Just some thoughts for a Friday. I should probably call this Research 2.0 or something to be inthe here and now, but I'm old skool when it comes to new concepts.

A question in the office the other day was raised around how someone 'does research'. I didn't think too hard about it, but really I probably should have, as I spend a lot of time surfing, reading, and then in consideration of that with my own ideas which I guess constitutes research.

So how do I do this? Well, I think the general method is pretty well understood - I have blogs that I refer to, and of course all of the typical web sites and SDKs and so on, that I'll use as primary sources for information. Similarly, I'll use internal resources in the same way. BUT, this means I'm awash with information, so more important are the tools and how I can organise that information.

Right now, I use two core tools - OneNote and Omea Reader.

On OneNote: Typically, I'll spin my own ideas out in OneNote, and if I'm in the mood, I'll use it to gather clippings and so on. OneNote is tremendously useful for dumping out some thoughts and then rearranging later. I'm always surprised that people don't realise that you can TYPE into OneNote rather than have to use a stylus, and actually, I do pretty much equal amounts of each. OneNote has made me almost a paper-free zone.

On Omea Reader: I have all of my favourites and blog subscriptions in Omea so active information is typically arriving there. Omea has a bunch of features that allow clippings, categorisation and workspaces. I could probably do the same thing in Outlook, but I have so much information in Outlook that I prefer to breakout my research into 'somewhere else'.

So what's the problem?

Well, the issue is that it isn't natural for me to collate, categorise 'stuff that I see that is interesting'. Both of these options, and any other you can think of (Del.icio.us tagging for example) force me to: 1) take some disruptive action and 2) make an immediate decision on context on any content I find.

The result of this is that I while I'll succeed at any particular researching action, I don't imagine for a moment that I'm maximising the potential of the information that is available, and I'm sure in some circumstances that I miss gems of information and insight that would be directly relevant.

What do I need then? I believe I need a tool, or feature, that can monitor what I'm doing so that I can happily take a look at things and spend the day reading and surfing, before I can then return and triage the information from that researching session. So my browser history would be useful for this. But it's one-dimensional and doesn't provide additional context.

I could really do with some additional metadata: how long I looked at something, things that were like other things. I can then add to that my own metadata: did I think it was worthwhile, keywords. The result would be an overall position of my thought process, search process and the 'stuff' I've now found. (The richness of even relatively simple metadata shouldn't be underestimated: consider how a simple system such as Del.icio.us offers such navigational and linking possibilities).

Between these tools and Vista, I probably have a lot of that capability, but not in a process driven way. I need to be able to use gestures in a non-disruptive fashion, and not be forced to take contextual or value decisions right at the point of consumption, but be assisted through that process once I'm ready to do so. And that's the History++ bit.