What matters is trying I guess. The PASS project I submitted to Google's Project 10^100 did not make it. Somehow not surprising considering there was over 150,000 submissions.
That said, I was surprised of the selection made by googlers. The 16 top ideas aren't that interesting to my eyes. So be it! I just hope Google will use the pertinent ideas submitted in a useful way. They can surprise us - they already proved they're able to contribute positively to society in various ways.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Getting Things Done App Reviews: OmniFocus, Things, Life Balance, ThinkingRock and Chandler
Ok, I spent several hours over the last few weeks trying to seriously pinpoint the best Getting Things Done (GTD) app for my needs. The following is not a thorough review but might be useful to you, keep in mind your needs and tastes obviously differ from mines. Also take into account the timing: by the time you read this, it's probable these apps have been updated and may offer significant improvements. I tried five apps: Things, Life Balance, Chandler, ThinkingRock and OmniFocus. All the reviewed apps can run on MacOS X. I wish I could tell you I found the one app that fully fill all my needs, but it's not case.
First, why a GTD app? So many things I try or hope to accomplish in a diversity of overlapping contexts, I believe an app will help me keep track, thus not forget, the numerous next steps required to actually complete projects. A GTD app is also a mean to review ongoing and future projects and help me get the big picture of my life, personal and professional. Another expectation and intended goal is to reduce stress and frustrations.
At the moment, I use a combination of calendar events and reminders, a few flat to-do lists and inbox emails for organizing myself. To be honest, it works relatively well, but there's a lot of room for improvements. I feel I'm now ready for the next level: a dedicated GTD tool. Maybe I'll find out in the process that it doesn't help me that much after all, but I'm ready to try.
You'll find a lot of similar GTD app reviews on the Internet. It's worth reading many of them. It has been useful to me in order to identify the apps deserving review and providing clues about their general strengths and weaknesses. GTD apps require more than 10 minutes of exploration to get a good feeling of it and its ability to fulfill your needs and fit your task organization style. Screenshots and screencasts are never as revealing as actually trying the app for a few days.
I evaluated version 1.1.3 of Things.
Good:
* The user interface is great looking and mostly efficient. That really matters.
* It's really easy to use. Easy learning curve.
* Things relies on tags, which are very flexible but require some appropriate organization (example).
Bad:
* Version 1.0 of Things was release at the beginning of the year, and as much as it's great looking, in terms of features, it shows.
* There is no way to export anything from Things to html or other sharable document. This is problematic to me since I work on Debian Linux and don't have access to MacOS X at work. This might be Things' showstopper to me - you see, I really want/need to be able to share the status of my work related tasks with my supervisors and colleagues. Highly probable that this is a feature that will "soon" be added to Things, but I'm not sure I wanna wait an unknown period of time. You can print groups of tasks to pdf, but that's a fairly limited workaround.
* Search is poor to the point of being almost broken. You can't use the search to find next actions related to two tags or more. This is a real inconvenience. Selecting tags in the top bar is the workaround.
* "Saved searches": you can't save a search (e.g. a user selection of tags) and add it to your left column. Since Things relies on tags, it would make sense to have automatically updated searches in your vertical bar.
* Missing: a web client to access and manage the Things database.
* No specific reviewing capabilities or easy why to set up automated focus criteria.
iPhone Things :
It's the iPhone/iPod Touch app that I could actually try, thanks to a colleague. Since there are no contexts in Things, you need to browse your next actions by "projects" and then filter by context tags: not the most efficient.
Final take on Things:
I'd like to choose Things, just because of its UI and tags approach. But you can't export to anything yet, making it impossible to share with colleagues at work, and you must systematicaly reselect the multiple tags to browse by context and projects or anything else (all represented by tags), which is a serious shortcoming in terms of efficiency. Sure, the developers will add these features eventually, but I don't think it's wise to go down that road not knowing when and if these missing features will make it. There is a Things forum, but it's strangely "hidden" in the sense that there is no link to it from most of the Things web pages. I'll keep an eye on Things' progress.
I evaluated version 1.6.1 of OmniFocus.
Good:
* In general, offers many more features than all its competitors. This can quickly become important for many in the long run.
* The review mode. It's the only other reviewed GTD app (exception made of ThinkingRock) that specifically offers review mode capabilities. You can set next actions to be reviewed at a specific frequency, such as every week, every month or every year. Being able to review tasks every week without being distracted by long term projects that should be reviewed once every 6 months or so seems important to me.
* Tasks can be set as parallel or sequential, helping you focus on tasks you can accomplish now that don't require another task being completed first.
* Their "support Ninjas" are helpful and friendly.
Bad:
* Average user interface. Not bad, but average means there's obvious room for improvement.
* Contexts are exclusive. Despite the use of "perspectives" (which -must- be used for an efficient use of OmniFocus) to circumvent this limitation, this is annoying.
* Their implementation of "Contacts" is limiting. People are considered as contexts, and since next actions in OmniFocus can't have multiple contexts, that forces you to use perspectives, this too can be annoying.
* Missing: a web client to access and manage the OmniFocus database on the web. Hopefully, you can export subsets of your tasks to a beautiful enough html.
Final take on OmniFocus:
OmniFocus feels like a tool that has everything for me to start using it efficiently now. It meets my most of my requirements (such as exporting capabilities that provide a significant advantage over Things). It offers the most complete feature set of all GTD apps that I reviewed. OmniFocus is the tool I selected and will start using extensively.
Reading the comments in the forums informed me about what's coming in version 2, such as user-generated custom tags, so it should become even better later on but I prefer betting on a system and features I can use right away.
I quickly evaluated version 5.1 of Life Balance.
Good:
* I seriously considered Life Balance because it offers somethings the other GTD apps do not provide: a mean to help you spend more time on the things that really matter to you, not only a long list of tracked tasks. It prioritizes tasks to fit your goals, something you have to figure out without any help if you use Things or OmniFocus.
* Places, used as "contexts", are adequately designed: places can encompass multiple types of places, which is very convenient.
Bad:
* Nice colors, but overall, relatively poor user interface. Examples: (1) you can't move the events on the calendar by dragging them! (2) Entering a new task requires a lot of clicking on different tabs, moving sliders, etc., (3) search results are shown sequentially, no way to see all the results at once, etc. This is not efficient.
* No html export capabilities.
* No specific reviewing capabilities.
Final take on Life Balance:
Overall, Life Balance looks interesting, but the user interface annoys me. This, added to the fact that it does less than the other apps, has remove it of the realm of possibilities.
I evaluated version 1.0.3 of Chandler, an open source GTD app.
Good:
* Open source, meaning free as in freedom. I can install it on as many computers as I want without having to wonder about licensing.
* Multiplatform. I will be able to used it at work (Debian Linux) as well as at home (MacOS X). This is a major plus to me and a real advantage over the other reviewed GTD apps.
* Web based too, meaning I can access it from work even if I don't/can't install the Desktop app. Thw web-based version is surprisingly usable, but miss a lot of features.
* Can send emails directly from the Chandler interface.
* Chandler web can be accessed from an iPhone provided you're connected to the Internet. There's also a free iPhone app, but it seems it only allows task entry, no task browsing.
Bad:
* It's a first version and it shows. Lots of missing features.
* No projects grouping or hierarchy, no contexts, only "Collections". This makes the browsing of tasks pretty difficult with only basic sorting capabilities, no filters. This can be a showstopper to many potential users, including me.
* Average user interface. No auto-completion, must drag and drop tasks to associate them with collections. No great MacOSX integration, such as with Mail and AddressBook.
* Limited set of features in regards to tasks: no way to set a start or due date, only a single date for the calendar display and alerts.
* No specific reviewing capabilities.
My final take on Chandler:
The great thing about Chandler being open source, you can easily try it for a long period of time to find out if it suit your needs or not. If you have some coding skills, you can even help by adding the features that you really need. However, at the moment, Chandler definitely looks like the least mature of these GTD apps - try it yourself!
I also took a look at another open source GTD app, namely ThinkingRock, version 2.2.1.
Good:
* It's also multiplatform but doesn't have a web-based client.
* It's pretty loyal to the GTD methodology.
* You can log and filter next actions adequately.
Bad:
* I personally don't like much the user interface (it's Java and far from being Mac-like) and the integration with other Mac apps such as iCal or Mail is poor to inexistent.
* I admit also not liking the fact that despite being fully open source, some modules are pay-for and syncing requires a yearly membership that can quickly end up more expensive than other apps.
* There is no iPhone app (one in the works).
Final take on ThinkingRock:
Overall, the ugly interface (that's subjective) and lack of a mean to sync between work and home makes me favor Chandler as an open source GTD app. Otherwise, ThinkingRock looks pretty solid (really) and may fit your needs, take a look at it.
Ok, I took a look at more than Things, OmniFocus, Life Balance, Chandler and ThinkRock, but they were the main competitors to me. For instance, I also took a look at the donationware iGTD2, which looks promising for a free app, but its development seems rather very slow (works with tags but awkward UI and no export capabilities at the moment, which seals the deal for me). You may also want to take a look at this recent comparison of GTD software.
What's was missing to help me decide is the ability to try the iPhone/iPod Touch apps for those software. It matters because I expect I'm going to frequently deal with my "GTD database system" directly on such a mobile device.
As you read above, I'm going the Omnifocus way, but I'll be keeping an eye to Chandler and Things. Things mostly out of curiosity, and Chandler because if it really gets improved over time, I could directly use it at work on Debian Linux (OmniFocus very likely staying a Mac-only app).
But I did not discussed the price? That's right. Whether it's free or 100$ is not a big enough difference to change anything. I want the best GTD for me and I'm ready to pay for it. Too bad I ended up selecting the most expensive of them, OmniFocus being 80$ (+ 20$ for the iPhone app), but it's not that a huge investment if you consider the importance that such an app can have on your life (big picture, reducing stress, not forgetting anything, etc). As an open source enthusiast, the fact that Chandler and ThinkingRock are open source gives them a real plus to me - they're just not mature enough yet.
Hope this was useful to you. Good luck finding the best Getting Things Done app for your needs!
First, why a GTD app? So many things I try or hope to accomplish in a diversity of overlapping contexts, I believe an app will help me keep track, thus not forget, the numerous next steps required to actually complete projects. A GTD app is also a mean to review ongoing and future projects and help me get the big picture of my life, personal and professional. Another expectation and intended goal is to reduce stress and frustrations.
At the moment, I use a combination of calendar events and reminders, a few flat to-do lists and inbox emails for organizing myself. To be honest, it works relatively well, but there's a lot of room for improvements. I feel I'm now ready for the next level: a dedicated GTD tool. Maybe I'll find out in the process that it doesn't help me that much after all, but I'm ready to try.
You'll find a lot of similar GTD app reviews on the Internet. It's worth reading many of them. It has been useful to me in order to identify the apps deserving review and providing clues about their general strengths and weaknesses. GTD apps require more than 10 minutes of exploration to get a good feeling of it and its ability to fulfill your needs and fit your task organization style. Screenshots and screencasts are never as revealing as actually trying the app for a few days.
Things
I evaluated version 1.1.3 of Things.
Good:
* The user interface is great looking and mostly efficient. That really matters.
* It's really easy to use. Easy learning curve.
* Things relies on tags, which are very flexible but require some appropriate organization (example).
Bad:
* Version 1.0 of Things was release at the beginning of the year, and as much as it's great looking, in terms of features, it shows.
* There is no way to export anything from Things to html or other sharable document. This is problematic to me since I work on Debian Linux and don't have access to MacOS X at work. This might be Things' showstopper to me - you see, I really want/need to be able to share the status of my work related tasks with my supervisors and colleagues. Highly probable that this is a feature that will "soon" be added to Things, but I'm not sure I wanna wait an unknown period of time. You can print groups of tasks to pdf, but that's a fairly limited workaround.
* Search is poor to the point of being almost broken. You can't use the search to find next actions related to two tags or more. This is a real inconvenience. Selecting tags in the top bar is the workaround.
* "Saved searches": you can't save a search (e.g. a user selection of tags) and add it to your left column. Since Things relies on tags, it would make sense to have automatically updated searches in your vertical bar.
* Missing: a web client to access and manage the Things database.
* No specific reviewing capabilities or easy why to set up automated focus criteria.
iPhone Things :
It's the iPhone/iPod Touch app that I could actually try, thanks to a colleague. Since there are no contexts in Things, you need to browse your next actions by "projects" and then filter by context tags: not the most efficient.
Final take on Things:
I'd like to choose Things, just because of its UI and tags approach. But you can't export to anything yet, making it impossible to share with colleagues at work, and you must systematicaly reselect the multiple tags to browse by context and projects or anything else (all represented by tags), which is a serious shortcoming in terms of efficiency. Sure, the developers will add these features eventually, but I don't think it's wise to go down that road not knowing when and if these missing features will make it. There is a Things forum, but it's strangely "hidden" in the sense that there is no link to it from most of the Things web pages. I'll keep an eye on Things' progress.
OmniFocus
I evaluated version 1.6.1 of OmniFocus.
Good:
* In general, offers many more features than all its competitors. This can quickly become important for many in the long run.
* The review mode. It's the only other reviewed GTD app (exception made of ThinkingRock) that specifically offers review mode capabilities. You can set next actions to be reviewed at a specific frequency, such as every week, every month or every year. Being able to review tasks every week without being distracted by long term projects that should be reviewed once every 6 months or so seems important to me.
* Tasks can be set as parallel or sequential, helping you focus on tasks you can accomplish now that don't require another task being completed first.
* Their "support Ninjas" are helpful and friendly.
Bad:
* Average user interface. Not bad, but average means there's obvious room for improvement.
* Contexts are exclusive. Despite the use of "perspectives" (which -must- be used for an efficient use of OmniFocus) to circumvent this limitation, this is annoying.
* Their implementation of "Contacts" is limiting. People are considered as contexts, and since next actions in OmniFocus can't have multiple contexts, that forces you to use perspectives, this too can be annoying.
* Missing: a web client to access and manage the OmniFocus database on the web. Hopefully, you can export subsets of your tasks to a beautiful enough html.
Final take on OmniFocus:
OmniFocus feels like a tool that has everything for me to start using it efficiently now. It meets my most of my requirements (such as exporting capabilities that provide a significant advantage over Things). It offers the most complete feature set of all GTD apps that I reviewed. OmniFocus is the tool I selected and will start using extensively.
Reading the comments in the forums informed me about what's coming in version 2, such as user-generated custom tags, so it should become even better later on but I prefer betting on a system and features I can use right away.
Life Balance
I quickly evaluated version 5.1 of Life Balance.
Good:
* I seriously considered Life Balance because it offers somethings the other GTD apps do not provide: a mean to help you spend more time on the things that really matter to you, not only a long list of tracked tasks. It prioritizes tasks to fit your goals, something you have to figure out without any help if you use Things or OmniFocus.
* Places, used as "contexts", are adequately designed: places can encompass multiple types of places, which is very convenient.
Bad:
* Nice colors, but overall, relatively poor user interface. Examples: (1) you can't move the events on the calendar by dragging them! (2) Entering a new task requires a lot of clicking on different tabs, moving sliders, etc., (3) search results are shown sequentially, no way to see all the results at once, etc. This is not efficient.
* No html export capabilities.
* No specific reviewing capabilities.
Final take on Life Balance:
Overall, Life Balance looks interesting, but the user interface annoys me. This, added to the fact that it does less than the other apps, has remove it of the realm of possibilities.
Chandler
I evaluated version 1.0.3 of Chandler, an open source GTD app.
Good:
* Open source, meaning free as in freedom. I can install it on as many computers as I want without having to wonder about licensing.
* Multiplatform. I will be able to used it at work (Debian Linux) as well as at home (MacOS X). This is a major plus to me and a real advantage over the other reviewed GTD apps.
* Web based too, meaning I can access it from work even if I don't/can't install the Desktop app. Thw web-based version is surprisingly usable, but miss a lot of features.
* Can send emails directly from the Chandler interface.
* Chandler web can be accessed from an iPhone provided you're connected to the Internet. There's also a free iPhone app, but it seems it only allows task entry, no task browsing.
Bad:
* It's a first version and it shows. Lots of missing features.
* No projects grouping or hierarchy, no contexts, only "Collections". This makes the browsing of tasks pretty difficult with only basic sorting capabilities, no filters. This can be a showstopper to many potential users, including me.
* Average user interface. No auto-completion, must drag and drop tasks to associate them with collections. No great MacOSX integration, such as with Mail and AddressBook.
* Limited set of features in regards to tasks: no way to set a start or due date, only a single date for the calendar display and alerts.
* No specific reviewing capabilities.
My final take on Chandler:
The great thing about Chandler being open source, you can easily try it for a long period of time to find out if it suit your needs or not. If you have some coding skills, you can even help by adding the features that you really need. However, at the moment, Chandler definitely looks like the least mature of these GTD apps - try it yourself!
ThinkingRock
I also took a look at another open source GTD app, namely ThinkingRock, version 2.2.1.
Good:
* It's also multiplatform but doesn't have a web-based client.
* It's pretty loyal to the GTD methodology.
* You can log and filter next actions adequately.
Bad:
* I personally don't like much the user interface (it's Java and far from being Mac-like) and the integration with other Mac apps such as iCal or Mail is poor to inexistent.
* I admit also not liking the fact that despite being fully open source, some modules are pay-for and syncing requires a yearly membership that can quickly end up more expensive than other apps.
* There is no iPhone app (one in the works).
Final take on ThinkingRock:
Overall, the ugly interface (that's subjective) and lack of a mean to sync between work and home makes me favor Chandler as an open source GTD app. Otherwise, ThinkingRock looks pretty solid (really) and may fit your needs, take a look at it.
Concluding remarks
Ok, I took a look at more than Things, OmniFocus, Life Balance, Chandler and ThinkRock, but they were the main competitors to me. For instance, I also took a look at the donationware iGTD2, which looks promising for a free app, but its development seems rather very slow (works with tags but awkward UI and no export capabilities at the moment, which seals the deal for me). You may also want to take a look at this recent comparison of GTD software.
What's was missing to help me decide is the ability to try the iPhone/iPod Touch apps for those software. It matters because I expect I'm going to frequently deal with my "GTD database system" directly on such a mobile device.
As you read above, I'm going the Omnifocus way, but I'll be keeping an eye to Chandler and Things. Things mostly out of curiosity, and Chandler because if it really gets improved over time, I could directly use it at work on Debian Linux (OmniFocus very likely staying a Mac-only app).
But I did not discussed the price? That's right. Whether it's free or 100$ is not a big enough difference to change anything. I want the best GTD for me and I'm ready to pay for it. Too bad I ended up selecting the most expensive of them, OmniFocus being 80$ (+ 20$ for the iPhone app), but it's not that a huge investment if you consider the importance that such an app can have on your life (big picture, reducing stress, not forgetting anything, etc). As an open source enthusiast, the fact that Chandler and ThinkingRock are open source gives them a real plus to me - they're just not mature enough yet.
Hope this was useful to you. Good luck finding the best Getting Things Done app for your needs!
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Lecture de Competing on Analytics
*Copie d'un courriel interne*
Ma dernière lecture d'autobus au cours des dernières semaines fut "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning" de Thomas H. Davenport et Jeanne G. Harris.
Au lieu de vous offrir un sommaire, je désire seulement mentionner à quel point ce livre m'est apparu pertinent en général, et ce, même pour le genre de travail que nous accomplissons au CMC. L'idée centrale : utiliser à son maximum l'information disponible afin de prendre les meilleures décisions. Ceci s'applique à un paquet de contextes, par exemple la génération de produits pour des partenaires et clients, ça peut même aller jusqu'à servir pour l'optimisation des ressources humaines d'une organisation.
La description d'Amazon :
"You have more information at hand about your business environment than ever before. But are you using it to "out-think" your rivals? If not, you may be missing out on a potent competitive tool. In "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning" , Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris argue that the frontier for using data to make decisions has shifted dramatically. Certain high-performing enterprises are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that in turn generate impressive business results. Their secret weapon: Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling. Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples - from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay's, Capital One, Harrah's, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia, and the Boston Red Sox - illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics."
Ma dernière lecture d'autobus au cours des dernières semaines fut "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning" de Thomas H. Davenport et Jeanne G. Harris.
Au lieu de vous offrir un sommaire, je désire seulement mentionner à quel point ce livre m'est apparu pertinent en général, et ce, même pour le genre de travail que nous accomplissons au CMC. L'idée centrale : utiliser à son maximum l'information disponible afin de prendre les meilleures décisions. Ceci s'applique à un paquet de contextes, par exemple la génération de produits pour des partenaires et clients, ça peut même aller jusqu'à servir pour l'optimisation des ressources humaines d'une organisation.
La description d'Amazon :
"You have more information at hand about your business environment than ever before. But are you using it to "out-think" your rivals? If not, you may be missing out on a potent competitive tool. In "Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning" , Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris argue that the frontier for using data to make decisions has shifted dramatically. Certain high-performing enterprises are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that in turn generate impressive business results. Their secret weapon: Analytics: sophisticated quantitative and statistical analysis and predictive modeling. Exemplars of analytics are using new tools to identify their most profitable customers and offer them the right price, to accelerate product innovation, to optimize supply chains, and to identify the true drivers of financial performance. A wealth of examples - from organizations as diverse as Amazon, Barclay's, Capital One, Harrah's, Procter & Gamble, Wachovia, and the Boston Red Sox - illuminate how to leverage the power of analytics."
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Home 2009 et Climate Wars
Courte note pour vous inviter à voir le film "Home 2009" de Yann Arthus-Bertrand, l'auteur de 'La Terre vue du ciel'. Sans contredit un film visuellement superbe. Il est disponible gratuitement sur YouTube jusqu'au 14 juin, donc dimanche prochain, même en HD. Les thèmes '"environnement et changements climatiques" y sont très présents.
http://www.home-2009.com/fr/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/homeprojectFR
Dans la même veine, et sans doute encore plus proche de ce que nous faisons au CMC, j'ai visionné le documentaire en trois volets "The Climate Wars" de la BBC. Il s'agit d'un documentaire très intéressant sur l'histoire de la recherche sur les changements climatiques au cours des 50 dernières années. Une bonne partie du documentaire de 3 heures est consacrée aux guerres d'arguments et de vision entre chercheurs, compagnies et politiciens. Les trois épisodes ne semblent plus disponibles directement sur le site (ils étaient disponibles gratuitement il n'y a pas si longtemps).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00djvq9
Pour terminer, on m'a également recommandé le documentaire audio lui aussi nommé "The Climate Wars", mais de la CBC cette fois ci. L'exposé serait davantage centré sur le futur des changements climatiques au lieu de son historique. Ne l'ayant pas encore écouté, je ne puis me prononcer moi-même sur l'intérêt de celui-ci.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/climate-wars/index.html
http://www.home-2009.com/fr/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/homeprojectFR
Dans la même veine, et sans doute encore plus proche de ce que nous faisons au CMC, j'ai visionné le documentaire en trois volets "The Climate Wars" de la BBC. Il s'agit d'un documentaire très intéressant sur l'histoire de la recherche sur les changements climatiques au cours des 50 dernières années. Une bonne partie du documentaire de 3 heures est consacrée aux guerres d'arguments et de vision entre chercheurs, compagnies et politiciens. Les trois épisodes ne semblent plus disponibles directement sur le site (ils étaient disponibles gratuitement il n'y a pas si longtemps).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00djvq9
Pour terminer, on m'a également recommandé le documentaire audio lui aussi nommé "The Climate Wars", mais de la CBC cette fois ci. L'exposé serait davantage centré sur le futur des changements climatiques au lieu de son historique. Ne l'ayant pas encore écouté, je ne puis me prononcer moi-même sur l'intérêt de celui-ci.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/climate-wars/index.html
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
My encounter with Richard M. Stallman
Here's some personal notes from the seminar given by Richard M. Stallman that I had the chance to attend with a few colleagues. I stripped from the notes large parts that are work-related.
Richard M. Stallman, an internationally influential figure in software development since the early 80's, gave a seminar on free software for Canadian federal workers. M. Stallman presented his views on free and open source software in general, discussing free software ethics, development and use for all components of the society, including at the governmental and educational levels. [...]
Free software is more than a different business model, is has ethical aspects.
You can't know what's in proprietary software, it limits your freedom indefinitely.
The fact that free software is gratis should be considered as a bonus, what matters is the freedom that free software procures.
M. Stallman doesn't like the term 'open source' because, in contrast to 'free software', it removes the issue of freedom. Additionally, software that has its source code open doesn't mean it is free in regards to licensing.
Exclusively Free software should be used by governments, for reasons including:
M. Stallman prefers refering to Linux as GNU/Linux, because it correctly refers to Linux's historical source and philosophy.
Anyone can still make money from offering support for free software, training and related activities.
The LGPL license is a compromise, allowing free software to be directly connected with proprietary software (such as drivers and libraries), in order to encourage proprietary software developers to provide solutions compatible with free software.
In education, schools and universities should use free software in order to allow the understanding of the underlying code. For Stallman, proprietary software is the "enemy of the spirit of education". Proprietary software frequently donate software to educational organizations and should be considered as a first gratis dose of an addictive drug.
Free software is also about morale and ethics: it encourages transparency, sharing and communities.
Documentation should be free too, thus the Gnu Free Documentation License for 'functional works', i.e documentation required to do a job.
Free software enhance innovation by allowing everybody to use the best means to attain a goal, whereas proprietary software stifles innovation and competition by using copyrights to stop and block advances by other organizations.
M. Stallman don't like the term 'intellectual property', claiming it's an over generalization and confusing. Most of the time, 'legal issues' should be used instead.
By default, copyright laws denies rights to citizens, copyright holders must be proactive to free it.
"Non-free software don't contribute to humanity"
Stallman mentioned the improvements of the GPL v3, including Tivoization, the Creative Commons licenses, DRM and much more.
Executive Summary (parts)
Richard M. Stallman, an internationally influential figure in software development since the early 80's, gave a seminar on free software for Canadian federal workers. M. Stallman presented his views on free and open source software in general, discussing free software ethics, development and use for all components of the society, including at the governmental and educational levels. [...]
What is Free Software?
Please refer to the full Wikipedia article. Basically, the software you have a copy is free if it grants you the following four freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
- The freedom to study and modify the program.
- The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Views shared by M. Stallman
- Sovereignty, control and independence instead of being dependent on companies.
- Return on investment: the government gets its money from the citizens, it's only normal to give back the work done to the citizens.
- Security: free software allows you to know what the code does to you.
- Liability: people liable for lines of code can be identified with free software.
- Copyrights should expire after 10 years.
- Remixing content should not be systematically considered an infringement.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
'Gettings Things Done' by David Allen
I heard of it a few years ago but wasn't planning to read that book, until it somehow ended up in my hands and after reading its subtitle, "The Art of Stress-Free Productivity", was ready to give it a try. After reading Dalkir's Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice and Jones' Keeping Found Things Found, I guess I was ripe to get more things done!
For over a decade I've been trying to fine tune my way of actually accomplishing projects. Even if I don't think I'm bad at it, I know there's a lot of room left for improvements and that stress is a serious recurrent issue to me (added to the fact that I'm a father now meaning there's even less time available for personal projects). Obviously, no book you read can directly change your life unless you do something about it yourself and keep doing it. On the other hand, reading Getting Things Done can hardly do much harm, at worst, it will make you think about how you deal with your life: time, hopes, projects, priorities.
From page 18:
Later in the book, M. Allen reminds us that we don't do projects, we can only do action steps related to them.
The main sections of the book explain in detail the GTD methodology to go from the ideas to their realizations. It may be a little technical and one needs to adapt the proposed methodology to his liking, that said, there's still a lot of interesting bits to make these sections worthed. I wasn't rebutted, like I've been in other books, by Allen's discussion of how technology can contribute to our personal organization schemes - sophisticated and complex tools does not necessarily mean improved efficiency, often, it's the contrary.
The book, despite focusing on getting you organized from A to Z to get things done, also provides a pertinent discussion on the vertical integration of our goals and objectives in life - from actual ground-level activities to your contributions to the Grand Scheme of Things. Life is a journey, not a destination, and it's important to be able to see both the tree and the forest at the same time. The book can help you achieve this too.
Allen ends the book with the power of three key principles: (1) the collection habit, making sure we don't forget anything dear to us and that our mind stays free of disturbances, allowing us to fully focus on the present task, (2) identifying next-actions, in order to do small steps towards to completion of anything, we must clearly identify what's the next practical and physical action that must be accomplished, and (3), outcome focusing, making sure you don't forget the big picture and the smaller pictures of your personal and professional life.
Here's the Getting Things Done book at Amazon and the informative entry on Wikipedia, where you'll learn a lot more on the actual GTD methodology and associated principles than in my enthusiasm-sharing pseudo-review! This is a book I recommend for everyone. I haven't yet fully implemented my personal version of what the book proposes, but undoubtedly, it has already positively changed my attitude and way of doing things.
For over a decade I've been trying to fine tune my way of actually accomplishing projects. Even if I don't think I'm bad at it, I know there's a lot of room left for improvements and that stress is a serious recurrent issue to me (added to the fact that I'm a father now meaning there's even less time available for personal projects). Obviously, no book you read can directly change your life unless you do something about it yourself and keep doing it. On the other hand, reading Getting Things Done can hardly do much harm, at worst, it will make you think about how you deal with your life: time, hopes, projects, priorities.
From page 18:
"Before you can achieve any of that, though, you'll need to get in the habit of keeping nothing on your mind. And the way to do that, as we've seen, is not by managing time, managing information, or managing priorities. After:
* you don't manage five minutes and wind up with six;
* you don't manage information overload - otherwise you'd walk into a library and die, or the first time you connected to the Web, or even opened a phone book, you'd blow up, and;
* you don't manage priorities - you have them.
Instead, the key to managing all of your "stuff" is managing your actions."
Later in the book, M. Allen reminds us that we don't do projects, we can only do action steps related to them.
The main sections of the book explain in detail the GTD methodology to go from the ideas to their realizations. It may be a little technical and one needs to adapt the proposed methodology to his liking, that said, there's still a lot of interesting bits to make these sections worthed. I wasn't rebutted, like I've been in other books, by Allen's discussion of how technology can contribute to our personal organization schemes - sophisticated and complex tools does not necessarily mean improved efficiency, often, it's the contrary.
The book, despite focusing on getting you organized from A to Z to get things done, also provides a pertinent discussion on the vertical integration of our goals and objectives in life - from actual ground-level activities to your contributions to the Grand Scheme of Things. Life is a journey, not a destination, and it's important to be able to see both the tree and the forest at the same time. The book can help you achieve this too.
Allen ends the book with the power of three key principles: (1) the collection habit, making sure we don't forget anything dear to us and that our mind stays free of disturbances, allowing us to fully focus on the present task, (2) identifying next-actions, in order to do small steps towards to completion of anything, we must clearly identify what's the next practical and physical action that must be accomplished, and (3), outcome focusing, making sure you don't forget the big picture and the smaller pictures of your personal and professional life.
Here's the Getting Things Done book at Amazon and the informative entry on Wikipedia, where you'll learn a lot more on the actual GTD methodology and associated principles than in my enthusiasm-sharing pseudo-review! This is a book I recommend for everyone. I haven't yet fully implemented my personal version of what the book proposes, but undoubtedly, it has already positively changed my attitude and way of doing things.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Champs électromagnétiques : entre désinformation et danger
[en cette journée de congé, j'ai finalement pris le temps de compléter ce post rédigé il y a plus de 2 mois !]
Nouvellement abonné à Protégez-Vous, j'aimerais réagir suite à ma lecture de l'article de 9 pages sur les dangers potentiels des champs électromagnétiques présents dans notre quotidien. Il ne s'agit pas d'une étude complète et en fait, l'article ne semble malheureusement pas très solide (voir ci-après), mais on y apprend un paquet de choses intéressantes et peut-être même inquiétantes ! Quelle est l'une des plus grandes sources de champ électromagnétique pour notre corps dans notre quotidien ? Selon l'article : les lampes de chevet... même fermées ! Et le téléphone sans-fil de la maison, c'est logique et avantageux de le remplacer par un téléphone avec fil ? En fait, on apprend que c'est pas si simple, eux aussi dépassent les limites ! (la recommandation de l'article est de simplement limiter la longueur des appels téléphoniques) Sans grande surprise, parmi les premiers au banc des accusés se retrouvent les fours à micro-ondes. Au moins partiellement rassurant : leur brève étude n'a trouvé aucun endroit excédant les normes établies, celles-ci peut-être insuffisamment sévères pour préserver la santé publique.
Est-ce que Protégez-Vous serait en train d'être inutilement alarmiste et de participer à de la désinformation ? Peut-être. L'article du Protégez-Vous ne justifie pas bien les seuils qu'il utilise. Le seuil de précaution de l'article est 250 fois moins fort que la force du champ magnétique terrestre naturel ! (d'autres facteurs que la puissance entrent en compte, mais ce n'est pas du tout évoqué dans l'article) Les seuils sont basés sur les seules recommandations du BioInitiative Working Group (et je ne suis certainement pas l'expert qui pourra correctement juger de la validité et justesse de leur rapport de 610 pages), or, en cherchant à m'informer sur la valeur et la fiabilité de ce groupe, je n'ai rien trouvé de convaincant, plutôt le contraire ! Dommage, l'article m'apparaît conséquemment discrédité car s'appuyant sur des bases bien peu solides... Ayant été abonné de nombreuses années au magazine QuébecScience, j'ai été habitué à davantage de détail et de rigueur. À en lire les commentaires en réaction des auditeurs de Radio-Canada au sujet de cet article, je ne suis pas le seul à réagir négativement à cet article du Protégez-Vous.
Jusqu'à temps que l'on me montre des études plus sérieuses que celle-là, je vais donc continuer à mettre le dossier du danger des champs électromagnétiques dans la catégorie "controversé". Cela dit, mieux vaut adopter le principe de précaution et admettre notre ignorance ! Vous avez des informations complémentaires fiables ? Je suis à l'écoute !
Ce que je trouve encore une fois embêtant, c'est la difficulté de faire du sens de toutes les informations contradictoires qui nous sont disponibles. Je suis porté à croire que Protégez-Vous constitue une source fiable, mais clairement mes lectures des dernières heures font en sorte que je serai plus prudent lors de mes prochaines lectures d'articles de leur magazine... Ceci n'empêche pas que plusieurs autres de leurs dossiers demeurent très intéressants et pertinents tout en semblant moins subjectifs ou avoir de partis pris que celui-là.
La principale conséquence d'une désinformation efficace, c'est qu'on ne sait plus qui croire et qui dit vrai. Parmi la grande diversité de chercheurs scientifiques, devons-nous préférer croire les petits groupes de scientifiques marginaux qui ont parfois raison ou les groupes de chercheurs potentiellement mal influencés ? La réalité n'est sans doute pas si noire ou blanche, mais plutôt multicolore !
Nouvellement abonné à Protégez-Vous, j'aimerais réagir suite à ma lecture de l'article de 9 pages sur les dangers potentiels des champs électromagnétiques présents dans notre quotidien. Il ne s'agit pas d'une étude complète et en fait, l'article ne semble malheureusement pas très solide (voir ci-après), mais on y apprend un paquet de choses intéressantes et peut-être même inquiétantes ! Quelle est l'une des plus grandes sources de champ électromagnétique pour notre corps dans notre quotidien ? Selon l'article : les lampes de chevet... même fermées ! Et le téléphone sans-fil de la maison, c'est logique et avantageux de le remplacer par un téléphone avec fil ? En fait, on apprend que c'est pas si simple, eux aussi dépassent les limites ! (la recommandation de l'article est de simplement limiter la longueur des appels téléphoniques) Sans grande surprise, parmi les premiers au banc des accusés se retrouvent les fours à micro-ondes. Au moins partiellement rassurant : leur brève étude n'a trouvé aucun endroit excédant les normes établies, celles-ci peut-être insuffisamment sévères pour préserver la santé publique.
Est-ce que Protégez-Vous serait en train d'être inutilement alarmiste et de participer à de la désinformation ? Peut-être. L'article du Protégez-Vous ne justifie pas bien les seuils qu'il utilise. Le seuil de précaution de l'article est 250 fois moins fort que la force du champ magnétique terrestre naturel ! (d'autres facteurs que la puissance entrent en compte, mais ce n'est pas du tout évoqué dans l'article) Les seuils sont basés sur les seules recommandations du BioInitiative Working Group (et je ne suis certainement pas l'expert qui pourra correctement juger de la validité et justesse de leur rapport de 610 pages), or, en cherchant à m'informer sur la valeur et la fiabilité de ce groupe, je n'ai rien trouvé de convaincant, plutôt le contraire ! Dommage, l'article m'apparaît conséquemment discrédité car s'appuyant sur des bases bien peu solides... Ayant été abonné de nombreuses années au magazine QuébecScience, j'ai été habitué à davantage de détail et de rigueur. À en lire les commentaires en réaction des auditeurs de Radio-Canada au sujet de cet article, je ne suis pas le seul à réagir négativement à cet article du Protégez-Vous.
Jusqu'à temps que l'on me montre des études plus sérieuses que celle-là, je vais donc continuer à mettre le dossier du danger des champs électromagnétiques dans la catégorie "controversé". Cela dit, mieux vaut adopter le principe de précaution et admettre notre ignorance ! Vous avez des informations complémentaires fiables ? Je suis à l'écoute !Ce que je trouve encore une fois embêtant, c'est la difficulté de faire du sens de toutes les informations contradictoires qui nous sont disponibles. Je suis porté à croire que Protégez-Vous constitue une source fiable, mais clairement mes lectures des dernières heures font en sorte que je serai plus prudent lors de mes prochaines lectures d'articles de leur magazine... Ceci n'empêche pas que plusieurs autres de leurs dossiers demeurent très intéressants et pertinents tout en semblant moins subjectifs ou avoir de partis pris que celui-là.
La principale conséquence d'une désinformation efficace, c'est qu'on ne sait plus qui croire et qui dit vrai. Parmi la grande diversité de chercheurs scientifiques, devons-nous préférer croire les petits groupes de scientifiques marginaux qui ont parfois raison ou les groupes de chercheurs potentiellement mal influencés ? La réalité n'est sans doute pas si noire ou blanche, mais plutôt multicolore !
Web Trend Map 4
This is pretty informative current 'map of the web'. As a bonus: it's a nice map too! :-) Here's the source.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Now on Twitter!
Ok... trying the beast. I already spend way too much time in front of the computer, so I don't guarantee you'll see me often there, but if you somehow care, there I go... username slashgeo.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
An Inconvenient Truth
Saw it just recently on a plane to Phoenix. Nicer documentary than I thought. Great content and beautiful container. Convincing. Not that I needed to be convinced at all, but convincing and positively calling for immediate actions. I encourage everyone to see it. Really. Like in really see it and don't procrastinate again. Here's the 'An Inconvenient Truth' Wikipedia entry and here's the official website.
One thing I don't get though is why they don't provide the documentary online for free. The issue is larger and more important than the money they could make out of selling DVDs. I guess they have their hands tied by [insert any reason] but that's no good reason. That said - see it. It's well worth.
One thing I don't get though is why they don't provide the documentary online for free. The issue is larger and more important than the money they could make out of selling DVDs. I guess they have their hands tied by [insert any reason] but that's no good reason. That said - see it. It's well worth.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Science and Politics
At work today there was a presentation and discussion about climate change, economics and politics. I can't resist sharing this winning cartoon:
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Jean-Jacques Millet, artiste peintre
Petite note à propos du site web d'un ami de la famille de Caroline, le peintre Jean-Jacques Millet. C'est une site minimal, mais qui présente quand même quelques exemples de ses très nombreuses peintures. J'ai beaucoup plusieurs de ses oeuvres. J'imagine que le contenu du site sera bonifié avec le temps...
The Vaccine Book
My wife and I had our first baby a little over a year ago. Trying to be responsible parents, we decided not to follow the flock and read about vaccines before jumping in the suggested vaccines schedule offered. We then read a lot of books. A lot, really, from different sources and of different stance. And most were unsatisfactory to me, being clearly pro or anti vaccines, not providing a balanced and neutral analysis of the topic, or not reducing the confusion that surrounds information about vaccination.
But, the last book I read on vaccines was a book I can confidently recommend. Written by a pediatrician, it is surprisingly balanced and pretty informative. For every vaccine, its history, the commonness and its seriousness are discussed, the content of the shot, the potential side-effects, etc. Whether you choose to vaccine totally, partially or not at all your child, Dr. Sears' The Vaccine Book is a great ressource. Vaccination may be a delicate topic, it has been for us, and it's important to know what's at stake, where lies the uncertainties of science, what are the pros and the cons for the child, the parents and society. Some vaccines are clearly not imperatives nowadays, others may be worth considering the risks of the associated disease. For some vaccines, it's possible to wait until the child is a teenager and at that time verify if a natural immunization (better) has been developed, otherwise, go on with vaccination at that moment. Well, many possibilities, and to learn what's best and responsible to do, this book has helped me a great deal.
But, the last book I read on vaccines was a book I can confidently recommend. Written by a pediatrician, it is surprisingly balanced and pretty informative. For every vaccine, its history, the commonness and its seriousness are discussed, the content of the shot, the potential side-effects, etc. Whether you choose to vaccine totally, partially or not at all your child, Dr. Sears' The Vaccine Book is a great ressource. Vaccination may be a delicate topic, it has been for us, and it's important to know what's at stake, where lies the uncertainties of science, what are the pros and the cons for the child, the parents and society. Some vaccines are clearly not imperatives nowadays, others may be worth considering the risks of the associated disease. For some vaccines, it's possible to wait until the child is a teenager and at that time verify if a natural immunization (better) has been developed, otherwise, go on with vaccination at that moment. Well, many possibilities, and to learn what's best and responsible to do, this book has helped me a great deal.
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