Mind Media Review

No 19 OrganizationWare

September 2001

Highlights include:

	ORGANIZATIONWARE

NEW MINDWARE BOOK AND FUTURE NEWSLETTERS The event -- as strange as it was -- drove home to me the reason I've been not sending a monthly newsletters. I want to deliver quality - not quantity. Perhaps some of you don't know this but our newsletter among the first on the web -appearing about a month after our web site went up in April 1994. At that time there were perhaps only a half-dozen "E-zines" on the Net. Now there are thousands! Not counting the spam. Most of the newsletters you get are just words filled with empty marketing. Yes, there are a few that I wait for every month and read carefully. But the majority ends up in my junk mail bin. So I've waited to improve the quality of our newsletters -- which I have always strove to keep informative -so that they can contribute in a significant way to the life of you who take time to read our journal.

So in order to add quality to what you are reading, I've stepped back and made an effort to look at the larger picture of what I have been working in for past twelve years.. This lead to my writing a book coving the entire scope of my vision -- called MINDWARE IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM --which will examine the history and future of what I first dubbed "mindware" when I started the Mindware software catalog. The classic MINDWARE CATALOG -- 32 page print catalog was the first catalog to feature CD-ROM drives and CD-ROMs, the first catalog to have voice recognition hardware, the first to feature Artificial Intelligence and Neural Network programs and most important, the first to recognize that computers were more than just glorified typewriters or calculators - that they could make a difference much greater than technology that precede them.

The first edition of the software catalog I launched back in 1988 was called Mindware: Mind Appliances for Personal Development and High Levels of Achievement" The phrase "mind appliances" used in a news story caught my attention the other day because back then it sounded --- well kind of awkward. The phrase was the used by Intel Corporation to describe a new line of products which would be more like appliances than computers.

Well we know that computers still aren't easy to use as the TV set or refrigerator. Still, the idea of computers being appliances in the home that could help us in new ways that were interactive was what got me interested in starting a company that could get software the public that could help them in many ways. Increased creativity, personal growth and self-therapy, better ways of managing our time and getting organized, gaining new abilities that would help us succeed in life. That was my goal back then and it gives me great pleasure to see that those boxes that back then had hardly any graphic or sound capabilities have now not only become multimedia but are plugged into a world wide network that not only allows us to interact with the increasingly sophisticated abilities of our computers but also with other people around the world. It is now possible to take virtual seminars without leaving your home with the top experts in the world as well as having your computer increasing its ability to become your assistant and mentor.

I've been working on a book which will include a number some of the topics I've covered in past newsletters plus some other new and important topics. The working title is "Mindware in the New Millennium: How Our Computers Will become Guides to Greater Success and Well Being and we hope to have it out by Spring 2002. It will explore both the personal and professional uses for Mindware. Mindware will be broken up into categories such as successware, therapyware, creativity ware, self-exploration ware, relationshipware, organizationware, thinking ware, knowledgeware and managementware. Perhaps ware gets overused here but you get there point.

There is Mindware which is downloadable software, online applications which make use of the computer and interactive seminars both with an expert and people getting together in virtual space So in the next issues several issues of Mind Media Review, I will explore some of what is happening in each of the these unique areas. So let's start with "organizationeware."

ORGANIZATIONWARE

Books, audiotapes, training courses and day-timers that help you organize our life and manage our time, so that we can find that calm center from which we can focus on making life work have been a vital and important part the self-improvement movement. In past issues of Mind Media Review, I have spoken of the history of this movement. Books such Alan Lakein's How to Get Control of your time and Your Life

and http://www.franklincovey.com/training/business/7h_overview.html Steven Covey's The 7 Habits of Higly Effective People are among the most popular personal achievement books of all time. More recently, David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity has also entered this top tier.

GETTING ORGANIZED

The ASCEND software package was based on the program begun by Hyrum Smith who started making Franklin Day Planners in 1983 and lecturing on his unique system which has people begin their day-to-day calendar and task list by first determining the most important "governing values" in their life, their key relations, and writing a personal mission statement much we would write a business plan. Franklin merged with the Covey Institute in the mid-Nineties and is at the forefront of this area of the mindware movement.

In a Mind Media Review last year, I spent considerable time on talking about Goalpro 6.0 software, http://www.goalpro.com/index.cfm?ID=50571, a program that I use myself. Put out by Success Studios, the program uses a very well thought out program of creating a hierarchy or tree of "goals", "objectives" and "tasks." -- The top down planning is similar in concept to the Franklin Day Planner model. You can import the tasks into Outlook and use them there for day-to-day scheduling - but the otherwise GoalPro is its own program and does not interface bi-directionally with Outlook.

In 1999, Franklin Covey who had bought back the rights for Ascend from a third-party company came out with the Franklin Day Planner which was based on their tried and true Ascend. THE FRANKLIN PLANNER had quite a different interface than Ascend and worked as a way of keeping your Franklin Planner on a computer (as Ascend had before it, coming with tapes by Hyrum Smith and your own leather planner and filler paper).

Two years ago, I called in for a review copy of the Franklin Planner. I received it and after using it awhile, found that they had made great strides over the Ascend program although the company offered backward compatibility so you could import your old Ascend data into the Franklin Planner. The program made it easy to follow each step of the program that old Hyrum Smith had taken on tour. I even played my old Ascend tapes of his seminar over again as I went through the different phases. But I noticed something. I was doing double entry. I used the Franklin Planner and Outlook and had contacts, tasks and calendars in both.

In a call to a Public Relations person to find out the latest releases (Franklin was just getting into using their software in synchronization with the Palm Pilot). During the conversation, I mentioned that it would great if there was a version which worked with Outlook, which I try to stick to as my primary planning tool. She excitedly told me that they were just launching a new product -Franklin Planner for Outlook.

After receiving the evaluation copy, I found that the effort was being made to almost turn Outlook into the Franklin Planner. There was even a replacement for Outlook Today which for some reason, in my several years of periodically testing the program, only worked once without "script errors" and currently doesn't work at all in Office XP.

Both Franklin Planner for Windows XP and Franklin Planner for Outlook share a common central "Compass" motif. The golden high resolution compass allows you to find your "Personal North" and metaphorically your bearings in life. There are well-produced videos and easy-to-use wizards for each of the section - governing values. Originally, there were highly customized forms for Outlook for tasks and calendar items but these were modified in two successive generations of the product. The current version which is the third released still uses customized tasks that have the "four quadrants" of Covey's noted Time Matrix that many of those of you who are familiar with "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" as a basis. However, the quadrants in the current generation of the product are so small as to be almost as to make the quadrant letters invisible (or am I just going blind from staring at a computer screen so much?). You can shop for all of the software products I mentioned here by clicking on this link Franklin Covey Shopping

But Franklin Covey has ambitions of going beyond these two products. One direction they are headed is toward the online application arena. At http:.//www.franklinplanner.com you can have a calendar, task list etc just as you A good review of these online organizers can be found at here as part of a course that was taught at the U of W. Its list is comprehensive and it gives the pluses and minuses of each site.

This spring, Frankinplanner.com tried an experiment with FusionOne a free outlook and hand-held synchronizing service which I had belonged to for a long time. They offered to put Outlook in synch with the Franklin Planner. Such a deal! It would have been great. I've used FusionOne (and would suggest you do also) to put my two home computers outlook files in sync, to put my Outlook on the road in sync and avoid the horrible duplication and omission of information that can result from using Outlook on each device independently. So one day while your intrepid reporter was exploring the Franklincovey.com, he noticed a "beta" program to get your Outlook in sync with Franklinplanner Dot Com.

Of course I signed up and tried it. Twenty hours later, in several separate sessions, I could not get the Franklincovey.com to sync with FusionOne. It would come up with some kind of server error which was based on a "Cold Fusion" server, which happened to be a coincidence and have nothing to do with the fact that FusionOne was involved. The Cold Fusion servers was running Franklincovey.com and try as I might, only did one sync the entire period of the beta test. It added 10,000 contacts to its contact database which is about 20 times as many as I have in my contact file in outlook. So there were no task, no calendar items, on "Favorite" web site bookmarks, just these zillions of contacts, many of which were gibberish.If you log onto Franklinplanner.com and try to push Synchronize" button, up pops a screen that tells you that the beta test has concluded! If you try to synchronize the Flaklinplanner.com from the FusionOne menu, you have no luck. So I guess they went to back to the drawing board on that one.

Authors Note: this aricle was written in 2001, as I compile it for our web archives, Franklin Covey has launched a qaite usable online system called PlanPlus Online

Obviously sometimes using new software is not the best way to manage your time but then, I do it for a living. Some of the Franklin Covey releases had their bugs but I think it is admirable that the company wishes to be on the cutting edge of information management and organization. I've written enough in past columns about his topic.

WHAT COLOR IS AN ENFISH AND HOW DOES IT TASTE?

It must have been three years ago that I first heard about Enfish Corporation in an email. They were making something called the Enfish Tracker. I volunteered for the beta test and installed the tracker. It was an unusual experience perhaps something like installing ICQ (which goes through your contacts to find members and adds them to your online pager plus sending them mail).

Enfish Tracker, however, goes through your entire hard drive and all of your contact and email programs and indexes them. It takes several hours which, unless you know the way to slow it down, you can hardly use your machine.

In the end, you have all of your contacts and email and documents --and just about every other file type you can imagine cataloged and linked so when you pull up Jack Green from Western Corp, you also get all of his documents, email, spreadsheets etc.

After a year of marketing Enfish Tracker, the program was redesigned as what Microsoft calls a Digital Dashboard. It was Bill Gates revelation that everyone needed a Digital Dashboard to keep track of the stock market, the news etc while working on their word document or reading their email and so the concept of a central organizing -- well call it a portal if you will -- was born. But more than a portal, a digital dashboard like on your car but for all your information.

So OneSpace has the mystical ring of all-is-one out of the plethora of information and documents and e-mails we have to deal with each day. Recently version 3.1 of OneSpace was released and I have to say, it works pretty well. To connect all of this together, Franklin Covey also discovered OneSpace and co-branded it with Enfish. Now they are selling it as Franklin Covey Oneplace. I haven't had to try their version of it, but if it is a hybrid of the Franklin Planner for Outlook and OneSpace, then maybe this bold company may be onto something. I'm going to ask them for an evaluation copy of OnePlace and report on it in the next issue.

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MIND MEDIA'S TWO MULTIMEDIA CD-ROMS ON ORGANIZATION AND TIME MANAGEMENT Mind Media is featuring two great titles as part of five CD- ROMs that we sell developed by the Midisoft Corporation. These are multimedia CD-ROMs produced by top experts, complete with video and interactive tutorials as explained on our website. I have found them helpful in conjunction with the use of the programs I have described above. These are not applications to be used to keep organized but training sessions in the principles behind time management and organization. And somehow they seem almost universal from system to system. The programs --- Organize for Success and Manage Time are on sale at half price for the next month.

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DOWNLOAD YOUR MINDWARE AND DON'T WAIT FOR THE PACKAGE TO ARRIVE Digital River -- the world's largest electronic download company has taken over administration of our electronic download catalog. You get their 30 money back guarantee and their technical support staff is on call 24/7 to insure that if you pay for your download you get your download. Just go to the Self Improvement Electronic Download Store. We hope you enjoy the work our staff has done to enrich the product descriptions! We've also included all our Mental Edge Bundle Offers, Mind Prober, Professional Analyst and more!

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