Paperless Office Quote

On Feb 18, 2006, at 10:56 PM, John C. Welch wrote:

> Paper is so easy to fake, it's not funny. I can digitally sign a
> PDF, and
> any alteration from that point is effectively impossible to hide. I
> can also
> *easily* hide trashing critical sheets of paper, or I can alter
> them and
> you'll never know. Paper as a way of preventing fraud is highly
> overrated.

On the other hand, it was demonstrated years ago that with (un?)
suitable use of Word macros, one could digitally sign a Word
document, and have it later appear to be different than it was when
it was signed.

The example given was an IOU, for a small sum until a certain date,
at which time it was for a larger sum. (One could, of course, reduce
the value to $0 after the set date.)

   --John

> I work with architects. Their entire universe is about revisions.

Same for programmers, who use digital tools (like cvs, bugzilla, etc.) for
that. Wikis also offer revision control.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

On Feb 18, 2006, at 10:56 PM, John C. Welch wrote:
> On 2/18/06 06:35, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
>> So, in an office I'd rather have a bunch of binders with useful stuff
>> in them than a bunch of pdfs on the machine. I'd rather get
>> important memos in writing, so I have an unalterable record of them
>> (regular stuff should be email, of course--but changes in salary,
>> vacation authorizations, approval of company-paid education, &c
>> should all be hard copies... or am I a Luddite?)
>
> In a matter of years, unless you're very careful with your environmental
> settings, storage, and paper quality, a lot of that paper will deteriorate
> at a frightening pace, especially if you have sunlight in your work area.

Or a fire. Ask the Army Records Center in St. Louis.

   --John

On 19/2/2006 1:35 AM, "Charlton Wilbur" <cwilburchromatico.net> spake thus:

> that size of a workspace is just not possible even with a 30" cinema display.

A friend of mine works in the planning department of the local council, and
they've gone completely electronic in the last year or so. Of course, now
they've gone from A2 (? at least, possibly even A1 or A0, I can't remember)
hard copy to a little itty-bitty (by comparison) screen for looking at plans
where they have to scroll around continuously to do anything useful. They
all hate it :)

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

--On February 18, 2006 4:35:39 AM -0800 David Ross
<drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:

> I work with architects. Their entire universe is about revisions.

I work with architects AND engineers, it's much worse.... But we are
investigating a great deal of electronic systems for helping to reduce some
of the clutter. We're looking at tablet PCs for those field markups and
meetings (not big enough to substitute for a large plan sheet but good for
a lot of meetings.)

Also several of our governmental clients now want PDF as a deliverable
instead of paper. And with Acrobat 7 and Reader 7 it's possible to make
PDF's that can be red-lined in Reader.

One of our departments had a recent workflow that was draft in Kansas City,
overnight to New York for redline, overnight back to KC for picking up
markups, rinse, repeat. A PDF workflow changed a 4 day process to mere
hours at the cost of one seat of Acrobat (everyone else used Reader). Costs
would go up for a larger job that needed more copies of Acrobat, but the
overnight costs and job time savings pay for that pretty well.

> General correspondence. Here's the big one. There are legal
> responsibilities in all those emails. It used to be on paper but now
> with emails, well you print them out and put them in the binder for the
> project. ABD agree to change 934 on date mm/dd/yy for an upcharge of
> $12392 and payment is for 50% of the work per contract signed on
> mm/dd/yy. Etc... and on and on.

Out of curiosity, what is your e-mail retention policy? We currently
archive these types of e-mail outside our e-mail system (with the project
files so there is a single location for project data). Most project
managers still print copies and put them in their binders too.

Unfortunately with some of our clients it isn't unusual to get an e-mail
with legal stuff at the top, and a dirty joke at the bottom....

> In fast moving areas of the country you pay extra to get the planning
> department to do an express review and they stamp the drawings and specs
> to be built as per the paper work WITH revisions and changes signed by
> the officials. Around here express reviews are scheduled a few weeks in
> advance, normal ones months. If you want to start work, you go the
> express route.

A couple of states, not sure about municipalities, are starting to looking
into digital signatures as a way of moving signed data around
electronically. PDF supports signing. We've also developed custom PDF
stamps with signature data for shop drawing reviews.

Of course many states still expect a wet sealed set of mylars too.

> Now AutoCAD talks about their electronic process work flow but it
> requires EVERYONE to be using the same version of AutoCAD to work well.
> Plus their work flow product. Yeah. Right.

cough, Microstation, cough. Autodesk's electronic workflow is DWF files. It
has a free reader which doesn't require AutoCAD for review/redlining, and I
believe is the latest versions can still read earlier versions of DWF
files. AutoCAD itself pretty much requires everyone to be on the same
version, which is annoying. Also DWF's can't include specifications in the
same file. A PDF workflow can.

On Feb 20, 2006, at 11:21 AM, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> What's so hard/expensive about having a text document open in
> TextEdit, also
> have the Color Palette open, select something you want to mark and
> hit a
> colour?

If all the information I was trying to capture was text, this would
be easy. But how do I draw a diagram? Oops, quick! switch to
OmniGraffle. And I need to put an equation down. Quick! open Word
for its math editor, or hope I remember enough TeX! And I have to
look something up in the music archive, but the person doesn't know
where it is, but can sing the opening of it. Quick! Open Finale!
Whoops, I missed half an hour of the meeting because I was fussing
with my tools rather than paying attention.

And when it comes to doing actual work -- there was a time in
graduate school when I was doing music analysis. Much of what I did
involved looking for patterns. The tool does not yet exist that
would let me do on the computer what I did on paper -- drawing
circles, making notes, pulling out two pages and putting them side-by-
side to compare.

Most of the information I deal with *isn't* simple text, or even
colored, attributed text. Until the computer interface is as
effortless as the paper interface, the paperless office will continue
to be a pipe dream. Sure, I'm working in specialized domains, but
honestly: I have not yet seen a business meeting where someone didn't
put a diagram up for consideration or where people did not draw
diagrams in their notes.

> If you think 3-dimensional, a 'puter offers a way larger workspace
> than any
> desk can.

A computer offers a *window into* a larger workspace. There are
times when I need to compare things side-by-side. Try comparing a
full 11x17 page of orchestral score against an 8-1/2x11 page of
reduction. Trivial on paper; complicated and fussy on the screen,
especially if the screen isn't large enough to display both side-by-
side; and the resolution of paper is ever so much higher than the
resolution of the computer monitor. Stacked windows just don't cut
it; sometimes you need physical space and crisp lines, not virtual
workspaces and anti-aliasing.

>> Two is control. I've been in more than one situation where a
>> permanent record of what was emailed was valuable. If you're in a
>> situation in your workplace where you have to pursue a grievance
>> process, you don't want your evidence stored electronically on
>> servers that the people you are filing a grievance against have full
>> control of.
>
> PGP-sign it. And don't store important documents where they can be
> accessed
> by those you don't want to allow acces. That applies to any form of
> storage,
> physical or digital.

Yes, in a perfect world, where everybody knew and understood PGP
signatures, and everyone worked cooperatively and nobody ever
disagreed or went to court.

In this world, imperfect as it is, a printed-on-paper copy carries a
lot more weight than a digital copy, PGP-signed or not. Further, if
I'm trying to establish that *I* didn't modify the document, I need
someone else to PGP sign it; and in the kind of cases where a printed
paper trail is most valuable -- adversarial relationships where
neither side trusts the other, and where part of the value of the
printed copy is that the other side *can't* control it.

If I'm in a dispute over what was said in an email thread and when, I
don't want to rely on the other party to have the sole power to store
or authenticate the messages in question, and PGP-signing the copy of
the data myself to establish that I didn't modify it is a pretty
ridiculous concept.

--
Charlton Wilbur
cwilburchromatico.net

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great article in 2002, explaining both the
resistance to a paperless workspace and the mistakes made trying to
convert people to one:

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_03_25_a_paper.htm

Kevin van Haaren wrote:
> --On February 18, 2006 4:35:39 AM -0800 David Ross
> <drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:
>
>> I work with architects. Their entire universe is about revisions.
>
> I work with architects AND engineers, it's much worse.... But we are
> investigating a great deal of electronic systems for helping to reduce some
> of the clutter. We're looking at tablet PCs for those field markups and
> meetings (not big enough to substitute for a large plan sheet but good for
> a lot of meetings.)

A design/build or architects/engineers under one roof can work better
with this. But here in NC an Architect can only be an architect so you
get into games of structure to put it all under one roof. :)

> Also several of our governmental clients now want PDF as a deliverable
> instead of paper. And with Acrobat 7 and Reader 7 it's possible to make
> PDF's that can be red-lined in Reader.
>
> One of our departments had a recent workflow that was draft in Kansas City,
> overnight to New York for redline, overnight back to KC for picking up
> markups, rinse, repeat. A PDF workflow changed a 4 day process to mere
> hours at the cost of one seat of Acrobat (everyone else used Reader). Costs
> would go up for a larger job that needed more copies of Acrobat, but the
> overnight costs and job time savings pay for that pretty well.

I didn't say it couldn't work. But it's no where near ready to toss the
paper. Especially when over half the work is on 30" x 42" or LARGER
paper. You just can't take 10 30" displays to each meeting. And if
you're not in the land of large cities (where the big dog can set the
standard for themselves and the surrounding area, well each planning
department can be an island unto itself.

>> General correspondence. Here's the big one. There are legal
>> responsibilities in all those emails. It used to be on paper but now
>> with emails, well you print them out and put them in the binder for the
>> project. ABD agree to change 934 on date mm/dd/yy for an upcharge of
>> $12392 and payment is for 50% of the work per contract signed on
>> mm/dd/yy. Etc... and on and on.
>
> Out of curiosity, what is your e-mail retention policy? We currently
> archive these types of e-mail outside our e-mail system (with the project
> files so there is a single location for project data). Most project
> managers still print copies and put them in their binders too.
>
> Unfortunately with some of our clients it isn't unusual to get an e-mail
> with legal stuff at the top, and a dirty joke at the bottom....

We mostly keep forever in structured project folders. Haven't seen much
of the dirty jokes. But most of the email quoting I've seen would give a
lawyer trying to figure out who really said what fits. Of course having
all the email filed doesn't help at all with the paper that comes into
the office. And non-trivial amounts of it aren't 8.5 x 11. We've looked
into various solutions but most are geared towards 100 person firms with
prices starting at that point. :(

>> In fast moving areas of the country you pay extra to get the planning
>> department to do an express review and they stamp the drawings and specs
>> to be built as per the paper work WITH revisions and changes signed by
>> the officials. Around here express reviews are scheduled a few weeks in
>> advance, normal ones months. If you want to start work, you go the
>> express route.
>
> A couple of states, not sure about municipalities, are starting to looking
> into digital signatures as a way of moving signed data around
> electronically. PDF supports signing. We've also developed custom PDF
> stamps with signature data for shop drawing reviews.
>
> Of course many states still expect a wet sealed set of mylars too.

And almost all of this violates some old state law or another or a court
case from 20 years ago. It's a mess with most of the folks I deal with
trying to be reasonable and hoping their E&O will take care of them if
they are reasonable in their processes.

Around here you leave an express review with a set of read lined prints
of which they have a copy. With the read lines, county seals,
signatures, etc... And you build to these prints as the final word on
what is approved.

>> Now AutoCAD talks about their electronic process work flow but it
>> requires EVERYONE to be using the same version of AutoCAD to work well.
>> Plus their work flow product. Yeah. Right.
>
> cough, Microstation, cough. Autodesk's electronic workflow is DWF files. It
> has a free reader which doesn't require AutoCAD for review/redlining, and I
> believe is the latest versions can still read earlier versions of DWF
> files. AutoCAD itself pretty much requires everyone to be on the same
> version, which is annoying. Also DWF's can't include specifications in the
> same file. A PDF workflow can.
>
On a really complicated project here with about 40 or so different firms
involved it go so bad that the lead civil did almost all the drawing
conversions for everyone as their Micostation setup dealt with the
issues better than the majority installed based of AutoCAD. :)

Yes. All of this can be done electronically but Architects, Engineers,
and their consultants all typically work with lots of outsiders and if
your office deals with multiple small (compared to say Chicago or
Dallas) municipalities, it can be real hard. And I work with one office
where EVERYONE doing CAD has dual 20" displays and they still think it's
about half the size they'd really like to use. :)

And I've discovered that most folks outside the CAD industry don't
realize how fractured document formats really are. It's hard for 2
wizards with expertise in different CAD programs to have a conversation,
much less trade files. And yet it's MUCH better than 10 years ago.

At 8:21 AM -0800 2/20/06, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
>On Feb 18, 2006, at 10:56 PM, John C. Welch wrote:
>>On 2/18/06 06:35, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
>>>So, in an office I'd rather have a bunch of binders with useful stuff
>>>in them than a bunch of pdfs on the machine. I'd rather get
>>>important memos in writing, so I have an unalterable record of them
>>>(regular stuff should be email, of course--but changes in salary,
>>>vacation authorizations, approval of company-paid education, &c
>>>should all be hard copies... or am I a Luddite?)
>>
>>In a matter of years, unless you're very careful with your environmental
>>settings, storage, and paper quality, a lot of that paper will deteriorate
>>at a frightening pace, especially if you have sunlight in your work area.
>
>Or a fire. Ask the Army Records Center in St. Louis.

Even better, try to look up your ancestors in the 1890 census.

--
Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshallidio.com>

On 21/2/2006 5:21 AM, "Sander Tekelenburg" <tekelenbeuronet.nl> spake thus:

> What's so hard/expensive about having a text document open in TextEdit, also
> have the Color Palette open, select something you want to mark and hit a
> colour?

Well, for one thing, you have to take a computer to the meeting with you.
Not everyone has a laptop. Plus there can be significantly more steps
required to annotate something with a computer vs. a pen and paper, as
you've just demonstrated.

Your approach: select, go to colour palette, click a colour (assuming that
it's readily visible). That implies at least two mouse moves and two clicks
on spatially separated parts of the screen. It doesn't sound too bad for a
single operation, but it adds up when you do lots of them (I have, and
believe me, it's not fun).

There's also the additional cognitive load to deal with, which can be tricky
when you're trying to pay attention. With a pen, you can just pick it up and
draw a circle or scribble a quick comment without getting distracted. You'd
need a tablet to get close to that level of ease of use with a computer.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

On 2/20/06 10:21, "johnbaxterlistsmac.com" <johnbaxterlistsmac.com> wrote:

>> Paper is so easy to fake, it's not funny. I can digitally sign a
>> PDF, and
>> any alteration from that point is effectively impossible to hide. I
>> can also
>> *easily* hide trashing critical sheets of paper, or I can alter
>> them and
>> you'll never know. Paper as a way of preventing fraud is highly
>> overrated.
>
> On the other hand, it was demonstrated years ago that with (un?)
> suitable use of Word macros, one could digitally sign a Word
> document, and have it later appear to be different than it was when
> it was signed.
>
> The example given was an IOU, for a small sum until a certain date,
> at which time it was for a larger sum. (One could, of course, reduce
> the value to $0 after the set date.)

One should not use easily editable formats for archival purposes anyway,
which is why PDF is a better choice here.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 18 Feb 2006, at 23:56 , John C. Welch wrote:
> On 2/18/06 06:35, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
>> So, in an office I'd rather have a bunch of binders with useful stuff
>> in them than a bunch of pdfs on the machine. I'd rather get
>> important memos in writing, so I have an unalterable record of them
>> (regular stuff should be email, of course--but changes in salary,
>> vacation authorizations, approval of company-paid education, &c
>> should all be hard copies... or am I a Luddite?)
>
> In a matter of years, unless you're very careful with your
> environmental
> settings, storage, and paper quality, a lot of that paper will
> deteriorate
> at a frightening pace, especially if you have sunlight in your work
> area.

"a matter of years?" A matter of decades, perhaps. Besides, the
examples I gave are not things that need preserving for many years.

For an example, I was just going through some old letters and
documents from my grandfather's house that date from the 1830-1870's,
including Confederate currency, bonds, and various other items (a
nice partial sheet of green 1907 2¢ stamps, for example).

Considering that the paper is 150 years old, it's in pretty decent
shape, fragile, to be sure, but still legible. I have a notebook
from my school days that is, sadly, pushing 30 years old and has not
deteriorated, despite being stored in no particular place with no
particular care. My father's letters and drafts of his book date from
the 1940-60's, where mostly typed or written on cheap lousy paper,
and are all still legible after spending decades in cardboard boxes
on a shelf. Again, no special care taken.

Unfortunately, most everything is carbon copies, and that seem to be
just about impossible to scan and OCR (I've tried numerous times
every couple of years with miserable results that would barely reduce
the effort of typing everything in manually).

Paper may not be technically 'archival' but in the vast majority of
cases, a piece of paper can easily last 100 years with no special
care. The trick comes in ensuring that it does, and that takes effort.

On 20 Feb 2006, at 09:21 , Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> At 04:35 -0800 UTC, on 2006-02-18, Google Kreme wrote:
>
>> On 17 Feb 2006, at 11:40 , Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>>> Can you explain what people didn't like about it?
>>
>> Sure, I'll take this one.
>>
>> I like pieces of paper around for the same reason I like books (hey,
>> I know print is dead in the near future, but I still like it!). I
>> think the simplest way to describe it is that I have a spatial
>> memory.
>
> It seems to me this describes what you do, not why a digital
> approach would
> not work or would even be harder. If you store your receipts in a
> directory
> "receipts", it should be easier to find them then if each receipt
> has its own
> unique, unrelated place.

Sure, and if I had a 'receipts' folder in the file drawer of my desk
(instead of a unorganized pile of original CDs and DVDs that get
tossed in there on top of my High School senior yearbook, the spare
cones for my iPod headphones, and the file folder that holds a print
out of the entire customer list for a business I used to own<1> --
well, that would also be "better" than my method. That's not the
point. The point is my brain doesn't work that way. I think "I put
it over here near this, under that" and that works for me.

Sure, I'd rather be organized--in the same way that a short person
might want to be tall.

>> The PDF manual I downloaded last month for an old Panasonic phone is
>> somewhere on one of my three macs. Which one, I'm not sure. I THINK
>> it's the laptop. I haven't a clue what the folder is
>
> It is on the "documentation" directory on your server, that you can
> access
> from anywhere. That's because when you downloaded it, you stored it
> in your
> local "documentation" directory, and a cron job automagically
> copied this new
> document to the appropriate place on that server.

See, people like you just can't understand people like me. You think
"organization" is just how things are done and I think, "if I put it
down and no one moves it, I know where it is."

This is why apps like Sticky Brain of Devon or Yojimbo don't seem to
work for me. Maybe if I could get into the habit of using them...
maybe.

<1> Hey, look, there's an actually file folder in my file drawer!

On 2/22/06 14:49, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:

> Paper may not be technically 'archival' but in the vast majority of
> cases, a piece of paper can easily last 100 years with no special
> care. The trick comes in ensuring that it does, and that takes effort.

I grew up in Miami. Want to ask me how long paper lasts in that heat and
humidity? I worked in a City Hall that in addition to the HVAC, had room
dehumidifiers that would pull, literally, half a gallon of water a *day* out
of the air, and that was just to make sure that the paper in the laser
printer would stay dry enough to function.

I've watched paper go from new to mush in less than a year.

In the southern US, long term paper storage, and by long term, I mean, more
than a year, is neither cheap, nor simple.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 23/2/2006 9:49 AM, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> spake thus:

> Paper may not be technically 'archival' but in the vast majority of
> cases, a piece of paper can easily last 100 years with no special
> care.

It's not just the paper though, you also need to consider what was used to
make the marks on the paper. I have seen laser-printed documents in my
filing from about 10--15 years ago where half the toner has attached itself
to the back of the next page in the pile (this wasn't from a cheap and nasty
laser printer either). Nothing wrong with the paper, but the content is no
longer particularly legible. Inkjet inks can be even worse in terms of
degradability, especially if exposed to light on a regular basis.

Wilhelm Imaging Research do a lot of work in this area:

<http://www.wilhelm-research.com/>

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

On 2/22/06 at 12:49 PM, gkremegmail.com (Google Kreme) wrote:

> On 20 Feb 2006, at 09:21 , Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> > At 04:35 -0800 UTC, on 2006-02-18, Google Kreme wrote:
> >
> >> On 17 Feb 2006, at 11:40 , Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
> >>> Can you explain what people didn't like about it?
> >>
> >> Sure, I'll take this one.
> >>
> >> I like pieces of paper around for the same reason I like books
> >> (hey, I know print is dead in the near future, but I still like
> >> it!). I think the simplest way to describe it is that I have a
> >> spatial memory.
> >
> > It seems to me this describes what you do, not why a digital
> > approach would not work or would even be harder. If you store your
> > receipts in a directory "receipts", it should be easier to find
> > them then if each receipt has its own unique, unrelated place.
>
> Sure, and if I had a 'receipts' folder in the file drawer of my desk
> (instead of a unorganized pile of original CDs and DVDs that get
> tossed in there on top of my High School senior yearbook, the spare
> cones for my iPod headphones, and the file folder that holds a print
> out of the entire customer list for a business I used to own<1> --
> well, that would also be "better" than my method. That's not the
> point. The point is my brain doesn't work that way. I think "I put
> it over here near this, under that" and that works for me.

Yup. The article reffed earlier had some excellent points about the way
people stack pieces of paper to be acted on around their desk, and use
their arrangement as a tool to organize and prioritize the tasks. And as
a reminder of what needs to get done. :) So much of this article rang
true to the way I operate.

A lot of this carries over to the way I use my Mac. I use icon view a
lot in the Finder, because it lets me arrange files and folders in a
way that makes sense to me and lets me organize my workflow. I arrange
program windows on the screen to facilitate the way I switch between
programs, chase various bits of information around, and so forth.
Sometimes the 'notational/definitional/standard' (I can't really think
of a better word off the top of my head) ways of organizing files - list
views with sorting, column view, etc. - are very useful, as with a large
folder of logs where leaving them sorted by date makes a lot of sense.
These are also the methods computers have traditionally been good at,
since they are rule-based and can easily be automated. But such
'denotational' organization has very large limits, at least for me, and
that's where having a messy Desktop can be very important. :)

> Sure, I'd rather be organized--in the same way that a short person
> might want to be tall.

I'm not so sure I could call it genetic, or that it's *impossible* to
change, but I would definitely say these kind of organizational
behaviors are very deep-rooted and at least very difficult to change
successfully.

> >> The PDF manual I downloaded last month for an old Panasonic phone
> >> is somewhere on one of my three macs. Which one, I'm not sure. I
> >> THINK it's the laptop. I haven't a clue what the folder is
> >
> > It is on the "documentation" directory on your server, that you can
> > access from anywhere. That's because when you downloaded it, you
> > stored it in your local "documentation" directory, and a cron job
> > automagically copied this new document to the appropriate place on
> > that server.
>
> See, people like you just can't understand people like me. You think
> "organization" is just how things are done and I think, "if I put it
> down and no one moves it, I know where it is."
>
> This is why apps like Sticky Brain of Devon or Yojimbo don't seem to
> work for me. Maybe if I could get into the habit of using them...
> maybe.

That's certainly been true for all of the organizers I've tried in the
past. I can make use of organizing metadata that's automatically added -
like the ID3 tags in iTunes - but any system that requires me to do
heavy-duty classification/manual metadata entry is probably doomed to
failure for me.

Yojimbo has some promise for me, because it requires minimal entry
effort up front and promises to make retrieval possible without lots of
work. I'm somewhat dubious on relying entirely on searches to retrieve
items - searching has made great strides in 20 years (though I still
miss goFer - anyone else remember that DA?), but it's still too
regularized and rule-based and poor at making the semi-random
connections humans are good at.

Travis Butler
tbutlermac.com

On 24/2/2006 10:29 AM, "Travis Butler" <tbutlerbirch.net> spake thus:

> but any system that requires me to do heavy-duty classification/manual
> metadata entry is probably doomed to failure for me.

This is getting slightly off track, but I've been getting into del.icio.us
recently, and quite like the way its categorisation scheme work. You can add
as many user-defined keywords to your bookmarks as you like, *plus* it's
reasonably good at suggesting possible keywords as well. The only thing I
don't like about it so far is that it begins to noticeably slow down when
you have lots of keywords (it's the JavaScript that's doing that, I'm sure).
 
> searching [is] still too regularized and rule-based and poor at making the
> semi-random connections humans are good at.

Again, this is something that del.icio.us is rather good at: when you do a
search, it searches not only your bookmarks, but everyone else's bookmarks
as well. The searches themselves are pretty basic keyword matches, but
because everyone categorises things differently, you get random connections
and then some :) The power comes from the nature of the data being searched
rather than in the search engine.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

> Sure, I'd rather be organized--in the same way that a short person
> might want to be tall.
>
>>> The PDF manual I downloaded last month for an old Panasonic phone is
>>> somewhere on one of my three macs. Which one, I'm not sure. I THINK
>>> it's the laptop. I haven't a clue what the folder is
>>
>> It is on the "documentation" directory on your server, that you can
>> access
>> from anywhere. That's because when you downloaded it, you stored it
>> in your
>> local "documentation" directory, and a cron job automagically
>> copied this new
>> document to the appropriate place on that server.

Yep. Cron jobs are what most folks whip out to keep themselves be better
organized. :)

> See, people like you just can't understand people like me. You think
> "organization" is just how things are done and I think, "if I put it
> down and no one moves it, I know where it is."
>
> This is why apps like Sticky Brain of Devon or Yojimbo don't seem to
> work for me. Maybe if I could get into the habit of using them...
> maybe.
>
> <1> Hey, look, there's an actually file folder in my file drawer!

I read part (!) of a book a while back by someone where the point was to
admit that some of us don't have Day Runner kinds of brains and never
will. Her insight started when she realized she was at her umpteenth
class on how to get organized and finally realized that the folks who
used Day Runners and such never needed or went to such a class. It was
only folks who could never make them work hoping the next class would
make it all gel.

I think we're in that second category. :)

At 08:27 -0800 UTC, on 2006-02-27, David Ross wrote:

[...]

>>> a cron job automagically copied this new
>>> document to the appropriate place on that server.
>
> Yep. Cron jobs are what most folks whip out to keep themselves be better
> organized. :)

Oh don't be silly. Of course cron is for geeks, but that's only because of
its interface. Millions of non-geeks sync their iPods with
iTunes/iPhoto/iCal, they sync their handhelds with their desktops, they sync
their Macs with .Mac, etc.

More comments in this thread have been like yours: basing the argument on
specific software being user-unfriendly. But that only tells us something
about that software failing, not about the general concept of organising
digital data.

As to the argument that people just are different: of course they are. We all
have our different strengths and weknesses. But I get the feeling some are
only using that argument in order to not have to learn to be more organised -
mistaking "having never learned" with "being".

In any case, if I were to hire someone, I will favour someone capable of
organising his work in such a way that when for instance he gets sick,
someone else can take over. I wouldn't want to have to tell customers to go
away just because an employee is ill.

--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

On 20/02/2006, at 17:24, Kevin van Haaren wrote:

> A couple of states, not sure about municipalities, are starting to looking
> into digital signatures as a way of moving signed data around
> electronically. PDF supports signing. We've also developed custom
> PDF stamps with signature data for shop drawing reviews.

Here in Spain architects belong to legal association (I don't know
how you would define that in English) that they have to join after
finishing university. The translation would be something like
"Architects School" and there are similar associations for all
technical careers (engineers, etc...). I point this out because in
the last three years most of these associations are pushing their
respective associates to go digital. I work at an Apple Center
(official Apple retailer here in Europe) and I assisted to an Adobe
presentation for professionals explaining how PDF has been the tool
that has made all possible.

As an example, when a company wants to build a highway they have to
compile lots of documentation. You may ask how much and they said
that for a 7 Kilometers section there used to be 14 big boxes of
drawings and binders. Now that same section only takes 2 CDs. All the
signing and legal stuff is done through plug-ins added to Acrobat
that build encryption and time stamps, so nobody can tamper with
them. And the final result are PDFs that anybody can read with the
free Adobe Reader or other compatible PDF tools and all the DWG or
DXF drawings are included in the PDF file, so you can go back and see
all the layers and everything.

Call me a tree hugger if you like, but 14 big boxes of paper seem a
lot to me... and a highway may have more than 1000 Kilometers. And I
do like books on paper, but a book is something I keep and is a
pleasure to have. The rest of things like magazines or similar should
go digital. I am already subscribed to the digital version of
MacWorld and I am writing over and over to Wired Magazine to convince
them to go digital too.

The secret lays in standards and PDF is becoming the de facto
standard for longterm documentation.

> Of course many states still expect a wet sealed set of mylars too.

The problems may lay not in states but in countries
interrelationships... and even that will be a matter of time.

> cough, Microstation, cough. Autodesk's electronic workflow is DWF
> files. It has a free reader which doesn't require AutoCAD for review/
> redlining, and I
> believe is the latest versions can still read earlier versions of DWF
> files. AutoCAD itself pretty much requires everyone to be on the same
> version, which is annoying. Also DWF's can't include specifications
> in the same file. A PDF workflow can.

Yes and as I said it is becoming an standard and an open one.


Victor Bottacco victorskios.es