Bill Gates dreamed that all users would program with VisualBasic For Applications.
But this user is different: unlike most of Steve Ballmer’s customers, this user is a developer – and in the two languages of which Gates was ignorant in the 80’s: Smalltalk and Prolog.
So what can a user do after OneNote 2007 trashes OneNote 2003?
Build a better mousetrap. And market it.
Applications such as OneNote have a future in collaborative computing. But OneNote is not there yet. Not by a long shot. And Leo will not make it as a collaborative outliner without such a major re-write as to be a non-starter from the get-go. TreePad has had its shot.
OneNote is for GTD: Getting Things Done.
So evolve: use OneNote 2007 extensively while building its competitor. a product not married to MS Office and IE7+.
We might call it, I don’t know, EclecticPens
Many of us lamented the loss of the 99$ word processor in the MsWord-WordImperfect-AmiAmateur wars. But in the days of WordStar there were such products. I owned one which was excellent but was only bundled on Zenith computers. Remember Zenith PC’s? Bundle or die. And ignore antitrust – the DoJ didn’t even have PC’s.
Today there is TextPad and the free Crimson Editor. But I am betting they will not become web-collaborative any more than emacs or vim.
EclecticPens
