*archived from medium, published on 24th November 2015
PART 01 31st October 2015 _ Dropbox Paper
Today is a good day. There is a new app out there. Just got access to a Dropbox Paper invite, and I a am bit happy. Almost as gratified on the day I got my medium invite. Toggl times my session of this testing as data curation. This is going to be the day where I will officially sort out my writing mess.
Now where all do I have my notes at _
Medium drafts,
Svbtle drafts,
Draftin notes and documents,
box notes,
wri.tt txt files,
stray google docs,
stray notes on Onedrive,
more notes on Evernote,
notes on OneNote,
some on Quip,
tests on Slack and then
Basecamp.
Online existence is getting more complex with every new product beta release. So many apps and other systems to choose from are facilitating a productivity loss. With the influx of note-taking functionality on all apps, coordinating notes needs a dedicated app in itself. An idealized manner of work and integrated environments is the proposition just that everything is one.
Paper is a fancy tool that presents a delusion of what can be the ideal way of working. A separate product (at the looks of it) in a file hosting service, in principle tires, to coordinate a better use for the app, but somehow maintains a distance in activities. It could work where dropbox is solely dependent on, but this is definitely unlikely.
As a result of the early invite and pleasing UI, Dropbox up until now just reserved for storing screengrabs is suddenly useful. Google Apps and Office365 are paid for. Hence docs on that stay. Evernote has been around for a while so that too stays for now. Other than these all notes from other apps are moved to Paper.
Now Paper is still in beta. Ticks are persistent. 31st is one of the worst internet days had thus far. A transfer is proving difficult as every document creation and edit is stalled. It works purely online thus requires constant access to an unhindered data connection. A complete online product is a definite no-go.
The core problem is how the product seems to cater to a category of people who use text as a medium of work. The communication interface for the project moves from say conversation, email to paper as an instrument for idea exchange. It is a workflow concern which necessitates what tools are used for discussion, and the delivered work.
Tools of production are instrumental in deciding how to streamline. Out of the twelve services used the excitement of a new tool has virtually negated the need of two-thirds of the products used. Dropbox as the larger app now locates writing assignments. All writings tasks move to an unused account.
PART 02 15th November 2015 _ Google Docs
A random functionality comparison has resulted in moving the working text here. Horrible internet doesn’t hinder at all on a google doc. Paper move considerably helped in clarifying content production and therefore its distribution. Even though all writings/ notes are now on Dropbox/ Paper having a dedicated file server in a production environment seems too much.
It could be just bad internet but dropbox isn’t relevant anymore. Onedrive and Google Drive both do the job very well while having much more to offer than a standalone file-sharing app with notes add-on. With the same persistence which moved material to dropbox the entire lot is transferred out again.
Overall it’s taken about three weeks in sorting writing apps. As both Microsoft and Google products are paid for, the move to paper and then out has revived the need to produce within ecosystems. Main writings are still on Word. Written drafts are cleared over to OneNote and google docs.
The trick is now to leave Evernote. Products create a level of dependency which locks you into using them. Like dropbox now, Evernote was just a note-taking app. It’s bloated ever since and recently I suffered my first major data loss on the app. With that trauma still at large, all created notes from an instance have already been transferred to OneNote.
Evernote encourages hoarding. As it's been used over time and projects, a workflow is in place. Deactivation can happen only over a revised work method. The objective lies in engaging with tool ecosystems instead of several apps across vendors. With all payments switching to subscriptions it’s only advisable to have minimum app overheads.
Between OneNote and newly launched docs.com from Microsoft, Evernote could over time synthesize into the office365 ecosystem. If you are in a windows environment, office dependence is the default. Additional windows-centric apps available through subscriptions and which add to existing platform capabilities is the way to use tools.
Over mail, storage, and document publishing google apps do their work. Owing to better collaboration tools google docs are best served in draft constructions.
Particularly those requiring extensive internet research or co-authorship at early stages will all take place here. Editing and subsequent processing for print are performed on Word.
So that’s roughly it. Text archive collected on dropbox is under contemplation to shift either to Onedrive or Gdrive. A tale of how beta testing invites instead of encouraging the use of a new product has facilitated a consolidation of the old. Optimization of tools paid for/ at hand is the moral of my story in general.