The big money will be online, made by the giants, by giving away the wares and getting the metrics and data. The users becomes the product via their data.

We've gone a long way down that path already. But the recent Cambridge Analytica revelations show what a horrible path it is.

Money isn't everything.

(I realize you aren't saying this is a good thing, BTW)

--

Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com

bartb wrote:

MS is
enjoying a lot of success with Office 365.

Maybe, but here is an interesting counterexample:

The Airbus CEO on why they chose Google G Suite instead of Office 365:

"He claimed Google’s G Suite was “built from the ground up” for collaboration, and Airbus’ traditional tools in use were based around Microsoft and email.

“We want people to fundamentally reconsider how they work and move away from old ways of working, like sending millions of emails around,” said Hennekens.

“It is a lot easier to achieve that with a tool that, from its conception, radically breaks with past ways of working and past concepts, rather than working with a tool (Office 365), that is a step up, but still in many ways is similar to what we’ve been using in the past."

"Interestingly, Hennekens was previously CIO at Qantas, and joined months after the company had deployed Office 365."

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/15/airbus_cio_interview/

Andy Brice wrote:

The big money will be online, made by the giants, by giving away the
wares and getting the metrics and data. The users becomes the product
via their data.

We've gone a long way down that path already. But the recent Cambridge
Analytica revelations show what a horrible path it is.

Money isn't everything.

(I realize you aren't saying this is a good thing, BTW)

--

Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com

That's not the only thing. Like the current big few dominant media companies in the U.S., most of the online tech giants, media, social media etc holding the majority of information/digital market will merge into just a few, most probably.

Secondly, unlike current media, the future few dominant digital and software standards will have to be taken up by everyone as it's not just media consumption anymore but tech protocols.

Thirdly, the real data nightmare will be when within a few decades the various versions and finally the sole version of a full AI takes over.

I would have stuck with OneNote if:

1. It had a future on the desktop
2. Allowed me to keep all my files local on the desktop
3. Had full feature parity with its Windows counterpart

True Confessions: I am a constant reader/data junkie/digital packrat. OneNote met my needs for personal knowledge management very well until I went Mac only. But I get it. Microsoft is a big company with multiple paths and different goals.

As I start digging into Devon Think Pro, the interface looks a little "old school". But thats ok, I've been working on systems for the last 40 years. So I guess I'm a little "old school" too!

I liked the last great version of OneNote before it was replaced with the appy minimal bimbo.

I think the MS Calendar/Outlook team got jealous and killed it off as a potential distraction/diversion. They can't compete with Google Calendar/Keeps/G-Docs/G-Drive etc. Instead of integrating it into the online suite they killed it.

MS does occasional disaster releases, like the alternative crappy Windows major releases which is a famous joke now in memes.

The good old OneNote version didn't have the clout to be resurrected in the dinosaur corporation. It is well and deeply buried for good. I have the last good version, but what's the use of investing time in it when I know this parrot is dead.

Agreed.

IMHO: the best product MS made was Excel and I still use it to this day. I think OneNote was also a great product that never seemed to get the support and resources it deserved. Too bad. Its a great fit for tablets.

Office 365 subscriptions still contain the "full" version of OneNote, and not the simplified version installed with Windows 10. (Both versions can coexist on the same machine.) I just added a new machine to my Office 365 allotment of computers and the full version of OneNote was installed.

washere wrote:

The good old OneNote version didn't have the clout to be resurrected in
the dinosaur corporation. It is well and deeply buried for good. I have
the last good version, but what's the use of investing time in it when I
know this parrot is dead.

undeclared campaign finance violations is being approximately valued at
$100m. That's the golden-egg, if you can create a golden-egg laying
chicken, you are looking at billion$. Which makes the rest look like
chicken feed. Data.

Yeah, 100 million my arse. Its hyped like everything else in this now
insane game of Russophobia from people who just can't get over the fact
that it wasn't information or data that made Trump the president but their own corrupt and
digusting massmurderous war criminal candidate.

Dr Andus wrote:

bartb wrote:
>MS is
>enjoying a lot of success with Office 365.

Maybe, but here is an interesting counterexample:

The Airbus CEO on why they chose Google G Suite instead of Office 365:

"He claimed Google’s G Suite was “built from the ground
up” for collaboration, and Airbus’ traditional tools in use
were based around Microsoft and email.

“We want people to fundamentally reconsider how they work and move
away from old ways of working, like sending millions of emails
around,” said Hennekens.

“It is a lot easier to achieve that with a tool that, from its
conception, radically breaks with past ways of working and past
concepts, rather than working with a tool (Office 365), that is a step
up, but still in many ways is similar to what we’ve been using in
the past."

"Interestingly, Hennekens was previously CIO at Qantas, and joined
months after the company had deployed Office 365."

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/15/airbus_cio_interview/

Hmm. I'm working with an organisation that has just (last July) moved from Google to O365. The move has introduced a lot of friction into what were previously reasonably smooth collaborative models. Two reasons:

- As suggested in the quoted article, collaboration was an add-on to Outlook, especially the calendar, and doesn't reflect how people work naturally.
- Much of the collaboration is built on Sharepoint, which demands *a lot* of design and configuration to fit the organisation's specific use cases.

The result is that what was quick and intuitive now requires much more in the way of work and forethought from the end users. It seems to me, as a relative outsized (I'm contracted to a specific project), that all the current benefits are to the IT department and it ability to manage, administer and control and none are to the users. In fairness, there are plans that might deliver end user benefits down the road, but my experience is that "down the road" never actually delivers.

Sorry - that went somewhat off topic

Lothar Scholz wrote:

>undeclared campaign finance violations is being approximately valued at
>$100m. That's the golden-egg, if you can create a golden-egg laying
>chicken, you are looking at billion$. Which makes the rest look like
>chicken feed. Data.

Yeah, 100 million my arse. Its hyped like everything else in this now
insane game of Russophobia from people who just can't get over the fact
that it wasn't information or data that made Trump the president but
their own corrupt and
digusting massmurderous war criminal candidate.

The quoted valuation is nothing to do with politics. They are basically multiplying the 50 million people by two dollars. The real story is not political rants by various partisans or countries. The real story is both Houses looking to legislate social media giants more tightly how they harvest, maintain, share and profit from personal data.

The other aspect is the European legislation is tighter and expected to become even more harsh for social media. That's why Facebook lost tens of billions in shares. They'll have to confirm to that lower common denominator anyway. As Microsoft and Google learnt in costly ways.

Another reason is penalties. IIRC Facebook agreed to pay $40,000 for each data infringement case. Some Wall Street analysts are multiplying that number by 50 million. Others say some lower yet hefty fine in the U.S. and/or will be inevitable.

Regardless, a database of fifty million Americans' personal data and interferences is easily worth tens of millions if not more. As anybody who's worked with advertising, focus groups, Politics, lobbying, PR etc knows. Advertising and marketing revenue is not in the billions but trillions. That's how the giants make money, like Google. I don't think anyone has a similar fifty million or larger database of Americans' personal social media data except Google and Facebook. And maybe Amazon but not that personal. Instagram is owned by Facebook. Not sure about fifty mill Americans on Twitter or LinkedIn.

I don't know how much that Russian professor sold that USB stick for, but he's realized he got peanuts for it. That's why any social media who has tens of millions of users in US or Europe, not to mention rising Asia, is valued in tens of billions as in the case of social media giants. Data. And they're still growing.

Facebook enforcers went to make sure the fifty million database was being deleted! As though another USB stick couldn't be made and wasn't in another dubious guy's pocket from that firm! While they were there, the government officials arrived, locked down the systems and kicked the Facebook enforcers out. The database will still be used secretly for metrics by whoever gets a copy. It will be useful for some years to come.

OK. let's get back to topic. This is not Facebook or Reddit.

Paul Korm wrote:

Office 365 subscriptions still contain the "full" version of OneNote,
and not the simplified version installed with Windows 10. (Both
versions can coexist on the same machine.) I just added a new machine
to my Office 365 allotment of computers and the full version of OneNote
was installed.

washere wrote:
>The good old OneNote version didn't have the clout to be resurrected in
>the dinosaur corporation. It is well and deeply buried for good. I have
>the last good version, but what's the use of investing time in it when
I
>know this parrot is dead.

That's good to know. But the points remain.

They're not integrating into their online suite like Google.

The dual versions, the minimal Appy for the mass user base, is a second way of killing it off. Should be one version, online, integrated, and if monetizing, by cloud means as with Google drive premium.

Thirdly, I believe the full version development has stopped. Also no plans to integrate it into cloud as is norm for any of that genre to survive.

Like I said, I have it but won't invest time in it because it's not going anywhere. When they kill off something they don't delete it and declare it dead. Actual annual development and features growth stops and if it's cloud related to the online suite and not integrated and updated with that suite. And not updated with that online suite's features updates, modern looks and updated user interface.

No mass distribution and contrary looking minimal app named the same and cut down. No cloud or modern version when it belongs naturally in that suite. As if all the above were not enough, dormant development, ie basically dead.

The outlook/calendar cloud suite team didn't want it, hence the useless apps versions, constantly updated but not the elephant in the room. If they pick up development, update features, stick it on the cloud, integrate it, update it to modern looks & UI like the suite and apps, then it's alive. I'd say there is no chance of that. It took a few years and billions of users to get Microsoft to bring back the old Win-Start button menu.

They're urging and pushing the new appy version as the version still being updated. ie not dormant/dead. They call the old looking dead one "the legacy version". They praise the features of the new one still being developed and why it should be used.


https://support.office.com/en-us/article/what-s-the-difference-between-onenote-and-onenote-2016-a624e692-b78b-4c09-b07f-46181958118f



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vuW6tQ0218

Franz Grieser wrote:

OK. let's get back to topic. This is not Facebook or Reddit.

Yeah, it's not Reddit!

Yes, so I'm interested in thoughts from anyone who is using MindManager or iMindMap, etc., as a regular, ongoing part of their work planning process. I really like MindManagers' integration with Outlook on Windows. It's simple to use, and two-way. iMindMap has the Droptask integration which is interesting but hard to warm up to. iThoughts has a minimalist one-way todo relationship with calendars, and a recent release integrates (sort of) with Things on macOS.

I like the idea of a graphical planner (like a mind map) bridging to the hardscape of my calendars -- ideally two way. Just haven't found a robust way to do that without feeling like I'm hand hacking the whole procedure.

Franz Grieser wrote:

OK. let's get back to topic. This is not Facebook or Reddit.

Paul Korm wrote:

I like the idea of a graphical planner (like a mind map) bridging to the
hardscape of my calendars -- ideally two way. Just haven't found a
robust way to do that without feeling like I'm hand hacking the whole
procedure.

Zenkit is a really powerful, flexible tool that's kanban and mindmap rolled into one. It also has list and table views as well as a calendar, but it also has integration with Google Calendar for anything with a due-date:

https://blog.zenkit.com/integrating-zenkit-with-google-calendar-2b99667da3d9

Thanks for the great suggestion @satis. I should have mentioned my view that work planning and tracking is not something I'm interested in doing in anyone's cloud. At all. Ever. Which is why I'm focused on legacy desktop applications, either Windows or macOS. Doesn't matter.

Really? Hmmm ... ok, so since this is cloud based, then I'm going to assume that all the features available Windows are now available for a Mac user - yes?

Also, can you save OneNote files locally?

Really? Hmmm ... ok, so since this is cloud based, then I’m going to assume that all the features available Windows are now available for a Mac user - yes?

Also, can you save OneNote files locally?


Paul Korm wrote:

Office 365 subscriptions still contain the "full" version of OneNote,
and not the simplified version installed with Windows 10. (Both
versions can coexist on the same machine.) I just added a new machine
to my Office 365 allotment of computers and the full version of OneNote
was installed.

washere wrote:
>The good old OneNote version didn't have the clout to be resurrected in
>the dinosaur corporation. It is well and deeply buried for good. I have
>the last good version, but what's the use of investing time in it when
I
>know this parrot is dead.

@NickG (and apologies for the off-topic post)

Thanks for sharing your experience. It confirms some of my suspicions about it. I've only just recently come across Office 365 in a corporate Windows environment, and I also found it clunky.

E.g. I was sent an MS Word file that showed up as an attachment, but when I opened it, it was blank with 0 KB. Eventually I realised that the web-based Outlook version I was using (because I was off-site and accessing my email remotely) was blocking some features for safety reasons, and when I allowed permissions, it turned out that the MS Word file was just a link to a file hosted on Sharepoint.

But in the meantime the situation had already generated some unnecessary interactions, and the sender also didn't understand why I wasn't able to open the attachment. In the end a Microsoft product (online Outlook) was blocking its own product (Office 365) from being used properly. Also, the design decision to make a link look like a .docx attachment confused us all.

There were also some long Sharepoint-based URLs in the email that made it look messy. I found that an inferior collaborative experience to Google's services, where everything works quite seamlessly within its own ecosystem, as long as one is working within a Chrome browser, regardless of the operating system or whether one is onsite or offsite.

Having said that, ironically I'm finding Office 365 quite useful in the Chrome OS environment when I need to deal with MS office files that people send me, wether via the online interface or the Android apps. These of course don't have all the features but good enough for viewing files and doing basic manipulation.

NickG wrote:

Hmm. I'm working with an organisation that has just (last July) moved
from Google to O365. The move has introduced a lot of friction into what
were previously reasonably smooth collaborative models. Two reasons:

- As suggested in the quoted article, collaboration was an add-on to
Outlook, especially the calendar, and doesn't reflect how people work
naturally.
- Much of the collaboration is built on Sharepoint, which demands *a
lot* of design and configuration to fit the organisation's specific use
cases.

The result is that what was quick and intuitive now requires much more
in the way of work and forethought from the end users. It seems to me,
as a relative outsized (I'm contracted to a specific project), that all
the current benefits are to the IT department and it ability to manage,
administer and control and none are to the users. In fairness, there are
plans that might deliver end user benefits down the road, but my
experience is that "down the road" never actually delivers.

Sorry - that went somewhat off topic

I also thought about using MindManager for project planning / task management etc. I think it's very useful for that purpose because it basically combines mind mapping with a lot of functions that are more typical for database or spreadsheet applications: Microsoft Office integration, reading from and writing to databases (not sure if only SQL Server or also other types), different types of tags and variables can be assigned to nodes, advanced filtering of views, formatted reports, integration with the Windows file system etc.

It would make a really good dashboard application. But I never took the time to set it up. Also from a productivity standpoint having a "visual" system is probably overrated -- many people do quite well with the complete opposite, like org-mode, or are nostalgic about some DOS program.



Paul Korm wrote:

Thanks for the great suggestion @satis. I should have mentioned my
view that work planning and tracking is not something I'm interested in
doing in anyone's cloud. At all. Ever. Which is why I'm focused on
legacy desktop applications, either Windows or macOS. Doesn't matter.

Jan S. wrote:

It would make a really good dashboard application. But I never took the
time to set it up. Also from a productivity standpoint having a "visual"
system is probably overrated -- many people do quite well with the
complete opposite, like org-mode, or are nostalgic about some DOS
program.

If you are a visual person, a visual dashboard might be perfect - and not overrated.

Also to the "off-topic" discussion. Many people don't realize this but the big money for tech companies is (like for any other company) in government contracts. Which is probably why the classic OneNote program is dying. Microsoft wants to get in all classrooms, not just in the US but world wide. So they stripped down the app and added special features for teachers and students. Then they can either sell lots of surface tablets to school district --- and the corresponding professional services: cloud infrastructure, training etc. --- or get license fees from third parties (which is how Microsoft got big) like Lenovo, Dell etc. for their computers.

The importance of "data" seems --- to me at least --- very overrated. I can't see a logical reason why companies wouldn't be dissatisfied with Facebook or Google Ads in a couple of years. Just like they have been with magazine and newspaper ads previously. I think we are in the early stages of big data right now and many people can get away with making authoritative statements. There is really no good way of testing how reliable the predictions models are, that supposedly revolutionize marketing. But there is an obvious incentive for the people who develop them to overstate their effects. For example by using ridiculous multiplicators---as in the example given in the thread above: paying 2$ for a single row in a spreadsheet. That would only be justifiable if one could expect to sell products with an average value of well above 2$ per person, which seems unreasonable to me. But selling more toothpaste by using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning sure sounds good --- right now.

Also, if more and more services move the cloud, then there could also be positive effects --- at least for the people in this forum. It would create more incentives for smaller developers to work on desktop software. Just like the proliferation of streaming created a vinyl revival.

Conditional on the fact that there actually are "visual persons" this would be true. However, it doesn't seem that people should be categorized by their learning/working "style". Of course, they can be categorized by being more visual, textual, linear, non-linear etc. But those preferences are probably not hard-wired but also learned.

For example, somebody might take notes on a text as a mind-map. Then they are tested on their understanding of the text and receive an A. Now they are convinced that mind-mapping is a superior method of understanding --- even if they would have gotten an A anyway by learning via a different method or by not learning at all. This often holds true even if the expectation of high achievement is repeatedly disappointed: they learn with mind-maps but don't get an A. The initial reward often introduces a very strong path dependency.

This is true for many phenomena. Many people swear by underlining or highlighting passages in a text. Meanwhile different approaches have been tested again and again. Highlighting is by far the worst --- even worse than just reading. So perception and actual outcome might be quite different. Highlighting is of course perceived as work by the student. It is also observable while thinking isn't. However, it's not a good representation of thinking/understanding, so the two shouldn't be confused. Successful scholars who mainly highlight texts succeed despite of their inferior methods not because of them. I would think that a similar argument can be made about many 'productivity techniques' --- visual tools included.

Of course dashboards etc. make a lot of sense when there are to many data points to be related by a single brain.


Franz Grieser wrote:

If you are a visual person, a visual dashboard might be perfect - and
not overrated.