We do have the power for this (testing internally now) so I just wanted to put the feelers out there for more comments. Who wants to see tagging in Outlook 2007, Windows XP files (Explorer), and Gmail? Which one would you like to see the most?

Mark

Calgary Barcamp is coming this fall so bring out your demo software, product ideas, or investment cash.  If the first democamp was any indication there is a lot of Entrepreneur/VC networking going on.  Check it out!

Mark

Check out the latest demo video posted on youtube.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSwliFTuAKA

We’re still working on the official beta release because we’re now experimenting with Gmail tagging.  It’s working with Gmail’s existing labels using the SideFinder interface, but we want to be able to combine the Outlook tags with the Gmail labels so you can tag with both, in either email app.  I know that many here use Gmail, so please comment on what you think of this idea.

Mark

Many thanks to Kempton Lam, Patrick Lor, Shekar Kadaba and Sarah Blue for organizing the first democamp in Calgary. This is such a great venue for networking because it’s so relaxed and we always end up going to a bar afterwards.
Check out the video if you want to see it live in action. Cheers!

A few people here in Calgary have started this thing (actually imported this thing) called Barcamp. It’s a recurring event where fellow entrepreneurs, VC’s, techno-philes, etc just get together in an informal atmosphere (like, uh, a bar) and rap about the cool things their doing.

I attended the first one in March and it was great. It’s nice to be able to talk to VC’s in a relaxed atmosphere instead of some pressure cooker office. I was surprised to hear from Patrick Lor how very few people actually pitch their plan to VC’s. Apparently there are a lot of investors out there who are just dying for opportunities and receive very few, even when asking for them. Maybe it’s like “hot chick at the bar” syndrome and there’s a fear of getting shot down.

Well, SideFinder is coming along nicely, albeit a bit delayed on the beta release - sorry beta testers, it’s coming - so we’re starting to work up the courage to ask the hot chick to dance. We’ve decided to take part in Democamp and, yup, do a demo.

Some good ground rules here; max 10 minutes and no Powerpoint slides. The bad news is this isn’t very long to explain a product, but the good news is that I’ll be done early. Here’s my demo agenda.

Introduction:

SideFinder makes it easier to find and file your stuff.

There’s a lot of stuff in inboxes, most of us can’t find it and gave up on filing it, so the first SideFinder plugin we decided to build is for Outlook.

Key points:

1. Unobtrusive interface - sidebar, no change to Outlook.
2. Tags instead of folders
3. Integrated search for both messages and tags
4. Unify information stores (PST files)
5. Mnemonic Search - use data to find meta to find data
6. Business process examples; a) bug reports, b) email annotation
7. Our vision - first Outlook then…

• files
• web favorites
• gmail, webmail
• Picasa
• blogs
• mp3’s
• social tagging integration - delicious, flickr, StumblUpon, etc

………………… unify information islands, all using the same interface.

Last week one of our Beta Testers from a large corporation sent us a note to discuss their needs for SideFinder and he mentioned the volume of email he receives in one day. I replied back to correct what had to be a typo of as it was a completely unrealistic number of 7000.

It was no typo.

Apparently Jody works as a Systems Administrator and gets a - cough - “lot” of auto-generated email in the form of server trouble tickets on top of the torrent coming from managers, colleagues etc.

None of us here have ever seen or heard of an inbox of this size and we’ve worked at some pretty big companies. In an 8 hour day there are 28,800 seconds which would allow an average of 4.1 seconds to read every message. This is staggering.

If SideFinder can help Jody manage his email, it can help anybody.

If anyone cares to top this story please feel free. Here’s a screenshot of the message count in his inbox in case you think this message contains a typo.

I’ve clipped out a few of responses regarding folder issues from the beta signup list. The question is; What is your biggest issue with folders? Feel free to add to the list here…

• Argh! When you have to pre-organize things to get stuff done, it just takes all the fun and productivity out of it.
• It’s too restricting. I’m used to organizing my personal e-mail with Gmail and that allows multiple tags for any given e-mail. I’d like to be able to do the same with work e-mail where we have to use Outlook.
• nightmare to keep up to date
• search across is painful in my current setup, slow search. I’m more comfortable with tagging these days in general, ala flickr.
• Compartmentalitis. Spend a lot of time creating cubbies and a lot of time stashing things in cubbies and a lot of time finding which cubbie i stashed things in.
• I store emails according to their categories (newsletters, or topics etc.), so I have (too) many folders and personal folders file (.pst). It is very difficult to find emails when my emails are scattered in different folders and .pst.
• After I’ve started to implement your AntiFile methodology, I will not go back to the file tree system. So, I am happy you came up with SideFinder and I’d like to use it. Thanks and keep the excellent work!

This is hilarious. It’s from one of our beta testers and she articulates her email gripes so well I just had to post it… Enjoy

Hi, Mark. Thanks for the reply. I will warn you now, you officially “got me started”.

I do use the categories feature of Outlook. From what I’ve been able to tell, it’s just an exercise in doing something that is hard to find again. My mail is automagically categorized when it comes in. Now, how exactly do I take advantage of that? I’m sure there must be a way to use this feature, but I’ve not found it to be immediately obvious, with the email especially I’ve managed to make categories come into play on the task panel and the project list I kludged together, but that’s about it. And as far as category intersections, such as we see with del.icio.us‘ “+” feature, there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to filter on more than one category at a time — items in this category AND that category. Instead, I get the same project or task repeated for every category I’ve assigned. This really doesn’t help me at all.

I find that most things I do with Outlook fall into the arena of “kludge”. There’s no graceful way to make all the parts play together without a lot of macro programming, and that’s not where my skills lie. I know that there is usually a complicated, unintuitive method to do anything I really want to do with Outlook, but hey, I’m not into complicated and unintuitive in a premium piece of software. Actually, I’m not into it in *any* software, but especially a premium piece like Outlook.

I’m beginning to think that Outlook is a dinosaur that’s ready to be put down. Seriously. I’ve been a computer operator in one form or another since the mid 80s, using big systems, mid-range systems, desktop systems, and whatever the flavor of the year was, from mainframes through DECs to PCs. I’ve always picked it up quickly and easily, and I’ve even taught people how to use the technologies on their machines, whatever those technologies may be, all through the years. I’ve never seen a system as kludgy as Outlook stick around long, but here Outlook is, long in the tooth and getting kudgier all the time, and if it doesn’t get easier to use (and fast), I’m going to leave it in the dust and fly away with Thunderbird! : ) It will mean going back to paper and pen for my project handling, but truthfully, I’m halfway there already, precisely for the reasons stated above.

This is why your tagging notice appealed to me. When I read it, I envisioned a tag cloud in place of the folders list, and I got all warm and fuzzy thinking about it.

As to why I would prefer to tag rather than rely solely on the sort method as you discuss… I’ve got about 4000 emails in one folder now (and my PST file is nowehere near the 300mb limit). Sort by name… Ok, what name am I looking for? Richard’s print designer sent me his logo, but what was the guy’s name? I don’t remember, as I only had one communication from him, 3 months ago. Did he use a useful subject line? What a surprise — he didn’t. Did Sid’s email come in under his name or under his email address (and just exactly what is his email address again?)? Sometimes it’s one way, sometimes it’s the other. His project name isn’t usually referenced in the subject line, so I can’t sort and select that way. Sometimes I communicate with 3 or 4 people on the same project. Who sent the email about the latest modifications to the Acme site? Was it Tom, Dick or Harry? The subject line, again, is almost totally useless. Most folks put in something completely unhelpful, such as “Changes” or, even worse (my personal hell), “website”. Until people learn to use a subject line correctly, this will continue to be a problem as far as information retrieval.

The correspondant’s name and subject line aren’t the only culprits. Some people have me listed in their address book as webmaster, some as ’shari’ (with single quotes — why, I ask!), some as Shari (no quotes), and the list of permutations goes on. My brother continues to use my webmaster email address for personal correspondence even though I’ve begged him not to, and has named me ‘web’ (yes, with single quotes). In my effort to color code, I found myself creating about 12 organizational rules, and still I have a large percentage of messages showing up in black. I even started over and tried again using email account instead of the FROM or TO field, and then using it in addition to the FROM and TO field, but I ended up with more in black than before. Something isn’t working right. So as you see, even with what should be a simple system, Outlook once again moves into the realm of kludge just to get things to work right — and still they don’t!

Finding things by date doesn’t work for me. I live in a place with one long excruciatingly hot season. It doesn’t matter if it’s summer or winter, it’s hot. My brain records the passage of time by the season. I know this because I haven’t always lived here, and everything I remember from my life before the heatsink is tied to a season. Now that I live where it’s hot no matter what, the passage of time has become essentially undetectable. Half the time, I don’t even know what month or “season” (ha!) it is, unless I look at a calendar or really stop to think (and I mean that literally). So when I try to think about when I may have received an email I’m looking for, all I know is, it was hot. Well, it’s always hot, so that doesn’t help. I’m aware that perhaps not everyone stores information this way, but I do, so I have to take these things into account. Yes, I know… I need to move.

I would absolutely love to know your take on categories, especially in light of the fact that y’all posted the notice about tagging. Or… is this what you were talking about? Using categories to tag? If so, I’m afraid it’s just not going to be as easy as it should be — especially if one were to create many categories. That itty bitty category dialog window is next to useless.

For comparison purposes… I’ve been dumping sites into del.icio.us on a regular basis for quite a while now and have a few thousand sites tagged. And because of that nice little tag cloud, and the “+” feature, I can find whatever site I’m looking for in about 15 seconds max — and usually quicker. I can’t say the same about finding things in Outlook, no matter what method I use. And that’s a shame. Redmond has had more than 10 years to get it right, and they haven’t done it yet.

Well, that’s my rant on the subject. Sorry, but you did ask!

Have a good one!

Shari

Ok, all systems go on the blog. Tell us what you think of the layout, etc, or just start a conversation. Cheers!