Last week, Julia talked about the new widget catalog. Widgets were introduced in Notes 8.0.1 as a way to automatically carry out repetitive tasks. Widgets are useful for a couple of reasons.
- The widget knows where to get information, so you don't have to. Just browse a widget catalog (like the one on Greenhouse) for interesting widgets, and let the widgets do the rest of the work. (Widgets can also be pushed down by your administrator, so you might not even have to know what a widget catalog is.)
- Avoids distraction by letting information comes to you. How many times has this happened to you? You get an email and you think to yourself, I'm going to have to look that up. You fire up your browser and it opens to your home page. Something on your home page catches your eye, so you click on it. That leads you to another web page and something else that catches your eye. Fifteen minutes later, you think to yourself, "What did I come out here to do?" Opening up a browser to do work can be like having to pass the dessert cart on the way to the salad bar. It can be distracting. Widgets bring the information directly to you, precluding the opportunity for distraction.
Widgets are great, but they're only half of the story. It's one thing to know where to go, but it's quite another to know when to go there. That's where Live Text comes in. Live Text is text string recognition in Notes. For example, a 5 digit number in North America is a zip code that specifies the geographic location, and Notes will recognize that. The recognized string can then be wired to an action.
The North American zip code recognizer can be wired to widgets that bring up a map of the area or the local weather. This is great when you get an e-mail telling you about a trip that you'll be making in the near future.
Another example is that recognized names can be linked to widgets that send an e-mail (great when the name is not in the recipients list) or bring up the person's profile on a social networking site like Lotus Connections or LinkedIn.
Configuring Live Text in Notes
Live Text is configured in your Notes Preferences. It is not enabled, by default, in an effort not to confuse unsuspecting Notes users. After reading this post, you'll want to make sure that it is enabled. You can change the underline style that is used when various text strings are recognized. Personally, I prefer the "Thick Green " style, as I find it less like that which is used for URLs. Some Content Types (e.g., Address and Person) ship with Notes, while others are included when you add the widgets that employ them. It is here that you can see the list of recognizers that you have installed. If you add a lot and decide that too many strings are being underlined, you can uncheck the recognizers that you don't have a use for.
If you don't want to see all of the underlines in a given document, you can also turn text recognition off for just that document. While viewing the document, click the Tools menu and select or de-select Recognize Live Text in this document. You can also do this from the context (i.e., right-click) menu in the document.
Dwight Morse | 23 May 2009 12:38:25 AM ET | | Comments (9)
