I have to quite liking the new Microsoft Office Ribbon interface. Sometime I might write a longer post on why I think it;s an improvement. In the short-term though, here’s something I just discovered.
If you move the mouse cursor up into the ribbon you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse to move through the menus.
Enjoy.
This year I’ve had some fun writing about the tools that I use. At the beginning of the series someone asked me to include regular summaries which I have only been moderately good at. So here is the summary for the end of 2008 because I’m not sure I’m going to write anymore before its 2009.
(Good, I’ve now got a list of topics not to cover next year. It’s amazing how quickly you forget what you’ve written.)
Interesting questions, interesting responses:
It’s interesting what our response to some questions are.
Your first reaction to these questions and your considered response might be significantly different. The problem with estimating the value is that we use very strange (complex) logic.
I spend a lot of time helping people to change there business by bringing extra value to the way that they do things. These changes normally involve IT, because that’s my area of expertise, but not always. Understanding and agreeing what the value of any particular activity is can be quite a stressful exercise, particularly when it comes to the decision to spend money.
The values that people place on things has always fascinated and frustrated me. Surprisingly few decisions are based cold hard economics. The value is often much more subjective, or so it appears to me. Perhaps I’m just not seeing the complicated value judgement that they are making. Perhaps my value judgement is missing important elements.
I don’t have any answers here, I’m just making an observation, but I’m not the only one that sees the paradox. Dan Gilbert does a much better job of explaining than I do.
If you ever want to extend your thinking TED is a really good place to start.
This is my second, and last Top 10 for a little while, I promise.
I had a few minutes so thought I would put this together:
My Tools: Mindjet MindManager Pro – clearly a very interesting tool for people. Personally, I’m seeing mind-maps all over the place.
Lotus Notes Tabs – My Usability Problem – I’ve since had a template update and it’s a lot better
"Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy" – this one gets a lot of attention, people are clearly starting to become concerned about it as an issue
My Tools: Twitter & Twhirl – twitter had to get in the top 10 somewhere
The Cost and the Value of Virtual Meetings – I’m starting to evolve my thinking on this, we need to think more holistically about the end-user experience of collaboration.
My Tools: BlackBerry 8800 – mobile technology is getting hotter and hotter.
I need a new bag – and still do. Other things have taken priority on the Chastney family finances.
More iTunes bloat – I think that they started to listen in 2008, but it’s still not great.
The Power of the List – a list with a reference to lists.
iTunes Update – Interesting Selection of Font – it looks like I wrote a lot about iTunes, I didn’t really.
I don’t blog enough! Do you? – yes I know that this is number 11, but it has the same number of visits as number 10.
This isn’t my all-time list, just my Top 10 for the 2008 posts.
I thought I might try a random Top 10 today. Top 10 lists are not normally my stile, but lets give it a go anyway.
There are just times when I would like people to know things without me telling them, so I thought I would tell everyone, so now everyone should know. In no particular order then:
The latest version of Symantec Norton Anti-Virus comes in a Gamer Edition.
Yes that’s right an edition designed specifically for gamers?!?!
Is this just clever marketing or are there some technology differences here?
Norton AntiVirus Gamer Edition
So what makes it a Gamer Edition:
Gamer Mode
- No alerts + no notifications = no interruptions
- Optional settings to temporarily suspend updates, behavioural scanning and intrusion prevention
- Enabled automatically when your PC is in full screen mode
- Activate manually with a quick click on the Norton system tray icon
Lightning Fast*
- Rapid Pulse Updates every 5 to 15 minutes
- Installs in less than a minute
- Adds less than 1 second to boot time
Light as a Feather*
- Uses less than 6MB memory even without the Gamer Mode performance boost
- Needs less than 50MB hard disk space on installation
- Runs only 2 processes at a time
- Performance graphs display CPU and memory usage and how little Norton is using
Respects your needs
- Smart Scheduler holds resource intensive actions for when you are not using your PC
- Resource usage table shows you the what, when and how long for background actions taken by Norton AntiVirus
- Delivers consistently strong protection – that’s why Norton AntiVirus has won more consecutive Virus Bulletin 100 awards than any other AV software
So what is it that makes Gamers special why wouldn’t everyone want these capabilities? I’ve been of the opinion for some time that, in many ways, antivirus software is a medicine that is worse than the illness it’s trying to cure. And I’m not the only one to think so:
“It can be awful to have your Windows computer infected with malicious software, but it is almost as bad suffering the daily burdens imposed by the security software designed to protect you.
Too often, security programs significantly slow down the computer, causing lags in booting up the machine, launching programs and receiving email. Not only that, they can be incredibly annoying, popping up frequent messages or asking questions in techie lingo.”
The problems that are being resolved here are exactly the complaints that I hear from my corporate customers. People only have antivirus software because they have to, it’s not something they really want so every time they see it it’s a problem. If it gives them a pop-up it’s a problem. If it slows their machine down it’s a problem. If it takes longer for their machine to start it’s a problem.
But again, it’s another human psychology problem. I don’t what interruptions, but the interruptions do actually tell me something.
The video is fun though.
There are times when the English language is one of the most frustrating things in my life – they tend to be the times when I am thinking about spellings with a dyslexic son. At other times I love the ever changes nature of the lexicon that we use.
The Post Office (of all people) has just released a report titled: Are you 404 when it comes to tech chat?
I’m not normally a huge fan of these things because they age so quickly, once its been published it’s already out of date. This one seems to be reasonable though, it’s interesting because it picks up on localised abbreviations too, the ones in the report relate to the London Oyster Card.
I’ve spent all of my working life in the IT language sub-culture, it’s interesting to see how this language is leaking into day-to-day common language.
This came to my attention recently as an example of what I mean, it uses a whole set of words and phrases that 10 years ago none of us had heard of, or if we had they probably had a different meaning. Today we understand all of the meanings:
For me it’s a great example of user innovation – people who use the language innovate it all of the time. The need for people to innovate is very strong, something those of us in IT do well to remember.
Over and out to all of you Code 18’s 
One of my tasks at the moment is to plan a significant change to a customer “desktop” infrastructure. A significant portion of this change will be looking at application management and delivery.
The technology is now available for us to make all sorts of changes without the end-user even knowing – we can be seamless. Technically, that’s what we can achieve now.
We have a worry though, what will the human impact of this be?
People are used to being disrupted by an application change, they complain about it all of the time, and rightly so. What we are discovering, though, is that the disruption actually gives them some value, and we are not sure how much of it to reproduce.
People feel attached to their personal device, even though it’s clearly a corporate asset they still feel that it’s theirs. The primary value in the interruption is communication – they know that the application has been updated. They don’t have a say in whether updates occur, but at least they know that something has happened to their device. Seamless changes mean that they don’t know and arguably that there is, therefore, nothing to worry about, but my concern is that seamless upgrades without communication start to breed a sense of mistrust – “something has changed and I don’t know what”, or “they keep changing things and I haven’t a clue what they’ve done this time”.
The other thing that the interruption does is warn the end-user to look out for things that might not be correct. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Sometimes they see problems in a change that weren’t caused by the change, but regularly they notice issues with the change that weren’t revealed in testing.
Interruptions also tell the end-user to look out for the new features that they have been looking for.
This is one of the situations where the technology is easy, but the customer experience is more difficult to judge. Any wisdom for me anyone?
How inquisitive are you?
Today’s quote to think about: “If you tell the average man there are 278,805,732,168 stars in the universe, he will believe you. But if a sign says Wet Paint he has to make a personnel investigation.”
I used to work in a restaurant and the same thing applied, if you told people the plates were hot, they would always have to touch them just to find out.
But how often are we completely the other way around? How many times do we take something as fact just because the person telling us spoke with authority? I have played a game a few times where I have embellished a truth and told it to a few people as fact. I’ve then sat back and waited to see how long it would take for the embellishment to come back to me. It normally only take a few days.
I’ve been in many problem solving situations where we would have fixed things a lot earlier if we hadn’t taken as fact the things that people told us.
I’m a techie I don’t mind admitting it – actually I’m quite proud of it. I can do things with technology that others marvel at.
I was recently in a meeting when someone who didn’t know I was in the room made the statement “well it must be a technical discussion you are wanting to have if you’ve invited Graham along”. There was a little bit of embarrassment when it was pointed out who the person sitting opposite them was. This person doesn’t know me so they were making a judgement on the basis of my role, but the role clearly said to them techie and the inference was not business.
There have been other situations myself and others have been in which highlight the same issue. Someone I speak to quite regularly was saying recently that one of the comments made to them in a recent interview was that they were “too techie”. Again the inference was not business.
The job that I do today requires a good deal of technical ability, but its primary purpose isn’t a technology leadership one, it’s a business understanding one. The premise of my role is that the gulf between business people and techie people is so great that they require an interpreter. In other words techies don’t speak the same language as business people.
Because my background is primarily a techie one I tend to be treated with a warm welcome by the technologists, but treated with a certain amount of suspicion by the business people.
It’s almost like some people think there is a one dimensional sliding scale with highly technical on one side and high business on the other. As a techie am I really incapable of thinking as a business person? Perhaps this goes all the way back to school where people were encouraged into the arts bucket or the sciences bucket.
Are these just age old prejudices with a new dimension? Or, do these definitions reveal some real issues? I’m not sure. What I do know, though, is that the need for edge people, or multi-dimensional people is growing all of the time, the innovators, the people who work beyond the process.
One of the reasons I’ve been thinking about the brain so much was the realisation that it will be the people who have a strong right-side of the brain who will be the most valuable ones in the coming economy.
Right-brained people are strongly creative, something that transcends arts, sciences, technical or even business. I think that is will be this characteristic that will become dominant, not the field in which you choose to exercise your creativity; Einstein was creative, Monet was creative, Tim Berners-Lee is creative, Warren Buffett is creative. Or perhaps you don’t like the word creative because that sounds too arty, then how about word innovative; Malcolm Gladwell is innovative, Ted Hoff is innovative, Stephen Hawkins is innovative, Yann Arthus-Bertrand is innovative.
Anyway enough of my musing it’s time for me to go and be innovative in a cross functional, multi dimensional, business focussed, technically challenging, problem solving, situation.
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