Koral seems to have the table stakes functions for collab tools, but it also has some breakout features, including allowing the folks who submit artifact to tag items, great structured and unstructured data search, and a slick synchronization feature that allows users to drag and drop a folder to the desktop and keep artifacts sync’d. One of the breakouts in terms of the common language around the system seems to be the lack of talking about a file/folder structure. In this era of unstructured search, we’ll see these types of structures become less important as artifacts and content are structured by use or function rather than location.

Koral is onto something worth watching.

What’s hard is that it’s still a very Microsoft-oriented device. I’m ok with that, but even within its Microsoft orientation, I have trouble getting the Microsoft products to integrate. Windows Media Mobile has been great for MP3s and WMAs, but it’s very difficult with video and impossible with other audio formats. There are just no options for plugins, etc., to get access to these other audio formats. While the camera is a nice feature that seems to be important for consumers, quality’s a challenge and you have to do a conversion to get them to work outside of Windows Media Mobile. What drove me crazy today is that I can’t seem to find any upgrades or patches to account for Office 2007 file format changes.

I’m sure there’s more to come, e.g., longer battery life, compatibility issues addressed, and form factor, which I didn’t mention.. This thing just doesn’t drop into a shirt pocket. More to come.

Here we are at the end of ‘06. Desktop search tools are so prevalent that, at some point in the past 12 months, I’ve had one or more of the search tools from Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft on my laptop. For a long time, I had settled on Google until I upgraded to Office 2007 this past Summer. When the update for the new Microsoft search came out this Fall, I upgraded, fell head over heels, and I’m not looking back. When I recently rebuilt my laptop, I only installed the Microsoft search, but not because of the XP/Office 2007 search capabilities. I was sold on Microsoft search on one of my recent visits with my buddy Rick at Microsoft. He showed off the new OS integrated search that’s in Vista and the new enterprise search that’s rolling out with the new Microsoft Office server products. Awesome. The indexing is more efficient than Google. It integrates natively to SharePoint and Exchange. Awesome. For my clients, it’s a fraction of the cost at scale of the Google solution.

I’m going to keep watching the Google solution because it’s very good on the desktop, but Microsoft has close the gap so fast and at a scale that accelerates past Google’s enterprise search, you can’t help, even if think Microsoft is the evil empire, but be impressed by. Check out what they’re doing and let me know what you think.

Thought I would follow up on my new Pocket PC. After a few more weeks of using this device, I’ve found more I like about it, and, of course, I’m finding the things I don’t like about it.

I know this sounds far-fetched, but this device is the coolest, most dramatic productivity improving tool I’ve had since I got my first laptop. Some of my recent ah-ha moments have been

• The seamless integration of contact list to both phone, text message, and email.
• The ability to use text messaging with a keyboard… I’ve always liked text messaging for all the same resons I like IM so much. Now, this is like taking IM with me. (More on the downside of actually using IM mobile down the page.)
• So, I thought having a camera on a phone was a stupid idea. Now that I’ve got one… I think it’s really cool. Witness, we went to see the Rangers in their winning effort against the Twins. My parents had paid our kids a few bucks for picking up their paper while they were away on a vacation. The kids decided that it would be a good idea to buy Lemon Chills with their newfound wealth. (Not a bad idea given that it was 92 degrees and 45% humidity. I’m proud to say my kids are pretty bright.) The kids wanted to let my parents know what they had done with the money, so we snapped a pic with the phone, and from the picture menu, I shot the pic over to them in an email. My dad picked up the email before we left the game.
• The video feature is way over the top. It’s a nice video player. I’ve, of course tested it out predominantly on my kiddos, but it’s also integrated so that you can send email upon recording or later from storage.
• The Microsoft OneNote integration is awesome. I’ve bought into OneNote. Even when I take notes on paper now, I transcribe to OneNote for storage. OneNote on the phone is awesome because it syncs with OneNote on my laptop everytime I do a standard sync. Only problem I’ve found is that I don’t have enough memory on the device to keep it loaded all the time. I actually have to install and uninstall it based on my current activity, which is a major bummer.
• Web browsing is really nice. The speed from the Sprint EVDO network make browsing easy. I’ve used this a lot lately to keep up with the World Cup, but I’m also finding that I can pull up a lot of the sites I use in my business, including LinkedIn, Plaxo, and research sites.

Now for the drawbacks, as I’ve found ‘em.

• MSN Messenger is confusing. It looks the same, but it doesn’t perform the same. I have a hard time knowing when, or sometimes why, I’m logged in. I’ve also not figure out how to store my messages, which is important to me. The other issue is persistence. I like IM and the new Live chat because they persist messages. I get that effect with text messages.
• Performance is not consistent or fantastic. I don’t know whether this is because of an undersized processor or too little storage memory. But, it can take me as much as 3 minutes to search and find a contact in my contact database. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes it’s faster, but, as a knucklehead who does a lot of calling while I’m in the car, I need fast and easy.
• I can’t figure out why, but I only have between 1 and 4 MB free on the device at any given time, which limits what I can put on the device, including OneNote, as mentioned before, but also I think that this may be causing the performance problems. I bought a 1GB mini SD card, which is great. (I’ve been listening to audio books. Jim Collins Good to Great is the current book loaded.) I can store a ton of stuff. I guess I wish I had better control of where stuff got stored on the deivce. I have a feeeling if I could store my contacts list on the SD card, I’d free up a lot of space on the device, improve performance, and be able to use OneNote all the time. (Grrr.)

More to come.

So, what’s so cool? It’s the ability for me to have access to Outlook mail, calendar, and contacts. On my old phone, I had figured out how to get my calendar and contacts through a crude Plaxo mobile web interface. On this new device, I’m seeing the promise of mobility. I’ve got very similar prodcutivity capabiltiies from my mobile device that I find on my laptop. I can address email from my contacts list. I can send email from my contacts list. I can access contacts from my calendar. I can do mobile one note and have it integrate with my laptop. I can do… you get the idea.

I’ve heard so much about the mobility promise. I’ve seen Microsoft selling this promise through Sprint and Verizon and Tmobile. I’ve seen it sold to me direct through the Microsoft Partner Program. I’m naturally skeptical. So I assume that only half of the promise is doable. I can see that I’m only seeing part of the promise being delivered, but I’m honestly surprised that it’s because I can’t absorb the features. What a pleasant surprise. More to come on how I use this thing.

To be fair, this shift occured a couple of years ago, but it’s just now with the release of their Office 2007, including SharePoint, and CRM 3.0, and SQL2005 and Business Scorecard Manager that Microsoft has taken the bull by the horns and told people that they were releasing product that ‘works the way you do.’ Big step forward… especially for partners, who’ve been selling this way for years.

Give the video a listen.