Who needs folders anyway?
Today I made a crazy decision:
I will simply tag all my files and forget where their physical locations are.
To achieve this I'll be using the excellent tag2find utility distributed freely.
But, why do you need such an adventure?
Let me try to explain: Just on my desktop, I have 7535 files. Messy me! I'm sure have tens of thousands of files on other places (images, fonts, documents, movies, music, articles, tutorials, papers, documentation... and so on).
And chances are that you are more or less like me. I bet you are one of those file-archiving, pizza-eating active internet lurkers.
When I stopped for one second and think about it, I realized that categorizing files is not an optimum solution if the number of your files exceeds a certain limit. And the number of my files
already have exceeded that certain limit.
I see, but what makes tagging different?
The good thing about tagging files is that file-tag associations are independent of the folder hierarchy.
So even if I move a file (intentionally or unintentionally) to another physical location my tags will point to the correct files (for the interested, tag2find automagically maintains the relationship for me).
As you may have guessed, I got even more mad and moved everything on my desktop to my D:/ drive.
And here is my nice and clean desktop.
From now my desktop will only be a temporary repository. I will put new files that I download, or receive via e-mail etc. on to my desktop, tag them accordingly and move them straight into my D:/ drive.
No, I won't create any folders on my D:/ drive; I'll simply put them to the root of D:/ .
Can't you see that I don't need folders any more?
...
Of course this change requires some learning curve. The more I tag files, the more I'll get used to it. In other words, the better I give mental associations to files, the easier I will be able to find them later.
Well I'm not a newbie in tagging (for those who don't know, I found a startup whose business logic is strictly based on social tagging :) )
As far as my knowledge and experience is concerned, the best way to tag a file (or the best way to tag anything in particular) is to go from general to specific (just like using folders and then subfolders)
For instance if I have a setup.exe file of my favorite IDE somewhere,
The good thing is that I can have intersecting relations:
For example, I can also tag my favorite movies with "favorite" because they *are* favorites; They are the stuff I like and I don't really care about where they actually are located, i.e. their folder structure. I just need to find them quickly and easily. And tagging gives me exactly that option.
Similarly, I can have "development" frameworks and libraries which are not setups (hence not
tagged with setups). I can tag those with "utility, library, development" tags.
I can have articles related to development and tag them with "article, development".
Can you see where I'm going? Tagging is way more flexible and intuitive than classical usage of folders.
...
I admit it seems chaotic at a first glance. But think about it, is using folders less helter-skelter? I think not:
I have been using folders since pre-windows3.1 DOS years and I often remember myself digging
my hard disks just to find a god damn document for hours!
When I find the file I often realize that I had unintentionally dragged and dropped it to an entirely unrelated folder (I remember once finding my up to date MBA thesis in a folder named "My Thunderbird Signatures". It took me half a day scanning my entire drive to find it. However if I had tagged it, I could have found it in minutes! )
Since I'm familiar with the concept, I believe it will not be too hard for me to adapt. I just need to change my behaviors and learn to forget about taxonomy.
Who needs folders anyway? Well we'll see ;)
Just tune in for the coming news and have a taggy day!
No I ain't that mad. Or do you think so?
bu yaziyi sevdin mi?
hemen 
una ekle!
From now on I'll stop using my file system.Yes, you heard it right.
I will simply tag all my files and forget where their physical locations are.
To achieve this I'll be using the excellent tag2find utility distributed freely.
But, why do you need such an adventure?
Let me try to explain: Just on my desktop, I have 7535 files. Messy me! I'm sure have tens of thousands of files on other places (images, fonts, documents, movies, music, articles, tutorials, papers, documentation... and so on).
And chances are that you are more or less like me. I bet you are one of those file-archiving, pizza-eating active internet lurkers.
When I stopped for one second and think about it, I realized that categorizing files is not an optimum solution if the number of your files exceeds a certain limit. And the number of my files
already have exceeded that certain limit.
I see, but what makes tagging different?
The good thing about tagging files is that file-tag associations are independent of the folder hierarchy.
So even if I move a file (intentionally or unintentionally) to another physical location my tags will point to the correct files (for the interested, tag2find automagically maintains the relationship for me).
As you may have guessed, I got even more mad and moved everything on my desktop to my D:/ drive.
And here is my nice and clean desktop.
From now my desktop will only be a temporary repository. I will put new files that I download, or receive via e-mail etc. on to my desktop, tag them accordingly and move them straight into my D:/ drive.
No, I won't create any folders on my D:/ drive; I'll simply put them to the root of D:/ .
Can't you see that I don't need folders any more?
...
Of course this change requires some learning curve. The more I tag files, the more I'll get used to it. In other words, the better I give mental associations to files, the easier I will be able to find them later.
Well I'm not a newbie in tagging (for those who don't know, I found a startup whose business logic is strictly based on social tagging :) )
As far as my knowledge and experience is concerned, the best way to tag a file (or the best way to tag anything in particular) is to go from general to specific (just like using folders and then subfolders)
For instance if I have a setup.exe file of my favorite IDE somewhere,
- I'll first tag all my setup files with "setup" tag,
- Then I will be more specific and tag some of them with "development" tag,
- Then I will tag all IDE setups with "ide" tag,
- And then I'll tag the setups I mentioned at the beginning with "favorite" tag.
The good thing is that I can have intersecting relations:
For example, I can also tag my favorite movies with "favorite" because they *are* favorites; They are the stuff I like and I don't really care about where they actually are located, i.e. their folder structure. I just need to find them quickly and easily. And tagging gives me exactly that option.
Similarly, I can have "development" frameworks and libraries which are not setups (hence not
tagged with setups). I can tag those with "utility, library, development" tags.
I can have articles related to development and tag them with "article, development".
Can you see where I'm going? Tagging is way more flexible and intuitive than classical usage of folders.
...
I admit it seems chaotic at a first glance. But think about it, is using folders less helter-skelter? I think not:
I have been using folders since pre-windows3.1 DOS years and I often remember myself digging
my hard disks just to find a god damn document for hours!
When I find the file I often realize that I had unintentionally dragged and dropped it to an entirely unrelated folder (I remember once finding my up to date MBA thesis in a folder named "My Thunderbird Signatures". It took me half a day scanning my entire drive to find it. However if I had tagged it, I could have found it in minutes! )
Contrary to popular belief, folders are not the best way to categorize data.That's how one's brain works. That's the logical way to store and find things later.
I'll go further; taxonomical categorization is a useless approach in arranging data.
Since I'm familiar with the concept, I believe it will not be too hard for me to adapt. I just need to change my behaviors and learn to forget about taxonomy.
Who needs folders anyway? Well we'll see ;)
- I'll try to prove that the 2.0 way of categorization is tagging!
- I'll try to prove that the majority of folder-addicts are doing things the wrong way.
- And I'll try to prove it here.
Just tune in for the coming news and have a taggy day!
No I ain't that mad. Or do you think so?
Labels: categorization, folksonomy, tagging, taxonomy, web20
bu yaziyi sevdin mi?
hemen una ekle!
- permalink: 9:26 AM
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