• filed in technology on 19. March 2005

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Tag it further

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for a LONG time, you know tagging is the big thing for filing your images and bookmarks on sites like flickr.com and del.icio.us to name a few tag-powered sites.

Tags are great for cataloging all your content / data that doesn’t necessarily fit into categories, you often have data that fit several categories, or sometimes none (cant wait to get this site tag-powered instead of categorised).

But why stop at web stuff – why not take it further and utilise tags in operating systems. The nature of computers with everything being made up of zeros and ones limits the possibilities, but Im tired of having to locate ALL my data in a hierocracy. I want a more freeflowing datastructure, I want to be able to associate a folder with an image located on another drive or WHATEVER. Hierocracies are great for one kind of cataloging, but I want the option of another view of my data – an “associated” view.
Update: I have just learned that this MAY be coming in Mac OS Tiger – If so, Im buying a Mac!

Currently the only “sort-of” tagging possible is to store keywords with the file, and this is only possible for some types of files and only implemented in some applications. Why not make a tag field appear in the Whatever OS – standard save dialog box?

I would love to see something like the Personal Brain idea integrated in my operating system. Users don’t think in hierocracies, they associate.

Why not make the operating system work the way we instinctively do? Using tags, and presenting them like the Personal Brain does would be a start!