Oh yeah, almost forgot about that whole 'tags over folders' project
While skittering through the internetz, this popped up:
http://live.gnome.org/Tracker
Tracker is an GNOME desktop utility that "enables you to tag your data with keywords which can be used to find related information or to group and categorise your data further" All of which means that you can organize personal files into multiple categories and the like, and worry less about what single folder to put stuff in, and more about how relevant something is to you. Think 'del.icio.us for your desktop' and I thank them, thank them, thank them.
Anyway, I was interested in just such a feature after fumbling through OneLaptopPerChild's XO's way of storing files. It was fascinating to see that every document created and stored there was not visible in a standard folder structure. Rather, everything was kept in one location, and visible immediately was a title phrase, who initiated the document/activity (relevant because much of the laptop's function concerns communication and sharing with other students and teachers), and the date: It looked more like a log than a list of files in a folder. And it reminded me of a scene between personified PC and Mac (a fanfic of the Mac commercials), where Mac wonders about PC's need to sort everything into neat, hierarchical folders, but then has trouble finding things later and never touches much of it--PC's strictly hierarchical folders contrasted with Mac's multiple relational tagging, supposedly. I say supposedly because I don't know much about Mac's, rarely used them; but this statement really rang true for me, as I have difficulties filing documents into that single subfolder, and more often than not, never see any of it again. I'd recently joined del.icio.us, and though I don't use much of the social/sharing features, I appreciated sorting and filtering website links through tags, and tracking content that way. "If only I could do this on my desktop," I said wistfully, but moved on to other things.
Well, now I'm interested in pursuing it again.
http://live.gnome.org/Tracker
Tracker is an GNOME desktop utility that "enables you to tag your data with keywords which can be used to find related information or to group and categorise your data further" All of which means that you can organize personal files into multiple categories and the like, and worry less about what single folder to put stuff in, and more about how relevant something is to you. Think 'del.icio.us for your desktop' and I thank them, thank them, thank them.
Anyway, I was interested in just such a feature after fumbling through OneLaptopPerChild's XO's way of storing files. It was fascinating to see that every document created and stored there was not visible in a standard folder structure. Rather, everything was kept in one location, and visible immediately was a title phrase, who initiated the document/activity (relevant because much of the laptop's function concerns communication and sharing with other students and teachers), and the date: It looked more like a log than a list of files in a folder. And it reminded me of a scene between personified PC and Mac (a fanfic of the Mac commercials), where Mac wonders about PC's need to sort everything into neat, hierarchical folders, but then has trouble finding things later and never touches much of it--PC's strictly hierarchical folders contrasted with Mac's multiple relational tagging, supposedly. I say supposedly because I don't know much about Mac's, rarely used them; but this statement really rang true for me, as I have difficulties filing documents into that single subfolder, and more often than not, never see any of it again. I'd recently joined del.icio.us, and though I don't use much of the social/sharing features, I appreciated sorting and filtering website links through tags, and tracking content that way. "If only I could do this on my desktop," I said wistfully, but moved on to other things.
Well, now I'm interested in pursuing it again.