost not true.

So before you go off on a Google chase to figure out which MIME type Microsoft Word is then, let me tell you that even with that information, you’ll only find a fraction of the amount of files you know are in your Evernote.

Wouldn’t it be cool if Evernote had a search like has:pdf or from:whomever or…

Finding Files the Easy Way

Setup and use a tag structure which emulates precisely the type of queries you would want to perform in Evernote.

For example, I might tag a note with has:file, has:word, is:template. Or: has:file, has:image, has:photo, is:scanned.

You can already see how this folds back into specific queries:

[tag:has:pdf] finds all my PDF files.

[tag:has:word –tag:is:template] finds all my Word documents which aren’t templates.

I have these tag structures listed in a way which helps me remember visually that something special is going on here – but you can organize this any which way you like.

Taking Query Tagging to the Next Level

Although you have to be careful not to go all out crazy and create tagging structures like people:family:mom:events:birthdays … there are some tempting query-like tags you can setup.

I often come across software that strikes me as very handy because it does A or B. I often download and/or buy it. Problem is that when the time comes that I think “boy, do I need to do B!” … I have no recollection of the software solution I have at hand :)

So, these days when I read the description of a product or service, I clip it into Evernote and tag it with one of my tool: query tags.

Need Portable software? [tag:tool:portable]

Graphic apps? [tag:tool:graphic]

Any software? [tag:tool:*]

You Can Go Your Own Way

Apart from the file/attachment specific queries above, which I think we all need at one point or another, the examples above are really very specific to my user scenarios.

When you get back to your Evernote install or web setup, you have to apply this the way it makes sense in your life.

Questions & Answers

• Do I have to use the : in these tags?
  No, not at all. In fact, putting a period there is much faster. I just like how it looks like a regular query this way :)
• Do I have to start these tag structures with has or is or tool?
  No; pick whatever works for you.
• Why do you use word:word? Why not simply add two tags?
  Because at times I need very specific searches. When I have notes tagged with “word”, “file”, “template” … those notes are just as likely to be about those thing vs. being those things.
  In other words, the above structure allows me to separate tags into information about the note’s content (what it’s about) and information about the note itself (where it comes from or what it contains).

It’s a slice of a growing collection, a collection that encompasses the digitized memories of My Life. Thoughts, songs, clips, snapshots, links.

It’s a collection started in 1997 but by now containing items from long before that time; digitized photographs and video of my childhood and teen years, songs from back then, etc.

As time passed and the collection grew two main challenges emerged:

• how do I make sure these items make it to my children?
• where or how do they get the information about the items?

Getting Digital Assets to the Next Generation

Although seemingly the simplest problem to overcome, this has turned out the be the most laboursome and worrisome aspect of digitizing memories.

The problems are media and file format.

Media

To put it simply: all digital media is fleetingly temporary into the extreme.

by U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Joshua Strang

When you decide to keep your memories in digital format, and for many of us that decision is made by the consumer equipment we choose, you agree to keep your files “in the air” as if you’re a juggler.

I have DVD backups from 3-4 years ago which cannot be read. I have CDR’s which cannot be read. In a few cases even recent media cannot be read but on the very device which I created them with.

The only sure way to guarantee your files will be there come next year let alone the next generation is to keep them in a constant “alive” state.

My files, the Golden Copy, are stored on a hard disk which is mirrored to another hard disk.^[1]

Hard disks are cheap. Exchange the backup drive for a new one at least every 2 years; delegate the previous one to your current main drive or keep it as an additional copy.

As long as you have a somewhat manageable amount of data, use online backup as well. I prefer Carbonite, having been with them since 2006. I can download about 1 GB/hour: if push comes to shove I can restore my digital photo collection in 2-3 days.

At one point though there’s a tipping point either because your ISP would never let you download so much so fast or because downloading it would take the better part of a season…

You realize that you have so many digital memories since so long that you can’t afford not to consider serious disasters in which everything you consider as your current setup is destroyed: flooding, explosions, fire, theft, vandalism, etc. etc.

Once at that point you will want to start making copies/backups on an external drive which you’ll store in a safety deposit box at the bank or in a media fire proof safe at your own place.^[2]

The take-away is that at no time should you feel your information is solid and permanently stored. Instead, think of it as very ethereal.

File Formats

So far this is the one that bugs me the least. Time has actually done a lot to reduce worry for my famliy’s version of the digital dark age.

There are caveats though.

Most if not all of the files I use are not only current but long time standards: QuickTime, JPEG, PDF, HTML, and of course plain text. Other data of interest might be contained in email.^[3]

It’s my experience up till now that hugely popular file formats like this have tons of converter applications available. If down the line a format such as PDF would start to fade away you’ll have ample time to convert those documents to something else.

File Applications

A bigger problem.

As soon as we start to store information on the application level through integration with a database, we risk data loss through obsolescence of the application.

It’s not that the final storage place becomes obsolete but rather that it starts to demand that the next generation are geeks with intimate knowledge of how this application stored information where and how — and how to get that information out.

A good example is Evernote^[4] which when installed as a local application stores its data in a SQLite database. For geeks it’s trivial to 1) find this out, 2) realize you need a SQL browser of some sort, and finally 3) to find such a SQL browser without being ripped off and to effectively use it to export the information.

Are you absolutely sure your children will be such geeks?

It becomes necessary to export to a more standard file format or to prepare for it — and to possibly prepare such export paths and detailed information. More on that, detailed information, later on.

Sharing the Digital Memories

The difference between the digital asset and the digital memory is the one between data (the file) and meta-data (information about the file and what it contains or represents).

A good example to work with are photos.

Think back to your grand parents’ photo albums or, if you’re about my age, your parents’ albums. Under, on or at the back of photos information was scribbled about the photo: a date, event, maybe names of people in the photo.

by freeparking

And then maybe your mother or father would sit next to you and say “That’s from the time when grand-pa Joe was still hunting in Arizona and…”

Although the latter might happen with your digital files too, you shouldn’t count on it, shouldn’t build your collection on it.

But the former, the scribbled data, is simply not there: we don’t write or draw on our digital photos.

To carry information about what is portrayed, shown, described or sung over to the next generation we have to find and use ways to provide such meta-data.

“Truth In The File”

The best way to add meta-data is through the file and in the file itself.

Scott Dart, program manager for Microsoft Windows Live, referred to it as “truth in the file”. I like that description.

Most of my file names are in the format yyyy-mm-dd keyword keyword keyword.file-extension.^[5] This format not only allows for correct sorting in Windows in a sort of timeline flow but also helps ensure that the date stamp is carried over: file timestamps will change as backups are restored…

The above format can just as easily be applied to a photo (“2007-12-24 christmas eve.jpg”) as to a PDF (“2001-02-01 drawing audrey for ruud.pdf”), for example.

In contrast to the file name, the second layer of file-level meta-data is not immediately visible. This is data that can be embedded in the file.

Examples of file formats which can contain usable meta-data are MP3’s (ID3 tags; think of artist/title information), JPEG’s (IPTC and XMP data for captions, descriptions etc. but also EXIF data provided by the camera itself), PDF’s (keywords, title, description, etc.) and MOV’s (description, comment, etc.).

As this information is not immediately visible and only accessible at the application level it’s again necessary to prepare detailed information about the existence of the meta-data and how to access it and use it.

Your Digital Will

This is where your digital will comes in.

A digital will contains all information the people you would leave behind will need to finalize any account activity and access and use any kind of information you purposely want to leave behind for them.

Let’s only look at the type of information that’s relevant to what we’re talking about; digital memories.

What should you detail?

You should explain that there is a digital collection, that there are digital memories. As this post has done, you too should instruct the next person on how to keep that collection intact and alive.

Thanks for the memories

You have to detail how to access it. Where are the photos? Where are the videos? Where are the scanned documents?

Suggest applications to access these files. Possibly prepare a folder with the installers of such applications ready for them.

Explain about the meta-data and how to access and use it.

List the applications you have used to build this archive of digital memories. Detail what you did with those applications and why. If you’ve ever ran into a problem with those applications or the files they work on and were able to fix or work around it, detail that here.

Best Practices & Tips

Make things as simple as possible.

Store all your digital memory files together in one folder (with subfolders if you want). It’s simpler to backup, simpler to instruct about (“take this folder and that’s it”). Using My Pictures, My Videos and My Whatnot starts to scatter things around in a folder (My Documents) which will soon enough fill up with files and folders unrelated to your digital memories.

Be wary of applications that “eat” your data/files. File recovery software is one thing; getting files out of some sort of proprietary file format or database is a whole different ball game, one nobody should want to play.

The above pertains to web services as well. Unless you use them as a sort of backup or “also” storage, don’t rely on them. Most people who were online in 1997 can name a whole lists of (online) brands that seemed to never ever go away which simply don’t exist anymore today.^[6]

If you do want to use an additional layer, an additional application, use one that works with your files in a non-destructive manner. Personal Brain is a good example: files dropped in it are stored as regular files in regular folders: if the application ever fails it’s somewhat trivial to search through the folders on the disk and access your files.^[7]

Two is better than one: I don’t rely on one image application to handle our photo collection, for example. I use both Adobe Photoshop Elements and Picasa.

1. I think of it as a poor man’s RAID. Use shadowing software such as NTI Shadow or sync software like GoodSync
2. Sentry Group has dedicated data protection safes with hard disk inside a safe and what not. Costly but as time progresses and more and more people have this problem, I expect more solutions to come on the market.
3. mbox and PST although I plan to do a huge export to EML and/or txt
4. I use Evernote quite regularly to add some diary-type information. The application will be part of my digital will. Personal Brain is better as it stores notes as standalone HTML files but here too one can’t rely on the next generation “getting” the application.
5. You can’t fully rely on these long file names however. I have a number of files from the early years which at one point had short DOS 8.1 file names due to a problem with the CDR backup
6. see for example the shutdown of Google Notebook or Yahoo Photo
7. see also One Brain to Rule Them All: Creating a MegaBrain

Another great feature is built-in persistent searches. You can add searches the Tweets of which will appear in their own column.

A “drawback” — one is never satisfied — is that TweetDeck enforces a 10 column maximum. You’ll quickly run out of columns to add, having to delete a previous search to start to monitor a new topic.

Bundle Searches

Searches in TweetDeck are powered by search.twitter.com (the previous Summize).

The default operator applied is AND: evernote chrome.

But Twitter search recognizes the OR operator: economy OR coffee.

This gives you the ability to combine or collapse a number of searches into one and the same column, giving you “virtual unlimited columns” in TweetDeck.

Good candidates are searches which during most 48 hour periods, the timeframe TweetDeck considers, produce limited results. For example, I combine the streams for knowledge management and mindmapping.

Topics can be more thoroughly covered this way as well. Hot is The Economy at the moment but simply searching economy gives you a restricted view. economy OR recession OR “wall street” OR “credit crunch” is much wider, covers more ground.

Evernote3 has only made life easier, simpler, with syncing in the cloud. It’s the goodness of never having to chose between storing stuff on this computer, that computer, on your Flash drive or in the cloud: it’s and, not or. And Evernote does the transparent heavy lifting of all that synced goodness.

Evernote can store images (and yes, index and search text in those images…) and PDF files (which, again, it can index and search too). So I didn’t take out my notetaker walllet to copy down the addition to the opening times of the nearby swimming pool; I snapped a photo with the low-res CMOS camera built-in to most cellphones today and emailed it to my Evernote account.

Likewise my copy of Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done has been drag-and-dropped into Evernote and is thus available to me anywhere at any time.

Nice.

However, as it goes with these kind of improvements, they make you long for more. That longing rises quickly when you attempt to drag a non-image, non-PDF into Evernote.

Can’t be done.

Adobe Acrobat to the Rescue

Having been on the fence whether to continue to use a patchwork of alternative solutions or buy Adobe Acrobat, I interpreted the recently-ish release of Acrobat 9.0 as a sign that I should buy a copy.

Ever since I’ve been playing around with the program, liking my new software toy very much — thank you — and turning just about anything into PDF’s. Our Husky now scurries away when he sees me approach.

One of the things I came across is the ability to create a PDF Portfolio. A PDF Portfilio is a PDF-ish file that can contain other files: images, Word files, Excel, video, etc. etc. …

You see where this is going to go, right?

Create a PDF Portfolio

Except for the reader-only version, obviously, any edition of Adobe Acrobat 9.0 can create PDF Portfolio’s.

Open your copy and go for Create -> Assemble a PDF Portfolio.

Grab a file and drag-and-drop it to the PDF Portfolio screen.

If you want you click on the file name to change that. Or click under the file name to add a description to that file.

You can switch to the esthetically more pleasing list view too. Adobe Acrobat Pro and Pro Extended can also apply templates to how these PDF Portfolio’s look and behave. Brian S. Friedlander’s Assistive Technology has a good entry on creating PDF Portfolio’s in Adobe Acrobat Pro (Extended).

The created PDF Portfolio, containing your files, can be dropped into Evernote and will be synced with and through the cloud.

Even when (if?) Evernote adds native file sharing, using PDF Portfolio’s in a very elegant way to move and share files which should be kept together.

My favorite capture tool since 2005-ish has been Evernote. Highlight, CTRL + C, CTRL + ALT + V to create a new pasted note from anywhere within Windows.

But back then Evernote was a local installation application only. Bugged me as I switch between my desktop and a laptop provided by Canada’s SEO company.

Enter Gmail [hat tip: Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center].

Gmail Capture Process

• Get the Google toolbar.
• Highlight info on a page, click Send To, choose Gmail.

  

• In the subject line I use a pipe followed by keywords/tags.

  

  

  Those keywords allow you to do “tag” searches by doing a subject search in Gmail.

…to Evernote Workflow

To send information into my Gmail database I, of course, use a special + email address as in Gmail you can do youremail+anything@.

In Gmail I’ve setup a filter which will label any email to this specific address with DB, short for database (why not database in full? simple, in a search it is faster to restrict to label:db or l:db than using the word “database” spelled out in full….).

The address is also filtered to automatically forward to my special Evernote email address. Minutes after the note arrives in Gmail it’s available in Evernote too.

Once every 1-3 days I go into my “InBox” notebook in Evernote and go through the incoming notes. This is a fast, short job. Give it one “real” Evernote tag, usually. Very high level too. Then drag it into one of the handful of notebooks I keep (again very high level. Any complete web page capture goes into Web Archive, for example).

Done.

The Benefits

1. Future proof: Evernote might disappear, email won’t
2. Automatic backup
3. Both available from anywhere with Gmail being just a tad better available even
4. Keywords (“tags”) in the subject/title of the note allow for subject searches in Gmail and intitle searches in Evernote
5. Searches in both Evernote and Gmail are fast while each has its own strengths
6. Since a little while Evernote has removed the inline Goto Source to a tiny button, making note export with URL a royal pain. Gmail includes the source link.

   

The only time I clip directly into Evernote is when images/graphics are of importance to me: Gmail stores a link to the images, not the images themselves. And yes, in that case I often email the note to Gmail :)

Intention Drives Actions

Normally we intent to do something with something at a specific time and place. Thus we find ourselves in the supermarket with the intention to buy groceries.

Removing intention from the equation is frustrating.

Loss of intention makes your actions meaningless and impossible.

Ever stood up to go to the kitchen only to find yourself thinking; “Why am I here?” That’s loss of intention for you right there…

Intention Deficit Kills Information Joy

If you don’t have a clear intention for each piece of information you expose yourself to soon that information will become a source of distraction and frustration.

You open your feedreader, see “1000+ unread” and think; oh no. Clicking “mark all as read” you sigh, clench your muscles and think “I failed again but this time I’ll stay current and up to date — this time I’ll read it all, all the time”.

From Intent to Read to Intention for Reading

The clearer your intention, the better you feel. “I follow this feed to stay up to date on the news in my industry” sounds like a clear intention but soon you’ll find yourself stressed at somehow staying “up to date”.

Why?

Because the question is; why do want to stay up to date? Answering that question for yourself gives you a chance to bring things back to your real life; “I follow this feed to stay up to date in order to learn about code exploits as soon as possible so I can protect the company server”.

If you find yourself storing information or URL’s ask yourself: what do I intent to do with this?

The fact that it is remotely interesting isn’t enough. You have to know for yourself “I save this article because I’m planning to write about the body-space awareness of termites”.

More elsewhere:

• Horizons of Focus
• Covey’s idea of Roles (would love to include a link but alas, can’t find a good write-up on it! Know one?)

Do you think clear intention helps — or do you maybe think all this talk about information processing and knowledge work is way overdone?

It’s there, ready to go when you want to enjoy it.

This Saturday morning, for example, I passed in bed with some heavenly espresso (Italian stovetop method, yes) and tons of great, funny, interesting, emotional, informing articles. It’s like having a huge pile of recent magazines.

Be Your Own News Filter

As you browse through your collection of feeds and feed items you’ll come across a lot of tasty stuff. Just as with reading a magazine, it’s perfectly OK to skip forward to what caught your interest, to sample and article or to earmark another for later reading.

In Google Reader the Starred Items works perfectly for this. [S]tar that post, [S]tar that item you think sounds like a good read, [S]tar for later on.

This routine is like being your own news filter. Not only do you have your hand selected subscriptions waiting for you; you have your hand selected “most interesting” articles preselected.

Photo at the generous courtesy of AJ Schuster

"If information overload was the issue you’d walk into a library and die. The first time you surf the web, you blow up."

Now as we don’t have people dying or suffering a mental meltdown caused by information "overload", clearly we don’t mean "overload".

What we’re trying to say is; "Look, there’s too much information here to digest". To which my answer is; so?

If someone is clutching his stomach complaining about "food overload" caused by there being too much food to digest, you’d ask "but why in the world do you try to eat it all at the same time?!"

Take Television

Information abundance isn’t new. Just think about the thousands of television programs, the hundreds of hours you could spend in front of the tube. Hard news, breaking news, reportages, documentaries…

Hear anyone complain?

Between 1993-2002 television program supply in Finland (PDF) increased by 73%; 23 additional TV program hours per day. Yet television viewing time over that same period increased by only 40 minutes a day.

And no-one is collapsing under TV, entertainment or information overload.

Why?

Don’t Try To Finish

Nobody in his right mind will try to finish watching all programs on all channels.

Likewise no-one around you is attempting to read all newspaper article in all newspapers. Or sitting in a library speed-reading all books.

And you yourself, when you sat down and connected to the World Wide Web, were just "surfing the web"; you weren’t actually trying to reach the "last page" and finish, were you?

The same holds true for your RSS feeds. Yes, there’re 1000+ unread items. Great! Even if everyone would stop publishing today, you would still have a ton of great reads ahead.

Because face it, you don’t need to "catch up" with all those unread items. Stand up! Surf! Welcome to the information wave.