No long ago, I was presenting at meeting and sifting through our company's shared drive searching for some document. We have a semi-structured directory structure for files related to projects. At the top level, the project name, of course. But then things get murky. At level 2, we have things like "Mind Maps", "Business Analysis", and "Governance".
Of course, not every document neatly fits into each category and, in fact, most items fall into multiple categories. The most obvious is the mind maps related the business analysis. It was then I realised how grotesquely outdated the modern file system is. We are still stuck in a filing-cabinet world and we can do so much better!
(Side note: Having a folder based on the file type is completely useless and probably stifles adoption of the mind map software we are encouraging because it presupposes that it's special in the gamut of software. Imagine seeing a folder called "Word Files" and "Spreadsheet Files". We know what file type it is from the icon and/or extension. But, as usual, I digress.)
So as I was imaging an operating system which eliminated the file system paradigm entirely and replaced it entirely what a tagging-based system, I was extremely pleased to discover Leap by Ironic Software which brings tagging to the Mac Finder. Leap is extremely clever, deriving tags from things like the folders in which your file already exists (each folder level is a tag) as well as metadata which might be associated with a given file type (MP3 tags, for example). Still, there are some missing features, such as the tag cloud, which would be nice to see. Interestingly, Ironic Software's other product , Yep, offers the tag cloud for its PDF repository.
Finally, under the tag theme on Macs, check out Delish [via TUAW] which offers an iPhoto-like way of browsing your Del.icio.us bookmarks via their tags. Nice stuff. Nice enough to make me finally trial a Del.icio.us account after all these years. So long, Google Bookmarks.
Of course, not every document neatly fits into each category and, in fact, most items fall into multiple categories. The most obvious is the mind maps related the business analysis. It was then I realised how grotesquely outdated the modern file system is. We are still stuck in a filing-cabinet world and we can do so much better!
(Side note: Having a folder based on the file type is completely useless and probably stifles adoption of the mind map software we are encouraging because it presupposes that it's special in the gamut of software. Imagine seeing a folder called "Word Files" and "Spreadsheet Files". We know what file type it is from the icon and/or extension. But, as usual, I digress.)
So as I was imaging an operating system which eliminated the file system paradigm entirely and replaced it entirely what a tagging-based system, I was extremely pleased to discover Leap by Ironic Software which brings tagging to the Mac Finder. Leap is extremely clever, deriving tags from things like the folders in which your file already exists (each folder level is a tag) as well as metadata which might be associated with a given file type (MP3 tags, for example). Still, there are some missing features, such as the tag cloud, which would be nice to see. Interestingly, Ironic Software's other product , Yep, offers the tag cloud for its PDF repository.
Finally, under the tag theme on Macs, check out Delish [via TUAW] which offers an iPhoto-like way of browsing your Del.icio.us bookmarks via their tags. Nice stuff. Nice enough to make me finally trial a Del.icio.us account after all these years. So long, Google Bookmarks.
1 comments:
On the del.icio.us front, have you looked at Mento (http://www.mento.info/)? I just discovered it. Looks pretty good.
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