Five Things to Consider When Choosing Personal Assistant Software

It has been said that we are in a period of time which is the rise of the personal assistant. By that, I mean software/services intended and designed to augment and improve your life on a personal level (perhaps on a professional level too). Here you will lean the five basic ingredients to good personal assistant software and how they differ from more traditional software applications. May this advice help you choose (or create) your own.

A Good Personal Assistant operates like a Software Agent and not an Application.

Software agents have been around for quite a while but not many people know about them. I won't bore you with talk about FIPA compliance. Instead, I will make the most important distinction between software applications (such as a word processor) and software agents.

With an application, you express a command (e.g. open a file or send an email), there is usually some task negotiation, the app then performs the task in a finite amount of time and it's done.

With an agent, you express a wish (e.g. find a good deal) and the agent keeps looking in the background. Along the way, it will report to you anything it finds that it believes is relevant to you. This kind of task never stops until you tell it to stop. Task negotiation also happens but only after you have seen some results and are asking the agent to make some course corrections.

Human Interface Factors

Traditional applications rely heavily on the keyboard and the mouse for human interaction. You are most likely expected to fill out forms or dialogs as a part of the task negotiation phase. You must also learn the information architecture of the app through how it categorizes things via its menu structure.

A good personal assistant relies heavily on natural language processing in order to understand human commands either spoken or written in a more informal, conversational tone. With an app, you navigate through a menu structure (or similar GUI construct such as a tab bar) to find the right place to express the type of command that you want it to do next such as draw a line or search blogs for stories about ponies. With a personal assistant, there is no menu structure and only one place to interact. This is usually in the form of a big text box (or microphone) where you tell the assistant what you want and answer any questions that it asks for clarification purposes.

Multiple Platforms

Effective personal assistant software needs to be able to go where you go and inhabit where ever you are focusing your attention. If you are waiting in line somewhere, then you will want to interact with the personal assistant on your smart phone. If you are a commuter on public transportation, then you will want to review what your personal assistant has found on your tablet. Depending on your personal style of office workstation, your personal assistant will need to be present and available on your laptop or desktop of choice.

Big Data

What good would any personal assistant software be if it cannot serve as an ombudsman to a world of complicated choices? That means, in order to help you make the right decisions, the personal assistant software needs to be able to access, manage, analyze, and summarize a lot of fast moving data. The ability to apply sophisticated search algorithms across large, heterogeneous content repositories whose data has a short shelf life is what gives personal assistant software the only value proposition that uniquely distinguishes it from other applications. I call this opportunity discovery.

In the end, that is what personal assistant software is really all about.  Instead of you spending a lot of time trolling around for the next good airline ticket deal, that vintage Windows CE device on ebay, or good seats to a Giants' game, the personal assistant software does all of that mindless repetitive stuff for you. You get notified and kick into action only when the personal assistant software has discovered the desired opportunity.

Real-Time Communications

That leads me to the last ingredient to good personal assistant software, its real-time nature. Opportunities, once discovered, don't last long. You have to act and act fast. Email takes too long. Push driven notifications, presence updates, and chat are the most effective ways to deliver the discovered opportunity in time for you to take advantage of it.

Leveraging the popularity of search engines, social networks, and mobile computing, I believe that personal assistant software is a trend that is on the rise. Before considering any particular product to build or buy, be sure to evaluate it for its ability to continue working while you are offline, how easy it is to interact with, what types of machines that it can run on, how connected it is with online databases, and how quickly that it notifies you of any results.

The Student Web

The world wide web is the best thing that ever happened to college students. Why? Because there are so many free, online resources for learning. How could students not benefit?

The biggest and perhaps most obvious advantage is the rise in power and effectiveness of search engines. Every term paper should now sport a “powered by Google” logo on the title page. Most schools now don't even let you register without a computer because students without one would be at too serious a disadvantage.

But that's not all. From free software to free online help with homework to student advocacy, web sites of all shapes and sizes cater to the profiles of students.

For example, if you are taking an online course and you need to meet with your group, discuss a topic, then publish the results for the rest of the class to review, then you should check out Conversational Content Management. If you have ever participated in a chat room, then you already know what to do. Once you are done, ask the reporter to publish the document and the assignment is finished. All for free, of course.

Consumer Cloud

With all this talk of cloud services these days, I thought that I would focus on a cloud related subject that you don't hear much about. Consumer cloud.

The Internet is all a buzz about cloud computing where companies outsource their IT needs to third party vendors whom they pay on a per usage basis. If the app isn't used much, then the bill is low.

What you don't hear much is how cloud computing has trickled down to the consumer, usually in the form of a freemium based file sharing service. I would like to explore this new market by reviewing three players in this space; Box.net, Evernote, and Ubuntu One.

The Box.net service is quite similar to the more original drop.io which was recently acquired by Facebook. You upload files to a centralized service that you can share or collaborate with those whom you invite.

My biggest problem with the Box.net service is poor usability. The user experience for invitees is misleading which results in a huge abandonment rate. The user gets an email notifying them that someone has shared something with them and inviting them to click a URL to see the documents. What they are presented with at the resulting page is vague and leads them to believe that they already have an account here when they are really just registering in order to claim access to the shared documents and folders. Everyone that I invited to use the service during my evaluation abandoned the process before accessing any documents.

I am including Evernote in my list of consumer cloud vendors but their freemium model only allows you to type in notes by hand. You cannot upload files of any type when using the free service. Also, you can share files and folders with others but you cannot collaborate. Their access is always read-only. These problems go away when you upgrade to the paid subscription. They have a web based interface but they also have native apps for Windows and Mac OS machines. They also have an iPhone app.

The last vendor that I wish to tell you about is the Ubuntu One service. Unlike Evernote's aggressive freemium model, Ubuntu One has a kinder and gentler model where you get access to most of the core functionality with the free service. You can share and collaborate files of any type and folders with others. You can also store your contacts and notes in the service. The limit is on the amount of storage which is a generous 2GB. After that, you have to pay to be able to get more storage. Their iPhone app is also only for paid subscribers.

Ubuntu is also a distribution of the open source operating system otherwise known as Linux. They take the Debian distribution and customize it for a friendly user experience that, in my humble opinion, rivals the ease of use similar to the Mac OS and surpasses recent versions of Microsoft's consumer OS offerings.

Although I am a frequent user of operating systems made by Microsoft and Apple, Ubuntu is my OS of personal choice. So, I really like Ubuntu One because of its deep integration with the Ubuntu OS. In the file explorer GUI, you simply mark each file or folder to synchronize with Ubuntu One. There is a notes app called Tomboy Notes and any note that you write there will get synchronized with Ubuntu One if you configure your account to do so. Evolution is the default email client that comes with Ubuntu. Not only does it handle multiple POP3 and IMAP email accounts, Evolution also handles calendering, contacts, memos, and tasks. With the latest version of Ubuntu (Maverick Meercat) any contacts that you store in the Ubuntu One Couch DB list also get synchronized with the Ubuntu One service. There is also a web interface so you can share files with your non-Linux friends too. You decide who can access your uploaded files but your contacts and notes are private.

Mind Mapping in the Modern Age

Originally pioneered by Tony Buzan, a Mind Map is a type of diagram that is a radial organization of an outline. Mind Mapping is taught in prestigious schools such as MIT.

I like mind mapping. I have always believed that diagrams are the instrument of thought and the mind map is a great diagram for composers of all types or simply for those wishing to organize their ideas.

Here is my short list of open source mind mapping tools that are thriving in 2010.



Labyrinth is a Gnome tool so it is for Linux users only. Labyrinth can be easily installed from the Ubuntu software center. It's not the best tool by far but I end up using it because mind maps created in Labyrinth can be indexed by the search tool Beagle. Here is a screen shot of a labyrinth mind map of this very blog.



Freemind is a great stand-alone tool for mind mapping. The GUI doesn't get in the way of your creativity. Freemind is written in Java so it can be run from Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. Files saved in one OS can be opened in another.

Semantik is written on top of KDE so it is another Linux only tool. It's focus is to aid students in generating documents based on mind maps. Semantik can also be easily installed from the Ubuntu software center.

You don't install Mind Meister on your local machine because it is a web application that you access through your browser. Mind Meister stays true to the original concepts of mind mapping yet extends those ideas in useful and relevant ways. Mind Meister is a commercial company based on the freemium model so you don't get to fully access all the features without paying a monthly subscription.



At first glance, Bubblus diagrams don't look all that much traditional mind maps. Like Mind Meister, Bubblus is also a web application that you do not install on your local machine. Unlike Mind Meister, Bubblus is free forever so you get full access to all of its features without a monthly subscription fee.



Mind mapping is a great way to explore the hierarchy of ideas through creative diagramming. These five free tools present the state of computer based mind mapping in 2010.

Integrating Email with Voice Mail

Last week, Google announced that they were integrating their VoIP technology with their email service.

Some interpret this as big brother closing the noose around smaller offerings such as Skype. Indeed, maybe that is why Skype is willing to be acquired by Cisco. Let the big boys battle it out.

I have been using Google Voice for a while and I do like the ability to see voice messages that people leave on your phone as text in an email style GUI. The usage pattern seems to be to use text to negotiate when to have a real time phone conversation so this integration does seem to be a natural next step for Google Voice.

The Rise of the Social Media Aggregator

I think that it goes without saying that there is a tremendous impact that social media is playing right now on the Internet. Checking out the identity and entertainment lines on my favorite metro style web trends map shows how sites like Twitter, Facebook, Hi5, Bebo, Freindster, Plaxo, Orkut, and Friendfeed take up a considerable amount of the online traffic. Social media features are permeating almost every aspect of both corporate and consumer computing. Many users leverage multiple social networking sites such as 43% of Hi5 users also use MySpace and Facebook users tend to use 2.9 major social networking sites on average.

So, it should come as no surprise that there is now a plethora of applications presenting an aggregated view of multiple social networking sites. Apparently, it must make sense that the more sophisticated and active social networkers want a single UX that works across (and unifies) multiple, heterogeneous social networks.

I guess that the grand-father of this genus would be TweetDeck. They have versions for the Mac, PC, Linux, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad and support for the Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, Google Buzz, and Foursquare networks.

Hootsuite is targeting the more dedicated media professional. They do support an aggregated UX for Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In. Their forte is a deeper integration and extension of Twitter with features for statistics, lists, workflow, and brand monitoring.

Digsby combines email, instant messaging, and social media aggregation. They support Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Linked In.



Even the open source folks are getting into the act. Gwibber is a micro-blogging client for an aggregated experience with Twitter, Identi.ca, StatusNet, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, FriendFeed, and Qaiku. I recently ran across Gwibber because it comes pre-installed on the latest LTS (Long Term Support) release of Ubuntu, still the most popular distro for Linux users.

Since social media users appear to want a unified experience in their micro-blogging, how long will it be before there is a recognized need for a unified social profile? I suspect that it will be something beyond what Disqus and Gravatar can provide. Will Google's OpenSocial initiative satisfy that need?

What other brewing trends can you spot amongst the social media set?

3D Education

Two of my interests are virtual worlds and enterprise collaboration. I attended an event recently that touched on both of these interests. Two University professors talked about their recently released book on collaborative learning in virtual worlds.

In the early days of education, the predominant model was a master/apprentice one which didn't scale as the population grew and as democracy became popular. So, the model switched to a declarative one. Now, with the advent of 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life, the apprentice model becomes scalable since there is no economic boundary to physical location anymore.

Other movement has indicated an increased interest in virtual worlds for the enterprise. SAIC, Inc. provides scientific, engineering, systems integration, and technical services and solutions to various branches of the U.S. military, agencies of the U.S. Department of Defense, the intelligence community, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other U.S. government civil agencies, state and local government agencies, foreign governments, and customers in select commercial markets. They have recently acquired Forterra Systems, Inc. which provides a virtual world technology focused on enterprise training.

What do you think? Will virtual worlds ever mature beyond that of video games? Is there a legitimate use of virtual world technology in the enterprise? I'd be interested in your opinions.