Notes on Productivity Home Page

One of the essential components of my productivity toolkit is an application called ActiveWords. I use ActiveWords to control most of my Windows Applications.

I've just posted the video and related links over on the inside.eProductivity blog.

Since this blog is focused primarily on Lotus Notes, I know that the next question I will get is: "Will ActiveWords work with Lotus Notes?"

Yes and no.

ActiveWords works as if you had typed keystrokes at your keyboard and is great for launching applications and substituting text. These features work great in Notes.

Because Lotus Notes is itself a windowed application ActiveWords has not context from which to control specific features of Notes once launched. This is because it has no context.

For people that use eProductivity for Lotus Notes we have modified Notes in such a way that ActiveWords can effectively control most aspects of Notes. So, for example, I can type "IN" anywhere (Notes does not even have to be running) and ActiveWords will launch Notes (if not already open) and take me to my inbox.

Even without the connection to Lotus Notes, I think ActiveWords is a remarkable application and certainly one I am never without!

ActiveWords Web site

Two interesting discussions today. (Well one at least, my post has no comments yet.)

Ed Brill: What kind of apps do you run on the Notes client stand-alone?
Eric Mack: Just what is Lotus Notes good for, anyway?

There's discussion about what people use Notes for and whether it can be personal or not. I just posted this comment to Ed Brill's blog, but I think it is valuable to re-post here. It deals with the issue that when tools become personal, people become passionate about them - and they tell their friends, and their friends, and their friends...

@12, one of my clients, David Allen, loves to show end-users and senior company execs the Notes Journal - something most have no idea exists. If you have ever attended his Getting Things Done (GTD) seminars, you know that he often mentions and shows how he uses Lotus Notes and then he talks about the power of the journal and the ability to customize. 10 years ago (it maybe more) David stumbled on the Notes Designer client and created his own quote application - an app then he still uses and shows off today.

The key here is that Notes became personal to him. Once a tool becomes personal, people can't help but tell and show their friends. Think of the iPhone.

The key point I want to make is:

When tools become personal, people become passionate about them - and they tell their friends, and their friends, and their friends...

In this illustration, and end-user "discovered" something that created great value for him (the Notes Journal) and then he "discovered" that he could customize the way he works with his information using the Notes designer client. the tool became personal. Now, you couldn't pry it from his hands. I know many people that feel the same way.

As I teach in my seminars: "for tools to become productive, they have to become personal."

What do YOU think?

In the beginning, we did not think of Notes as e-mail.  (I'm talking about the client)  We thought of Lotus Notes as the ultimate repository for information and knowledge in tacit form across distributed databases (often called "knowledge-bases" or "applications"). Oh, and Notes happened to do email and calendaring (with some issues).

Over the next 15 years Microsoft did an exemplary job (I think) of convincing the world that Notes was just email and that it wasn't very good as such and that Outlook was better application because it was a really good Personal Information Management Tool (PIM). They did a good job of shifting the focus from the many things Notes did really well to the fact that its email and calendaring had some issues. Over time, Notes users listened to the message from Microsoft and, in the absence of new information to the contrary, began to think of Notes just an email client.

Lotus, then, IBM responded with improvements to email & calendar but missed the opportunity (in my opinion) to educate the world that the Notes client - even back then - was so much more than email.

Continue Reading "Just what is Lotus Notes good for, anyway?" »

Over the past few weeks, two free drawings were held for GTD Productivity tools. Sponsored by ICA, ActiveWord Systems, and Gyronix, the drawings awarded prizes with a total value of over $2000.

People were invited to to download and explore eProductivity for Lotus Notes. Everyone that did, got their name entered in the drawing. Those that took the time to send in feedback, got their name entered a second time. No purchase was required.

Six people's names were drawn on June 2 and again on June 15 for a total of 12 lucky winners.

Visit the Inside.eProductivity blog to find out who won.

One of the (many) features that I love about Lotus Notes is the ability to paste doclinks from anywhere to anywhere. Long before we had URLS we had doclinks. I feel so strongly about the value of Notes doclinks that I worked hard to get my two favorite knowledge visualization tools, MindManager and The Brain, add support for Notes Doclinks to to their product.

If you can live inside of Notes, doclinks are great but when you move to the web they sometimes break. I've been following Ben Langhinrichs blog posts about his product, iFidelity, that among other things appears to ensure that doclinks will work inside and outside of Notes - incliding within IBM's own iNotes mail template.

I have not actually used iFidelity, but from today's blog post it looks like a valuable tool to improve the experience and increase user productivity.

Blog: Why is iNotes a second class citizen?

You can lean more about iFidelity here.