The key idea behind CreativeOS – or why the “there’s an App for that” does not always work

…and a great idea just hit me this morning.

I wanted to create something new, to write about “wind farms” as personal (digital) information hubs in an age where the media really behaves like the weather; jet streams, siroccos, tailwinds and sandstorms…

Several things crossed my mind lightning fast – as usual during a typical creative “moment”.

Let’s take the story from above to illustrate some of the key concepts behind CreativeOS.

When you are fully immersed in your thoughts, you are “in the flow“, you don’t necessarily think about “formats”, what the ultimate creation will “look like”, let alone about the tools you’re going to use to “materialise” the idea.

The creative activity on a computer involves the use of a couple of software tools.

To write and edit texts you need a text processor (1) application.

To search for photos and images you need either a local search engine (2a) or a web browser (2b) if you’re searching online.

To make references you need to find the sources and “link” them to your piece of work – in most cases you’re going to use hyperlinks – so you need an application that supports the editing of HTML (3).

To publish your “article” you need a publishing platform (4) – like WordPress. That’s another software application you need to deal with.

So far so good, but what happens if I want to also

• send the “article” as an email message to some people, I want to
• tweet about it on several web portals, want to
• create a PDF version of it for local archiving, want to
• print it, and last but not least I want to
• copy it over to my pen drive…

And I want to do this ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

OK. Let’s go one by one.

Besides the text editor I need an email client (5) and I need to copy the content or attach the article to an email message.

I also need a Twitter client (6) and need to create a TinyURL to link to the online copy of the article.

I need a “converter” application (7) that can save my article as a PDF file.

I need to send the article to the printer. That may require using / opening up another application (8).

Also, I need to copy it to my pendrive. Using a file manager app (9).

It does not matter whether you’re using Windows, Linux or Mac OS.

All three major operating systems force you to use several (8-9) software applications to achieve your goal.

You have to open several windows on the screen, copy and paste your work from and into several applications.

That’s fine, we all used to do that.

But what if there’s a better way?

Enter CreativeOS.