Because of the size limitations of the old ‘PST’ format under Office 2003, those emails are spread across 10 different PST files.  And to help me find those emails (otherwise why file them in the first place), I have a fairly complex set of folders and sub folders.  3,500 of them.

I therefore have all kinds of problems trying to find emails (but that is for another post).  With that many folders I have problems filing messages in the first place.

I’m not sure if you’ve used Outlook’s filing capabilities very much, but they leave a lot to be desired.  Basically you can move a message to a folder or copy it there.  In either case you need to manually navigate to the destination folder.  Even with Outlook 2010′s improvements the process is still very cumbersome.

That is where ‘SimplyFile‘ comes in.  There’s a little company called TechHit based out of San Francisco that I came across a couple of years ago that develops cool add-ins for Outlook.  My favourite is SimplyFile, but TwinBox (which routes your Twitter feed to one or more Outlook folders) is also great.

SimplyFile allows ‘one click’ (literally!) filing of email messages.  It either learns or you train it where you file messages.  As time goes on it gets smarter and smarter to the extent that (in my case) over 90% of the time it knows exactly which one of my 3,500 folders I want to file something in.  In the example to the right it is suggesting a folder called ‘FY10 Investment Plan.  I can accept the suggestion and just push the button, or I can choose from a list of five suggestions (which moves the probability to about 98%), or I can select any file using autosuggest as I type the folder name.

It will also let me file all the messages in the thread with a single click, or create an appointment from the message.  If I need to go to one of the 3,500 folders I can do that too: I start typing the name and it autosuggests the folder.

Version 3.0 has just been released and includes enhanced support for the Ribbon on Outlook 2010.

At $49.95 it isn’t cheap, but it is worth it.  You can download a free 30 day trial here and I’ll guarantee that once you’ve used it for a couple of weeks there’ll be no going back.

Starting from the top, those potholes are:

1. 80% of learning on the job is informal;
2. individual learning in organizations is irrelevant;
3. learner-centric learning objectives are not justifiable

I’ll take items two and three first, because the 80:20 ‘pothole’ is more of a bottomless pit and I’ll devote the bulk of this post to it.

Let’s start with: “individual learning in organizations is irrelevant”,  the argument being that work is done by teams and networks, therefore the individual is less/not important.  Whilst I absolutely support the implication in Harold’s post that context crucial and that none of us exist in a vacuum, I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes (if only I could remember who said it!) “Without people, companies are just depreciating assets”.  Organizations don’t learn (sorry Mr. Senge).  Teams don’t learn.  Networks don’t learn.  People learn.  People can learn to perform (better) in organizational, network or team contexts; they can even learn in teams, but organizations and teams don’t learn. (we could go off and discuss whether processes and/or culture count as organizational memory, but in both cases they are either created or instantiated by people.  Individual learning is it.  But context is crucial.

Next one: “learner-centric learning objectives are not justifiable”. Harold argues that learning objectives should be crafted as “the organization will be able to …”, not “the learner will be able to …”.  Again, organizations don’t do things. People do.  The role of the corporate learning organization is to develop human capability to execute business strategy.  A key skill of the members of the training team is therefore to work with business leaders to translate company goals and strategies into objectives that can be achieved via learning.  The goal of a learning program should be to “enable [employees/partners/customers...] to achieve [company objective].  Learning objectives should support the program goal.

Finally, let’s talk about the 80% thing (alternatively stated as the 70:20:10 rule – 70% of learning is informal/experiential, 20% comes from mentoring/feedback, and only 10% comes from formal learning).  The implication that often follows references to 70:20:10 is that we are wasting resources on formal training, and that social collaboration/informal learning is some sort of nirvana.

I really don’t want to target Harold for this one.  He’s simply repeating what many others have said before him.  The 70:20:10 mantra has reached almost hysterical levels in corporate learning circles.

But all is not what it seems.

I recently had the privilege to spend a few days at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania with a number of academics and a hundred or so senior corporate learning folks like me.  We were attending the 2010 Global Leadership Congress organized by the Corporate University Exchange. (Great event, by the way.  Thanks Alan and team!)  Both prior to and during the event I spent time with Dr Doug Lynch. Doug opened my eyes about a few things, but most notably about 70:20:10.

Doug asked a couple of simple questions: (a) is 70:20:10 true, and (b) if so how do we know?  Everyone in the learning space seems to assume (a) is true, but we all get a bit vague about (b).  The answer to (b) is almost always “because I read it in ____ (insert your favourite training magazine title here)”.  Doug therefore set his post-grad students a simple challenge: find the source of the 70:20:10 concept.  The results are at best worrying and at worst frightening.  The following is taken from information presented by Doug at the event):

• If you google “70:20:10″ you get 2.25m hits.  That’s right, 2.25m.  Hits are split between the education model, and the business resource management model of the same name
• “Informal learning” gets you 402,000 hits, as of the time of writing this post.
• 70:20:10 was the subject of the 2009 ASTD study, “Tapping the Potential of Informal Learning” (exec summary PDF here)
• There is even a Wikipedia article
• Informal learning has been covered in just about every training publication and in the mainstream media, including the Harvard Business Review

The problem is that almost no-one, including the Wikipedia article and HRB cites the original research for 70:20:10 applied to education.

So what does the research have to say on 70:20:10?

• If you step away from the mainstream, you get 46,800 hits with in Google Scholar
• If you drill down to what might be called ‘authoritative sources’, things get a little narrower.  There are a grand total of 46 EBSCO (Peer reviewed) Articles
• If you examine the peer reviewed articles, there is not one single empirical study that validates 70:20:10

That’s right.  Not one. (I hope someone out there can prove me – or rather Doug – wrong on this one)

70:20:10 was never researched; it was conceptualized by Tough in 1968 and put forward as a hypothesis.

Think about it.  All of that wild hysteria that has built up around social learning and collaboration?  All that time and dollars/pounds/euros you are spending on collaboration systems?  Built on a house of cards.  Er. Um.  Time for a headache pill.

Please don’t get me wrong.  I’m as big a supporter of collaborative and experiential learning and the use of social media and web 2.0 tools and techniques for learning as the next person, if not more so.

My engineering background would just like things to be on a bit firmer footing.  Any Academics out there up for a challenge?

For me it utterly fails in UI design. It is totally unintuitive, has few visual cues and behaves inconsistently. Do I swipe up, down, left or right? Is the missing text below or to the right of what I’m reading? Where did the two finger drag come from?

USA Today and Marvel comics have shown what happens when great UI design is applied to a familiar subject. Why can’t I browse PopSci on iPad like I can with the magazine? Popups? Drill downs? Embedded videos? In app browsing?

Sorry PopSci. Don’t even get me started on the pricing, but without a back to basics rethink of the entire concept behind the iPad version I’ll be sticking with good old fashioned paper version.

When you use Safari on the iPad, it identifies itself to the web site using the following string:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10

Some websites interpret this as a mobile browser and force you to a mobile (i.e., cut down often text-based) version of the site. This is frustrating, but is made unacceptable when sites don’t provide any mechanism to go to the full version of the site.

I haven’t done enough research to know whether this is an Apple problem (they should use a different browser string) or a web site one (they are interpreting the string incorrectly), or a combination of the two. Regardless, it is a pain!

1. USA today – this is exactly what an app on the iPad should be. It looks just like the paper version with all the familiarity that that brings, but fully exploits the iPad screen, UI and gestures. Excellent.

2. RealRacingHD – you are in a racing car. The iPad is your windscreen and your steering wheel. What more do you want? Good graphics and impressive performance make this a winner.

3. The Weather Channel (TWC MAX+) – the best weather app I’ve found so far.

4. FlightTrack Pro – builds on the iPhone version by adding flight tracks (with real time position info if the flight is in the air) overlaying a map.

5. F1 Timing 2010 – real time or recorded telemetry from official F1 timing-and-scoring. See the data the commentators use – in real time. Also includes real time track position on a 2D or 3D accurate representation of the track. See things unfold in real time, or watch practice, qualifying or the race as they happened.

6. Twittelator – current favorite Twitter app (thanks to @leolaporte for the recommendation). Previous to that it was Twitterific. Not impressed by the iPad version of Tweetdeck. Still like Reportage on the iPhone.

7. Dragon Dictation – absolutely impressed by the speech-to-text capabilities of this app. In some ways I wish that the iPad keyboard wasn’t quite so good. Although there is an iPad version, he minimalist interface doesn’t require the iPad, or benefit from it.

8. Photogene – great image editing app with a nice new interface for the iPad. Perfect for tidying up images for blog posts.

9. WebEx – haven’t had chance to try it in anger yet, but I loved WebEx on the iPhone and from the demo video included with the app, the iPad experience should be great.

10. See the images below for other honorable mentions – everything on the two screens are native iPad apps.

I’ve also downloaded Dragon Dictation, and if the first few attempts to use it on the iPhone are anything to go by it should make document creation on the iPad a doddle.

First impressions of the iPad generally?  Smaller than I expected, and much heavier. I knew it weighed 1.5 lbs before I picked it up, but the reality of it in your hands is deceiving.  It looks so delicate, but it seems to be built like a tank.

As an iPhone/iPod Touch user of two years, the user interface is utterly familiar and welcoming. Apple has done a great job of scaling the OS interface up to the new resolution, though why they chose the sparse icon layout is beyond me.

Haven’t had much chance to try many of the applications yet, but what I have tried works pretty well. The first minor disappointment is that I’ve yet to track down an iPad version of Facebook and the iPhone version looks lost in the middle of the screen. The ’2x’ feature demo’d by Jobs at the launch is a stopgap at best, and makes iPhone apps look clunky.  The second is wiggy the WordPress app that I’m using to write this. Cutting and pasting doesn’t work, and there is no way to detach pictures that are added to a post.

Despite these teething troubles, overall the experience is better than expected – especially the typing.  The iPad definitely does not feel like a “big iPhone” and the experience is much more akin to a Mac with a different UI. I like it. A lot.

More news in a little while.

On a recent trip to the UK I purchased the 20MB package and carefully monitored my usage to stay within the limit.  Despite this, when I returned my bill said I’d used 23.3MB and they stung me an extra $29 for the 3MB overage – which was more than the cost of the original 20MB!!  I’ve heard other people have had similar issues.

According to AT&T, despite their recommendation to use the iPhone usage meter as your gauge, the ‘approved’ way of checking usage is to phone ‘*data#’ (*3282#) when you are travelling.  This will send a text back to your phone like the one shown on the right.  They assure me that, even though you are abroad, you won’t get charged for the international text message.  My next trip starts today.  We shall see if they are right.

So make that call!

iTunes Description: The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is the largest collection of movie, TV and celebrity information anywhere. We aim to list every detail about every movie and TV show ever made, including who was in it, who made it, the plot, user ratings, trailers, photos, reviews, and trivia.

IMDb for iPhone and iPod Touch includes:

• Over 1.5 million movie and TV titles
• Over 3.2 million celebrities
• US Movie showtimes
• Trailers
• Photos
• US TV listings
• Top ranked movies (MOVIEmeter)
• Top ranked celebrities (STARmeter)
• Celebrity birthdays
• US Box Office results
• Movies coming soon
• Top 250 rated films of all time

Look and Feel I use Winterboard to modify the screen with a number of visual key changes (all installed via Cydia): Illumine theme (not active when the screen shots below were taken) Blue Apple Signal Bars Helix Battery RSS WiFi Orange No Docked Icon Labels And also the following mods: Lock Calendar Five Column Springboard Five Icon Dock

System Tweaks There are also several system changes that are installed, also via Cydia dRus Strong Bad Email announcement sound Snappy – fast access to camera by holding status bar qTweeter – fast access to tweet by swiping down the screen SBSettings – fast access to toggles by swiping across the status bar Push Notifications SBSettings Toggle Push SBSettings Toggle Rotation Inhibitor SBSettings Toggle Action Menu (with Plus Pack) 3G Unrestrictor – allows various applications to work on 3G (and not just WiFi)

The Apps

Below you’ll find all the apps installed on my phone.  I’ve tagged the apps into four categories:

1. Use them all the time
2. Use them occasionally
3. Installed just in case
4. Installed but didn’t like/didn’t use and should be deleted

I’ll use this numbering scheme for all the apps below.  Also note that I’m in the middle of reordering a few screens, so a few apps appear in strange places.

First Page apps:

• 1. Mail (built in)
• 1. Things – to do lists
• 1. Consistency – from Sciral – recurring to do lists
• 1. TWC – The Weather Channel, with the Weathericon mod
• 1. Calendar (built in)
• 1. Safari (built in)
• 1. Facebook
• 1. Contacts (built in)
• 1. Camera (built in)
• 1. Photos (built in)
• 1. Maps (built in)
• 1. Messages (built in)
• 1. Clock (built in)
• 1. Calculator (built in)
• 1. SplashID – password keeper
• 1. TideGraph – tides at any location
• 1. MyBlog – Safari shortcut to this blog (www.nickjhowe.com)
• 1. WordPress – to administer this blog
• 1. Wikipanion – Wikipedia look up
• 2. iPass – prepaid access to WiFi hotspots

And in the dock:

• 1. Phone (built in)
• 1. Reportage – Twitter app by Wherecloud
• 1. Settings (built in)
• 1. iPod (built in)
• 1. AppManager (built in)

Second Page apps:

• 2. PicSafe – store pictures securely
• 2. Sonos – controller for my Sonos whole house music system
• 2. Remote (built in)
• 2. TimeScroller – Suggests times for multi-timezone conference calls
• 2. Skype
• 1. AP Mobile – news from Associated Press
• 1. NPR News – news from NPR
• 1. USA Today – news from USA Today
• 2. BBC Mobile – news from the BBC. Not an official BBC app – still waiting for that.
• 4. WikiHow – app to show info from the WikiHow website
• 2. Chase – Chase banking app
• 2. Wells Fargo – Wells Fargo banking app
• 2. BofA – Bank of America banking app
• 4. Drync Wine – wine cellar app
• 2. Tetris
• 1. TripIt – shows travel information stored at the TripIt web site – great for frequent travellers
• 1. FlightCaster – tries to predict whether flights will be on time (US flights only)
• 1. FlightTracker – detailed flight info.  Can use TripIt data
• 3. HotelsNearMe – lookup hotel availability and prices near where you are

Third Page apps:

• 2. AutoStitch – create panoramas
• 4. iSnapShot – create email postcards with four photos
• 1. Camera Zoom – zoom the iPhone camera
• 2. Photogene – Image editing
• 2. GazoPa – search for images on the internet that look like another image
• 2. ColorSplash – selectively add or erase color from images
• 2. NightCamera – use the iPhone accelerometer to capture still images in low light
• 2. SmugShot – upload images to SmugMug
• 2. ImagePro – search the internet for images
• 2. Cooliris – search the internet for images and display on a 3D ‘wall’
• 2. Dictionary – internet dictionary
• 2. SoundHound – get the name/artist of a song by ‘listening’ to the song (was Midomi)
• 4. Bump – exchange contact details by ‘bumping’ iPhones
• 2. BJ Run Lite – Blackjack game
• 3. InchCalc – add/divide fractional numbers (useful for carpentry or picture hanging)
• 2. iTunes (built in)
• 1. Mint – online money management – (like Microsoft Money)
• 4. QuickMark – barcode decoder
• 3. iHandy Level – 2D spirit level

Fourth Page apps:

• 2. TweetDeck – Twitter app; works just like the desktop version
• 2. BrightKite – location aware social media app
• 1. AppMiner - Lists new and on sale AppStore apps
• 2. USA East – marine navigation
• 2. LinkedIn
• 2. Zillow – find home prices/homes for sale
• 2. AppBox Lite – useful tools (currency converter, etc)
• 3. Weather (built in)
• 3. To Do (built in)
• 2. iDaily – quote of the day
• 4. HomeFinder – find homes for sale
• 3. Google
• 3. Tweetie – Twitter app
• 1. Timing ’09 – Formula One official app (09 season) live qualifying/race timings
• 3. What’s On? – TV guide
• 4. Alarm+Clock – alarm clock!
• 2. Meet – Webex app
• 3. TV Listings – TV guide

Fifth Page apps:

• 2. eBay
• 3. Stations – UK rail network info
• 2. Now Playing – Movie listings.  Includes Rotten Tomatoes ratings
• 2. Boxee – remote for Boxee app
• 4. Air Sharing – use iPhone as a wireless disk
• 3. Cricket SC – Cricket scores from Sky TV
• 3. MotionX GPS – full GPS with tracks, routes, etc.
• 3. Audio Boo – record/post quick audio ‘tweets’
• 3. Voice Memos (built in)
• 2. POTUS – List/details of Presidents of the United States
• 2. Amazon
• 2. DocScanner – Save pictures of documents with keystone correction
• 3. FlashBang – how far away is the lightning?
• 2. FlashCards – learn info about the 50 states
• 3. PublicRadio – listen to free radio stations
• 4. Layar – augmented reality browser
• 3. i.TV – TV guide
• 4. TV Forecast – TV guide
• 3. YouTube (built in)
• 3. Last.fm – listen to Last.fm radio

Sixth Page apps:

• 4. Jamd – celebrity news/pictures (interesting multi-touch interface)
• 2. Pandora – listen to Pandora radio
• 4. Public Radio – old version of Public radio app
• 3. Rocket Taxi – find local taxi numbers
• 3. Big Oven – 100,000 recipies
• 4. Trapster – show live speed trap/police trap info
• 3. Check Please – calculate check/bill splits and tips
• 2. Koi Pond – excellent demo of iPhone grapics
• 2. Dial Zero – 800 numbers of hundreds of companies, and how to bypass voice prompts
• 3. iBird Pro – Bird database of US
• 3. CitySearch – find local restaurants, shops, etc.
• 2. Google Earth
• 3. Flashlight
• 3. G-Park – use GPS to record where you parked your car
• 2. HJ – Human Japanese – learn to read, speak and write Japanese
• 3. Drinks Free – thousands of cocktail recipies
• 4. E*Trade – E*Trade app

Seventh Page apps:

• 1. Open Table – find restaurant table availability and book
• 4. IsaDial - Dials using calling card info.  Still broken on iPhone with Sprint
• 2. iPhunny – jokes
• 4. Police Scanner – listen to police radio
• 4. Pocket Whiteboard – scribble on a mini whiteboard
• 4. Restaurants – keep track of fast food eating
• 3. Tracker Lite – track packages on UPS, FedEx, USPS
• 2. Scramble – word game
• 2. myWireless – view AT&T billing/usage info
• 3. Spanish Anywhere – offline Spanish/English translator
• 2. Starwalk – visual star map
• 4. Stocks (built in)
• 4. Roambi – Business Intelligence/Dashboard viewer

Eighth Page apps:

• 4. Land Line – sends tones through the speaker to dial a land line hands free
• 2. Twitterific – Twitter app
• 3. Seafood Watch – helps avoid endangered sea food in restaurants
• 3. iTrans Tube – London Tube maps/timing
• 3. Compass (built in)
• 2. Craigs Pro – Craigslist app
• 3. Factbook 09 – CIA world country factbook
• 2. Moonlight Lite – Mah Jong game
• 3. uStream Viewer – viewer for uStream
• 3. EPCOT Wait Watch – how long are the queues for the rides at EPCOT?
• 3. Weatherbug – weather app
• 2. Red Laser – Scan bar codes and find competitive prices on the internet

Nineth Page apps:

• 1. Urban Spoon – Restaurant suggestions
• 3. White Pages – residential phone number look up
• 3. Yellow Pages – business phone number look up
• 2. Drivers Ed – driving test questions for all US states
• 2. Flixster – look up movie locations/times/reviews
• 2. ISSLite – when can the International Space Station be seen at your location?
• 4. JamBase – find local live music performances
• 2. Labyrinth LE – game – excellent example of accelerometer
• 2. Notes (Built in)
• 3. Repair Pal – find local car repair locations and costs of repairs/service
• 3. Speedtest – connection speed test
• 3. Wifi Trak – find WiFi hot spots
• 2. WildWest – pinball game
• 3. iBart – routes/times for BART in San Francisco

Tenth Page apps:

• 2. Word Warp – word game
• 2. Crog-Mag Racer – racing game
• 4. Tris – tetris game
• 2. Toobz-Free – flowing water game
• 2. Movem free – pattern matching game
• 2. Hangman – word game
• 2. Brick Free – blocks game
• 2. iFighter Lite – arcade WW II fighter game
• 2. Cross Light – crossword puzzles
• 4. Place Tagger – GPS/timer app.  Can be used to help geotag photos
• 4. Searchme – search using multiple search engines
• 4. SpeedTest – connection speed test
• 2. Sol Free – solitaire game
• 2. Wall Street Journal – online news paper
• 2. Yammer – like Twitter, but secure

Eleventh Page apps:

• 2.Yelp – find local restaurants/shops, plus social media component
• 2. Stanza – offline book reader/book database
• 2. Sudoku – Sudoku game
• 3. Translator – online multi-language translator
• 2. Yowza!! – get online coupons for local stores
• 2. Constitution – US Constitution, with notes
• 2. qTweeter – settings for qTweeter twitter app
• 1. Insomnia – keep wireless connection live when iPhone locks
• 1. 3G Unrestrictor – allows any app to work on 3G, bypassing WiFi-only restrictions
• 4. Icy – app installer – website just announced this is dead
• 1. Winterboard – modify look and feel of iPhone
• 1. Cydia – install non-AppStore applications
• 4. Finder – iPhone version of Mac finder (crashes constantly)
• 2. Terminal – terminal access to iPhone (or other computers)
• 2. AppLinks – creates shortcuts to all installed apps in /var/mobile/AppLinks