In light of Apple’s press conference tomorrow and Microsoft’s launch of Origami on Thursday, I thought it was about time I got together my thoughts on something that’s been bothering me since November last year.

But first, more about Origami. Word is that it’s a lifestyle PC. Yep, we’ve heard that one before. This time it’s small, wearable, always-on and connected. It runs Windows, but that’s not important right now. Back to November…

At this time I was getting frustrated that all the stuff I need to work with lives in different places:

• E-mails document things I need to do and they also serve as archives of what has happened and who I’ve communicated with. I use GTD categorisation of e-mails so it’s not just Actions that matter.
• Basecamp has other useful chunks of information: Projects, ToDos, Milestones, Writeboards and Messages. For our business we usually use Basecamp when more than one person is involved. Personal stuff remains personal.
• Backpack is where I keep casual notes on my work. It’s often easier for me to create or update a page in Backpack than it is to record it elsewhere. I also use Backpack for some occasions when I visit customers.
• Backpack was also the place I kept my other GTD information, although this has since been replaced by kGTD, which works with OmniOutliner. The essence is still the same, and I still follow the GTD philosophy.
• Apart from all of the above, the rest of what I need can be simply called ‘Documents’.

From all of this, I perform weekly reviews, I define the work to do in the following week, and I decide what to do each day, using GTD to pick up other things that need addressing as each day progresses. One more thing, I also note things down in a tiny Moleskine notebook.

The big problem with all of this is that everything may need to change, propagate, splice and transfer to one or more of the other places. New items need to be added. Old ones archived or deleted. Links and relationships need to be created, revised and deleted. And it’s mainly done by hand. Some of the information is on my Mac, the remainder is on the web.

We’re currently developing a fairly groovy content management system. Generally, CMSs can cope with various classes of information and each piece of information can be augmented with other data (tags and metadata). All the classes of information I mentioned earlier could be represented in a common format, using tags and additional metadata to differentiate them or add semantics. So it’s possible that everything could be put on the internet. Accessible from anywhere.

One other issue is how it’s organised so that it can be effectively retrieved, sorted, categorised. But, when everything can be tagged or can have metadata added to it, this becomes a relatively simple task. Apple’s Spotlight technology and Microsoft’s new WinFS format both aim to find data outside of the application which created it. Smart Folders are a sensational way of grouping and organising information, and I use them extensively in Apple Mail. It’s all achievable.

If everything is on the internet, there must be an effective way of accessing and manipulating it. Which is where this post began. Mobile and desktop devices could both have the ability to access documents, synchronising where necessary or making live modifications if network connectivity allowed for it.

The revolutionary but short-lived OpenDoc project had the concept of compound documents. Each document was composed of other documents, each class of which had its own viewer and editor. But the overriding problem with OpenDoc was that it was difficult to convert to and from the OpenDoc format and certain companies didn’t want to play with the consortium promoting OpenDoc. Using something similar to the OpenDoc concept would allow a wider range of documents to be manipulated on mobile devices, and you wouldn’t need to download an entire document in order to edit it.

That’s about all I have at the moment on this – there are drawings and other ideas on my Newton, which may pop up in a later post. Origami won’t do anywhere near this, because it’s geared towards talking with other devices, and I have no idea what Apple may eventually do. But what would really suit me is given here.