Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Book review

Mood: Lack of sleep

There is a question, somewhere deep in my head: Is it possible that Leonardo da Vinci has bored just once per whole civilization? Is there truely no place nowadays for real "renaissance person", who has some achievement in more than two,three disciplines? The book is the answer for the question: definitely there is at least one such a person - Mr. Feynman.

The book describes the incredible life of open-minded person, who can during one life do the following:

• learn to repair radio as a thirtenn years old child
• how to learnd italian quickly :D
• take a part in Manhattan project (atom bomb) - surprisngly he writes the most about how the life in Los Alamos looked like, than about his real work. It seemes like he worked more in nearby factory in Oak Ridge, than in Los Alamos ;)
• open locker, wardrobes and safes (I need to remember 25-0-25 and 50-25-50)
• how to make impression on women in bars (do not pay for them silly)
• how to earn money in Las Vegas
• how to be friend of big fish in Las Vegas
• try to repair Brazilian schollar system
• play on pandeiro and frigideira (whatever it is) and took a part in Carnival celebration as the samba school member. Hotel boy screaming - "O PROFESSOR!"
• learn why you should not earn too much
• paint
• why to be in touch with people from other disciplines and not to go for the interdisciplinar conferences discussing general topics
• get Nobel prize (it sounded like the ceremony was the worest challenge)go through the hell of scroing US school books
• how to play hald-professionaly on the drum for the ballet

So when you read the list there may be the following feelings in your head.

• Did he really do these things? Yes.
• Is he a megaloman? A little.
• Why I hear the surname for the first time? I was surprised as well :)

As you can see making the extract from the book, which is the extract from such a rich life, like the Feymann's one, gives the odd results. Nevertheless what was the most inspring in this all - Feynman has always very pratical approach and even when he speaks about VERY complicated things (including philosophy), everything is served in straightforward way (without a single formula).

• You can not be the professor Mr. Feynman.
• Why?
• Because I understand everything what you are saying.

On the other hand the book is simply SMART. It contains plenty of tips&tricks including not only "uncommon integration" (how you can gain from possesing the other toolkit), but also "how to cut massive number of string beans" or "how to deal wit a women". What is truely inspring it desribes the things AS-THEY-ARE and not with rounded words, so you can find even once a crossword on f, when he speaks about the government :D

He was also the one, who reminded me that if you want to achieve something in long term, you need to be honest in front of yourself and when you present the results of your work you must present ups and downs.

And at least, but not at last - the book is hilarious, so you enjoy reading it. It will be definitely well spent 11$.

Score: 6/6 (very good)

Google Trends

Mood: The weekend with XBox 360 and Call of Duty 3 is truely the cure

Link: I would love to fix projects problems as he dances :D, but at the end there is usually blood :D :D

Intro

Google Trends is the set of services, which allows you to analyze through ALL the search requests send to Google and news appearing on the web by geographical region and by date (since 2004). There are the following services:

• Google Trends
• Google Hot Trends
• Google Music Trends

It is produced by Google Labs and it is still in Beta phase since may 2006. At the beginning, Google had some problems with data updates, but since 17 July, they started to provide the data on the regular basis - Google Trends daily and Hot Trends hourly.

Juice

The service is truely cool and you open mind has a play ground... staying focused on rather professional things:

Project management methodologies

• South Africa turns on the PMBoK?
• Prince2 is the winner in EU
• RUP is very popular in Poland (polish language also)

Web languages

• Polish language is the most popular generally and in HTML/PHP!!!??
• There is HTML renaissance, when we speak about publications
• Ajax gets the ground slowly
• The other interesting analysis in the area

eCard

• the e-cards become less and less popular year-after-year
• they are the most popular in Viet Nam, Thailand and Honk-Kong (Viet Nam and Thai language), than in Belgium- Netherlands (Dutch language); is truely english 3rd the most popular language?! Probably not in greetings :D
• they are the most popular in Christmas time and New Year (seasonal trends metioned by wikipedia)

Issues

I truely spend a lot of time just to produce these three, looks-like-quick analyzes as that is truely hard to find good set of keywords for search. Just as and example I have tried to compare the top three most popular business social network using the wikipedia list as primary resourse and I felt into XING trap, which is also the big Chinese teleco. There is plenty of similar cases - Java means also the island and Eclipse is mainly the astrology term.

Google Trends does not show the popularity, but just the number of searches and publications (whatever it means).

System bases on IP addresses wherever from the query was issued and it happens that pools of IPs are transferred from one country to the other by "smart" internet providers (I know about such pools hijacked from Finland to Poland) ;)

You may request up to five key words at once.

Conclusion

The service is defintely cool, but you need to use it VERY carefully and you probably need also some other resources, which proofs your hypothesis. Incoming popularity of Facebook (comparing to MySpace) is possible,

but XING comparing to LinkedIn or Plaxo? ;)

Anyway the incoming API for the service, will be definitly the cool thing to play with! What else will come up from these Labs? It seems like there is a lot of rocket science going on! ;)

UML, RUP, MSF and the others versus reality

Mood: Monday was not as horrible as expected
Link: I am not the fan of the serie, but the sounds keep pinging my mind ;)

"We need simply to use UML and it will fix all the problems" - I was quite surprised to see the idea in MY mind and luckily not in my mouth yet ;) I am quite sure you know also the people, who believes that particular approach like Prince2 or RUP will be the remedy for any diseas. The problem is that effectiveness of these solutions always depend on particular situation. That is always the most important to diagnose the problem first and then to find the medicine in various books ;) Sounds like the cliché, but there is still so many werewolf hunters fully equipped with silver bullets. I have made conscience-searching and here we are...

General
· None of these specify necessity of designing GUI, but usually when you start drawing how particular screens will look like you may gain a lot of information (unless you plan the prototype first or strictly agile, iterative approach)
· None of these (but Prince2 books mention it unofficially) specify necessity of hard-numbered profit versus cost estimation. Business analysis should include some predictions of key indicators like Net Present Value or Internal Rate of Return
· QA is different topic, which you need to have in back of your head regardless from everything else (RUP and Prince2 mention it just)

· No one below will remind you about the law issues and regulations (legal acts, being compliant with standards, corporate regulations)

UML
· UML diagrams are really cool, but THAT IS NOT THE METHODOLOGY – that is simply some set of boxes, which you may use in drawings. Nothing more, nothing less.
· Very many companies uses UML to attach some images to documentation (good), but unfortunately not too many generates even the classes skeleton from it; even less keep synchronization between the physical and logical model. Surprisingly I have never heard or read about any CMMI-like model, which would suggest it or score it!
· When we speak about Use Case diagram remember about drawing the border of the system and if necessary about the version of the system (quite often technical spec says about the subset of functionalities enlisted in business spec)
· Use Cases are also about identifying the type of users

· Apply packages to simplify Use Cases

· Always look for reuse of diagrams and avoid copy&pasting (eg. <>, <> in use cases)

· Think about Deployment Diagram and general plan on early stage; it is also a good moment to think which OSes and browsers might be used by final users (it is often forgotten and it blows out when the deployment truely starts)

· Sometimes it is quicker to scetch, scan and paste even sligthly against the rules, that draw the diagram with 100k EUR worth software beign strict; pretty-good is usually enough ;)

· UML is one of the best for desiging software, but it is not the only one - have a look here.

RUP
· That is quite cool approach, which nicely show 4 important stages of the project – preparation, analysis, realization and deployment, but there is no point where all the analysis is finished. It means that even when you start the 3rd Construction phase you do not have all use cases finished (just 80% is required)!

· Against RUP I prefer rather to start coding when I have complete set of uses cases and the range of first release fully established - I found too often one, nasty case, which caused total redesign

· Surprisingly RUP does not go deep within technical aspects - it mentions mostly use cases, business aspects and risk management.

· Martin Fowler in his book The New methodology says something like: “My experiences with RUP are, that you can customize it without the boundaries and it causes problems. I have met couple of RUP usages, starting from the cascade model with analytical iterations, finishing at the full Agile process. I was surprised that this promoting RUP as one process caused that people may do everything and call it RUP – it makes RUP the word without meaning” - I guess this happens because IBM strategy is to allow in the same time the marriage of it with SCRUM and Prince2
· You can quicker find interesting documentation about RUP outside IBM (like Wikipedia) than inside, where you must go through tons of commercial crap to get kilo of knowledge. The kilo is probably somwhere within 270 pages long red book.

· Some sample documents templates

· RUP defines couples of disciplines - among others Business Modelling, Requirements, Analysis & design. In situation, when you need to make the interview with clients (in order to specify the contract), it means that each specialty must be represented at each meeting.

MSF
· Unfortunately since the new version (at least the document is ONLY 47 pages long ;) ), the split between logical and physical design is not bolded so strongly. You need to spend significant time to find the sentence like “There are three levels in the design process: conceptual design, logical design, and physical design”. I guess that is caused by the necessity of generalization caused by MSF for Agile.
· Good trade-off mechanism, which finally learned how to be agile, when customer wants something more :D
· User experience role, which you will not find in RUP.
· Practical bottom-up approach for estimation and no word about it in RUP

I was thinking for a sec to weight both RUP and MSF and put the score, but the truth is that the covarage which both companies for their development environment (IBM with Eclipse and Microsoft with VS.Net). There is couple of interesting places, where you can find deeper comparsion of both like even some Master Tesis prefering slightly RUP. At the end of the road, it does not matter what label you wear, but how you feel with it. Is it flexible? Can you show in the suite on the business meeting? Can you run to catch the cab? Do you buy clothes in regular market or you can afford the tailor? Do not you think you need to have couple of clothes? :D

Sources of knowledge

Mood: Just after straight-11 free days without ANY business phone call (can you imagine that?)
Link: Odd Christmas wishes

I have got some time ago the very good question: "Where from do I know, what I know?". I am the type of the guy, who asked about non expected thing, usually can not come up quickly with a clever answer, so I answer something not-clever-enough. The problem is that, this type of things keep staying in the darkness of my mind for some clever-enough story. The worst of all, the dark side of the soul wakes up usually 5' after I should be already sleeping and once per a while instead of behaving like the 31 years old man should behave I get to the laptop and write something like right now (tommorow morning will be truely a horrible intiation of the new year ;) ).

Anyway... lets do the home work.

I am the type of the guy who does not like to go to the courses, which I usually very expensive, time-consuming, borning and not-engouh related with the real life. This is way I usually prefer some self-pace paths, where books and web materials are the best, primary friends. In case of Microsoft certificates (MCSD.Net) I also convinced my boss to buy the examination training kit from Transcender (wow! they have a new web page) and I was very satisfied from it. I always focus myself and my subordinates to focus on some certificate. It is not to be some type of a label whore, who needs to have a jeans from Wrangler in order to feel better, but having a material goal is always a good motivator and the one, which you can set in time - usually the certain date and hour of the exam, when you shake like the leaves on a tree in autumn. Anyway I am crossing my fingers for you ;) and I give you one hint...

If you fails, there is always a possiblity to have a next shoot. I remember until today one exam at my university, when I had three make-ups; the most horrible was that each time I have spend doubled amount of time over the books and the result was doubled misrable :D The professor Jan Węglarz finally gave me the lowest possible note to pass, just to get my out of the range of his sight. Staying in front of him I truely considered to refuse the offer despite my desprate situation, but as usually my opprotunistic side has won ;) EVERYBODY has at least one story of this type - you must to set up and take a challenge.

The second and more interesting source of knowledge are people. There are two main figures who have been the sources and spiritus movens (surprsingly I could not find yet the english explanation of these latin words). One of them is positive and second one is rather negative.

The first one, was Clem Predergast who rather acts than publish and this why there is nothing about him on the web. He was though the one, true manager whom I met and whom I could watch managing and leading the people in software projects. It was more about the soft skills and possibility to motivate people in right direction, but there was also about the "know-how" import from Irish island and Performix company. How the support mechanisms works, how QA labs should look like, what road show is about, where there is a sense to pump the money and how to gain the support from executives. He had tones of his phresals, which I am sure, most of people who have worked with him, will remember for a long time like "all hands on pump". I keep catching myself on repeating them or doing some small things in the same why how he did it like learning first how "cool" and "shit" sound in foreign language, when I am in one these countries where german and english is not the mother tongue. Learning by the example is definitely the best possible method.

The second person is much more interesting and I have been growing up with this feeling for years. This person had probably better hard skills than I had on each, technical level - starting from code, through the architecture and finshing at methodologies knowledge (especially the agile once). I am quite sure that he still has these skills better, but he had some problems with soft skills. Unfortunatelly it has appeared after some time that we do not work together but against. Why I come up the situation? Because he was a perfect challenge, which (or rather who), I admit publically in this new 2008 year, still sits in my mind and keep challenge me in the ares, which about we had this short, usually intense discussions. Of course that is not my main or even secondary motivator, but for example it forces me to review once per a while all the existing methodologies and only the ones, which I prefer or can be useful.

Where books can be treated as hardware, people would be the software - you need both and you need to have some balance. You need to have hardware to load software, you should not have too much software on the weak machine and the most important... do you really need Vista? :D

Preparing for Prince2 exam

About Prince2 exams
Prince2 stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environment and it is non-agile type of project management methodology. It bases on customer-supplier pair, who wants to make a business (represented by business cases) in a strictly formalized way, to avoid some possible misunderstanding or potential conflicts. The methodology operates mostly on customer side and it is optional for supplier, who may use different methodology (even agile).

Prince2 was financed, registered and developed by British governmental organization Office of Government Commerce (OGC). The courses, exams and materials are provided by APM Group. There are two exams to certify the knowledge in the area:
Prince2 Foundation – 1 hour long multiple choices, just to prove you may take a part in projects, 50% good answers are enough and 99% candidates pass
Prince2 Practioner – 3 hours long objective testing multiple choices, to prove you may run and manager projects, 50% good answers are enough and 75-80% candidates pass
More about exams details - here.

The interesting thing is that many companies offering authorized Prince2 courses refuses “just exam” option, even when it is not against the APM Group rules. If you are willing to take the self-learning path, probably you will need to use British Council. If it is not an option, contact APM Group directly and remember to choose the examination language ;)
More about taking exams - here.

About Prince2
It is focused on processes and documents flows maintained within 3 main folders for project, each stage and quality. Management is split into 2+ levels (above Project Board there is Company or Programme management, but it is outside Prince2 scope):

• Project board – taking strategic decisions, before-and-after stages and when project manager reports exceptional situation (beyond established level of tolerance). Its members must represent main 3 interests – customer, supplier and business.
• Project manager – taking daily tactical decisions
• Team leader (optional) – may take over part of project manager duties especially if some specialized (eg. technical) teams takes a part in a project

Prince2 consists mainly of 8 processes (flows), 8 components (key elements used in flows) and 3 techniques (important approaches across all processes realized with use of components). The methodology is though scalable and the minimum is 2 level organization (board and manager) and 2 processes (initialization and acting).

The Prince2 is a brother of PMBoK methodology. The main difference is though that Project Manager Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) answers the question what PM should know, and PRINCE2 answers a question what PM should do.

Processes
Detail list of all sub-process you may find in number of places like english or polish wikipedia. The scope of the paragraph is to show the boundaries of the processes and linkages between them.

· Starting up a project (SU) [Uruchamianie Projektu/Przygotowanie Założeń Projektu (PP)] – it is about organizing Project Board [Komitet Sterujący] and nominating Project Manager (creating Organization component) and preparing documents for first strategic decision
Input: Project Mandate [Zlecenie Przygotowania Projektu] document
Output: Project Brief [Podstawowe Założenia Projektu], Project Approach [Formuła realizacyjna], Initation Stage Plan (IP) [Plan etapu Inicjowania projektu (IP)]

· Directing a project (DP) [Strategiczne zarządzanie projektem (ZS)] – that is about taking strategic decisions by Project Board; they are always taken when one process/stage finishes and next is about to begin OR if Project Manager request exceptional situation and wants to put into play the Exception Plan
Input: Output from previous stage and plans for the next one from PM
Output: Decision

· Initiating a project (IP) [Inicjowanie projektu (IP)] – when SU is just the general approval to work over vision of the project, IP is about the detail preparation for project realization split into one or number of management stages (they may be parallel to operation stages). It is about quality, risk register, business cases, controls and setting up documentation flow gathered at the end into one key Project Initiation Document. It includes also planning the basic budget plus changes and reserve budgets.
Input: SU [PP] input and permission from Project Board (DP1) [ZS1]
Output: Project Initiation Document [Dokument Inicjujący Projekt]

· Controlling a stage (CS) [Sterowanie Etapem (SE)] – As mentioned above the realization of the project is split into one or many management stages. Within the stage the full responsibility is delegated on PM, who fully manages tactical decisions and optionally he may delegate his responsibilities on team leaders. The process is about all the actions linked with authorizing and acceptance of performed work packages (1,9), controlling the project progress (2,5), registering and managing issues appearing during a project (3,4), reporting to project board (6), small (7) and big (8) crisis management depending if the problem is going out of established tolerance scope or not.
Input: Project Initiation Document and output from previous stage (if any)
Output: Realized set of work packages within controlled time and budget

· Managing product delivery (MP) [Zarządzanie Wytwarzaniem Produktów (WP)] – Prince2 is products based planning. The management products may be split into the specialized products, which may be realized outside the company. The process is mainly about dealing with such a situation. It is a very simple process consisting off three parts – accepting (1), executing (2) and delivering (3) work packages. It is the lowest possible in Prince2 acting level - doing the thing.
Input: CS1 [SE1] work package authorization > (1)
Output: 2 > CS2 [SE2] project progress 3 > CS9 [SE9] work package acceptance

· Managing stage boundaries (SB) [Zarządzanie Zakresem Etapu (ZE)] – When “Controlling a stage” process is coming to the end and a new stage is planned this process is run as a preparation for new stage including updates of project plan, business case and risk register. The result of it is Final Stage Report and plan for the next stage (small IP process), which is presented to Project Board for acceptance. The process is also used for crisis management if some significant changes to the base plan are necessary (the path CS8>SB6>DP3)
Input: Current project documentation
Output: Final Stage Report, plan for the next stage or input for “Closing a project”

· Closing a project (CP) [Zamykanie Projektu (ZP)]

· Planning (PL) [Planowanie (PL)] – planning is unique process as it is a parallel thing happening in the background through the whole project life cycle. This is mainly about documentation review and keeping it consistent. It includes products management, configuration management, schedule, risks register etc. It is especially used at sub-processes SU[PP]6, DP6 [ZS6], IP2 [IP2], MP1 [WP1], SB[ZE]1,2,6
Input: Various
Output: The project plan

1. Prince2 process flow

8 components:

• Business Case [Uzasadnienie biznesowe]– The justification behind the project.
• Organization [Organizacja] – The way in which the personnel involved in the project are structured.
• Plans [Plany] – Documents describing what the project should accomplish, how the work should be carried out, when it should be carried out and by whom.
• Controls [ Elementy sterowania] – The way in which the project manager and project board should exercise control over the project including the things like tolernace, reports etc.
• Management of Risk [ Zarządzanie ryzykiem] – The way in which the project should approach and manage risk. PRINCE2 defines a risk as uncertainty of outcome, which may be either a positive opportunity or a negative threat. Enlisted risks are analyzed and then, they are managed in one of 5 ways – prevention, reduction, reassignment (for example on the external company eg. insurance), acceptation, planning the reserve budget in IP process.
• Quality in a Project Environment [ Jakość w środowisku projektu] – The way in which the project should ensure that a quality product is delivered. Prince2 does not specify details and it relays on external standards – especially the once already used by the customer or supplier.
• Configuration Management [ Zarządzanie konfiguracją]– The way in which the project's products are identified and tracked including versions management.
• Change Control [ Sterowanie zmianami] – The way in which the project manages any changes to specification or scope of its products. Benefits/Savings versus risk,cost and time.

3 techniques

• Product Based Planning – the technique of planning based on defining the products, establishing their hierarchy and than the relations between them – product flow diagram. Based on this information the plan is created including the schedule, quality and risks.
• Change Control – the technique of registering and taking decisions about the planned changes including analysis and granting permission plus planning Changes Budget in IP process.
• Quality Reviews – how the quality assurance should be performed on a regular basis, in order to provide the planned quality level

Prince2 Maturity Model (P2MM)
As Prince2 is scalable solution and many companies are willing strongly to get Prince2 label for minimum cost, many companies suffer PINO (Prince In Name Only) syndrome. OGC develops lastly the maturity model as the remedy for this, which defines 5 levels:

• 1 Initial Does the organisation recognise projects and run them differently from its ongoing business? (Projects may be run informally with no standard process or tracking system.)
• 2 Repeatable Does the organisation ensure that each project is run with its own processes and procedures to a minimum specified standard? (There may be limited consistency or co-ordination between projects)
• 3 Defined Does the organisation have its own centrally controlled project processes, and can individual projects flex within these processes to suit the particular project?
• 4 Managed Does the organisation obtain and retain specific measurements on its project management performance and run a quality management organisation to better predict future performance?
• 5 Optimised Does the organisation run continuous process improvement with proactive problem and technology management for projects in order to improve its ability to depict performance over time and optimise processes?

APM Group among others, provide the maturity assessment to define the existing level of organization maturity and prepare the action plan to improve it for future (most of companies offering authorized Prince2 trainings does it as well).

Resources
„Understanding Prince2” Ken Bradley (polish version)
Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2 (polish version)
NOTE! There is a newest edition of these books, which you may buy in AMPG shop.
Polish and English wikipedia
Sample exam questions

PS.
I have just passed the Prince2 Foundation exam - happy Christmas ;)

PopFly - mashups

Popfly is the mashups and web page creator service published by Microsoft at November 2007. It seems like the answer to the Yahoo!Pipes service and as that solution it does not require from you to install anything – you may do all the tricks straight from your web browser. Pipes seems to be the on-line version of Data Transformation Services concentrated more on processing text data, when Popfly, is focused on the visual data like maps, photos and videos.

1. Yahoo!Pipes editor

Microsoft truly surprise also with the freshness and richness of the GUI. It is very visible that a lot of effort was put to create moving effects (based on Silverlight), which does not shade the functionality, but causes that you truly enjoy to play with solution. I love to tickle the drill down menu (like the tutorial).

2. PopFly - link two blocks

3. PopFly - specify linkage details

4. PopFly - final effect

Popfly is not only about the fireworks, but it truly provides the big number of available blocks. When there is opened option to play with picture galleries you may not only put them on maps (why there is no Google Maps? J ), but there is a wide range of various gallery displays starting from the simple one like ImageFader or PhotShow and closing on more advanced one like Carousel or PhotoSphere.

5. PopFly - Picture sphere

As far as you play just with couple of blocks, you may easily link particular metadata and the range of capabilities is truly inspiring. The part of the demo showing GeoNames is a good example.

Furthermore Popfly is not just about mashups, but it also provides the web page designer tool, with number of templates. It seems like that is a way how the creators wanted to popularize the solution and that is way you may even put there the mashup editor!

Popfly has a big chance to become popular and even now it is surprising how many new non-MS objects are available. It happens so, because the solution allows you to create the rich content without writing the line of code and I am sure that in short time it will appear in number of web pages. Furthermore, it is a also the interesting playground for the developers as well. You may put your JavaScript snippets straightforward within the IE or you may see your projects within Visual Studio! Furthermore, you may also see your friends projects and if you are allowed you may play with them!

Popfly is a beta version, but surprisingly I could not blow it out (I admit I did not try it too hardly as I was busy playing with all the toys J ). There is just couple of small, annoying things like most of available services are strongly linked with US localization. Is it though the challenge for EU developers?!

Plaxo 3.0 Beta

Mood: First day at work after the holidays ;)

There is quite many social national and international social networks. I use the most often LinkedIn as the most popular one and also the one, which I enjoy. I have some accounts in the other(s), but I visit them just once per a month or couple of months, when I get some invitation from them. I have made lastly the exception to have a closer look at Plaxo and I must say I have been positively surprised.

Unlike LinkedIn, which is turning more into hiring market and Question & Answer services, the Plaxo has the aspiration to become the integration/synchronization bus, which allows to track humans activities across all the existing services via Pulse. This includes not only the Social Networks, but also Photo Sharing, bookmarking, bloginning etc.

Everything in one place, as far as the service base on the open standard! With the pulse stream service you keep the information about all the actions/changes, which happened among your social network in the area – something like mega RSS :)

Some of these things are actually similar to LinkedIn functionalities, but with the fresher approach. For example… Instead informing you that your firend X get 5 new connections (LinkedIn), it says that your friend X connected to person Y. Furthermore, you do not need to know the email address of person Y or prepaid SendIn Email service (LinkedIn) to invite the person to your social network. The other example are groups, which are not so restricted like in LinkedIn – generally everybody may establish it for free and communication possibilities within it are much richer.

Actually Plaxo has the aspiration to become the key service to integrate not only all your contacts (professional, personal and family), but also the other Outlook type of information like Calendar, Tasks and notes. The sample approach of how it is achieved for calendar events you may watch at this demo. Unfortunately the Sync with LinkedIn is free, just for first 30 days :( Later you will need to pay 50$ per a year.

It is also visible in some moments that the service is still in beta version, when it frozes once per a while on loading the data…

It provides also the cool Outlook plugin. As Plaxo is different from LinkedIn, it provides within its toolbar mostly the synchronization options, but there is also "Send eCard" thing. Within a package you get also the signature editor, which allows to create the nice footer to your emails. What is not so easy to do within Outlook, is much easier with Plaxo wizard. Futhermore there a cool feauture next to each email, which allows you to do couple of actions related to person, who send you the email. Again, except the standard one like "Invite" or "send eCard", there is "Google [the person]" ;)

Plaxo is definitely interesting company and I am looking forward to see its further grow!