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Merlin Mann of 43folders presented a talk titled “Inbox Zero” at Google this past Monday. Inbox Zero echoes the bit literacy concepts promoted by Mark Hurst. The video is an hour long, but Merlin provides a compelling argument for proactively managing your inbox.

Source: 43folders

The Informed Reader has a great post titled The Powerful Lure of the Useless Extra Feature that describes the problems facing, well, many products (and product lines) today. The article quotes The Wisdom of Crowds‘ James Surowieki, who explains that “…people are not, in general, good at predicting what will make them happy in the future. The strange truth about feature creep is that even when you give consumers what they want they can still end up hating you for it.”

What got me started down this train of thought was this provocative comparison between Cingular (AT&T) Wireless, a company with 200 cell phones and 50 pricing plans and CBeyond, a smaller company with four cell phones and eight service options. CBeyond is growing at a faster rate and generating much higher margins. Could it be that we really like simplicity, and just don’t know it?

Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with my iPAQ PDA phone. It’s mind-numbingly capable, with built-in camera, GPS, web-browsing, music playing and spreadsheet crunching power. And it even makes phone calls. But for all the features and functionality, I often find myself wishing I had a plain, old phone. Something to just pick-up and dial. The reality is, though my iPAQ does in fact do all the things advertised, it doesn’t do any of them very well (including the phone call part).

Another comparison could be drawn on the web. Discussion forums (like BigBlueBall) and blogs (like this one) are two common expressions of the social web. Both allow some form of interaction between the author and the readers.  Forums are feature-rich and complex. Blogs are (usually) bare-bones and simple, but painless. I realize it’s not an apple-to-apple comparison, as they each serve a specific purpose, but it’s worth noting that although blogs appeared on the scene later, they outstripped the growth rate of forums exponentially.

Where is this all leading? A reminder to myself that sometimes less really is more.

I’m back from an excellent trip to Greenville, SC for our second enterprise “summit” on knowledge management. I’ve just about recovered from the long days preparing and presenting and a string of 20 hour days. Over the 2-1/2 days, I was up front and presenting for about nine hours, not including the barcamp-styled “KM Camp.” It was great to get together with others who are passionate about knowledge management and the value it can provide today. Many of them I talk with regularly, either via phone, email or IM (Paul, Rob, Gabi, Hank, Sara, Robert, Bob, Derek, Donna, Sathiya) but nothing can beat the value of face-to-face interaction. Many more were people I met for the first time (Miranda, Crystal, Harry, Adam, Dave, Cathy, Peter) — some of them very new to their role and just beginning to “get” what KM is all about.

Knowledge management provides a way of tapping into the intelligence of the corporation, and application translates into real, measurable value. The “smarts” of the enterprise can be reflected at least in part by market value, and based on what I experienced last week, I’m very optimistic about the future at Fluor.

MSN Messenger is being renamed as Windows Live Messenger, beta testers have been invited, and  now Microsoft Program Manager Leah has shared the official feature list. I’m running the new version, and like the UI changes… especially “frameless” access to the menus (similar to Windows Media Player). I’ve posted some screenshots on Flickr, and will be adding a detailed review to BigBlueBall.com tonight.

If you’re interested in testing Windows Live Messenger, leave a comment and I’ll send you an invitation.

February 14, 2006 Update - 484 comments later, I’ve decided to disable new comments on this entry. I’ve passed out all the invites I have from two different MSN accounts, and I’ll continue to send invites to the others on this list as I get more (you can see who’s received the latest batch in the last comment on this blog entry). For those of you still searching for an invitation to beta test Windows Live Messenger, visit the new Windows Live Messenger forum at BigBlueBall. There you’ll find several resources that will probably help you get your hands on WLM faster than ever.

technorati tags: Windows Live Messenger, Microsoft, IM, instant messaging, beta

Few would argue that Steve Jobs is one of the more interesting characters in the Silicon Valley. Last week Jobs gave the Commencement address at Stanford University, and made some excellent points on work and life in general. Thanks to Heather for passing on this great link!