• How many times a week do you forget your online banking credentials?
• How often do you find yourself surrounded by scraps of paper covered in scribblings?
• When last did you actually scan and file notes from your last telephone call or minutes of a meeting?
• Ever just wanted to jot down a few words in a safe place as you think of them?
• How do you remember the list of items you need to discuss with Joe when next you meet?

If you’re anything like me, paper just doesn’t work for such moments. If I don’t lose that scrap of paper between the office and home, I’ll almost certainly forget to scan and file it for later retrieval. People like us need “a system”. Here’s mine:

Storage

Everything I write gets stored in one or more text files. You’d typically open such files in TextEdit or Notepad. As of today, my notes directory contains 433 .txt files. This gives me the freedom to open access my notes in any application I choose and the peace-of-mind of not being tied to a single piece of software.

Desktop Writing

This is where the magic happens. What we want in a note-taking application is the ability to quickly and efficiently search for information. I’d like to introduce you to two applications: NotationalVelocity (for Mac) and ResophNotes (for Windows).

NotationalVelocity was developed in 2002 by software developer, Zachary Schneiro to solve his problem of tracking short, unrelated snippets of information. Resoph is a great alternative for Windows users that works in a similar way.

Let’s divide the user interface into three parts, top to bottom:

1. Text field (highlighted in yellow, below),
2. a list of notes sorted by their last modified date, and
3. the text editor.

The Text field has the uncanny (and awesome) ability to both search and create notes. As you type, a full-text, incremental, live search is done across all of your notes. That is, within both the filename and file contents. If you hit Return (or Enter) at any point, you generate a new note with its title set to whatever you just typed. From there, the cursor is automatically moved to the third area – the note editor, and you just start typing your note. It feels incredibly natural.

The list of notes shows every note in your notes directory – along with a preview of their contents and date last modified. As you search, this list will update in realtime to show matching notes.

Notational and Resoph also save automatically as you type, so you’ll never lose a note again.

Syncing

But what use is a folder of notes on one computer? We need to get our notes onto “the cloud” for safe keeping and easy access. Enter SimpleNote.

SimpleNote is an online note-syncing service that automatically syncs with NotationalVelocity and ResophNotes. Simply sign-up for a free account and give Notational or Resoph your username and password. In next to no time, you’ll have access to your notes offline and online.

Going Mobile

And it get’s better: If you have a iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, you can download the SimpleNote iOS app (again, for free) and have access to all of your notes – complete with searching and tagging. This is great for note-taking during meetings, conferences and calls.

So, go and get that set up and let me know how it goes. I’ll post some power-user tips in the coming days.

Links

• Notational Velocity for Mac
• ResophNotes for Windows
• SimpleNote
• SimpleNote for iOS

“Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win.”

That’s Paul Thurott tweeting from //Build/ (yes, the forward slashes are required) where a developer preview for Windows 8 was released this week. You can almost feel the simultaneous relief and collective glee of the Windows community as their mainstream OS becomes cool again.

Apparently the above was actually tweeted in jest:

Made a joke yesterday. Here’s what I really think. iPad, Win8 tablets, and Amazon tablet will all own some part of this market. Obviously.

Interesting choice: iPad, Win8, and Amazon tablets. Notice how only one of those devices actually exists in the market? The Amazon tablet remains a rumour and, while there is no official release date, it seems like Windows 8 is only slated for a September 2012 release. Yes, that’s a year from now. A year.

Microsoft struck gold with DOS, Office and Windows in the late eighties and dominated the consumer technology space in the nineties. By surveying what competitors were releasing and responding rapidly with a commodity solution, they were able to monopolise the industry.

But their game plan hasn’t changed ever since. They’ve applied the same basic strategy to every innovation that has popped up on their radar. Sometimes this has found disastrous results, while in general they’ve just been so late to the game that their imitation is outdated by the time it reaches market.

So let’s consider some innovations (in this case by Apple) and the number of days it took Microsoft to imitate them and bring a product to market:

• 1984 Macintosh (GUI) to Windows 3: 2995 days
• 2001 iPod to Zune: 1848 days
• 2007 iPhone to Windows Phone 7 Series System Series Seven: 1228 days
• 2008 MacBookAir to Windows on Ultrabooks: 1339 days
  (not strictly a Microsoft imitation here - more-so Intel trying to prop up Microsoft’s business in an attempt to ward off ARM)
• 2010 iPad to Windows 8 Tablets (assuming a Sept 2012 release): 882 days

Put simply: Microsoft has accelerated their rate of imitation to meet changing industry demands, and this has become the sole-focus of the corporation. When last did something industry-changing came out of Redmond?

Remember how, until recently, a certain tablet manufacturer literally had people queuing through the night for a chance to buy one? You can bet that’s going to happen again early next year when the third generation device is released.

So, bravo Microsoft on building (sorry, //building/) what seems to be an impressive new entry into the touch OS arena. However, being a year away from having anything comparable to today’s industry champion is just not reason to announce victory.

However, this morning I experienced an issue while trying to join a Windows 7 Professional computer to the Home Server.

During the installation of the Connector software (found at http://yourserver:55000) you are asked to enter the server administrator’s password. Strangely I was repeatedly told: “The password is incorrect.  Please retype your password.  Letters in passwords must be typed using the correct case.”

The solution took a while to find, but I eventually I came across a post by AMLane on the Microsoft forums that solved my problem.

1. Run secpol.msc (You’ll need Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate)
2. Drill down through Local Policies | Security Options
3. Find Network Security: LAN Manager authentication level
4. Set this to Send NTLM response only
5. Reboot the machine

I imagine that similar strange bugs in WHS will be dealt with in the upcoming Home Server 2.0 codenamed – “Vail”, now available for beta testing.

Don’t sit on the bench, get to DevDays 2010 and score with us! Laduuuuuuma!!!!

It’s here! Microsoft DevDays is the premier developer event of the year and is all about learning, sharing and interacting with one another and having fun! DevDays 2010 brings you the best of current developer technologies, along with a preview of soon-to-be-released Microsoft tools and technologies.

I spoke at DevDays 2009 and had a blast. This year, I’ve been invited back to deliver two new talks:

• Getting started with Silverlight development
  Interested in Silverlight development but not sure how to get started? Learn the basics of Silverlight application development – the tools and fundamental concepts behind Silverlight. Find out how to re-use your existing .NET development skills to build exciting new applications. This session will focus on the fundamentals of Silverlight including layout, data binding, data access and styling.
• Open Source and Microsoft – Working Together
  Microsoft AND Open Source? What?! Come and learn how Microsoft platform works with open source platforms like PHP and Java form the server room and into the cloud. Come and learn how Microsoft is opening up and supporting open source development and technologies.

Find out more, and register at http://www.microsoft.com/southafrica/devdays/default.mspx

Most importantly, entrance is free! Please join us for a wonderful day of learning and networking.

For the longest time, the utterance of “PHP” and “Windows” within the same sentence meant the speaker was either temporarily insane, or horribly misguided.

In ‘An Oxymoron’s Guide to PHP on Windows’ you’ll discover just how much the situation has changed in the past 12 months. Thanks to Windows Server, IIS7 and FastCGI, running PHP on Windows finally makes a great deal of sense. It performs admirably and facilitates integration with familiar Microsoft technologies like ASP.net and Silverlight.

Coming from a Linux background, I was skeptical about running our mission-critical apps on Windows. We had a lot of infrastructure built around the traditional LAMP stack, and the mention of throwing Windows IIS in its place was somewhat shocking. But, I can tell you that the transition to IIS7 is utterly painless, and brought with it some incredible advantages.

For the first time, we’re able to easily integrate our PHP products with ASP.NET code. We can build Rich Internet Applications with ASP.NET AJAX on the frontend and PHP on the backend. Even Silverlight 2.0 applications can be enhanced with familar PHP code to create something of value.

At DevDays 2009, which kicks off in Durban on the 10th of March, I’m going to be showing developers just how great it is to develop and deploy PHP applications on the Windows platform. Be there, or be PEAR