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Getting things done, on the Internet: organising your research

Bill French, Information Age

14/10/2005 16:05:58

The big question is how do you organise what you capture? Where do you put it? How do you share it easily?

One approach is to use an Internet organiser like OnFolio which is designed as a fairly robust set of services that includes a link manager, RSS reader, note taker, and it even has its own search engine for content within it. Another useful tool (although not as robust as OnFolio) is Google Desktop (GD version 2.0); a beta version is currently available. Google is apparently trying to capture the mindshare of the desktop workspace with this new application that extends GD 1.0 beyond that of a desktop search engine.

Getting (Internet) organised for a project Although I like Google Desktop, I also use OnFolio for most link management tasks, RSS reading and research projects. Since many of my work challenges vary, OnFolio has provided the best array of possibilities in making my work faster and more persistent. As I continually advocate, getting organised is about creating repeatable processes and information reuse.

One task that I do frequently is the collection and republishing of information about companies and their products for competitive intelligence. OnFolio makes this quick work and whatever you produced, is persisted in a place where you can easily find it, refer to it, and update it.

We're in the business of providing corporate blogging solutions to enterprises and businesses. As part of that service, we provide specific enterprise RSS solutions to our larger clients such as VeriSign. On a monthly basis I develop a report covering the emergence of the RSS services industry segment. To achieve this, I have created an OnFolio Collection that contains a very specific taxonomy of information categories. The categories include such things as news, customers, competitors, and top search engine rankings for terms related to this segment. Not only do I capture pages that rank highly, I capture the search queries that helped me to find this content.

Not enough can be said about capturing search queries; making them persistent. There are two huge benefits to this activity: first, you don't have to type the key terms in more than once, and second, you will always execute the same query month after month. Consistency in search is very important if you're trying to asses how things have changed since you last searched.

Collecting the Web links that I store in this collection is as simple as dragging them from Google or any Web page. Since every item in OnFolio is an information object, there are properties for each link item which makes it possible to write notes about them or provide additional details. You can even add custom fields to the properties panes.

The real productivity benefit kicks in as soon as you have to share this information with other people. OnFolio saw me coming when they added a way to package the entire collection and send it via e-mail in its native format (a collection - .cfs file). This is great if you work with other OnFolio users. Additionally, they provide a way to publish the collection as a Web application and it supports MHT files if you prefer (the Microsoft specification for Web archive formats). This is ideal since it builds the report as a single file.

The published collection is fundamentally a complete Web site including embedded links and a table of contents. You can also customise the generated report package in many ways. There is additional export and sharing options including XML and publish direct to intranets, but the Web packaging option has proven ideal and simple to use.

Beyond projects So far, I've described how you might use OnFolio to satisfy the objectives of a single task that is easily packaged into a simple set of resources that are updated weekly. However, OnFolio is useful for many tasks - it has the capacity to become your "Web central" dashboard; a place where favourites, desktop shortcuts, RSS feeds, applications and notes about all these resources may converge. One aspect that I find extremely useful about this tool is that it can capture links to files and applications that are on your own desktop or network. So, when performing desktop searches with Google, links can be easily dragged right into OnFolio.

OnFolio also allows you to create an unlimited number of collections - these are like projects, and switching from one collection to another is very easy. As such, it makes sense to consider these features and look closely at how you use and manage links and shortcuts to improve your daily work. While OnFolio is not a Web-based product, the collection files can be taken on the road by simply copying them to your notebook. I use OnFolio to manage just about every Web site, application and content-related process I engage in. There are very few limitations with this tool if you are looking for ways to solve many of the shortcomings of favourites and other link management methods.

Link and information management Notwithstanding the emergence of RSS, there are places on the Web that we visit each day. One way to shorten the process of visiting sites is to use Google Desktop (GD). It has some great features that allow it to disappear when it's not being used, so it's a non-intrusive desktop tool. But it provides some things that are obvious benefits.

I look at my system resources on a frequent basis since I run so many applications. GD provides various plugin's (such as system resources) that allow you to do things like watch your inbox, or rotate photos. Although there's no generic RSS newsreader component, there will be, and there is a tool that can aggregate multiple news feeds into a single news component. The link manager is pretty useful and it allows you to designate links that are persistent and the rest can be automatically maintained as history links (ie, places you've been recently).

This is still a very early idea for Google, but if you're looking for a free tool to get started with link and desktop management, this is a good one. There are many other tools that are much more powerful, but the desktop search component is a huge productivity enhancer. Many of my research projects begin with a search of my own system. And with the advent of enterprise desktop search (which is free, by the way), there's no excuse for not being aware of information that your company possesses:

•News - articles and news about enterprise RSS adoption. •Customers - a list of links to our RSS customers. •Competitors - a list of links to known perceived competitors. •Top Google Rankings - a collection of Web pages that rank high for "enterprise RSS".

Desktop organisation Aside from the sheer productivity gain from loading project-oriented Web site collections in one click, there is the added advantage of simplifying your workspace. Many of us can't afford large (or multiple) monitors. Minimising a single browser window that contains six Web sites is a snap. Managing your desktop in this way reduces clutter while eliminating wasteful minimise/maximise clicks that you typically perform by the dozens each hour.

Process agility All too often, you're in the middle of a task and the last thing you want to do is break your focus to solve another problem that is urgent. The use of a tabbed environment also has the added benefit of agility; you can easily switch gears without losing your "spot" in Web space. This makes it much easier to satisfy those nagging little interruptions we all must deal with.

Improving your digital environment In terms of productivity, enough cannot be said about your environment and how you configure your computing work space. This is a critical aspect of getting things done (efficiently) on the Internet. It takes a little practice to adopt the idea that your Web site work patterns should be persisted for instant reuse. This involves a little extra effort on the front end, but massive productivity gains on the back end.

Recognising work patterns As you do your job each day, try to observe the steps you repeat with regard to Web browsing. If you typically open Google and Yahoo whenever you perform a certain task - say competitor research, consider creating a tabbed group for that.

Example patterns: Blogging - you might have your blog authoring site open with a second browser displaying your blog. You might also have a search engine open as well as another browser opened to an article you're blogging about. Support - as a Web developer, you might need a browser window for tests, and another browse instance to your online support system. Writing - as you author content with a desktop application, you might use other online applications like Wikipedia, dictionaries, or news portals.