Start Google Documents or Upload Files to Google Docs with an email.

Google decided that emailing to start a Google Doc wasn’t a service that enough people were using, so they discontinued it sometime in 2009. While I didn’t use it all of the time, I found it incredibly useful. And ever since, I have been looking for a way to do the following:

1. Start a Google Document with the text of an email I send
2. Start a Google Document by attaching a Powerpoint, Excel, or Word Doc.
3. Have anyone upload to my Google Documents in a predesignated folder

Well, now all of these things are easily within my grasp and I am basking in the glow of this productivity hack. While you may not be as excited about it as I am, here is how you might want to use it:

• To turn in files (from anyone in a meeting or in your classroom) to you in a well organized folder with a time stamp
• To share files with a group of people in a Google Docs collection simply by emailing them to a single email address (and not having to remember all of the emails of the people that should have it)
• To start a collaborative document on your phone by sending an email (that you can continue to edit when you get back to your computer)
• To upload files that you need to have access to in the cloud.
• To CC google docs on conversations that you would like to continue in a more collaborative way than just emailing back and forth.

I’m sure that you can think of a few other ways of using it, but let’s get to the steps for making this happen.

Step 1: Log in to http://sendtodropbox.com by giving the application access to your Dropbox account.

What this will do is give you a single email address that you (and anyone else who you want to have access) will use to upload document (first to Dropbox and then to Google Docs).

Some tips: To keep the next steps as simple as possible, keep the file structure as just Attachments / Filename.

Step 2: Check “Include HTML copy of email message” in Send to Dropbox

This will take whatever is in the body of your email message and create a file in your Dropbox account in the Attachments folder. Make sure you click “Save Settings” after you check the box.

It looks like this:

Step 3: Send a test email to the email address that Send to Dropbox gave you

You can choose to attach a file or not. It will create the Attachments folder in your Dropbox account and it will allow you to use it in the next step.

Step 4: Log into http://wappwolf.com/dropboxautomator by giving the application access to your dropbox account.

This is what will take the files from your dropbox folder and upload them to a Google Docs collection. The question most of you are asking is why not just leave them in Dropbox and be done with it. The answer is that you can’t share the Attachments folder that the Send To Dropbox application makes for you. This limits your ability to leverage the files in that folder (for collaboration and editing purposes).

Step 5: Click “Create a new automation” in Dropbox Automator

The Automator is going to watch a folder for new files. The folder you want to select is the “Attachments” folder that was created by Send to Dropbox.

It looks like this:

Step 6: Choose “Upload to Google Docs” as the action in the Automation you are creating

If this is your first time setting it up, it will ask you to connect your Google Docs to Dropbox Automator as well. After you do that, it will ask you which folder/collection to put the files in. Choose a folder that you would like to be the “inbox” for these types of files and documents.

Make sure you click “Add Action” when you are done with selecting the collection in Google Docs.

Tips: You can also have the Automator do lots of different things to those files in addition to uploading them to Google Docs, including sending them to a Kindle, emailing them to someone else, saving them to another dropbox folder and a bunch of others. Play around with these because your workflow may be more interesting than the one I have envisioned for my tiny purpose.

It looks like this:

Step 7: After you are done adding actions, click “Finished” at the top of the page

It looks like this:

That’s it!

Now if you (or anyone else) emails that Send to Dropbox Address, the attached files and the email itself will be sent first to Dropbox and then in about 10 minutes get picked up and uploaded to the collection of your choosing in Google Docs. Any files that are “Google Docs Types” will be converted for instant editing and they will be made available to anyone you have shared that folder with. Enjoy.

Extra Credit:

If you want to know who sent the files, you can choose to have Send to Dropbox put in a “From Address” in the path in Dropbox. While this makes it easier to know who “turned something in”, you will have to make an automation for each one of the folders in Dropbox Automator in order to have those files moved over into Google Docs. If you are getting things from the same set of people (a classroom or a team, for example, it may be worth the effort).

Also, let me know if you figure out anything cool to do with this hack. I am super excited about how easy it is to automate this process, but I think there is a lot more that we can do with it.

Question 292 of 365: When can we speak freely?

US Military protocol is almost entirely unappealing to me. The hierarchical structure and the chain of command really don’t adhere to my ideals of hyperlinked networks and free communication. The idea of classified documents or need to know information is counterintuitive in an era of Open ID and Web Search. And yet, there is one thing that continues to intrigue me: The simple custom and protocol of asking to speak freely when in the presence of superior.

This is such a valuable tool and it has almost no corollary in civilian life. Perhaps it is because we lack the rigid chain of command or code of conduct, but our expectation is that we can speak freely. In fact, we regularly go on about our opinions for most of the meetings and conversations we have with one another. We don’t hold our tongues or seek the guidance of others before we speak.

And it is this fact that we lack a line in the sand beyond which we cannot speak that we are perhaps even more bound in our speech. Because we do not know our place and time to contribute, we end up subconsciously filtering what we say along to coincide with all of the platforms and expectations already in place within our institutions. For example, if I am being overtly collaborative and sharing a Google document with others, I have to consider each domain and email address I am inputting. Even if I am sharing it as a link, others see where I created it from and what the context for that creation was.

We are tied to our context in a way that both does not require us to ask permission to take part and does not grant us permission to say the things we would if we weren’t an extension of our company or school district. We are the outstretched hands of our entities and we can’t escape that. Our meetings would be more collegial if we could ask one another for permission to step out of our own roles and speak as individuals.

Even if we are relaxed and social, even if we don’t have to worry about insubordination, and even if we aren’t working on the types of sensitive information that military officials claim, we need a system for asking one another to be unaffiliated, to be human with one another. Opinions are not all equal unless we can ask for them without bias and agenda.

Perhaps we just need a signal, a sign on the door or a label in digital spaces: “Free Speaking going on in here. Be people, first and foremost and last of all.”

Or, perhaps we need to designate a specific time and space for free speech, where everyone agrees to the rules of abandoning hierarchy and institutional pretense.

I have great respect for the leveling that happens in Twitter and on Blogs, but I still think that we are tied to and weighed down by our public identities in those places. We need a way to say “Permission to speak freely ” with one another and have that mean something. We need to be able to define the lines that we assume aren’t there because we are on the civilian side and then we need to give them up sometimes. We need to identify the limitations of our personas and put them aside when they get in the way. Only in that space and time will we truly be able to share everything and collaborate on what matters most: changing things for the better, no matter where you are starting from or who you supervise.

Question 268 of 365: Can we take everything with us?

We have preferences and we have workflows. We know where things are in our offices and on our devices. We don’t have to relearn every keystroke on a daily basis. We establish comfort zones all around us so that we can rise above the minutiae and pursue the big productive work at hand. We even lug around large laptops or set up elaborate work environments just so that we don’t have to change too much from day to day.

Even as I argue for a device independence and syncing every service to one another, I notice that I am leaving a lot of the customization that I treasure behind. I am starting to begrudge putting in my wifi credentials on each new device I decide to use. Even though I have access to all of my files in Google Docs and Dropbox, access still differs a bit depending on the browsers and versions I have to work with. I have decided that I hate upgrading software almost as much as I hate having to bring a certain laptop with me in order to access all of my individual preferences. It just seems so antiquated and uncivilized to feel like a foreigner even as I access the same gmail account on different computers.

There may be hope, however. Yesterday, I decided to give load up Ubuntu Linux on a micro-SD card. This tiny little card holds an entire operating system, all of the programs I will need to run on it, and every preference I could possibly have. Currently, I am running it on a Netbook that I was given for a test drive. But, I popped the card into a USB stick and loaded it up on my Mac, my wife’s Dell and any other machine (save my iPad, I suppose) that I could throw it’s way.

It is nothing short of a revelation.

I am looking at the same desktop on this machine that I look at on any machine that I turn to. The desktop is the same. The programs are the same. Even the saved credentials are the same. I am literally packing my entire computer into a square centimeter of silicon. How did I not recognize this as the logical extension of syncing everything together? How was it that I missed the idea of bringing my consistency of experience to everything I use?

The word that Ubuntu uses for a USB stick based install that can save preferences is persistence. I think that describes what I am doing pretty well. I am using a persistent system. It persists as a part of me, even as I add to it and change my workflows to meet the operating system that is so tight and compact that it can fit into a single Gigabyte. I can now take everything with me that I need to get down to business. Everything.

(For those who would like to know more about this setup. Here is what I have done:

1. I made the Ubuntu instance out of the Universal USB Installer. (I used the Netbook Remix of Ubuntu because I knew it would work on pretty much any machine)
2. I installed Google Chrome with the Browser sync (for any computer I use that isn’t running this Ubuntu instance).
3. I’m using Google Documents to edit all documents.
4. I installed Dropbox to sync all files to every computer (I do not sync directly to the USB stick, but rather to the hard drive of whatever computer I am running).

While this really isn’t a long list of things that I had to do, I think that each one adds a bit to being able to take everything with me.)

Question 244 of 365: Why do users revolt?

Over the past week, something strange has been happening on Digg. Ever since they changed over to a new format for the website and a different submission process, an absolute torrent of users have decided that this site no longer has their best interests in mind. Whether it is the removal of the bury button (the ability to demote stories that are not relevant or interesting) or in the total site redesign, users have given more than an earful to the makers of Digg, including spamming the site with articles from competing news aggregators. They want it to go back to the way it was before, or at least to fix the glaring errors that are starring them in the face every time they use the site.

In the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t matter. A single web portal changed its platform and a few users (mostly hipster geeks) aren’t happy about it. It isn’t a tragedy or a massive privacy breach. It isn’t a power grab or a diabolical plan for torture. The website changed. That’s it. It is a blip on the timeline of the web, but it may be a symptom of a much larger problem. User revolts are becoming more common and more pronounced.

Facebook‘s privacy changes prompted congressional letters, a number of different startups to be created, and huge numbers of users to up and quit. Google‘s inclusion of Buzz into gmail without any notice prompted huge shifts in our understanding of what a company can do with a product that we have all come to rely on for our daily workflow. Even something like Microsoft‘s use of the .docx standard for all current generation word programs has been a slow burning user revolt that has many saving files in open formats or uploading them to Google Docs for fear of not being able to open them on other’s computers.

This may just be the fear of change that is the same in every generation, but I feel as though there is something different going on here. Users are revolting based upon the idea that their requirements for a service are no longer being met. This type of change is akin to an employees benefits being changed via a form letter, with no recourse whatsoever. One day, a switch gets thrown and the services we have come to expect have changed because the company responsible has other motives.

Users revolt because their trust has been compromised. They revolt over not knowing what the future holds and believing that the direction and progress is all wrong. Fear of change is warranted when the process for change is secret. Companies have every right to introduce new features and to try and advance into new markets, but their interests should still be to collaborate with users (all users) to find out what their needs are. Too many companies are advocating for fictional needs rather than focusing on the core pain that their software or service actually eases.

Facebook made up the need that people have for publishing all demographic information in a public (or easily monitized) way. Google made up the need that people have for having a social network in their e-mail (while I like this idea very much… it isn’t one that I hear a lot of people clamoring for). Microsoft made up the need that people have for proprietary document formats. All three of them did this because they saw a future opportunity based upon those fictional needs. Facebook could target better ads, Google could get more of the social graph information, and Microsoft could hold on to formatting standards. These are real opportunities, but they don’t necessarily lead to happier users. Because each of these needs are fictionalized, the cost benefit analysis that these companies are doing is severely flawed. The cost of the change is much higher for each user and the benefits are much lower for the company because the users revolt.

I understand that the vast majority of the services where users revolt are free. This may lead companies to believe that they can change anything they want to without repercussions from users. In essence, we should all just be glad to have the service at all. I would make the case that we have a social contract with Google and Facebook even if we don’t have a signature and a payment plan in place. This social contract includes the idea that major changes made to the service should be vetted. It includes working with users to establish needs rather than making them up. It also includes transparency. The process of creating something new should be an open one, and that is how revolts are stopped before they start. By making everyone a part of the new version, you will create buy-in and ownership and you may even find the elusive needs that are both beneficial to users and lucrative for the company.

Otherwise, we will continue to see more user revolts, more splintering of user groups, and more distrust of really great pieces of technology. I also like the idea of an undo button somewhere in the top left corner of everything, just in case.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A Redd Monday: Reddit Profits from Digg Revolt (readwriteweb.com)
• Digg users revolt after redesign (guardian.co.uk)
• Former Digg Engineer: Digg v4 Is Here To Stay (techcrunch.com)
• Digg Users Are Revolting – But Literally This Time (gigaom.com)

Question 209 of 365: What is the difference between a leak and a link?

The wikileaks papers are exquisite. In their scope and its specificity, they are immense. I don’t fully understand all of their implications, but I know that they are not ordinary. They represent sharing on a magnitude that we have not seen for years. Or, at least that is what many mainstream media outlets would have us believe.

To me, there is a much bigger leak that is happening every day now. It is so massive in scope that it makes the wikilink papers look like a children’s book of content. The leak that I am referring to is the newly public Google Docs.

A few months ago, Google Docs decided to change the default settings for how public documents would be indexed into the Google search engine. At the time, Google was telling everyone that if they wanted to maintain anonymity for their documents, they should “unpublish” the content. What was still up in the air was how all of the public documents would be made available to anyone who cared to search for them.

I have been spending the last few days looking at public documents that include intricate notes of meetings, planning documents for major projects, and simple to do lists. It is amazing to me to seen just how many people’s ideas are indexed in their unfiltered form. The difference between a web page or a blog post and a google document is that people use documents for more intimate communication and collaborative purposes. They use them to plan things that perhaps only a few people would find important. In fact, they use them much like many of the military personnel used the wikilinks documents. The public Google Docs are the types of communication that were formerly private but now have been given searchability in a way that only Google can do.

And I think this is good. I think that much of our communication is too private. The default for collaborative notes should be public and published. The minutes for our organizations shouldn’t have to be vetted before they are posted. They should be saved every half second as they are in Google Docs.

In other words, this type of leak should continue. We should continue to tell the stories of successful collaboration and creation. We should continue to share drafts with the world, complete with comments and unedited passion. The instinct should be that we leak our communication as often as we can. I know that we aren’t trading secrets of national security, but perhaps by doing this we will be able to rise above the secrecy that has plagued organizations the world over since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Finally we will be able to harness our institutional memory and momentum and move beyond doing the same things over and over again. We will start to build upon one another and through the process of simple sharing and searching, we will all become reporters on the major story of our time: Information, when attained through learning and collaboration, is the largest power there is.

Oh, and just in case you don’t know how to search the public google docs, go to google and type site:docs.google.com and then whatever search terms make sense. You may be surprised by what you find.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The WikiLeaks Paradox: Is radical transparency compatible with total anonymity? (slate.com)
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• WikiLeaks Founder: Document Leak ‘Only Scratched The Surface’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• “The WikiLeaks documents may not be as harmless as they first seemed: The Times of London discovered…” (ihatethismess.tumblr.com)

25 Killer (iPad) Apps

I have been putting this post off for a while now, but I am finally compelled to write about all of the apps that I am using  on a regular basis on my iPad. I am compelled by just how many conversations I have had about doing more than just consumption with the device. The following list of Apps are what make the iPad essential to me. They are what make it more than just a toy:

Before I go too deep, here are the apps that I have on my iPad right now (While there are a great many Jailbroken apps that I would recommend, I think that it would be somewhat counterproductive to highlight those in this blog post because the vast majority of users are never going to open up their device as I have.):

1. Accuradio – This is the one and only radio service (other than the amazing NPR of course, which has been downloaded so many times for iPhone and iPad that it hardly needs mentioning in this list) that I have found which I do not find myself skipping through songs I have already heard or artists that I could care less about. I think it is because it is being curated by real people rather than by an algorithm. The stations vary widely, but my favorite is Future Perfect Radio.
2. IM+ Lite – This is the best way to chat on the iPad (Multiple sessions at any given time, push notification, etc) I use Google Talk all of the time on my laptop, but this was the only reliable way to continue to do so on my iPad. And with backgrounding (either on a jailbroken iPad or in the iOS 4 which is forthcoming), you will never again miss out on a  conversation that you could have taken part in.
3. Atomic Browser – This is one of the only apps I actually paid for (99 cents). I love the ability to choose tabs over Safari’s odd pagination system. I also love that I can change what the user agent is (this means that I make a website believe I’m running Internet Explorer or another desktop browser). This gives me the opportunity to see the desktop version of every website if I wish to do so, rather than the more limited versions of mobile sites.
4. Air Sketch Free – Killer. This app allows me to draw on the iPad and have it display on any computer (or projector) that is on the same wifi network. This means that I can present without cords as well as I can allow everyone in a room to see the same thing that I see. Just awesome.
5. DejaPlay – I have written about this app previously because I think that it is wonderful. It is the best way for me to view videos that my friends and colleagues are sharing on twitter and facebook. It compiles every link that is shared and puts them into an elegant video display. Rather than wasting time down the rabit hole that is YouTube, I can watch my network curate my video library in real time.
6. GoodReader – Another pay app (also 99 cents) makes the iPad into an uploading and downloading machine. While the app was created for the purposes of viewing big documents, I pretty much exclusively use it for downloading files uploading them to other sites. Here is my favorite use case: I open up GoodReader and pull a file from my e-mail and put it up on Dropbox and then share it out with everyone I wish to. Another thing I do a lot is upload things to FTP sites and web servers that I maintain. This means that I don’t have to wait to get to my laptop to update a file. I also can get access to all of the files on my iPad from my computers without having to use a USB cord. (In fact, I haven’t synced my iPad, ever. I activated it once and that was it. I haven’t seen the need.)
7. CloudBrowse – Although this is becoming less valuable to me as I find other interesting workarounds, this is still the only way to really get flash or Google Docs to play nicely on the iPad. Useful, if a bit crippled without a paid account.
8. Dropbox – I have become more and more dependent upon this product to sync everything I need. Whenever I need to look at a file or send a link to someone, I just jump into the app and grab it. What else can I say… it just works.
9. Sundry Notes – Best App. Seriously. It’s uses are incredibly far reaching. The only thing I can compare it to is Keynote, Smart Notebook, Word, and Skitch all rolled into one. From this app, I can take handwritten notes, typed notes, screenshots from any webpage, insert equations, and do voice recordings of what is going on. This app is ridiculously useful for meetings, brainstorming, presenting, and everything in-between. The export to PDF works great and you can even view your notes online if you want to sync with their service. Oh, and you can annotate PDF’s from your computer if you wanted to do that by syncing them in iTunes. Crazy awesome.
10. Idea Sketch – A free and well laid out mind mapping software. Brainstorming in here is a pleasure. Export works great and you can even let other people edit your brainstorms if you e-mail them along.
11. Adobe Ideas – The drawings and writing that you can do in this app are incredible compared to pretty much everything else out there. This is mostly because the app translates your jagged strokes into smooth vector graphics. My favorite part, though, is the enormous drawing area that you can zoom in and out of to draw and write in detail. I guess I would most compare it to an iPad version of the Prezi interface. Slick.
12. Google Earth – I thought about not including this in the list because of how used it already is, but I think that if you have only used Google Earth on a laptop you are missing out on some of the best interactive learning that is available anywhere. I have spent hours just observing the differences between cities by zooming in and out on Denver and Kansas City. Feeling as though you can control the entire world is just cool.
13. Web Projector – One more 99 cent app, here. Although I use my jailbroken capability to project anything on the iPad from the VGA cord, this is the cheapest way I have found to project anything that you can access from a webpage. It works very well and gets updated frequently.
14. FeedlerRSS – Other than the web interface for Google Reader, this is my favorite (free) way to read the blogs I follow. It works well and lets you get through quite a number of posts in short order. My favorite thing about it is that I can actually see the blog posts in their original context, which is missing a lot of times when I just read it on Google’s site.
15. Caster Free – I can’t tell you how cool this app is. You may just have to see it for yourself. It is a single stop for creating podcasts from multiple recordings, mixing them, processing them and then posting them to either an FTP site, a blog, or even Dropbox. I can’t believe that this one is free, actually. This is content creation at its finest on the iPad. (I know that AudioBoo and other services do this well, but you don’t own the files like you can here.)
16. Story Kit – While this isn’t the most polished app in the list, it is one of the most interesting ways to create a book. It would work well with younger folks as well as with very simple content.
17. Gooey – I use Google Docs to take notes quite often, or to leave myself reminders. This is a great way to add a Google Doc that is a quick note. There really aren’t a lot of features other than a pretty interface with this one, but I really like being able to save a quick note that syncs directly to Google Docs. I also like that it is free. Watch out, though, some versions of this app do crash. Good thing I only need it for a few minutes at a time.
18. Granimator – Possibly the easiest, most creative art app. Basically, you paint with great drawings. It is meant to create backgrounds, but I think that it makes for a great backdrop for note taking or brainstorming. It also definitely gets my creative juices flowing to see someone else’s creation. Just cool.
19. PaperDesk LT – If you just happen to have a VGA cord lying around for your iPad and are interested in projecting some drawing, text creation, or other brainstorming activities this is the perfect free app. I really like the way that you can save sessions for later to keep on projecting what you were working on even after you leave the app.
20. Photopad – The best free image editor. All of the editing features that you would expect from a desktop editor with the ability to save right back to your Camera Roll. I can’t tell you how many screenshots I have rotated and cropped in here.
21. uStream Viewer – Although we can’t record or stream from the iPad with the current version (although I swear you can see where the camera is supposed to go), I absolutely love being able to attend events in real time with chat. This is the only non-native iPad app in the list, but I think that it really works well in pixel doubled mode.
22. iDraft – Adobe Ideas does pretty much everything I need from a drawing program and Sundry Notes does pretty much everything I need from a note taking application. So, what do I use iDraft for? Well, to make pretty diagrams and pdf notes with multiple pages. The simple pencil in this app makes it look like I am using a calligraphy pen, with the ability to make thin and thick marks by changing the speed of my gesture. The words I make in this app are nothing short of beautiful.
23. JabberPad – Possibly the coolest concept for any app on the list. This app uses open protocols (including a jabber server) to create a collaborative whiteboard with any iPad on the same wifi network. Not only that, but you can chat with the other people in the same whiteboard. I can’t wait until you can contribute using your computer on the same network as well. Brilliant.
24. Analytics (It looks like this is no longer free. I wouldn’t pay 6.99 for it, but it is pretty cool.) – While this isn’t really creating or consuming, it is really nice. This allows me to see my Google Analytics account (or at least the most important info to me) on the iPad. I love just taking a quick glance at how the different websites and blogs I maintain are doing and what I might need to change or highlight.
25. Desktop Connect (pricey at 11.99, but worth it) – There are many free versions of VNC viewers (log into your desktop or laptop from the iPad) for the iPad, but this is the only one I have found that lets me login to a Mac from anywhere (at least for this cheap). This is because they have a desktop software called Easy Connect that actually authenticates using your Google Account. This means that not only can you see your desktop computer from your iPad no matter where you are in the world, but you can also see any of your friend’s (according to your Google Talk account) computers if they are online. They will have to give you access, but I think that the idea of actually seeing the network of your friend’s computers is stunning.

Well, that is it. That is my list of why the iPad matters right now. Again, there are some missing things that I need to Jailbreak my iPad for, but the ones I mentioned above are reason enough to buy and use an iPad and never look back. The iPad is not a device for mass consumption. It is a device like any other, completely dependent upon what you actually want to do with it. I want to create with it, so that is what I do. While not all of the apps above speak specifically to this need to create, they all inspire me to create more and better. Call me a fan boy if you must, but I believe in creating with whatever is available and it just so happens that I have an iPad.

Question 186 of 365: How should we submit our work?

I think a lot about the submit button. The process of taking something that you own and uploading it to someone else is an act of trust. I am trusting that everything that I submit to Flickr will be there when I look for it, without some crazy provisions or copyright license on it. I am trusting that the presentations I upload to Slideshare will be embeddable wherever I want them to be. Whenever I submit an assignment in an online course, I am trusting that it will be valued by the person on the other end and not just put into a virtual file cabinet to make one more check on a class checklist.

This trust isn’t something that we should take lightly or that we should let rest as it is. There is inherently a problem with turning over your work to something else via a button. The transaction method of turning things in is all wrong. When we have to turn over all authority of the things we have authored, we are no longer able to take responsibility for where they end up. And we should be able to do that. We should be always able to make decisions about our content, continuing to extend its existence wi every link and collaboration.

I want to start making Dropbox the standard for submitting. The very idea of dropping your content into a folder on your desktop and having that sync into a space that other people and services have access to is he future of sharing. Removing content or revising it updates the files everywhere that they are referenced, preserving your control and your ability to revise and continue to come back to where you have already been without recreating or storing every ne version on every different service that comes into existence.

I want to turn in assignments by dropping files onto my desktop and revise my answers with a simple save. I want to share them with everyone else who is in my class and have the facilitator see that sharing as well. I want to have photo sharing sites get access to my collection through a sync from my computer. I want to always maintain the copies but know that they exist and are accessible easily.

The possibilities for creating are simple and elegant when you remove the pressure of the submit button. When you no longer have to wait until something is good enough to start syncing it our to the world, collaboration has the ability to take hold of everything that you do. When you don’t have to be connected to the web in order to check in on what other people have contributed, we aren’t tethered to any device or service. Sharing ownership of our work and also being able to continue to expand its use is the next journey that we must attempt.

This is the workflow I see:

Any file that is on your device is on the cloud is also shared with others and is found on other’s hard drives. The redundancy allows for backup after backup of our work. All of these drives and versions are networked and allow us to see as a work progresses because a visualization of all edits across the world will be a part of the metadata of the file itself. Each file will be editable on all devices either by a local program or a cloud based service. The file will not care which. Microsoft word and Google Docs will simply be the way we revise the much more powerful part of this process: the sharing. Each file will become linked and embeddable. And because of the way all of these hard drives are networked, the file will not be embedded just from the cloud service, but it will also be embedded from the original source (your device). This will mean that we will always be able to track where content has come from and where it goes to. The single source of truth will be the person that created it, and if they delete it, all that will be left will be the remixes and revisions that work under fair use.

None of this will happen if we keep on with the submit button as the only way to share (this button takes many forms, but it is the function that I think is going to hold us back). We need to move toward sharing responsibility for our files and our ideas. We need to submit by moving things around on our devices and not just on the services that seem to come and go every few weeks. We need share via a link that will always exist, instead of break with every whim of a few shareholders. The infrastructure isn’t what needs a tweak. It is us. We need to push what our own devices can do and what we are willing to pay for as well. We need to become our own data centers and wharehouses. We need to become our own cloud, all with the idea that Google or someone else will also have backups of our stuff too. Because you know they will.

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Question 154 of 365: What are fences good for?

Nearly all of the houses in my neighborhood have fences, many of which are in severe need of repair. They are coming down because they were all built in the early 80′s. So, every few days I see new fenceposts being dug and placed. Pretty soon, all of the fences will be new again and we the peer pressure will mount on any house that doesn’t pony up.

But, whenever I see a new fence I am reminded of the Robert Frost poem about good fences making good neighbors (or not, if you read the poem according to the author’s intent). The fences that are around our houses are serving to separate us and to ensure our isolation, and for the most part, we are all in agreement that they are a good idea. We know that we are demarking the land that is ours versus the land that is yours. It isn’t egalitarian; it is ownership.

We know that we will never be as good of friends or find the kind of close community that places without fences seem to be able to achieve, but we are good with that. Until we learned that the people who live behind us are the most loving and amazing family. The husband and wife are genuinely attracted to one another and the three children play together and with their parents in a real and wholesome way. There are fits and there is yelling, but they love each other just the same. And my family and their family anticipate living in these two houses for years to come. We are looking forward to that, too.

So, what else would we do, but start planning to put a gate or a enormous slide between our two houses, circumventing the fence in the hopes of bringing our two families even more together. We have decided that it is more important to have the ability to roam freely and rely on one another for things than it is to preserve all of the privacy that was originally envisioned.

And that is the way that I feel closed platforms like the iPad are moving. In the beginning, all of the apps worked on their own and could only speak to their own data. This was great for focusing your attention on a single thing (this goes for many facebook applications and even Google web apps as well), but it was terrible for portability and ease of use. Now, though we are starting to see a sort of convergence where apps can open up files within another app. For example, the mail app now allows you to open productivity documents in any program that allows for editing of those documents. Apps like Documents to Go allow you to edit Google Docs and then sync them back up or upload them to another service like Dropbox. We are moving away from the default of emailing yourself objects and moving much more toward the requirement of syncing objects with all of the things that need access.

All closed systems need to be able to do both. I get the benefit of a neighborhood of applications or houses, with walls seoarating them. This allows each one to be the best house or app it can be. But the value of a neighborhood is when people come together. Be it through slides or garage sales, we all need to find those others that can add value to our existence. The fences are good for preserving privacy, but they are terrible at creating new spaces or relationships.

I want both. I want to be able to have an unique identity and also find a way to see how that idenity fits in to the greater picture. Without the grater picture, there really isn’t much left but being a shut-in without the capacity for collaboration or knowledge sharing of any kind. As enticing as that sounds sometimes, I don’t think it is in anyone’s long term interest,

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Question 110 of 365: Can we change from the outside?

Advice is a funny thing. It is often sought, often misheard, often rejected, often obnoxious, and often invaluable. This is all at the same time, mind you. Whenever I am asked to give advice, I know that there is very little chance that the changes I am advocating for will be followed as I have voiced them. I find myself looking in on effects of my advice from the outside. Much of the time, I don’t have to deal with the ramifications of my advice. I usually just get to jump from that conversation into another one where I won’t be around to see the effects of everything that I have contributed. And yet, the subtle pressure that I have provided, does seem to resonate and have an effect.

If I were going to describe the effect it would be like this:

I bought a Galaxie Twelve Smith-Corona manual typewriter. It is one of the best purchases I have ever made. It has a ribbon that never ends and that can be almost infinitely wound and never get old. Every time that I rest my fingers on the keys, I know that I am about ready to make serious damage. I really pound on those keys, and you have to. To get the type to show up correctly, you have to mash down hard as if each finger was a fist with enough fury to push the letters into being. The sound of each striking key is metallic and harsh. It is loud as it cascades off of my office walls.

I get people coming into my office all the time asking me what I am doing with a typewriter. They are flabbergasted that someone “like me” would actually use such an antique. Then they see the margins set and the paper pulled in correctly, and inevitably they want to know what I am writing about. I never get this question when I am typing on my computer. While I could conceivably be doing a great number of things with my computer keys, I never get asked what I am writing about. Somehow, the computer in a public space is private and the typewriter is not.

I am affecting not only the paper itself, but everyone who may sees it and hears the sound of its creation. Essentially, I have demystified the process of writing by inviting other people to come and observe and take part. I am taking away the unholy veil that seemingly is in front of our every act at work. As my fingers are continually cushioned by the oversized keys and as the page moves upward showing that I am actually accomplishing something, I know that the effect I am creating for myself and others is one of reinvention. By making edits and contributions in such a way, I am telling myself that it is okay not to engage in the same sorts of technologies and circumstances that are created for me. It is appropriate to question my level of comfort with any given task. It is also okay to completely reject the conventions and make sometime more concrete than abstract, more real that virtual.

I think that all of my advice boils down to pretty much the same thing, anyway. It is all about demystifying the work that you are doing and making it more real. When I advocate for using Google Docs rather than trading around word documents it is to make sure that people can see what one another are thinking and work together towards a common goal. It is about establishing the same expectations for everyone within a given project rather than hiding the fact that some people do more work than others. When I advocate for using a backchannel at a meeting or conference it is to demystify the way in which we process information. It is to ask everyone to participate in something that they could easily let happen to them. And, when I advocate for creating online spaces to ask big questions, I am attempting to capture learning. I want it to be visual and memorable.

I do not have some silly brand of advice to change the way that organizations work or to improve the working environment for all stakeholders. If we did nothing else besides demystify our work for others, we would be well on our way to creating better environments and organizations. If we were able to describe our purposes and our processes to the outside world (or even to our coworkers), there would be much more ability to relate and work together. Yet, somehow many of us function on the hypothesis that if we shared our secrets, everyone would be able to do our job. We want to perpetuate the myth that knowledge is still the only kind of power worth having.

Connections are the power that we should be pursuing. They are the value that we should be providing to those we work with. The wonder of a network is not in the content that is currently there, it is in the content that is coming because of the connections that have been established. The spaces that we inhabit whether online or physically should only be judged by how many connects are visible and how much work can be transmitted via those connections.

So, here is what I think makes the most sense:

• Create online spaces for collaboration where people can see just who contributed and what their connection to that shared knowledge is.
• Create physical spaces for connection where people share stories about their work.
• Create both physical and online spaces for disruptive behavior (like typing on a typewriter) so that our expectations can shift beyond what it is that we need for the given moment and think about just how we can grow.

And that is how I propose to demystify my work and change from the outside what is going on in ideas and places that I will never fully see realized.

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Question 40 of 365: Why can’t we focus on making something, rather than the something itself?

It is the product that we are after: the book, the video, the iPhone, the worksheet, and the report. These products are the result of a huge amount of processing, working, collaborating, and creating. And yet, we are so focused on the product itself that we have almost no idea how it came into being. We are so interested in what the product can do for us, the idea that we could be learning from  the creation of that product and helping ourselves to the knowledge of what it takes to create something great is simply left behind.

I have three examples for this kind of misguided focus.

The first is of a single YouTube video. For effect, let’s choose a meme: Takeing a picture of yourself every day for a number of years. The result of this meme is a serious amount of introspection, reflection on what matters in one’s life and an amount of dedication to an idea that many people do not choose to follow. The video is just the byproduct of this reflection. It can garner a huge level of interest, but the process is what matters, not the object at the end of it.

Other videos are even further removed from the process. One of the most engaging videos in education, social media, and technology in the last 10 years was created by a friend of mine, Karl Fisch. He did a powerpoint presentation that gathered a lot of data about technology, schools and the ways in which the world is changing. The process that he went through to create the powerpoint was rich and worthwhile, and every iteration that has been created off of his original vision has undergone some version of the process. Yet, all of the people that have watched the video believe that the final product is what should be the conversation starter. I believe that the process of thinking through the implications of technology, education, informatics, design, and comparative analysis is where the power lies. If we truly followed the example of this process, we would all be trying to find the data in our own lives that will enable us to anticipate and engage in the future instead of taking someone else’s observations on data and declaring it to be gospel.

A second type of product worship happens when a piece of technology becomes the focus of endless discussion. Facebook is a product that you would think could focus on the process of creating intricate networks of people for all kinds of reasons, but in fact, the majority of the conversation about Facebook is about how to get the most friends, make money, or all of the content (read: products) that gets shared on that ever expanding network. The conversation rarely is about what an individual’s social network requires in order to be a sustaining and engaging aspect of a healthy social life. Facebook, as a product, too often wins out to Facebook, as a creation of interconnected stories that add value to your life.

The final way in which I see products being the focus of all attention is within the “upload” button. The upload button has become a pervasive part of the online ecosystem and it has quite simply turned all of our actions into looking for a product that we can “upload.” Whether it is a powerpoint uploaded to Slideshare, a photo uploaded to Flickr, or any type of file uploaded to Google Docs (now that it is basically an online hard drive); all of this uploading is causing us to focus on getting everything we do into a package that is uploadable. While I am seriously in favor of placing my work on the cloud, the fact that all of the collaboration and thought behind each product doesn’t get uploaded with it is a serious problem. Google Docs gets it right when you start from scratch in there. You can look back at the revision history and see what contributions and thought process made it an important document. However, that is only one path, and it is still incredibly hard to follow a thought process through a revision history.

What I want is a system that allows me to see the process of creation, from start to finish. I want to see everything that goes into answering a big question. I want to hear the fits and starts of answers. I want the “umms” to hang in the air while someone formulates a new thought. I want the rough edges in the middle drafts and the clean lines of the final one. I want the upload button to be modified into a “record” button. I want that button to be the beginning rather than the ending.

In essence, I want a YouTube that can show me how the ideas were birthed and provide a backstory to fill in all of the things that were left on the “cutting room floor.” I want a Facebook that allows you to see the connections and understand the true importance of each one. I want a social network that can look at the quality of content and not just the quantity (or the ability to view huge amounts of it). I also want a cloud-based service that doesn’t let the upload button to reign supreme. I want the uploaded work to be an iterative process, one idea leading to the next.

I guess that is asking for a lot, but perhaps this is more about my process of building it than it is about the product I want at the end. Right?

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