Freebase.com is a free resource which has made Wikipedia and other sources into a massive online database, which can be queried using a structured language: MQL.

It is based on the idea that simple assertions build up to complicated and useful facts. So, a book has several attributes, like author, date of publication etc, which will then show up on a list of books published in that year, books by that author, and so on.

In its rawest form, the data is a series of three-word sentences with the word ‘is’ in the centre. This has got me thinking about a historical database which works in a similar way.

As I see it, every person in history has only ever been in one place at a time. So, over time, we can map the movements of individuals and of objects created by them. All we need is a name, and a series of locations mapped to a date and time. Sometimes, individuals could inherit location data from groups they were a member of for a while, like soldiers in an army.

The rawest level of this database would be a line stating that at a certain time, a certain individual was at a certain place.

Being able to query this data would allow us to see the history of the world in a contextual way. At the moment, history is usually explored through narratives, stories with a single focus. This allows us to home in on the area of interest to us, but means that we often miss the wider picture. That can mean that a reader of a biography of Dickens, for example, can have a good idea of his contemporaries in English Literature, but be completely at sea when called upon to identify the British Prime Ministers who governed during his lifetime.

Allowing this historical data to be queried would allow all manner of mash up and maps which update as new data is added. A massive undertaking, to be sure, but Freebase shows that amazing things can be done.

UPDATE: I have had a go at doing something along these lines, here.

I wish I could touch-type. When I first started using a keyboard, it was with a ZX81, which had a smooth, plastic surface to type on, and each key needed a good hard push. I developed a way of typing pretty fast, and it has stayed with me. The problem is that now, as my job seems to involve having multiple IM conversations, it lets me down. My technique means that I still type pretty fast (it certainly makes an impressive typey sound), but not fast enough. I also make a lot of errors, which I frantically correct, contributing to an impression of rapidity not supported by the output.

This is a pretty good metaphor for a lot of things in my life: no formal training, I learn things as I go along, and spend a lot of time wishing I had more time to learn things properly. I suspect anyone over 35 who uses technology in their job feels the same way. There was no way to learn about HTML when I was at school. It didn’t exist.

The problems really arise when you have to go up a level, rather like a piano player who picks out tunes by ear suddenly being asked to play a Beethoven sonata.

Which is how my job feels at the moment. For the first time, I am working from home, not surrounded by people working on the same projects. If I forget something, there is no-one to ask, and no-one to make sure I am keeping focus. I have to know where any of twenty-five projects stands at any moment, and my tried and tested method of relying entirely on my memory does not work any more. My technique has collapsed.

I am sure this kind of predicament is very common: people who are perfectly organised gradually taking on more and more until they implode. And most of us have a self-taught self-organisation technique, because until recently no-one tried to teach it.

Hence the cult of GTD: like touch-typing for the mind, it promises to teach a method where you no longer have to look at the keys (metaphorically speaking) and just focus on what is being done.

To me, GTD has always sounded too good to be true. I keep everything in my head because that is how I have always worked best. That way it stays neat. As soon as I write things onto paper – do the complete Dave Allen mind-dump – my career becomes an illegible and depressing mess that makes me want to cry and take up lunchtime drinking.

Looking for a short term fix during a particularly frantic week, I downloaded a trial version of OmniFocus (a GTD friendly bit of Mac software) to help me get my ducks in a row. Initially it was quite frustrating and unintuitive. I found lots of material to help me use it, but that just annoyed me even more. I am used to working out how to use software by reading the preferences and menu items. Who needs manuals, right?

Then, a thought struck me. I remembered how computer games 20 years ago used to come with big, thick, manuals. You were expected to read them in their entirety before you could play them, and I used to do it gladly. The thicker the manual, the more absorbing the game. It also gave you something to do while the game loaded.

So, there I was, trying to keep on top of dozens of complicated things, all of which were very important, but expecting any helpful tools to be so simple that I could work out how to use them in 30 seconds. As if the problem with learning to play the piano was that it had too many keys. Cut it down to three, and we could all play it in minutes – but the music would not be very interesting.

So, I persisted, and I am so glad I did. OmniFocus is really, really good. So good, in fact, that I don’t use many of it’s features, but realise that I should. It’s like having a gnarled old pro telling you what you should be doing to make your life easier. Not always saying what you want to hear, but being right most of the time.

It even gave me the confidence to add an item to my someday/maybe list: learn to touch-type. Which I will do. Someday. Maybe.

I was thinking about facebook over Christmas, because I met up with so many people for whom facebook represents just about everything useful about their computer.

Among the people I know online, facebook is not very fashionable. I don’t use it, for several reasons, but chiefly because many young members of my extended family use it a lot, and I feel like a ghastly snooping adult when I read their posts, obviously aimed at their friends. They all seem to like me following them: I just feel like a voyeur.

Perhaps this lack of a privacy gene will be the saving grace for the emerging generation of facebook users. I have heard it predicted that the antics of teenage facebook users might be used by potential employers, on the look-out for youthful indiscretions. If everyone’s secrets are equally on display, these revelations will be worthless. Facebook: the eternally self-generating WikiLeaks of teenage sexuality.

But, I begin to realise, Facebook is performing the sorts of tasks that I used to associate with an operating system. People store photos there, they send and receive various type of email, some shared, some not, and play games. I see people who go to any computer, anywhere, find a web browser, go to google, type ‘facebook’, log in to their account, and they have everything they need.

This is probably why I never ‘got’ facebook: I already have all these functions split up into different service. Twitter over here, email over there, and Path for the very few people who get to see my home. My old-man style obsession with privacy, and my ability to present different aspects of myself to different people, means facebook misses the mark for me.

But what I find interesting about many of the native-facebookers is that they are often only using a fraction of the power their computers are offering. However, their entire digital universe is in ‘the cloud’. Remember, these are not necessarily power users here, but facebook allows them to treat any digital device as their home. This seems pretty darn sophisticated.

Lastly, I think facebook is far better suited to mobile devices than to desktop computers or laptops. Casual comments and images, captured while on the go are where things are going. That, coupled with facebook’s ability to sell advertising which is vastly more targeted than Google’s, means that I think we are just at the beginning of the facebook story.

(DISCLOSURE: I am not the facebook co-founder, also called Chris Hughes.)

I have been using the iPhone app Path recently. It’s a fun way to share photos with friends: a kind of social network where you only share with carefully selected people. In fact, the app limits the user to 50 friends.

It was this consideration for privacy that I liked about it. I could use it without worrying about how my posts would be interpreted by the ghastly bots who stalk Twitter these days, meaning you can get followed by half a dozen ‘weight loss experts’ if you thoughtlessly tweet about your weight.

So, I was pretty amazed when the latest update from my new favourite company seemed to make a pretty basic mistake. It introduced comments, which should be a fun feature. Except, they decided to use SMS text messages to send comments. By so doing this, any comment reveals the mobile phone number of whoever I am commenting to.

Now, I don’t remember asking this company to pass my mobile phone number around. As it happens, I don’t object to anyone in my Path group knowing my mobile phone number. But I very much like to be asked before a company starts sharing it without asking me.

Anyway, I have emailed Path about this, as there are other objections I have. I enclose the email below.

I have just upgraded to Path 1.1 on my iPhone, and must say that I believe you have made a mistake.

I like being able to comment on my friends photos. However, the only way I can do it with my iPhone is as a text message. There are at least three problems with this.

1. At the moment, commenting on a photo reveals the photographers mobile phone number. Now, it is one thing to share photos with someone, it is another to give someone your mobile phone number. I was not asked if I wanted to share this information. I might have decided to allow this feature, if I had the option. But I had no choice. I consider this to be a serious privacy issue. I felt that the philosophy of Path was towards privacy, and I liked your attitude. This is why I trusted you with my private photos. I am now doubting myself for placing that trust

2. I live in England. All of my Path friends live in the USA. How much will a comment cost me? I have no idea. Not free, I suspect.

3. If the comment is an SMS message, it interrupts the receiver. Surely, this is wrong. A comment is not an urgent message, worthy of interrupting something. What if they are eating a meal, or watching a movie? I might want to comment ‘Nice photo’. If I am afraid of interrupting them, I won’t bother: I would feel rude. So I don’t comment – my sentiment, which might be a nice gesture in the right context, becomes an annoyance.

I could probably go on. I am amazed at how flawed this feature is. Please change it.