Editorial Pointers

I recall a conversation with Gordon Bell a few months ago after he received reviewers’ comments for his article on MyLifeBits (page 88), a pioneering system he and colleagues at Microsoft Research created to digitally archive his life. He was most appreciative of the feedback, but was struck by some questions the reviewers posed. One asked simply: "Why"? What use is having every detail of your life stored digitally? Does it change the way you live?

Bell’s response was quick: "There’s a great freedom in not havingto remember this stuff anymore. To lose that weight, it’s almost indescribable."

Personal Information Management (PIM) is a movement at the forefront of our digital lives, yet its roots trace back to 1945 when Vannevar Bush’s landmark article "As We May Think" appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. In it, he envisioned a memory extender—memex—device that would store all his books, records, and communication for easy access.

This month’s special section pays homage to Bush’s inspirational vision and examines the current progress and future potential of PIM, detailing the tools and technologies needed to record, store, and recall a person’s journey through life, mapped out in a trail of digital, paper, mobile, and multimedia collections. Guest editors Jaime Teevan, William Jones, and Benjamin B. Bederson have called on many of the leading researchers in the PIM field to share the latest improvements and applications, address PIM ramifications pertaining to security, privacy, control, and information fragmentation, as well as present the next generation of products and devices to put the "personal" back in personal computing.

Also in this issue, DeSouza et al. offer results from a survey of 25 software development organizations that spotlight weaknesses inherent in firmwide reuse programs. Pallis and Vakali contend content delivery networks provide a balance between costs for Web content providers and the quality of service for Web customers. And Chenoweth, Corral, and Demirkan identify the key elements specific to data warehouse success.

Gordon and Loeb study how firms approach the budgeting process for information security expenses. And Tedre, Sutinen, Kahkonen, and Kommers present an approach for recognizing cultural differences in computational concepts and applications.

In "Viewpoint," Scott Campbell urges us to recognize how human intuition influences the security design of complex systems. David Patterson ponders what readers think about moving Communications in a new direction in this month’s "President’s Letter." And Phillip Armour explores more efficient ways to measure the dimensions of a software project in "The Business of Software."

Diane Crawford
Editor