Copying and pasting is as fundamental to life in front of a computer screen as pressing the gas and brake pedal when driving a car. It’s boring and not very noteworthy. But that’s not going to keep me from talking about it. Oh, no. Not at all. If you do a lot of copying and pasting, you might be able to get even better at it by using a clipboard history utility. My favorite is the one that comes with LaunchBar.

How come you say? Well, ‘cause I

• like making refinements to repetitious activities,
• copy and paste stuff a lot,
• have a fondness for keyboard shortcuts,
• like pasting plain text free of formatting and other gunk,
• write bookoodles of stuff in Markdown and like automating it, and
• I like quickly building lists of items that can be pasted into emails, documents, text files, and all sorts of other places where lists are welcome.

A history of the clipboard, LaunchBar style

Most of the following comes straight from LaunchBar’s Clipboard History help page with the seasoning of my own experience sprinkled on for extra flavor.

My LaunchBar clipboard settings

The keyboard shortcut

By default, Command-\ invokes LaunchBar’s clipboard history.

After invoking, continue holding Command, and use your up and down arrow keys to move through the list. Select the item you want, and release the keys to paste.

Quite often, I find myself copying multiple things from the same source. For example, I often need to copy both a web page's title and its URL. Instead of flipping back and forth twice, I can do both copies back-to-back, then retrieve them from the clipboard history in the order I need.

In general, I find that the less I'm switching between windows, the more efficient I am.

Pasting plain text

It’s exceedingly rare that I want to paste text with formatting. Normally, all I want is the plain, unadulterated stuff.

Checking “As Plain Text” means that no formatting will travel with your text to its ultimate destination. But fear not: you can still paste formatting by pressing the Option key.

The nice thing about keeping “As Plain Text” checked is that, for me anyway, Command-\ has become a substitute for Command-V (the default keyboard shortcut for pasting).

Merging clipboard items

This is where you can really give your copy/paste productivity a turbo boost. I use clipboard merge to quickly build lists of things. You might want to, too.

To merge items, press Command-C to copy the first item, then Command-C Command-C (twice, that is) to merge successive items with existing items. Each successive item will be stacked like:

First chunk of text
Second chunk of text
Third chunk of text

And so on.

This is a super handy way to compile of list of disjointed items from a PDF, web page, etc.

File operations

I use LaunchBar to quickly navigate through folders on my Mac. I also use it frequently to move and copy files to and fro. Until very recently, however, I thought that I could only work with one file at a time. Oh, silly me.

To select multiple files with LaunchBar, select the first file by pressing Command-C, then select additional files by pressing Command-C-C for each one. You can even do this with files in different folders!

Once you have all the files you want, you can do several useful things:

• Paste onto a folder to copy the files to that folder.
• Paste into a Mail window to attach them to the message.
• Press Command-Shift-V in LaunchBar to select these files.

This last one is particularly interesting; I discovered it only recently. Command-Shift-V tells LaunchBar that you want to do something with the files using LaunchBar.

If you’re familiar with moving copying and moving files using LaunchBar, you know that process is basically this:

1. Select file in LaunchBar
2. Press Tab
3. Type an “operation.” For example, type an application name, then Return to open with that app; navigate to folder, then Return to copy/move file to that folder; type email contact and Return to attach to message; and more.

After you’ve pressed Command-Shift-V, you can pick up at step 2 above, and it works exactly the same way.

In other words, Command-Shift-V is the ticket to working with multiple files at once – something that I previously thought only Quicksilver could do.

Do you have any shareworthy clipboard history tricks?

I’d love to hear them.

You know you like it. And you know you sit glued to the screen when the Discovery Channel shows it. A herd of wildebeests needs to migrate from A to B, but wouldn't ya know it: Between A and B there's a river lousy with crocodiles.

Crossing the river is for the good of the herd, and most will make it. Most, but undoubtedly, not all. If ever there is a time in the life of the wildebeest when one questions the rationale of the herd, it’s probably when he or she is looking down at that muddy water brimming with fourteen-foot, one-ton killing machines. Staring at creatures whose lot, it seems, is to f up anything that comes between them and the goal of living another day.

But the individual voices ultimately go silent. Groupthink prevails, and the suicidal swim begins.

But c'mon. It wouldn’t be such great TV if one or two of the unlucky bastards didn’t get obliterated by the crocs. After all, these are "animals," not people. People are different. Right?

Humans herding

As a human, acting on asynchronous thinking is difficult, too. You’re simply not wired for it. You’re designed, by nature, to sync with the herd.

Human syncing manifests itself in all kinds of funny ways. Women who live together often have menstrual cycles at the same time. The more rotund your friends, the more likely you’ll hit the buffet twice -- or thrice. You benchmark your yard, clothing, and car against your neighbors'.

Herding is a survival mechanism with deep primal roots. I’ve written about it before. But given where humanity has strayed the last 100 years or so, herding seems less helpful. Less rational, too.

Bienvenidos a Miami

Often, the farther you get from events in the past, the more they come into focus. It’s like being able to climb up on a large hill and watch reruns of herds bumbling about on the plains below. It's a much better vantage point than when you're among the dust, hooves, and whims below.

Lately, I’ve been doing some reading about the housing bubble, specifically in Miami, a place where the housing herd ran off a not-so-small cliff.

I’ve copied in some snippets from a few things I’ve been reading. They were written at various points in the madness. I’ll explain the sources after.

Source 1:

In Miami, the speculative craze is promoted in part by developers and brokers who help buyers to resell quickly. Brokers in Miami work overtime to get their clients into V.I.P. sales events before developers start pitching buildings to the public.

Source 2:

Everybody was making money… prices were climbing to incredible heights, and those who came to scoff remained to speculate… Speculation was easy-and quick. No long delays while titles were being investigated and deeds recorded; such tiresome formalities were postponed.

Source 3:

Builders have been selling the vast majority of their homes to flippers. Flippers don’t care about quality. Rarely does a flipper order a competent home inspection. Rarely does a flipper even do a walk through. They are only concerned with flipping the contract as soon as they close.

Source 2:

Nine buyers out of ten bought their lots with only one idea, to resell, and hoped to pass along their [property] to other people at a neat profit before even the first payment fell due at the end of thirty days.

Source 3:

So now we have a market flooded with people that had no intention of living in the home. When, in the history of the world, have you seen millions of people buying multiple homes like a box of donuts? Like donuts, the value of these homes is dropping as they sit on the market.

The sources

Sources 1 and 3 refer to the most recent housing crash in Miami. Source 2 was published in 1931 following the first Miami real estate crash, an equally (if not greater) financial disaster occurring in the 1920s.

• Source 1: “Housing mania will end in tears” by Bill Fleckenstein in 2005
• Source 2: Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen in 1931
• Source 3: Ghost Market by Mike Morgan in 2006

Both crazes were fueled by the same crowd consensus: “this time is different” and “everyone else is doing it.” Jump! Jump in, dammit!

Does history repeat itself?

I don’t think so. If it does, then I don't understand time very well.

No, history doesn’t repeat itself; people repeat themselves. People reproduce and pass along not only their DNA but their experiences. They pass their wealth along, too.

Wealth and experiences are more fleeting than the influence of DNA and the herding behaviors learned through basic human interaction.

A old Chinese proverb states that “wealth does not pass three generations.” That’s about right if you think about it. Rarely is the means of acquiring wealth bequeathed with the pleasures wealth bestows.

So as people repeat themselves through history, we see that some lessons must be painfully relearned every three generations or so. In other words, by the third generation, we're back to the crocodile pit wondering what to do about it.

Out with the gnu, in with the old

(Sorry, couldn't resist.)

We live in a time when it’s easier than ever to get drunk on the latest a meme or craze. Worse, while the web makes it harder to get rid of the past in some regards, it also makes forgetting easier than ever by enticing us to place disproportionate importance on the recent past.

Before social networks, stock market tickers and headlines were the best measures of social memes. But now, we see real-time information everywhere, and the more of it we get, the less important the past seems. Simply put, we have less time for the past.

If you want to make smarter financial decisions and high-value moves in your life, time spent studying people will pay you back far more than time spent studying the technical details of investing and finance. Know where we've been first.

Like wildebeests, people really haven’t changed at all for thousands and thousands of years. The forecast is flat for the foreseeable future, too.

But unlike a wildebeest, you have more license to act on your questions. Simply questioning the herd and avoiding obliteration is probably worth more in the long run than any upside associated with the remote possibility that a crazy herd is correct this time.

I think the next 100 years will present enormous opportunity for those who stop and look the other way while the rest of the herd runs for the cliff or goes for a swim. It takes fortitude and confidence, but being a contrarian can have huge upside in the hyper-memetic world we’ve stepped into.

A few questions to get going

• How am I different than the herd?
• How can I use that to benefit myself and the herd?

This is not an entirely selfish pursuit. As James Surowiecki points out in The Wisdom of the Crowds, groups of independent thinkers actually make smarter decisions as a whole than groups heavily influenced by memes.

Have you ever thought about who's been making your decisions?

A few notes

• No wildebeests were harmed during the writing of this post. In fact, that little guy in the picture up there actually got away. Good for him and his individual success.
• Hat tip to Randy Murray for recommending Allen’s book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
• After I drafted the guts of this post, I found a similar article comparing the 1920s to more recent times. See Bob Hoye’s article “The Consequence of Real Estate Bubbles” for more striking comparisons between the recent and not-so-recent financial past.

If you have a multi-touch trackpad on your MacBook or MacBook Pro, a magic trackpad, or even a magic mouse, then you know that you can do all sorts useful and not-so-useful things with gestures. One gesture that I use quite a lot on my MacBook Pro is the three-finger “brush.” I use it to drag and resize windows. It basically functions the same as doing a click, hold, and drag (the conventional way to move things around).

Personally, I like the three-finger approach because it just seems so effortless and natural compared to clicking and keeping the trackpad depressed while I move a single finger.

Like all the gestures available, Apple illustrates how the three-finger movement works in the trackpad system preferences screen. For a while, I used it exactly as their little model hand shows: group fingers 1-3 together and move them as one unit:

More recently, I’ve discovered that the fingers need not move as a group. As long as two fingers are anchored, you can move the other one to get the dragging effect.

I like to keep fingers 2 and 3 down as anchors and move finger 1 (my index finger). It works especially well for small window adjustments.

If you have any multi-touch tricks you’ve uncovered, share them in the comments.

Evolving email is a series about putting yourself in the inbox of the recipient and getting more value out of the time you spend on the task of writing email.

* * *

“He evolved email for six posts, and on the seventh, he rested.” Or something like that.

This is the last post in this series for a while, but don’t worry. Here are a few more miscellaneous nuggets to snack on.

Practically efficient tips for getting more from email

• Keep emails as short as possible. Some people recommend five sentences or less. I’m reluctant to put quantitative boundaries on such abstract things, so I just say try to keep the ratio of information to words as high possible, but shorter is generally better with email.

• Don’t use the acronym ASAP. Ever. I can’t think of a single time when seeing ASAP in an email motivated me to move faster. Say it some other way.

• Don’t be this guy: “Hey, I just sent you an email. What did you think about it? What, you don’t read your email or something?!?!” Give people a chance to read your message. If you needed something five minutes ago, use a phone.

• Use outlines as much as possible. Numbering pieces is also a great idea because it makes it super easy for the replier to refer to items.

• Say thanks more often. If people are blowing off your emails a lot, it may be because you never end email conversations with a simple thank you. If you always respond to coworkers’ answers with additional questions, expect them to shut down.

• Use spell check.

If nothing else, always remember that you can spend your time emailing, or you can spend it doing other more productive and enjoyable things.

Nobody wants their headstone to read “Here lies Joe, a man who lived between compose and send.”

When you send someone an email, your goal is often to get them to do something or get information from them. The easier you make it on them, the more likely you’ll get what you need and get it more efficiently.

You can read the rest of the entries in this series by clicking on tag: evolving email.

Two of my favorite podcasters, David Sparks and Katie Floyd, just dedicated an entire Mac Power Users episode to one of my favorite topics: Markdown and MultiMarkdown. Be sure to have a listen.

Whether you use the Instapaper browser bookmarklet or iOS apps like Reeder, you know that adding a link to your Unread items is just a simple tap away. This convenience is great, but that doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and daisies in Read Later Land.

When you save an article to Instapaper in the usual way, you’re not likely to remember where you found the article. For many articles, it’s no big deal. You’re just going to read them, and move on.

But what about those articles you find in your friends’ Twitter feed, or maybe a blog that you want to credit? Wouldn’t be nice if you could keep up with who shared that with you?

Save the sharer

Fact: Your Instapaper account gives you a unique, clandestine email address. It looks like this:

readlater.abunchanonsense@instapaper.com

When you email a link to that address, it throws the article in your Unread folder. Go take a look at yours on the Instapaper Extras page after you’re attention has been released from the mitts of this gripping post.

When you fire an email at your Instapaper email address, the subject of the email becomes the title of article, and it’s totally editable.

Tip (finally): Just put “via Steve” on the end of the subject to remind you that he's who sent it. Easy enough, right?

When I actually get around to reading the article, I know where I got it from. If I want to tweet it, quote it in Tumblr, or use it here at PE, I can easily credit the person that originally shared it.

Whether you’re on a Mac, PC, iPhone, Droid, or a “Windows Phone 7 phone” (the only mobile device name requiring a TextExpander snippet), email is an option. No excuses.

The importance of via (serious stuff)

Crediting others is, in my ever so humble opinion, critical to the efficient flow of “social capital” around the blogosphere, Twittersphere, or what ever abstract electronic social sphere you operate in. More importantly, it’s just the right thing to do.

If you’re good about crediting others, you can expect others to return the favor. Call it karma, call it web ethics, call it whatever you like. But it’s a win all around whether you do it for selfish or selfless reasons.

Also see: Everything I know about Instapaper for a big ole laundry list of Instapaper goodness.

Do you use Transmit in your FTP workflows?  (If not, you should.) How about Notational Velocity for your Markdown writing? Yes? Well then I’m sure you share in my debt of gratitude to Steven Frank, co-founder of Panic and the first to add Markdown support to Notational Velocity.

And as if changing the world of Mac software for the better wasn’t enough, Steven (Twitter: @stevenf) keeps his personal blog chock full of useful Mac tips. You’ll even find unique photos of his impressive collection of computer memorabilia there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a cool mix of new and old Mac things in one place.

Recently, Steven let me pick his brain on several topics. Here’s what he had to say…

How long have you been a Mac developer?

Cabel and I co-founded Panic in late 1996 / early 1997, and shipped Transmit 1.0 (then “Transit”) in September 1998. So about 12 years or so.

What inspired you to create your forked version of Notational Velocity?

I’m a big fan of plaintext and Markdown. It just seemed like a natural and obvious addition to Notational Velocity, and I knew it wouldn’t take long to slap together. A personal itch, like most things.

How do you use Notational Velocity personally?

Mainly as a desktop client for Simplenote. I don’t do anything in Notational Velocity that is beyond Simplenote’s capabilities. Its true value to me is as an automatic, over-the-air synced plaintext notepad.

My NV content is mostly reference. If I’m spending hours trying to figure something out, I fire up a new note with what I’ve tried so far, what happened, and what finally worked. I sleep better knowing that I can look it up next time I hit the problem. I also use it to capture things I find interesting as I do my online reading. Also lists of all kinds. Notes on people and things that I’ve found interesting for some reason.

I don’t really use it for freeform writing. Just capture, collection, logging, and documentation.

What type of writing do you do?

My personal blog has both personal anecdotes and technical tips and tricks. Most of my work-related writing is email, but I’ve also written the built-in help books for all of our applications, and am currently working on a rewrite of the reference material in Coda, so there’s unofficially a bit of technical writer in my job description.

Do you plan to develop Notational Velocity further in the future?

I’ve found it hard to stay on top of changes in the core NV code due to my complete non-understanding of Git, the source control system that NV is stored in. Also, some other folks seem to have picked up the torch and run with it, so I will probably mostly watch from the sidelines and see if any more enhancement ideas pop out at me. It’s all very selfish though – due to limited time availability, it would have to be a feature I personally really needed.

I’m also keeping a very close eye on an iOS app called Trunk Notes, which is a Markdown based wiki. Lack of sync has been the main thing keeping me from jumping ship away from Simplenote/NV. But I hear that a new version of Trunk is in app store review that uses Dropbox for storage. That seems to me like it would be absolutely killer. I’ve been pining for months for any syncing, plaintext notepad that would let me add links between notes. There are surprisingly few apps in this space.

How do you use mobile devices (e.g. iPhone) in your workflows?

It’s pretty integral now. I won’t use desktop knowledge management apps any more unless they sync automatically over-the-air to my iPhone. Unfortunately that means I don’t get to use a lot of beautiful apps, like Things. But life is too short for manual syncing.

That means IMAP for email, MobileMe for contacts, calendar, and bookmarks. Simplenote for notes and task lists.

How has the iPad change your workflows?

It kind of has me flummoxed. I love my iPad, love using it. I also just got an 11” MacBook Air. And whenever I’m headed out the door I look at them both and raise my hands skyward and shout “which one? WHICH ONE?!” Each is strong in the exact areas the other is weak.

But more often than not, I leave them both at home. My iPhone is the true go-everywhere device.

Do you use a content management system on your Mac? If so, how do you primarily use it?

Not really. Just the Finder, and built-to-purpose apps like iPhoto when it makes sense. I am kind of a stickler about third-party software and run as little of it as I possibly can get away with.

Do you use any productivity software to stay organized with tasks, projects, etc.?

I’ve been through a million. They are always either too complex or (ironically) missing that one feature that is critical for me. So for now, it’s back to a plaintext note called “TODO” in my NV/Simplenote.

Based on posts at your personal blog, you seem to be an avid collector of older computer hardware. Do you have a favorite piece? How do you store all that stuff?

We have a big house, and I was allowed to take over half of a guest bedroom. :)

I’ve only recently started doing the collecting thing, and I’m trying to limit myself to things that are personally meaningful to me (so Atari, Amiga, Apple ][, and Newton, primarily). I really don’t want to go too overboard. In addition to the fun nostalgia aspect, I also find it grounding to keep a historical “how did we get here” perspective on a high-speed industry that really doesn’t have much of a long-term memory.

Thanks, Steven!

Do you use more than one browser at a time? Do you ever want to open a link in a browser other than the one you’re currently in? I’ve already written about how I use two browsers to increase productivity. I also wrote a tip on efficiently dragging files from one window to another when you have lots of windows open.

Turns, out I can drag links from one browser to another in much the same way I illustrated file dragging.

How to drag a link from one browser to another

This example assumes I find the link in Chrome (e.g. in an email), but I want to view it in Safari.

1. Click and begin dragging the link in Chrome.
2. While still holding down your mouse/trackpad, press Command+Tab.
3. Drag and point your mouse pointer at the Safari icon in the app switcher.
4. Release the Command and Tab keys. Safari will appear on top now.
5. Continue dragging and release on the URL field in Safari.

The link will load in Safari.

To better illustrate this simple technique (as well as practice a little screencasting), I put together the following short video using QuickTime X:

[youtube _RbG3n9iCUs]

Evolving email is a series about putting yourself in the inbox of the recipient and getting more value out of the time you spend on the task of writing email.

* * *

Suppose you get this email from your boss:

We need to get that new proposal wrapped up. Sections 4 and 7 need the most work. You and Jack should probably split these up and get it done by this Friday or Monday.

What’s wrong with this email? Well, here are a few things:

1. We really means you.
2. Who is supposed to work on each section?
3. Is the proposal due Friday or Monday?

But the biggest problem is this: Additional emails will probably be exchanged to clarify the situation.

What the bossman should’ve said:

Please finish section 7 of the proposal by Friday. I’m assigning section 4 to Jack.

Why this version is better:

1. It’s perfectly clear what your boss wants you to do and when.

Avoid sending the passive email

• Don’t say “we” when you mean “you.”
• Be clear about directions.
• Be clear about deadlines.

If you’re a boss and you find yourself having this problem a lot, maybe you aren’t comfortable delegating things. Just remember that that’s one of your jobs. Delegating, that is.

And trust me. Your employees prefer clear, concise directions over vague, ambiguous ones.

The clearer you are, the clearer they are about what they have to do. And best of all, it minimizes time wasted writing and reading email. More gets done.

As I’ve said before, people read email for information, not pleasure. Deliver information clearly, concisely, and profit.

Let your boss have it in the comments.

[Photo by dklimke via Flicker]

In the year 2010, there are two large public silos of text-based knowledge. One’s been around a while; the other just showed up: libraries and the internet.

Libraries are incredible for what resides within their brick and mortar: documentation of virtually every written human thought since thoughts were recorded on paper.

The internet is pretty damn awesome, too. In a remarkably short period of time, it’s become a nearly real-time information engine that attracts and amalgamates an inconceivable amount of data.

Libraries and the internet serve different needs in the year 2010. The internet is a natural resource for real-time information and communication (current events, email, social media), while historical, story-based information resides in library books.

What if these two monumental institutions of mankind could mate? How would it happen, and who would make the first move? Should books get in bed with the web, or should the web jump books? Is it really that important?

Yes. And I hope to convince you why.

The sexy, rockstar web

The internet is an handsome engineering achievement. It’s a sophisticated mash-up of computers, wires, and software that form an artificial neurological structure for the world.

But the web is an even sexier organic creation, specifically the two-dot-O version. It’s a brain of brains. An orgy of idea orgies.

The life blood that flows through the web’s copper and fiber optic veins is digital curation, that magical plasma that brings content to life. Machines make content accessible; people make content relevant.

Google perhaps ushered in the Web 2.0 era by being one of the first to profit from the power of human filtering. Google search technologies like PageRank figure out the most likely answer to your query by directing you to sites containing content that others linked to.

Google works well. So well that it obliterated its early competition by using human filtering to shrink the vast multi-billion-page web to a single page of relevant search results. And today in 2010, that first page is the “internet” for many.

But there’s only so much you can put on one page. And while Google’s black box wizardry is damn good at figuring out what should show up 0.07 seconds after you hit enter, Google’s index is still limited to what’s been added to the web since the 1990s.

Granted, that’s all kinds of bits and bytes. But fifteen years or so just isn’t enough time to catalog and curate every single tidbit of human knowledge that’s been recorded since people started writing things down. Even the most Google-favored one-stops like Wikipedia have only been curated by for the last ten years or so.

The web is indeed a sexy rockstar. A lustful, live for the moment, chew it up, spit it out, hedonistic organism of information.

But the web is still a child.

Let me tell you a story about books

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a Wikipedia nut. It’s great. But it has a shortcoming that isn’t made up anywhere else online. Wikipedia entries usually don’t tell a story.

Are stories important? In a word, yeah. They’re really important. James Shelley says it more eloquently:

Storytelling, it seems, is the vector of human meaning, if not its essence. To be human is to be something of an autobiographical creature: the owner of a narrated existence that is comprised of experiences. Experiences and memories are the neurological currency of life, and they are accumulated, transacted and communicated in narratives.

Before the web, people learned everything through stories. Both verbal and written. The best written stories are encased in books, the most time-tested medium for communicating narratives when mouths and ears aren’t in the same place. More importantly, books reach across the strata of time.

Within all those stories in all those books are countless tales of humanity. Tales of folly and fortune, triumph and misery. Of evil and love. Accounts of the rise and fall of people and societies. Like broken records, books debunk the “this time is different” mentality over and over and over again.

Virtually every point along the pendulum’s multi-dimensional swing has been written down in books.

But above all, books contain answers. Enshrined in books are solutions to the mistakes that a memoryless humanity will repeat ad infinitum.

Civilizations progress when they take more steps forward than back; books are the medium through which non-overlapping generations hold hands along this journey. They are the stepping stones laid by humanity past for humanity present. Books help ensure that we efficiently pursue our ultimate destiny: getting better than before.

Books, take 2.0

Books are being rapidly reinvented as you read this. The concept of an e-book is new. Like brand spanking, wobbly legs new. While Kindle has been out since 2007, e-reading is just now beginning its ascent.

Recent sales figures show that 2010 e-book sales have nearly tripled over 2009. Something seen as an impractical gimmick by most people a few years ago is now something that every publisher and distributor of books wants to cash in on.

But for now, an e-book is still more “book” than “e.”

This is to be expected in the first generation of e-books, I suppose. As with the first generation of computers, which were patterned after the physical world from which they arose (think manila folder icons), e-books are also designed to look like their cellulosic ancestors.

E-books often have page numbers and chapters. Even the displays emulate page turning through graphical effects.

[Photo obtained from macrumors.com]

E-books are similar to their battery-less forefathers in another striking way. A very frustrating way. Sharing content in a e-book is no easier than trying to copy and paste ink in a paperback.

When books were only made of paper, I never questioned the fact that I had to manually type paragraphs I wanted share. But now this seems primitive and maddeningly absurd.

Now that my reading apps sit beside all of my other social apps, I can’t help but ask: Why can’t they talk to each other?

Reading a book through the glass of my iPad in 2010 is like staring at the face of a neanderthal frozen in ice. What if I could thaw him and let him speak?

Web 2.0 + open books = Web 2.Better

Web 2.0 is largely about connecting people and answers – as long as those answers are on the web. What if I need an answer that’s in a book?

Today, I can go to my library’s web site and search for titles. Or I can do a Google Books search. Or I can read reviews at Amazon.com. But all those things have something in common. I’m required to first make a decision to look for information with books in mind.

What if my question was answered on page 207 of a book written hundreds of years ago, but I have no prior knowledge of that?

Book-bound content must become relevant in web searches.

As I said earlier, people can only enter so much into Google’s index in fifteen years or so. No matter how determined academics, zealous wiki curators, and bloggers may be, they’re a minuscule subset of the web user base. Their numbers are dwarfed by the billions of ordinary people reading books across the world right now.

What if the natural human instinct to share and relate stories could be harnessed so that the masses could curate e-books?

What if reading was sharing?

When I’m reading a book in the Kindle app on my iPad and I come across a paragraph that really speaks to me, I highlight it. Sometimes I make a note too.

I suspect thousands and thousands of other people do the same thing on their Kindle device.

Just imagine if all of this information were made available to search engines, and imagine if other people were allowed to comment and create conversation around e-book annotations. Over time, readers would excavate all of the fossilized information now frozen in books.

At the same time, the conversations that would evolve around parts of books would give them modern context. The dialog would make parts of books relevant to search queries. Then, search engines like Google would be able to link a question asked in 2010 to an answer provided in 1750.

The most timeless topics would remain near the top of Google search results because conversations around these topics would never end.

It’s conceivable that the web may one day catalog the fruits of every great written human thought to date. More importantly, web search technology would connect people with relevant answers from the past.

It’s possible that parts of books would become more important than the books themselves. And perhaps people would be less likely to read whole books once book knowledge is brought online.

The web may even ultimately do to book publishers what music sharing did to record labels. But if people read more, know more, and leverage more is that not a worthwhile gain?

Web 3.0, getting ahead of ourselves?

Web 3.0 is supposed to be all about semantics. The semantic web will supposedly run on machines that can think more like people. In other words, computers will do more human-like filtering for us. Conrad Wolfram, Strategic and International Director Wolfram Research, goes further:

I suppose with Web 2.0, a lot of people talk about how the human users generate the content. I think we’re now getting to an era where that real-time content generation can not only be directly from humans, but from where the computer is producing new results in real time, responding to a question.

That sounds like a fascinating future. But here’s the thing… we’re a long way from being done with Web 2.x. And if computers are to do more thinking for us, we better make sure they’re informed.

Back to that destiny thing (getting better than before)

The web is indeed an emergent entity. It’s irreducible to its constituent parts. But like its most important parts, human brains, it’s given to impulse and emotion. The memory of a web-based society can be short. And we know that a meme-driven, memoryless society is a society easily influenced and manipulated.

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses.

[…]

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.

-Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf

If we want to continue that march to betterment, it’s critical that we know where we’ve already been… and perhaps more importantly, where we never want to go again.

The instructions already exist. Let’s make it easier to find them.

More reading on e-books

• Why book publishing needs the Silicon Valley way
• Embracing the digital book
• Open bookmarks - “Imagine a future where instead of lending someone a book, you lend them your bookmarks.”

Thank you. Practically Efficient recently picked up its 500th RSS subscriber, a cool milestone in the short history here. On top of that, several hundred more people regularly visit Practically Efficient on a typical day. And there've been a few occasions in the last month or two when it's gone into the thousands. Practically Efficient’s archives date back to February 2010, but I really didn’t start filling it up with words until June.

Since then, the subscriber and traffic growth has been steady. It’s quite a honor to know that other people enjoy reading the thoughts that occupy my head (whether I write them down or not).

In recognition of the fact that people like reading this stuff, I’m making it even easier to follow things here. At the bottom of the site, I added another way to follow PE: @PractEff on Twitter. This is a static, auto-generated feed of the posts here. I actually set it up a while ago, but haven’t really advertised it, so it’s pretty lonely right now.

And I know some folks love email, so that’s an option too. Just click on the envelope icon at the bottom of the site, and give it your email address. You’ll get an email for each post, provided that your spam filter doesn’t unduly assert itself.

Thanks again. It’s been fun so far, and I have some interesting ideas on the horizon for Practically Efficient. Can't wait to see where it goes.

Do you know what a logophiliac is? John Chandler will tell you. He also explains why you'll love Scrivener 2.0. Go see for yourself.

As my writing workflows have matured, I’ve become convinced that the way to build any written thing consisting of more than a few paragraphs is to

1. write in pieces starting from the inside out,
2. arrange and fuse the pieces together, then
3. publish the whole.

Creating “pieces” of drafts in Notational Velocity is easy. But it can also be quite easy to lose track of all the pieces that orbit some central idea if you have lots of notes (and ideas) like me.

Tagging sans tags

Notational Velocity has a tag field, but I’ve just not taken to it. Tagging text files just feels too meta-ish. So I just keep the tag field hidden.

I am using tags, though.

To group similar notes, I put a unique piece of text in the body of each related note. I use the # symbol to make it extra unique. Like #tag.

This lets me type #tag in the search field, and Notational Velocity shows me the notes that contain that unique term, which won't be found in any other (unrelated) notes. Notational Velocity will even keep #tag in the search field as I work on visible notes.

In other words, Notational Velocity retains the search until I manually clear it. This let's me type, cut, copy, and paste as I like across notes.

For me, this is an efficient and easy way to “pin” groups of notes in place. More importantly, it filters out other notes I don’t care to see.

Why not put the tag in the note title? Good question.  For one thing, I like keeping special characters out of text file names. It also keeps note titles cleaner, and it’s easier to make use of multiple tags without junking up the note title.

Honestly, this is a pretty basic Notational Velocity tip. No denying that. But it’s something I find myself doing more and more. If it helps you, great.

Note 1: Christian Tietze and I must be on the same wavelength right now. We're both thinking about how to best use Notational Velocity to work with groups of notes. Be sure to check out his thoughts, which he published yesterday after I drafted my own here. Let us know your thoughts on this too.

Note 2: I'm doing a lot of thinking about "tagging without tags" in OS X right now. I'm essentially trying to craft a content management system using tools already in the OS. I'll make a post when I have something more concrete to share, but if you want to share anything you've done along these lines, email me.

Note 3: There are no more notes. Two's a plenty.

Meeting interesting people through email is probably the most pleasant side effect of opening the doors of my brain to the internet here on PE. Some folks just blow my socks off at what they’ve accomplished in their own lives and workflows. Meet Mark Krieg. His story strikes me in two main ways. Not only does he know a ton about Mac workflows, he’s managed to boost efficiency in the lives of others as well.

With Mark’s permission, I’m sharing some of what he shared with me.

I’ve been in the computer field for 25 years. For the past 10 years I’ve been the I.T. Director for our church. We just spent the past year (or more) migrating everything from Windows to Mac & Unix. It was quite an undertaking, not only that switch but our infrastructure moved from small business to enterprise. We’re just in the process of having the dust settle.

Already it’s a dream-come-true from an administrative standpoint! The users are loving it, too! We have 3 Apple Xserves, a few other Unix servers, 12TB Promise raid60 drive array and a 16TB Drobo Pro. We have around 40 iMac 24”, 15 MacBookPros, 3 Mac Pros, and several Mac Minis. All units have a minimum of 4GB RAM. The only place we run Windows is in VMware Fusion where it’s locked out from the Internet .

The switch to Mac was brought about by a presentation we made to the elders about two years ago. By this time I had a full-time network tech hired because the task had become overwhelming. I can “conservatively” say that we’ve now reduced our workload by about 75% by moving away from Windows.

Nice.

Now we have time to train, build websites, and accomplish other projects rather than just re-image Windows PCs, check virus scanners, run parasite cleaners, etc. What we did for the presentation… we purchased two iMacs (still the white Intel design back then) and developed a stunning Keynote presentation. We placed an iMac on the board-room table at one end (no keyboard or mouse). I sat at the other end with a wireless keyboard and remote. Went through the presentation, slick as all get-out… and at the opportune time, in my pocket, I pressed a call on my cell phone to my tech.

He then makes an iChat call to us. We begin a conversation… and then I expanded it to full screen video. They were impressed. But the best part was… I then pressed F9 for Expose, and behind the presentation and iChat, there were 35 applications running that entire time. Unix scripts pouring through terminal windows, a movie running from the internal DVD player, other media playing from the hard drive, all sorts of apps that were giving off eye-candy feedback. It blew their minds. The presentation was smooth as silk, and yet that iMac was taxed about as heavy as it could go. I told them to try that on their Windows PC! They were stunned. And I was given permission to switch!

Thanks for sharing that, Mark.

If you have a workflow story you’d like to share, let me know.

Evolving email is a series about putting yourself in the inbox of the recipient and getting more value out of the time you spend on the task of writing email.

* * *

In his masterpiece How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie tells a fascinating story about Abraham Lincoln that probably isn’t in many school history textbooks. You won't read about it in Lincoln's Wikipedia entry either.

In the fall of 1842, some 19 years before he would become president of the United States, Lincoln found himself facing the very real possibility of death on a sandbar in the Mississippi River.

He had been challenged to a duel by James Shields, a “pugnacious politician” who was incensed after Lincoln publicly ridiculed him in a letter.

Fortunately for both men, the duel never happened. Their seconds managed to intervene and end the altercation before any blood was shed.

Carnegie notes that this “was the most lurid personal incident” in the life of Lincoln, a man who would later be proclaimed “the most perfect ruler of men that the world as ever seen” by his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton.

Though bullets never met flesh that autumn day in 1842, it’s likely that Lincoln learned the valuable lesson that when text is used as ammunition, the ricochet can wound the sender deeply. Sometimes fatally.

Later, during his presidency, Lincoln wrote another scathing letter, this time targeting his Union general during the Civil War. General George Meade had violated important orders from Lincoln and squandered the opportunity to corner the Confederate General Lee.

No duel ensued this time, however. Lincoln never sent the letter. It was found after his death.

Applying Lincoln’s life lessons to email

Clearly, the human urge to fire written words at others predates email. At least in the days before keyboards, we were forced to think a little more. Plus, we had to buy a stamp.

Today, however, an email can be received in anger and replied to before a cooler head can prevail. And the ricochet, if anything, zings back faster than ever.

An email argument is a duel that wounds both sides, every time. Think about it. Have you ever truly won an argument through email?

If you get a snarky-sounding email

First, wait. Whatever you do, don’t reply immediately. The angrier you are, the more time you should wait.

While you’re waiting, think. Are you misinterpreting what’s been said to you? How can you resolve this without firing back?

If you’re really convinced that the sender meant you harm, then apply another one of Carnegie’s timeless principles: you can never win an argument. Your mission should be to disarm. This takes will power, but it works. Personally, I love things that work.

Instead of angrily replying with counterpoints, point out what you agree on (if anything). And it takes even more willpower, but if all else fails, agree with the other person—even if you really don’t. Yeah, I said that correctly.

An argument can’t happen if both sides agree. But something more magical often happens too. When you agree with someone after they attack you, they often back down immediately. Many times they even reverse their position.

Whether it’s a family member or coworker, it’s in your best interests to get along. It's true from both a productive and a psychological standpoint. Getting along works.

A note on sarcasm

Whether it’s an email, message board, or any other textual medium, sarcasm often creates more harm than value.

Senders of sarcastic text assume it will be received as humor, not malice. Recipients of sarcastic text tend to assume it was sent in malice, not humor.

This is a problem with an obvious solution: Don’t use sarcasm.

Summary

The ease of sending email makes it very easy to fall into a temper trap (not the band, which is quite good by the way).

Keeping your email pistol holstered yields at least two valuable benefits:

• You avoid the time and attention distractions of an email duel.
• You earn the respect of others – making them more likely to help you later.

Conclusion: staying cool boosts productivity, health, and wealth.

If you have any stories about how you won or lost an email battle, let me know.