Here is an interesting article about a recent study done by Ohio State University about instant messaging in the workplace.

http://www.osu.edu/news/newsitem2021

The study found that those who used instant messaging in an office environment reported less interruption and distractions while working.

"We found that the effect of instant messaging is actually positive. People who used instant messaging reported that they felt they were being interrupted less frequently."

Here are three websites/services that I have come across lately to be interesting, useful, and free. You may find them of use as well.

Wakoopa (www.wakoopa.com) - Wakoopa is a social networking site unlike any other I have seen. The way it works is when you sign up on their website you get a small tracker program to install on your computer. This program just runs in the background and keeps track of the software and web apps that you use. With that information it updates your online profile for viewing on their website. You can share this information with others including your opinions about each product/app.

It has helped me to discover new software and web apps by looking at my day-to-day usage and recommending similar products used by other users and updated versions. You can easily see what other users on the site are using and see what is popular by browsing through by tags and categories.

Some of you may be thinking that this sounds a little scary, but it only tracks what applications you run and for how long. Not what you do in them. Plus you have full control over what you want to be seen in your profile.

Slydial (www.slydial.com) – Slydial is a messaging service that allows you to directly connect to someone’s mobile voicemail. Basically it is like an alternative to text messaging. This is great if you want to leave someone a voice message but you do not want to call there phone because you either don’t want to bother them or just want to leave a quick message without talking to that person. Or you just don’t feel like typing a text message.

Stackoverflow (www.stackoverflow.com) – This website is not for everyone. But if you do any kind of software or website coding it should be a must to have on your list of sites to reference. Stackoverflow allows you to ask any type of programming question and get a very quick response back from the community of users on the website. All questions are stored on the website for anyone to search through. There are tens of thousands of questions on the site already for any programming language you can think of. So, if you have a specific question about a coding issue you are having it most likely has already been answered on the site in some way or another.

Stackoverflow has only been around for a few months now and I have used it a number of times for coding issues I have come across. They have a very cool reputation and voting system so you know you are getting good quality answers to your questions.

One of the issues a lot of people have had with PinkNotes Plus v4 is that when you have a large number of messages in your received message window it is sometimes tough to find the PinkNote you want. The same goes for the Log window. You can easily have a few thousand messages in your sent and trash logs and to try and find one specific PinkNotes can be difficult.

We have completely revamped the received message window. What we have done is given the list of messages in the received screen a lot more detail and we have made it easier to read.

In v4 the list of messages only included the subject (or the first few characters of the message text). An icon to indicate if the message was new, read, or re-sent to yourself. Red text if it was urgent. And is always sorted in order you received the messages.

In addition to those, in v5 we have included fields for who the message is from. The date and time the message was received. There are new icons to display, new versus read, urgent, and attachments. Plus you can sort those fields in any order you would like.

There will also be a search box right above that list too quickly search for any message details you would like. And you can include specify starting and ending dates for your searches.

In this same screen we have included a folders frame. This frame will let you easily look through your messages all in one screen. There will not be a separate logs screen. This gives you the ability to moves messages from one location to another by dragging and dropping messages to the folder you would like them in.

In v5 all messages will also be “threaded”. For example in v4, when you received a message and replied back and forth to it a number of times you got multiple copies of that same original message in your received and logs screens. In v5 all those replies back and forth will be in one message thread with all the sent dates/times for each reply. Plus, there will also be a reply box at the bottom of this screen so you will not have to open up a new window to send replies to a message.

It may sound like from my explanation that this new window will have too much going on. But we promise to keep everything simple, to the point, and easy to use just like we have always done. We plan to get some screen shots on here of what v5 will look like for you shortly.

For the longtime users of PinkNotes you have probably already realized the power of the Send Later feature, the ability to send messages to yourself, and numerous other options. PinkNotes Plus was designed to improve the communication between people in any kind of business environment by giving you the ability to easily send instant messages from one computer to another. If you just use PinkNotes Plus for that, that is great! But, there are so many other ways you can use PNP to improve your office efficiency as well. I have spoken to many customers who just use PNP for the instant messaging and I feel like they are missing out on some of the “hidden treasures” behind PNP. These recommendations will definitely help out the new users but it may also give the longtime user some new ideas.

· Sending message to yourself – normally when you think of an IM product you of course think of sending messages to others and not to yourself. Some days I find myself sending more PinkNotes to myself then any other user. The reason why is I like to think of the received message screen in PNP as something like a to-do list. I only keep messages in the received message screen for things that either still need to be completed or need a response. Then once I have completed the task in that message I will trash it at that point. So, this helps me stay on top of things I need to do and gives me an easy to see list of outstanding items.

· Send Later – this is great for reminders to either other users or yourself. It can be as simple as sending yourself a reminder at 5pm, “don’t forget the milk on the way home”, or you can setup repeat reminders to send to your employees to remind them to do a particular task on the last day of every week.

· Using PNP over the internet – one of the main reasons why so many of you use PNP is because of the security behind the fact that all your messages are not being sent out over the internet. But, with PNP you do have the option to use PNP over the internet.

On the PNP Master in our office we have setup two usernames for a number of us. For example, there is a username called Keith and Keith@home. This gives other users and me the ability to send messages to either location. So, I can easily send files to my home computer from work and I can send messages to the office from my house. You do not have to use two separate usernames. You can just use your one username and login from wherever you want to check/send messages from. This is great if you work from home sometimes or you are home sick for the day and just need to check your PinkNotes. A lot of people do not realize this but you can install the PNP Client software on as many computers as you would like. Basically it is free to install anywhere. As long as you have a username and PNP Master to connect to you can login from wherever you would like.

Plus, if you are on a computer that does not have the PNP Client software installed (someone else’s office or in an internet café) you can use the web browser option to check your messages. All you need to do is enter in your PNP Master address into any web browser. This also can be done on any non-Windows based machine or a cell phone or anywhere you have a web browser with internet access.

· Mobile messaging – in PNP we give you the option to send text messages to cell phones with incredible ease. Once any user sets their cell phone number and carrier in their settings you will see that user in a new group called Mobile when you create a new message. All you have to do is place a check-mark next to that mobile user, type the message and click send and a text message will be sent to their cell phone. The great thing about this is you can send the same message to cell phones and PinkNotes users all at once by just placing check-marks next to wherever you would like the message to go.

If you have any questions about setting up any of these features please feel free to contact us.

This will be the first of what I’m sure will be many posts about the new features and changes that will be included in PinkNotes v5…A major change that we are making to the architecture of PinkNotes v5 is the move from the old MS Access database files that we have been using since version 2 to a SQL Server format. We feel that this has been a well overdue need in PinkNotes. The MDB files have served us well but there is only so much you can do with them and for v5 we really needed to make this change for a lot of the new things we wanted to accomplish. The database structure in v4 consisted of what could be hundreds on MDB files (depending on how many users you have). We will be taking all of the separate MDB’s and moving them into in SQL Server database with multiple tables for v5.

Right now we are planning to distribute Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition with the installation for PNP v5. In no way will we limit you to the Express Edition. If your office already has a SQL Server setup you will easily be able to setup v5 with your existing SQL Server. We are including the Express Edition with PNP v5 because it can be used and distributed without licensing fees on any version of Windows 2000 or later. Plus it does not have a huge overhead that uses a lot of system resources.

Some of the main advantages of using SQL Server in v5 will be:

· Ease of managing a large amount of data from one location.
· The database can be remotely managed from any location (local network or internet).
· Faster searching of your PinkNotes Logs.
· More reliable storage of data.
· Easier to backup data.
· Overall improved speed in all the reads/writes that PNP has to do with the database.
· For those of you who want to be able to integrate other software applications with PNP it will be easier to accomplish this in the new database format.

There are a few drawbacks to using SQL Server though:

· The installation file to install v5 will be much larger because it will include the SQL Server Express Edition as well. We will have a few different types of installation files for those who already have an installation of SQL Server and for those who just need to install a client only.
· The install/upgrade for the PNP Master will take a little longer because you need to install the SQL Server and then all of your data will need to be upgrade from your MDB format to the SQL Server format. But, this of course will just be a one time process that needs to be done.

We feel that the few drawbacks are greatly outweighed by the advantages of using SQL Server that is why we decided to make the switch.

Google is celebrating there 10th anniversary by putting up a link to there olderest surviving index (from January 2001). It's amazing. You won't find anything about iPhone's, YouTube, Facebook, etc.

This got me thinking to when is PinkNotes Plus’ 10th anniversary because I knew it was around this time of year in 1998. I took a look through our old sales and saw that the anniversary of the first sale of PNP v1 was on September 6, 1998. The interesting thing at the time was our first four out of six sales were not even in the United States (England, Cape Town, Melbourne, and Dublin). This blew us away and showed us the real power of the internet at its still somewhat early stages.

We had no idea what would happen when we released version 1 of PNP. At the time when we developed PNP we just wanted an easy way to send messages to each other on our own local network. When first developing the software we were not even thinking about selling it. We were really just a website development company at the time. But once it was working in our office we figured that there had to be other companies who would like to use this technology as well. So we made a free 30 day trial, put PNP on a bunch of shareware sites, and waited to see what would happen.

The response since then and the support of our customers has been amazing. We are now working heavily on PNP v5. Check back soon and we will be letting you know what exactly will be included in v5 and how it will help you and your company to be even more productive.

Over the past ten years, we've developed many priceless relationships with you, the valued users of our software. We've come to know you, what your businesses do, how you use our software, and what you'd like to see in future versions. Most of these relationships started with a simple phone inquiry or a call for technical support. We may have even first spoken to you via AnswerChat®, our live website chat tool.

In fact, we've always tried to make it extremely easy for you to get in touch with us with any questions or difficulties you may have. In an effort to expand upon that, we have added 2 new sections to our online community.

- You are reading an entry on our blog site right now! This blog will be very much like Alpha Media's 'personal' diary. We will regularly post happenings on our blog so you can stay up to date with what's going on. The blog may be written by any one of our several developers, so the content of that blog will change. Popular topics will include what we're working on, what kind of problems have we come across, and anything else the author feels like discussing. If we get a new server, or Keith decides to grow a Mohawk - you will see pictures here.

- You can use this site to contact us, or interact with other users of our software. Forum topics include General Discussion, Feature Suggestion, Technical Support, and Developer Information. You may create an account on the forum website, but one is not required to read up on any topics that may be of interest to you.

Again, on behalf of the entire Alpha Media team, we thank you for you continued feedback and support for our products, and look forward to serving your business software needs for the next 10+ years!

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Jason A. Goldberg
Product Specialist / Associate Developer
Alpha Media, Inc.