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Once i discovered del.icio.us (and also tagging), i came to a personal conclusion that it is the ideal way of somehow organizing granular and heterogenous data... thus being ideal not only for bookmarking, but also for most information that we receive on a daily basis and is bothersome to register on a hierarchical structure (creating a file in a folder, defining the structure of folders, etc). I'm talking about a substantial ammount of data that people would like archiving on a long-term and somehow classifying it (despite of course being able to perform a raw text search on the collection), but don't do because the hierarchical file structure of current File Systems don't allow it on a practical way, and also there isn't any application on the market that allows it as perfectly as del.icio.us does for bookmarks.
The way that del.icio.us uses to sort bookmmarks is also the culprit of my wishes: it is basically a blog with improved support for post-categories (which would be the tagging system), on which the posts are presented on the traditional reverse-chronological ('river of news') view, which is exactly the way most of us do archive stuff in real life: a pile of magazines with most recent on top, the office paperwork with bills paid recently more accessible than bills paid last year, etc.
If we add to this basic framework the ability to add specific database-fields to entries that bear a specific tag (or even a specific tag intersection), and sort the entries in that place not by the reverse-chronological 'blogish' way, but by those datafields, we have in hands a very general archiving system that also enables the creation of very specific mini-databases on certain tags or tag-intersections.
If we allow the ability to sync all the entries that bear a specific tag or tag-intersection to a blog-publishing service, we do not only have in hands a general achiving system, but also a blogging client, à la Ecto and Blogjet. If the blog-publishing service allows tagging like del.icio.us does, you could even replicate your local archive on a weblog, if you wish.
If you allow this system not only to publish to blogs, but also to subscribe to RSS feeds, you have an RSS reader that outputs the news items relevantly tagged as the user configured. So all the items received from Boing Boing could be automatically tagged: "feeds, boing boing, webculture, geeky".
The same can be said for all situations where the user somehow faces information overload, like e-mail. I really believe that a tagging system that splits information in a multitude of user-defined intersecting threads (tags) is the best way to offer relief to the user in these situations, also allowing it to properly archive the info.
Recently, on GTD site 43folders, a site of some guy that is obsessed with indexcards was featured. I think its sad that we have to see things like www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/ these days, where software could do the job so much more elegantly.
If you are somehow interested on these ideas, you are free to check out further disgressions about it on my blog:
indiegeek.blogspot.com/2006/0...al.html
indiegeek.blogspot.com/2006/0...em.html
Best wishes and merry christmas,
-Paulo
Piracicaba, Brazil
The way that del.icio.us uses to sort bookmmarks is also the culprit of my wishes: it is basically a blog with improved support for post-categories (which would be the tagging system), on which the posts are presented on the traditional reverse-chronological ('river of news') view, which is exactly the way most of us do archive stuff in real life: a pile of magazines with most recent on top, the office paperwork with bills paid recently more accessible than bills paid last year, etc.
If we add to this basic framework the ability to add specific database-fields to entries that bear a specific tag (or even a specific tag intersection), and sort the entries in that place not by the reverse-chronological 'blogish' way, but by those datafields, we have in hands a very general archiving system that also enables the creation of very specific mini-databases on certain tags or tag-intersections.
If we allow the ability to sync all the entries that bear a specific tag or tag-intersection to a blog-publishing service, we do not only have in hands a general achiving system, but also a blogging client, à la Ecto and Blogjet. If the blog-publishing service allows tagging like del.icio.us does, you could even replicate your local archive on a weblog, if you wish.
If you allow this system not only to publish to blogs, but also to subscribe to RSS feeds, you have an RSS reader that outputs the news items relevantly tagged as the user configured. So all the items received from Boing Boing could be automatically tagged: "feeds, boing boing, webculture, geeky".
The same can be said for all situations where the user somehow faces information overload, like e-mail. I really believe that a tagging system that splits information in a multitude of user-defined intersecting threads (tags) is the best way to offer relief to the user in these situations, also allowing it to properly archive the info.
Recently, on GTD site 43folders, a site of some guy that is obsessed with indexcards was featured. I think its sad that we have to see things like www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/ these days, where software could do the job so much more elegantly.
If you are somehow interested on these ideas, you are free to check out further disgressions about it on my blog:
indiegeek.blogspot.com/2006/0...al.html
indiegeek.blogspot.com/2006/0...em.html
Best wishes and merry christmas,
-Paulo
Piracicaba, Brazil
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