Let's jump right in.

1. Use Project Wizard (under the “Project” Menu option) to open the “Instant Messaging” research project:

2. Cartagio opens up the pages that were in view when you last quit the project. You should still see the last pages we opened listed at the bottom, something like the image below. If this is the case, click the Howstuffworks “How Instant Messaging Works” tab in Cartagio, else follow the above link to navigate to this page.

3. Right-click and Add Bookmark to Project. Then, over-type the hypertext with a comment something like this: “Here is an overview of BBS and Chat rooms. It discusses some of the major players and provides some historical context.” We are starting to editorialize now, which will help others understand our research. Add the page to the existing category “Background" 4. Follow the “Next Page" link at the bottom of this page to the next page, http://www.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging2.htm, which discusses ICQ. Bookmark this page, and type your own comments about ICQ, perhaps something like this: “This page discusses ICQ: the first popular instant messaging program, still widely in use today.”

5. Next, take a Snippet of the ICQ paragraph and screenshot, and add it to the existing category “IM Players”

6. Navigate to the next page, http://www.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging3.htm, which discusses AOL’s Instant Messenger. Bookmark this page, and type your own comments about AIM, perhaps something like this: “This page describes AOL's Instant Messenger”

7. Next, take a Snippet of the AOL paragraph and screenshot, and add it to the existing category “IM Players” Navigate to the next page, http://www.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging4.htm, which discusses MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. Bookmark this page, and paste in some of the text about MSN, such as: “A key feature of MSN Explorer, which the other major IM packages also include, is the ability to talk with another MSN Explorer user just like you would over the telephone” and about Yahoo! Messenger, such as: “The interesting thing about Yahoo! Messenger is how well it integrates with other Yahoo! content and services.”

8. Next, take Snippets of the MSN and Yahoo paragraphs and screenshot, and add them to the existing category “IM Players”

9. At this point, we are ready to organize the research, and present it in some logical fashion. To do that, Click “Project Organizer”.

10. Click the Project Bookmarks icon, and then expand each category by clicking the + sign next to each one. Then, select the Google Search:Instant Messenging bookmark, and overtype the generic comments with something more descriptive, like this: “I started the project here, using the Google search engine” Note: you can learn more about each of the functions of the Project Organiser by hovering your mouse over each of the icons.

11. Then, right click on this bookmark and choose the option “Add To Tour”. Select “New Tour”, name it Research Summary, and describe it as below:

12. Now, we are going to get a little tricky. Five of our bookmarks are from HowStuffWorks. We are going to add all five to the tour, at the same time, in the exact order we want someone to see them. First, drag the URL column edge to the right, until you can see the full URLs, as below. Next, click the URL column heading to sort the URLs alphabetically. Then, select all five URLs from HowStuffWorks (Click the first one, and Shift-Click the bottom one). Finally, Right-Click and Add to the existing Tour, Research Summary. Note: You’ll notice that we did not bother adding the ICQ.com bookmark to the Tour. It’s redundant to the good information we discovered on HowStuffWorks, so we won’t include it in our summary.

13. We’re done with Bookmarks. Now, click the Snippets icon in Project Organizer. Expand the Categories, as we did in Bookmarks, by clicking the + sign next to each one.

14. Add the four Snippets from IM Players to the existing Tour, Research Summary. Note: had we found interesting Project Resources, such as a pdf or a spreadsheet, we could have added those to the Tour as well. We’ll tweak the Tour one last time after creating the Project Document.

15. From the View Menu, choose Show Project Document. As one does not yet exist, you will be prompted to create a new one. Accept the default answer, “Yes”

16. Cartagio’s internal document editor will appear, along with a default document template that provides some guidance on how to use the editor, and also what the Project Document is for. Below is a sample Project Document (you may simply copy from this one, or experiment by creating your own). Hint: You can paste in text and graphics from this document, or any other. Instant Messaging Research Summary   In this project, we will communicate all that we learned about instant messaging (IM).  We have organized our research into a brief Tour that defines IM, describes its history and evolution, and shows how IM is used today.  Along the way, we learned much about the enabling technologies, who the major players are, and which one might be right for you.    On the last subject, we have concluded that the "best" IM solution probably has more to do with how you currently operate than with the "quality" of the solution.  For example, heavy Yahoo! users will find that its Messenger integrates seamlessly with other Yahoo! services, as does AIM with AOL, and MSN Messenger with MSN/Microsoft.    Click Here to go right to our Research Summary Tour.  Alternatively, you can sift through the detail information by clicking any of the following bookmarks, snippets and resources.   For your convenience, we have included the final Research Summary statistics for our project just below.  You can also view this information in the Research Summary Statistics section of Project Organizer.   You will note that the statistics summary is dynamic, and that any additional research performed by you and you colleagues is automatically added to the summary statistics.   Statistics 30Jan2002 17:27:51   Project: Instant Messaging      Research time: 1:39:05          Active time: 2:24:54            Open time: 7:14:07              Pages visited: 239              - bookmarked: 50 (21%)          - unbookmarked: 189 (79%)       Bookmarks added: 7              Page AutoRank (ave.): 18%       Page relevance (ave.): 0%       Time/Page (ave.): 0:00:25       Time/Bookmark (ave.): 0:00:58   Billing charge: $200              Thanks again for allowing us to assist you with your research needs, and rest assured that we will be here to support you with this or any other projects, as the need arises.   Sincerely,   Pat A. Researcher VP, Professional Research Divison ResearchAgent Inc. www.researchagent.com

17. Now, click on the Tour hyperlink in your Project Document to visit your Tour. Select each of the five HowStuffWorks pages, then Right-Click to edit the Properties and add a page number to the end of the Comments, as in the example on the right.

18. Once you are done, re-sequence the Tour bookmarks and Snippets as below, so that someone taking the Tour will see each item -- bookmarks, Snippets, documents, etc. -- in the appropriate sequential order. Note:There are some situations where a Snippet may serve you better (e.g., when you want a static shot of something on a dynamic page) and others where a Bookmark is the way to go (a Bookmark takes up far less disk space and by default will display the entire web page). In this project we used both so you can compare the features and benefits of each.

19. Congratulations -- You have just completed the Instant Messaging Research Project! All that remains is to send it to someone. From the Project Menu option (in the upper-left corner) select Export Project. You will see the dialog on the right. Select Send file by Email. Encrypt it or apply a password as you wish.

20. You will see something like the dialog to the right. You can expand the dialog box, add more comments and/or replace the default text. Type the recipient’s email address and click Send. If the project’s recipient is not already using Cartagio, he or she will receive simple instructions on how to download the free Cartagio Lite reader.

21. Finally, we will repeat the export process, this time specifying a backup folder on a backup media (e.g. a ZIP disk) . From the Project Menu option (in the upper-left corner) select Export Project. You will see the dialog on the right. “Select Save file to Disk”.

22. Click the folder icon to the right of the Filename dialog to browse to a backup location. In this example, we will create a Cartagio Backup folder on Drive D. If your backup destination uses a different drive letter or path, simply replace “D” with the appropriate information. Change the “Save in” location to (D:) (or the appropriate path).

23. Click the Create New Folder icon and name the folder Cartagio Backups, as in the example on the right. Note: You can open Project Based Browsing (PBB) Files from any PC with Cartagio installed. Simply browse for the file with Explorer, and double-click it to start Cartagio and open the project.

Congratulations again! You have just shared your newfound wisdom about Instant Messaging and saved a backup for posterity. In doing so, you have mastered the basics of Cartagio research. This is enough to realize enormous productivity gains that will save you countless hours of research.

There is no more that you absolutely need to know about Cartagio to realize these gains, but there is more that you may want to learn about Cartagio’s ability to transform research over time into an extensive knowledge base. If so, or if you are part of a research team and want to collaborate on research projects, you will want to read the next Lesson entitled “The Cartagio Workgroup”.