11–20 of 48 posts
When is someone in charge of such things for an OS vendor going to realize that for any of "my" documents, what I really want is to tag them?
I would jettison every piece of computing hardware I own right now and switch to the first device that would let me add (and search) tags in file metadata.
Even geeks can’t handle folders in folders
I didn't read further in to the article so perhaps I missed where this same idea was discussed, but I think a useful idea going forward would be meta-tagging of data. Something very basic like the ability to flag a file and later search or sort by those flags. Do it for specific folders, like the Documents folders. Done.
Now the 'non-geek's can deal with flat file structures and us 'geek's can do smarter things.
The applications itself will serve the needed context or metadata (type of document, last modified time, access/sharing privileges) to find the files you're looking for.
Windows did it first... My Documents / My Downloads / My Movies / My Music / My Pictures. The author makes it seem like Mac's "default content folder" scheme was a novel idea.
I'm fairly sure that Mac OS X was here first, and it was copied to XP. IIRC, I was running Windows ME at the time of Mac OS X, and ME did not have those default folders.
When is someone in charge of such things for an OS vendor going to realize that for any of "my" documents, what I really want is to tag them?
I would jettison every piece of computing hardware I own right now and switch to the first device that would let me add (and search) tags in file metadata.
The music player worked the same way, relying on other software to copy information out of the ID3 tag into the filesystem metadata so you could search for music by artist, album, year, genre, etc.
Coming from Linux, you would think "new file system" would mean that: a new file system. But its just the same smoke and mirrors Microsoft did when they scrapped WinFS: add magic folders, terrible ideas (translated folder names?) and missing hard features (links) in a limited fashion. Thats sad, because the file system could certainly do with a complete makeover: metadata, builtin sync with the cloud, backup and encr…
Windows 8's Contracts, combined with system-wide Share, and storing everything on Skydrive (so when you log in to another Windows 8 machine with your Live ID, it's all there) is a much more rounded vision for a post-file world, one where you have documents which are shared around, rather than opening apps then pointing at files.
When is someone in charge of such things for an OS vendor going to realize that for any of "my" documents, what I really want is to tag them?
I would jettison every piece of computing hardware I own right now and switch to the first device that would let me add (and search) tags in file metadata.
Then, later, I can find that file and any similar ones with a simple command like
dir /s | grep RoHS
It's no substitute for a true tag-based file system, but it's much better than nothing.
Concept building: A bottom up hierarchy
Everything you know was learned in the context of prior knowledge. You combined prior experiences, refined them, and over time solidified them into new constructs which you then used to repeat the process for higher level concepts. Visual light and dark blobs become coherent shapes which get associated with meaning and eventually those meanings get associated with names like 'chair' or 'rabbit.'
Content access: A top down (and sideways) lookup.
In many cases we know what we want without bothering to think of the name. Being thirsty may mean you think 'glass','faucet','stream','bubbles', and 'water.' But you don't have to think any of those words to get a glass of water and take a drink.
Unfortunately in much of IT there is a textual interface so you first have to pick a starting word and then use that to find what you're looking for. Any time you think of a word it is physically connected to many other notions, memories, experiences, and other words built over a lifetime of experience.
When we try to describe what something is we access the hierarchy we have learned. A chair is a piece of furniture, which is a solid object, which is something I can touch. We may even use this description to create a hierarchical description.
The tension here is that how we describe things is at best a very limited subset of how our brain connects to information about that thing. These mappings differ from person to person and change over time. One system of hierarchical categorization cannot be intuitive to all people and probably won't be to the same person after 10 years.
IMNSHO The only interface which will 'just work' for organizing labeled objects is one that knows you. The best example of this is Google's one box which searches my computer, builds associations between content that are not directly related to the search terms I use, and modifies itself over time based on my behavior.
Information architecture from a neuroscience point of view. Concept building: A bottom up hierarchy Everything you know was learned in the context of prior knowledge. You combined prior experiences, refined them, and over time solidified them into new constructs which you then used to repeat the process for higher level concepts. Visual light and dark blobs become coherent shapes which get associated with meaning and…