"Activity or Action?" stems from my frustration with a lack of forward thinking and planning in much of the current internet and application software spaces. In particular, the internet space has become replete with the usual badging and baggage. No more needs to be said about the white-washing of Web 2.0 with AJAX. Nothing much is happening in the current application space aside from the rediscovery of software we already have. In particular, a class of software -- the database -- is getting a re-vamped work-out in a public network, client-server environment (ie: the browser and the web). The zealots will excoriate me. Big deal. Web 2.0 seems more to be about the emulation of inelegant software on server farms, with fewer features no less, than about new ways of relating our data to inter-related contexts.

Here's an example. If I'm typing an email to a customer that makes 3 specific commitments in a relative timeframe, then why do I have to then re-enter each of those items into a calendar and/or a task list with the relevant absolute due dates? It doesn't matter whether I'm using Outlook or Gmail with some combination of on-line calendars and task managers. The outcome is the same. I enter data and I have to do all of the context management. In the example I cite, that data entry may require 5 or 6 discrete tasks. That's why luddites and many really busy people don't use computers to their fullest extent. That extent, even after 60 years of useful computer hardware advance, has not yet come into view.

Software is uniformly mediocre to awful. What have the innovations been in the last few years? RSS is routinely cited but it is mangled, misunderstood and been poorly implemented by developers. Open source is touted and yet a preponderance of OS software seeks only to emulate commercial programs, often with hilariously misguided interface "enhancements". Usability is not usually a part of a web application's feature list. Take a look at fundamentally useful apps like dotProject and tell me if you think you can use the interface for several hours a day without screaming? You cannot, I have already tried. Office suites keep inflating feature sets and nibbling at the margins of innovative interface development; I'll withhold judgement on Microsoft's "ribbon" concept. Tell me why, after numerous iterations of Microsoft Office, there are at least two letter key strokes for picking Categories ("i" and "alt-g") in different parts of Outlook? This kind of obtuse and careless attention to functionality is the hallmark of most software today; I'm not picking on Microsoft Office, I'm merely using it as an example. There are too many to relate.

Where is the emphasis on adaptive customization? Why do I either have dumb macro recorders that routinely mix up relative referencing with absolute or complex embedded programming systems that require extensive programming knowledge. What we need are applications that do a better job of learning than simply offering fewer menu choices. Most so-called adaptive programming is currently used to try and dumb down feature sets rather than to open them up to less savvy users. Here's another example. If I want to make sure that I assign a Category to a Microsoft Outlook item, it's all up to me. If I forget, then that item does not get a Category unless I notice it at some later time. Wouldn't it be great to install some discipline in the program without having to design a new form, write code and install it in all of the instances where it needs to be located? Why not have flexible criteria for data entry in any program's form?

I have noted before that the table view in Outlook should just be Microsoft Excel. Have you noticed that OneNote has no extensibility as an editor or word processor? Where's the option to "add" Word-like features to OneNote? I would pay for that. Why do I need two applications with all the attendant awkwardness to get data between the two? Why not one application and a bunch of extensible feature sets? This is not a question of making a move that would limit future revenue -- pricing could be adjusted so that it was revenue neutral or in fact revenue positive -- no, it seems it is not done because the current application model just will not accept innovative upgrading.

Software and its relentless revision cycle seems more about activity than action. It's time to challenge the norms and start extending our stagnant model of applications into real data management enhancers.