Six Degrees is a remarkable new piece of software for Mac OS X and Windows. This article describes my experiences with the application and discusses some of its implications for the future of all software.What it Does
I first heard about it in a stray comment at the Joel on Software website. As a power user of email, I was very intrigued by Joel’s comments and the concept I found described on the Creo website. I submitted an email stating my desire to participate in the beta program and to my surprise was rewarded with a restricted URL to download a copy of Beta 2. I’ve had the rare luck to use it through the several beta releases of the development lifecycle. And when I say “use” here, I don’t mean simply “install, tinker, forget.” This application has been up and running each and every day since I received the first beta copy. It’s already that solid. It’s already that good. It’s so good, in fact, that I was a terrible beta-tester, submitting no negative feedback whatsoever.
It’s not an entirely new breed of creature as it closely resembles a Unix daemon, running quietly in the background while providing a simple, elegant service. This service, however, is fascinatingly unique; it analyzes the inbox of your Outlook, Entourage, or Mail.app email client, drawing associations between your email, your attached files, and your contact list. These associations are presented to the user in an elegant three-paned interface – one for each of these elements of information. Even when this paneled window is minimized, a small semi-transparent “Legend” window floats at the top of the screen. This rectangle holds three colored dots, red for mail, blue for files, and yellow for contacts; tick marks rise vertically with the number of associations for a given piece of information.
It’s an amazingly subversive concept that is near flawlessly executed. Six Degrees completely bypasses the organizational hierarchy imposed by the underlying operating system, allowing navigation and access to content without moving up and down an inverted tree structure. While other applications have attempted similar feats, they’ve all required additional steps of work on the half of the user. For example, how many times have we seen knowledge management systems that required all files to be stored in special directories within a special system? Six Degrees, however, quietly hides in the background, paying close attention to new information as it arrives or is shipped off. It carefully draws potential associations between these bits of information and presents them in a clear interface.
In other words, it draws together the connections between some of the most immediate, relevant pieces of information to the present-day knowledge worker.
The Future
As a 1.0 release, Six Degrees is already surprisingly powerful. It’s so profoundly aggressive, it’s approach is so terribly innovative, that I imagine the principle architects wisely restricted the design scope early on in the development. As such, today Six Degrees draws from only three distinct types of information in the gross morass of files and file-formats created within the mesolithic operating system; the derived associations yield definite, immediate results for any knowledge worker. However, the design scope will necessarily increase to include and analyze more pieces of information (i.e. meetings and other calendar entries, assorted bits and pieces of multimedia, recently visited websites, etc.). Even more meaningful associations and relationships are likely to emerge.
With the predictable increases in available CPU resources and forestalling a paradigm shift in the general execution of operating systems, I predict we’ll soon see a product like “Six Degrees Services” emerge. These services will reign in the entire churn of content, drawing it together into a much, more coherent web of meaningful associations and make them available to other pieces of software.
Remember the first time you used a copy of the Netscape browser? Download and install a copy of the demo today. Standback and watch all your cognitive structures unravel into a pool of grey muck.
Go on. Enjoy yourself.
About the author:
Christopher Murphy is the president and a senior consultant at grueTech Studios, a company focusing upon delivering edge technology solutions to small and medium sized businesses. He’s currently in a quandary as to what his next antiquarian computing project will be: cobbling together a Next Cube workstation from assorted parts on eBay, constructing a full-size MAME-driven arcade console, or building an aquarium out of a Macintosh SE shell.
OSNEWS! C’mon!
This is a news release. It doesn’t even have anything to do with OSes.
Not a good idea to put this up on the same day that you put a link to your survey up.
Then again, it is your site, not mine. Do what you want.
Enough rambling.
Quality, not quanity.
>OSNEWS! C’mon!
Expect one more review of three Mac apps from me, next week. 😉
Kinda agree with previous post, not really OS news.
The software itself sounds a lot like Lotus Notes and that’s a load of shite!!!
In my opinion, OSNews is about innovative software, breakthroughs in the way our computers and information is managed. In that vein, if this software really functions as advertised (I’m installing it now), it is very much an important news story…
He could have just saved some time and said “There’s a new app out called Six Degrees that should have a great impact on computing. Check out their site for more details.” There – no need to read his rambling article that says nothing more than what I did.
Seriously, it would be nice to either have an actual review of the product or have a story about being a beta tester. This was really neither. I don’t mind reviews but this was really nothing more than bird-cage liner…
Wow, yet another app that rips off the BeOS people icons.
http://www.creo.com/sixdegrees/images/ss_people.jpg
1. Why put up non-OS content on the same day of your survey? I agree with the other posts that this is obviously non-OS related.
2. I also agree that the review really wasn’t one. I mean… does “Download and install a copy of the demo today. Standback and watch all your cognitive structures unravel into a pool of grey muck.” really tell me anything about the technical abilities of this software? Does it explain to me in real world examples, how I might use this to benefit my day-to-day chores? No… It’s basically a press release trying to hype up this new software.
In fact it’s so devoid of meaningful facts, that I seriously think it was written by a company rep.
3. The review makes the product seem laughable to me -I mean… Why rave about all this software can do, and then tell us no specifics?
It’s almost like “Ok.. We’ve got a new piece of software that’s like many, many other pieces of software out there, and offers nothing unique. So how to sell it? I know! We’ll write a very obscure, loosely-worded review that indicates this is the holy grail of computing. Then people will be curious enough to download the demo to try and understand what it is! Then we’ll have them!!”
I thought OSNews was a little more picky about it’s posts than this.
On the subject of the software itself… I might be interested if it tied together the work I do on the PC, regardless of program. for instance, if I’m doing web development, and continually am switching between my editor, Photoshop, and Deramweaver, it’d be nice if the software picked up on all this and tried to tie all these elements and files together somehow.
But since it only handles emails and attachments… And probably doesn’t begin to understand PGP encryption, or E-sigs, why do I care?
I guess if I lived my life around email, I might, but I do not. Similarly, unless it’s secure (refering to the PGP again), do I or you really want this program telling anyone who happens upon my PC what I’ve been doing, and how often I’ve been doing it?
Sounds like something that’ll show up and get buried on Tucows if you ask me.
Next!
They try to sell me with their soft something which needs Outlook and WinXP.
So long…
Eugenia, is there any policy to separate (by style, by special notice) commercials and articles?
It’s look like being first type though mimics as independent review
Is there any way you’d feel comfortable starting some type
of subscription system? You should get paid to deal with
all this whining.
Some articles are good. Some aren’t. This one was in the middle – interestingly written but not all that informative.
Still, nothing forced me/us to read it.
Eugenia, I’m glad OSNews is here – I like the diversity of the stories/articles/links.
And you can’t beat the price…
Peace
Thank you TLFord.
I find this application interesting, and OSNews is indeed about interesting stuff.
What it was not so interesting was the writting style of the author, who wrote the article to feel like a commercial instead of a real review. A review should both list the good and the bad.
(however, write the bad, get flamed from the zealots, write only the good, get flamed for not be too objective… 😉
Look at it this way, Eugenia: we wouldn’t complain if we weren’t so accustomed to the regular high-quality content of the site. If we didn’t complain *then* you’d have something to worry about!
Take care.
I have to admit that a subscription service would cause me to go elsewhere for the information I get from OSNews.
If you’re going to consider such a thing (and I hope you’re not), I’d first talk w/the Ars Technica guys. I know their forums are still popular, but from what I understand, they lost a lot of viewers when they moved their updates to a subscription based one (Kind of… they still put limited amounts of news on their site, but not as much as w/the sub I’m told).
Realistically, OSNews is one of my fav’ sites. But if you’re going to have an open forum and try to please the masses, you have to accept some criticism (or whining as Mr. Ford puts it).
If you want to mandate what people can post in your forums, you’ll end up having to block out a lot of IP’s and potentially lose about half your regular posters (ask the guys at UGeek.com -They tried this last year and ended up alienating many of their regulars. To the point where posts are still down from a year ago IMHO).
My two cents…
I also stick by my original comment that this thread was meaningless for a site such as OSNews. Both quality and content-wise.
…if the “moderators” would stop moding my comments out. They’ve taken out some gems. I waiste my best material on those assclowns
There are not going to be subscriptions on osnews. But there is going to be a new forum. I just wish I had some time to start coding it… :o)
Of course…
The word “Review” is never used in the article and it never really pretends to be a critical analysis of the application. For this reason, I think I can probably forgive him for not focusing on negatives.
He seems to think its pretty important. The last part even talks about how he relates it to the “Future of Computing” (check the subtitle of the website).
To my knowledge, there’s nothing stopping anyone (Mr. Cancelled?) from publishing an actual (positives/negatives) review in response. But that would involve actually looking at the software, using it, and forming your own opinion.
Which, (gasp!), is what he suggested.
i think this article is find to have even tho it doesn’t announce a new super great operating sysyem. i think osnews is about not only the operating system. but also the software that best complaments that system.
p.s. if you don’t like this non-OS-article….don’t read it.
(ahem)
i think this article is find to have even tho it doesn’t announce a new super great operating sysyem. i think osnews is about not only the operating system. but also the software that best complaments that system.
p.s. if you don’t like this non-OS-article….don’t read it.
Should be:
I think this article is fine to have even though it doesn’t announce a new, super great operating sysyem. I think OSNews is about not only the operating system, but also the software that best compliments that system.
p.s. If you don’t like this non-OS-article….Don’t read it!
(sigh)
Shut the fuck up. Who appointed you the grammar nazy? The internet is a *multinational community*. That means that people might not use English as their primary language, cock-holster.
I appreciate someone letting me know about it.
It sounds like a great technology. But, how long till M$ will take it over and fuck it up like they did e-mail with Outlook and the web with IE?
You will see what a review is, later today or tomorrow morning. If I hear anyone flaming me though for being very critisismistic (or whatever the word is)…… 😉
critisismistic is a not existilating word!
I notice that you mispelled one of the most infamous groups of idiots ever on this earth: The “Nazi’s”, but you you managed to spell your curse words correctly.
Both “Cock” and “Fuck” are four(4) lettered words, yet so is “Nazi”.
Interesting to see where your priorities fall…
I’m guessing “humor” and “funny” are too long of words for your vocabulary?
Enjoy your Eminem mp3’s…
I wouldn’t be against doing a review of this, but I think I’m going to be generally predisposed to a “What use is this to me” attitude.
As I mentioned, I don’t see where this would be much use to someone unless it’s ONLY email you’re tracking.
It should also tie in Office files (regardless of whether it’s MS Office, Star Office, or some other manufacturer’s flavor), as well as the files you use to interact with these files.
And it should support versioning, regardless of application. In other words, what’s the point of going back through my records of changes on a project, if the only version of that project that’s in existence today is the current one, complete with irreversable changes?
Another issue is PGP, or other email encryption…
I’m guessing that as-is, this is either a competitor, or a good companion for Research Desk (www.winferno.com).
>That means that people might not use English as their >primary language
On the other hand, were I posting on a forum in Deutsch, I might even appreciate it if someone followed me around correcting my grammar. That way, the next time I posted, I could focus on making new, different mistakes instead of the same old ones.
The post in question did read like that of a native English speaker who just needs a bit more practice.
There’s even more reason to write clearly on a message board with a many international participants. It is hard enough to read a foreign language without the writing being mispeelled and words the order reversed; with poor – punctuation: becoomes it, more evin dificalt.
On the other hand, as any 3rd grade teacher knows, public chastisement is seldom effective on the internet. Polite e-mails function better.
Yours truly,
Jeffrey Boulier
What does my complete lack of spelling ability have to do with my priorities?
As for “humor” and “funny” – ofcourse they’re too long. I don’t even know what they mean.
As for the “most infamous groups of idiots” – I don’t feel like giving you a lecture in history.
As for Eminem – I preffer German techno/industrial. You know, the country where all those idiots come from.
you are much more anal then i Remember,
but thanks anyway for that there lil lesson you gave,
i always like to be coreccted by some jackass who decides i need to be spellin are purdy and nice like, i forgot the to abide by the strict rules Eugenia enforces about proper grammerical usage and makin sure to put the big letters at the beggining.
Get a life!
Wirklich glaube ich dem veranschlagenen Over WEISE dieser deutschen industriellen Musik.
Die techno Seite von ihr wirklich klingt dasselbe – und erhält mir Unrecht nicht, ich mögen einiges sehr “aus dort” techno und es ist ilk (Schafe auf Drogen sind Gott!), aber deutsche Musik neigt, “dasselbe” von Band zu Band – meiner Meinung nach eher nur zwar zu klingen (ich habe großen Respekt für andere musikalische Meinungen).
Rammsteins nicht schlecht. Besonders als in ihrer gebürtigen Zunge sang.
Und während ich weg vom Thema für dieses Gewinde bin, denke ich noch, daß eine Geschichte Lektion von Ihnen wirklich ein Unterhalten gelesen sein würde.
Sie können vom Anfang abfahren, wenn Sie möchten, aber ich würde Sie eher hören, auf Ihrem Wissen des Nazis zu erklären. Sie klingen sehr gut versed und ich kann nicht mir glauben machte den Fehler vom Beleidigen Sie auf Ihren OH- so offensichtlich versehentlichen Spellingstörungen.
Auf Wiedersehen
ROFL! My high school German is kicking in!
I think it’s good to put up something potentially interesting to see. We’re all OS junkies. I know that I sometimes almost forget that OS’s are not ends in themselves.
…it does track all sorts of files, it just “connects” them together through your email program. While it doesn’t do true versioning, it can group “similarly named” files together.
So you might remember that Bob Jones sent you a file three weeks ago but you can’t remember what it was, only that you needed to work more on it. You look in your documents directory and it’s not there (or at least you don’t think it is). With Six Degrees, what you do is just select “Bob Jones” in your contact list (in Entourage) and call up the Six Degrees file window. There you can see Bob sent you a file three weeks ago called “Kumquat Report” and that you also saved a file a couple days later called “Kumquat Report 2”–which has half the changes that Bob wanted you to make already done in it.
It also can work on other paths. If you’d selected “Kumquat Report 2”, you’d notice the Six Degrees icon in the dock would be glowing dimly to show it knew something about that file–opening its window would reveal that Bob sent you the original. And, if there’s an email thread about it, Six Degrees can trace that, too. (As you can tell by “dock” I’m using the OS X version, but I presume the Windows version works similarly.)
Personally I’d prefer to have another way to make connections–while Six Degrees’ completely transparent approach definitely meets the “don’t get in your way” criteria for a good UI idea, my projects simply aren’t centered around email and contacts. However, I’ve worked at large offices where multiple projects are constantly bounced around in email; this sort of system could definitely have come in handy in a scenario like that.
i wouldnt pay for a site.. but i would click on commercials.
but anyways i like hearing about innovative stuff, be it in operating system developments or the software that runs on top of it.
this kind of technology really is the future of the operating system. this plus voice technology. and you can simply ask your computer to play a recently downloaded music file. or where is my poster project? Hal, open http://www.osnews.com. where did i just download that file to? can you inlarge the text a bit? change the color to blue. not that blue, a little redder. a little lighter. a little bit bluer
change my desktop walpaper to a picture of a cat.
thats probably going to be the future of os’s i think. except with email it will be a major part of the operating system. and it will help you carry out tasks.
imagine programming your computer in plain english!
wake me up at 10:00 in the morning.
wake me up every day at 10:00 in the morning except on sundays.
upload my website to my webspace on http://www.yahoo.com
save this image, its pretty. (you dont even know where it went) you would have to do 2 things for the computer.. mouse to the image you want to save. and describe it. that way the computer can pull the data back up..
so you could say do you still have that image with the trees and the lighthouse? and it would pull up the image.
this kind of setup would take alot longer if you were using a mouse and keyboard.. but speech is fast and descriptive. which is why the os will have to change a bit around speech recognition
You’ve felt it your entire life.
You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind.
Put everything aside except what you want to do most in the world.
We all want good applications for our computers. I certainly do.
But remember most successful revolutions start out small and start out in obscurity.
#m
Six Degrees ? Like Six Degrees of freedom ?
Let’s talk about the software, since it’s the topic of this thread.
I don’t have any MS or OSX box to test it, so I can only draw my opinion from the article, and what you guys are saying about it…
What I understand : this software build a database of connections/relations between documents and contacts, through e-mail analysis, and editing software . It also tries to track documents modifications (which is a kind of relation between documents). All this is done in the background, ie without asking things to the user.
I have a few questions :
– Does this software only track documents life ?
– Is it possible to create relations between contacts/documents/whatever ?
– Isn’t that what MS Longhorn is supposed to do with their DataBase oriented File System ?
– Six Degrees is available since the begining of this year. When did MS announce its project of DB oriented FS ? Is it possible that MS once again try to innovate with others people work ?
At least I did. And more, I really liked the way this app works. This is much closer to the way the not-so-computer-oriented geek thinks. This is software not for system administrators or Linux gurus. This is for your average secretary, so she won’t spend half an hour, looking for a required document she has saved somewhere-I-can’t-remember-where.
If you look at this from this point of view, I think this is really good software for lamest among the computer users. and possibly for the not-so-lame among them…
>This is for your average secretary, so she won’t spend half an hour, looking for a required document she has saved somewhere-I-can’t-remember-where.
Well, the secretaries seems to not want to comment this news article.
I’m just interested in using and writing OS’es, and I’m not a secretary, although I spend my days tapping away at the keyboard.
Interesting program though, but I didn’t grasp what it did and what the dots was for…
But it’ll cost 99$ AND Require one of MS’s premium email apps installed? I’m sorry but I can’t seem to think it’s worth it,
Hmmm. The requirement seems to be that you use Outlook or Entourage. This is especially odd on Mac OS X… you’d think that at the very least they’d support Mail.app.
That said, this sounds interesting. This essentially sounds like a file manager that doesn’t focus on a disk layout/heirarchy. It places a set of human task or contact related abstractions over it instead…. like the GNOME/Evolution project for the whole filesystem?
I remember reading in the BeOS bible that the original BFS wasn’t going to have folders. No tree… that idea has always intrigued me. I like the concept of pulling up a file or app based on content, not on location.
A tree based file system can still be good/usefull, but it’s how the actual OS/user organizes it that can make it awful. I remember beging confused as hell when I first started in on Linux…
/usr/shared/local
/usr/local/shared
Huh?
Just me ranting,
Vache
This program, like many that have come before it seems to be nothing more than yet another fancy front end for programs you already have and use, and can hardly be considered revolutionary. The comparison to Lotus Notes is hardly correct, as I would more compare it to the old ACT contact management program, which was only ever of any real use to telemarketers. If nothing else, the title says it all, ‘Productivity Suite’. This is marketing speak (a strange dialect indeed) for a program that lets you do things you already do.
All it does is provide YET ANOTHER way to get at information already on your computer or the web, hardly something we need another one of. It reminds me of several things M$ has added to Windows in the past, turned on by default, that were disabled by default on the next version, like Active Desktop, or things users go out of their way to kill like the extra toolbars on the taskbar or the stupid ‘helpful’ animated characters in Office (and now XP searches).
Look at a clean Windows 98SE install, and count how many different ways there are to start Explorer or Outlook. Desktop, Toolbar, Start>programs and Start>programs>accessories>internet. How about instead of making a goofy front end for the software, we get a utility that deletes all but ONE of the shortcuts to a program, instead of making us hunt for them (and I mean HUNT under NT based Winblows. Shortcuts in Start menu or on the desktop come from HOW MANY directories? Two at minimum, maybe more)
Increasingly I am becoming disgusted with the level of idiocy I’m seeing in computer use. This software is OBVIOUSLY aimed at people who know nothing about nothing, and is user #$%#$ pure and simple. Increasingly I’m seeing things like ‘Gnorm Evolution’ being touted as revolutionary when its just more of the same B.S. and a waste of effort on the programmers part. I like to compare it to Be. Back when release 5 came out, especially PE which brought a good many into the fold (myself included) Be Inc seemed poised to deliver a truly powerful and effective OS to the desktop, but they stated openly that was not their goal. Instead they were focusing on ‘the future’ of computing, Internet Appliances, to which my response was ‘What are you smoking???’. Why would anyone spend $400-500 for a half functional box in the corner when you can pick up a used K6/2-500 or faster for less money? If instead they had focused on getting OpenGL and BONE to the public with a decent web browser (let’s face facts, Opera sucks and Mozilla is buggy as a Louisiana bayou in june), maybe they’d still be in business.
Sorry for the Rant, but I quit working professionally with computers four years ago over ‘Philisophical differences’ on how stuff should be done. I keep being proven right, but nobody ever listened.