Things Should Be Made As Simple As Possible, But Not Any Simpler

I am finishing up this blog post, listening to Eric Clapton. I saw him this past Wednesday, just a few days before his 67th birthday. This is his 50th anniversary tour. It is hard to imagine that Slowhand has been making music for that long. Don't let his age fool you. He's still got it. Know where his nickname "Slowhand" came from? Back in the early sixties, he used to play his guitar strings so hard, they would break. So he used to sit onstage and replace them, while the audience slowly clapped their hands…hence the nickname. Man he is talented and very inspiring. Some good reading music...

Do or do not. There is no "try" - Yoda

I planned on getting this post out about a week ago. That is until my youngest decided to get sick. She loved me so much that she smiled and gave it to me. Take a garden variety cold and add a swirl of pollen and you end up with what is best described as an angry hurricane in your chest. Bear in mind that all of the world's pollen seems to emanate from right here in Atlanta. Just ask anyone who lives here. Today's count: 8,024. To put that into perspective for ya, normal counts are below 100. (Pollen Count Index). There is no getting away from it. Anyway, it made a bad situation a bit worse, making me sit out a day and a half from work. Ugh. I did get a laugh, albeit brief and ending with a coughing fit, thinking about this great movie scene, about being sick. This one will bring back a memory or two. Too bad missing work is not as glorious as missing school was.

So, I'm pulling together a list for each of the platforms I use regularly. I figured I would bust it up into a few lists. My intent is to have them as "living documents" that I will add to on an ongoing basis. So, to make sure I don't end up becoming just another propeller head with "his" apps, I have established a single rule: The apps I list will only be ones I really use. And I'll try and give you a good reason why they are cool and useful. For this blog though, I'd like to tell you about one app that really stands out: OneNote.

Strange Brew

OneNote. This is by far one of the most important apps I use every single day. And it is nothing short of awesome (Microsoft OneNote site).  So what is the big deal? Well, cop a squat and I'll tell ya a story. Way back in 2003, Microsoft was at the forefront of tablet technology.

See that picture? That's the Motion tablet I carried around. Yes, they existed back then, and they were not made by Apple. However they were much thicker and worked via a pen instead of your fingers. They weighed about 3-4 lbs, sported a Pentium III processor (the CPU now found in my washing machine) with 256Mb of memory and a 3-hour battery, which was code for "fake battery life." Real battery life was about 1.5 hours so long as you had the screen brightness turned all the way down, no WiFi and low CPU usage. That meant watching movies, and working on complicated spreadsheets was out so long as you remained cordless. Keep in mind, this was ten years ago. I remember travelling with two batteries plus the power brick. Anyway, there was a version of Windows called the Windows XP Tablet Edition. It contained a program called Journal; kind of an electronic piece of paper for writing notes right on the tablet screen. You read correctly. You could write, draw, scratch…anything you could do with a normal pen, in any color and just about any thickness. The idea here was to introduce people to write-on-the-screen technology, also known as pen computing. It was very cool and represented serious progress from the old monochromatic Palm days and the miserable Windows CE experience. But it was limited and a bit basic. Then along came OneNote. Same idea taken to a whole new level. Where Journal resembled a piece of paper, OneNote was an unlimited three ring binder. You create pages of information, which you can place in color coded sections, that you place in notebooks. Interest. Microsoft may be on to something here. Keep reading.

I know what you are thinking; you type faster than you write. Or your penmanship resembles the feet of a parakeet having a muscle spasm while hopped up on three cans of Red Bull. Sounds like a step backwards to you? Not exactly. Step away from your first thoughts for just a moment. OneNote wasn't conceived around the notion that people would be going back to writing versus typing. It's bigger than that; it's about something we all do: drawing. I am not about to suggest that we're all gifted sketchers like Matt Groening or even Frank Lloyd Wright. Yet at one point or another, we've all resorted to whipping out a piece of paper and drawing what we cannot express in words. From driving directions to the shape of furniture, drawing is one of our most basic expressive skills. And, it is very effective. In fact, some of the world's best ideas have been doodled on small pieces of paper. Southwest Airlines began life scribbled on a bar napkin in San Antonio. How about "Louie, Louie?" Who could forget the famed song which was forever cemented into fraternal consciousness thanks to the Deltas in "Animal House." It started out on a piece of toilet paper in 1957. Speaking of songs, the Star Spangled Banner was first scratched on the back of a letter that was stuck in the pocket of Francis Scott Key. Imagine if the mail hadn't come that day? And who could forget Jack Nicholson's riveting performance in "A Few Good Men." You may not be able to handle the truth of the movie's script. Adam Sorkin wrote the idea for it on…you guessed it…a cocktail napkin. He did so while watching the first act of La Cage aux Folles in New York City.

Crossroads

Try this on. For that meeting or class you attend every Wednesday morning, you grab your phone, a legal pad, a pen, and perhaps a folder or two. You watch as a list of items are created on a whiteboard, with circles and arrows, in different colors. Swiftly you try and re-create the whiteboard on your legal pad, as best you can. It is at this moment you realize the silly but true fact that you have two hands and can only use one pen at a time. Then there's the guy running the meeting. You know the one that moves really fast. So much so, it seems like he is erasing items before they are even written. Wait…wait…NO! Gone forever. Ugh. Now with the meeting over, you head back to your desk to go through the time-honored tradition of converting your hand-written notes to some electronic format. This usually involves typing your notes into your PC. Sucks doesn't it? Then there is the diagram. Sigh. So instead of hobbling between the electronic and written universe, you choose to just stay in your notebook and do double work to keep track of things. 

Now, let's try this again with OneNote and my old tablet. Same meeting, same situation. This time though I am writing down notes on the tablet. Ok, that's kinda cool. Then comes the diagram. Ah ha! I can draw it in all the right colors…right on the same page as my notes…just like a piece of paper! Oh it gets better. The meeting leader references a website. No problem. Pop open your favorite browser…again on the tablet, find the link, and paste it in the page. How great is this? Freely placing and organizing your thoughts…just like a piece of paper, with no real boundaries. When the meeting ends, press a button and my chicken scratch is converted to type-written words. No fuss and really fast. Need to highlight a sentence? Easily done. Misspell a word? Just scratch through it with the pen and write the correct one in its place. You can even open a Word document inside of OneNote and mark it up with edits. And when you are done, you can email it back to the author. Sound like what you do? I know it does. This is OneNote. I'm telling you, truly revolutionary. I can remember showing people how I used OneNote. Everyone's reaction was pretty much the same: jaw dropping like I was using some kind of alien that just walked straight out of Area 51. Too bad the devices were $3,000. But wait, it gets much, much better.

Badge

OneNote rapidly gained stardom as THE killer app for tablets. Trouble was, early tablets met with marginal success, even as new versions of the OS were introduced. Yet all of us hard core tablet users were willing to overlook the shortcomings because we loved what they represented.  We were enamored with OneNote. So much so that we also loaded it on our PCs too. What you say? A tablet program on your PC?  You bet. After all, it was Windows. And if you had a server…oh man…your kung fu was hot. Get this: you could take all of your OneNote notebooks and stick them in a folder on your office server. That way you could use the same notebooks on your tablet and on your PC! Come back from a meeting, jack into the network and BANG…all your tablet notes are now on your PC. 

Then, something unexpected happened. People all over started using OneNote on their PCs…without even having a tablet. They loved the free-form notebook idea and the thought of being able to organize all their stuff into one place. Before you knew it, all sorts of stuff was being piled into OneNote. Take me for example. I have a notebook for all my blogs; I have one for the things I need to catch up on reading; I have one for recipes. Ah recipes. Let's stop there for a moment. So I have an entire section filled with recipes that I like to cook. It contains a page for each recipe including the stuff you would expect like ingredients, prep, cook time etc. It also has pictures and even a few links that go directly to the Internet, just to make sure my  Etouffee doesn't turn into a gumbo. What else? I have a notebook for work stuff. In it, you will find knowledge base articles I've written, employee handbooks, policies and procedures…you name it. I know you are saying to yourself, "I can do all that right now in a Word." Yes, you can. But you would be stuck with a hundred or so different Word files stuffed into folders in some sort of order. Searching across them would be near impossible and they wouldn't be easily moved between devices. In OneNote, everything lives in pages and sections within notebooks. If I want to cook something, I flip to the recipes section and find what I am looking for…no file opening required. Can't remember where you placed it? No problem. Just type in a few words in the OneNote search field, say "Rick's Paella," and OneNote finds it for you. What else? I have a To Do list. Things to get from Lowes, Costco, etc. And I have a notebook for shop projects. This one is kind of cool because not only does it have my ideas for building things, it also contains sketches and even picture. Just awesome!

Wonderful Tonight

So now we are up to OneNote 2013. And if you thought I was giddy before, now I am going to put this whole thing into orbit. The Windows version comes bundled in Office, or you can just buy the license on its own. Wait just a second. Don't run off yet. OneNote is a free app available for iOS and Android. And there is also a free web version that runs in your browser. So you don't need to buy a thing. Yup, I have it installed on my phone, my office PC, my ultrabook, and my tablet. No, I don't have all these disparate notebooks floating around on all these different devices. That would be uncivilized and maddening. Instead, I see the same single set of notebooks across all my devices. I just heard a collective "Hmmmm. How is he doing that? Ah, it must be that server thingy. I don't have a server thingy. So much for this idea." Hold on a minute. Remember that whole cloud thing? THAT is how all of them stay in sync with each other. A little cloud storage service called Skydrive. Skydrive is the Microsoft equivalent to Dropbox, a free cloud-based storage locker where you can place music, photos, files and folders. As long as you have Internet access, you can get to your Skydrive. You'll notice I said equivalent and not equal. In many ways, Skydrive is better. I'll save that explanation for another blog. Anyway, where was I? Ah, tying it all together. Ok, here is how it works. Stay with me, you're almost there.

First, you sign up for your free Skydrive account (www.skydrive.com). Next you can download the Skydrive app to each of your devices. This gives you direct access to your Skydrive account from your device. Or you can use it via any Web browser and not even worry about installing the app. Once you're done, you not only get your Skydrive storage locker, you also get the Office Web Apps. This includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint and…you guessed it…OneNote. I then create a folder in Skydrive called…wait for it…Notebooks. Then one by one, I moved my old OneNote notebooks into that folder. Easy. So, all my OneNote notebooks live in a folder called "Notebooks" in my Skydrive. Next, I have the OneNote app installed on each device. OneNote is Skydrive-aware, no matter what device. This means that it "knows" how to connect to Skydrive all by itself, once you give it your username and password merely once. From there, OneNote takes care of the rest. It goes out to the Net and automagically synchronizes the notebooks to each device simultaneously. You can even tell it which notebooks to sync to each device. For example, I may not want my office notebook to sync to my phone. Not an issue. Uncheck the folder and it won't sync to that device. All devices and all notebooks in perfect harmony. Like wooden ships on the water very free and easy.

Take a moment and think about it. I start my Costco list at work. Then I add a few things to it at home. Now I am at Costco and looking at the list…on my phone. Mind you, I didn't email it to myself, nor write it down. I just opened OneNote on my phone and there's the list. How about ribs for dinner? I've got a great recipe I've perfected over the years. I grab my phone and open the recipe notebook. Yup, there it is. I pick up the ingredients at the store and while I am there, I remember the last time I cooked them I increased the amount of spice. I edit the recipe on my phone so I don't forget. Anyway, now I get home and want to start cooking. No need to bring my laptop into the kitchen. So, I open up the recipe notebook on my iPad, prop it up, and start cooking with both hands' free. And the change I made at the grocery store? It's already in front of me on my iPad. Get the idea? Let me give you one more example. I am writing this blog right now on my laptop. I won't finish it tonight. Tomorrow, when I pick it up again, I will likely be in front of my work PC. No worries. Open up OneNote and there it is…exactly the way I left it; no copying it to a thumb drive and moving it around. Nothing. It just syncs all by itself.

Let It Rain

Let's go go back to the meeting example one more time? This time with the latest version of OneNote and all the goodness you just learned. We go to the meeting or class, this time with just a tablet and your phone. Now you can type or write the meeting notes directly on the tablet within OneNote. Or better yet, just record the meeting. Yup, OneNote does this too. Turn on the mic and set down your tablet (or phone for that matter). It will record and place the recorded file as a link on the page. OneNote will even transcribe the recording into written text. I just saw all the doctors and lawyers just perk up a bit. Meeting leader moving too fast? No problem. I lift up my tablet and snap a picture of the whiteboard…while I am in OneNote. The picture lands on the page, right next to my handwritten notes. And thanks to my wireless connection, my notebook is already in sync with Skydrive…and my other devices. Oh and by the way, one click and I can email the notebook to my co-worker who couldn't keep up during the meeting since he was using a pen and a legal pad. 

Speaking of sharing, there is one more thing I should tell you about. Up until now I spoken largely about list and note-taking. What I haven't done is told you how I use it in daily business life. I'm talking about sharing information with customers and changing the way you work with them. Sounds ominous doesn't it? Ok, wrap your mind around this example. I'm preparing a proposal for a new network. It is made up of a series of files: an overview in Word, a cost analysis in Excel, and a diagram in Visio. Pretty normal stuff. Due to the proprietary nature of what I do, I never send these items in their native form. Instead, I convert them to .PDF. And, like you, I used to email them to customers. For years, this approach served me well, yet I was contributing to the very madness that I sought to prevent; the endless volley of emails and attachments, with revision after revision of documents. It occurred to me that it would be much better to create a project notebook. In it, I could place a copy of all the aforementioned items, in addition to notes, timelines, pictures, hyperlinks to products and more. As I went through revisions, I simply place the latest versions in the notebook. Makes complete sense, right? That is, except for one thing. How does the customer see it? Easily done in three steps. First, I create a folder in my Skydrive, specifically for my customer. I can do this by logging into Skydrive via my browser or the Skydrive app. Next I create a OneNote notebook and place it inside the newly created Skydrive folder. Easy enough eh? Add your notes, documents…anything you wish for your customer to see. Finally, you finish the process by choosing to share the Skydrive folder with your customer. Yes, you read that correctly. You can share a Skydrive folder with anyone, even if they don't have their own Skydrive account. When you share a Skydrive folder with someone, it asks for their email address. Skydrive then sends them an invitation, including a special browser link, that takes them to this private folder. As the owner of the folder, you can set permissions for what your customer can do; read, edit, or both. Now then, take a moment and connect the dots. You're my customer. Instead of an email loaded with ten attachments, I've sent you a link for a secured, private folder on the Net which contains all the information you need for an upcoming project. And thanks to the files being on Skydrive, we can discuss the project while viewing and editing the same set of files, together in real time. Once the revisions are finalized, a simple trip back to the web folder and there they are. What have I done here? For starters, I have completely eliminated the email ping pong match you are forced to endure from proposal revisions. No more sifting through previous emails trying to find the latest version of a proposal. Next, I am able to give you more timely and relevant information, organized and presented in a way you can easily understand, in a folder versus a myriad of email attachments. And finally, I've given you a single place for all your project information, that you can access anytime you wish, knowing the information is up-to-date and readily available to you everywhere you go. Yes, you may now clap and cheer!

Sunshine of Your Love

OneNote in and of itself is wonderfully satisfying and very powerful to use. Pair it up with Skydrive and you have something quite compelling. It changed the way I keep up with things and conduct business. You will be the king of all the info you survey. OneNote is kind of like the Grateful Dead. If you like it, you love it and you join the legions of Noteheads that are enamored with it. I don't know if we are really called Noteheads but it sounded good didn't it? The Dead had a reputation for never, ever playing the same set of music at any of their shows. They improvised, jammed, and were free to create on-the-fly. I bet you would be hard pressed to find two people that use OneNote the exact same way. And if there is one core principle of OneNote, it would be the freedom to create on-the-fly, however you wish. All of this from a little known software app that happened to start its own life as a humble idea scribbled on a piece of paper. Who knew. So the next time you belly up to the bar, and the barkeep throws down that cocktail napkin and asks you "what'll you have," consider asking for a pen instead of a cold one. You just never know. Nah, get the cold one...and just use ask for a tablet with OneNote instead. You'll thank me.