Ive always wanted personal computing to help me with personal organization. I bought my first laptop, in 1988, to run Ashton-Tates Framework III. With one command, I could search all my current work, all my recent e-mail and anything in my desktop library. It was worth the $8,000.
Fourteen years of Moores Law progress have given me more—more clock speed, more memory, more storage, for much less money—but they have not given me anything better. Im concerned that Microsofts OneNote, promised next year, may continue that trend. “Add little to little, and there will be a big pile,” wrote the Roman poet Ovid. “Create as many notebooks, folders and pages as you need,” urges the OneNote FAQ in rather less poetic language.
Yes, that FAQ page also promises that well be able to search our note collections without specifying notebooks, folders or files, and thats a good thing—except that well still have to know what were seeking, and every advance can make that more difficult to recall in terms of searchable attributes.
For example, during my most recent chat with Microsofts Steve Ballmer, did I write down his comment about customers demands for greater ease of administration? Did he even use the word “administration”? Or did he just say something like, “People want to manage our products more easily”?
Is that comment, perhaps, in an audio file from my digital voice recorder, rather than in written notes? Or was it in one of the video clips that I captured when he got really enthusiastic and started pounding the arm of his chair? MOV04010.MPG? Oh, there it is.
Will OneNote find such things?
We already have aids to accumulation. We need better tools for association. If I could ask for everything I have, from any time slot thats on both my calendar and Steves, wed be breaking new ground. Im sure that you can imagine other useful associations.
Security problems? Of course. Bandwidth issues? You bet. But lets define our goals in terms of what would be more useful than what we have—not in terms of what would more fully use the hardware that Windows OEMs would like to sell.
Tell me what would organize you at peter_coffee@ziffdavis.com.