Sunday, September 25, 2005

Speaking of Tags

As you may know, file names and folders are the backbone of our current computer filing systems. But, it is the least mastered...thousands, no...millions of users are clueless as to where files reside on their hard drives. I know that I spent a long time getting the file management discipline straight, in my head. Even with my expertise, I have folders named "unsorted" and they are crammed full because I haven't taken the time to drag their contents to the proper folders. But there is hope for those clueless millions. (And me.) Tags. Apple, Microsoft and Google are looking at file retrieval systems that use tags to locate the files you want. With file retrieval using key words and tags, you won't care where the file is...a search engine "spider" has already crawled your hard drive and knows where everything is. You just tell the computer that you want the file about fish that was created a few days ago...Voila! Your file is served.

Check out Flamenco at http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/flamenco.html for another way of seeking and finding.

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