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Organizing vs. searching
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Posted by Paulo Diniz
Nov 22, 2006 at 06:01 AM
I have written a blueprint for a software that addresses this issue… a tag-based PIM.
It’s on my blog: http://indiegeek.blogspot.com/2006/08/taglogger-idea-for-tag-based-pimgeneral.html
I call it Taglogger (or) Notarius. Unfortunately i’m not a programmer myself, so although it’s pretty detailed (you can tell it by the size of it), it’s still just an essay about my dream-PIM. I hope that i can grab some developer’s attention and this may come true someday. Recently, i have received an email from a programmer on Norway which may try to implement it for the mac, but he doesn’t have much free time so i don’t know if it will get real.
If you take the time to read it, i’d very much like any comments on it. Thanks,
-Paulo
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Nov 22, 2006 at 08:01 AM
Chris,
You are raising the right issue:
I always think that I should remove all the Outliner/PIM/Organizer software from my PC and just use a simple text editor and save all information, snippets, URLs etc. in one folder (or only a few folder, but not in a hierarchy (folder in folder)). on my USB stick. Then I just need a very simple and fast text search engine to retrieve the needed information in these text files. Most text editors have such a search engine included. Best is, when you can save your search queries for late reuse.
I think it is worth to test such a basic approach. If you don’t want to use a text editor your can implement this approach in Ultra Recall, ADM or Zoot (or any other application).
These are my main issues with hierarchical organisation of data:
- I don’t know anymore in in which folder I have put my note three days ago
- The created hierarchy today is logical and helpful. But in two weeks I think ‘why have I created this stupid hierarchy?’
- To find an information where I don’t know exactly where it is I am using the search engine
Dominik
Posted by Paulo Diniz
Nov 23, 2006 at 02:20 AM
While i agree that scraping the outline is the way to go (for all the reasons you described, and also because they tend to get huge with time, so even if i remember where i put such info, it still take ages to navigate through the tree and all its levels), and also that being able to search all the data and being able to filter and actually find stuff in a snap is a central feature of a great PIM, I think that while searching and finding works when you need to mine a specific information, sometimes you want to see things information in a context, alongside other bits of similar information, so there is a big room for some kind of organization.
So, instead of the hierarchical approach, which is deeply flawed in a information overload scenario (good for digesting information, but not for capturing and making sense of it in a quick way), i think that the core organization feature of a PIM should be tagging (metadata). Tags are good because you can classify stuff in a very direct, cognitive way, which is designating categories to the information on an equivalent way your own brain would label the same information. It is very convenient too that you don’t need to put that new info in the structure of your universe of information. You just capture it, give it some tags and done. Tags also don’t have parents or children. They don’t have levels. They just intersect with each other, which is a great way of filtering similar information, and viewing it in ways that you’d never imagined when you tagged the info. It subtracts from the cognitive cost of having to choose a single place on the structure to place the info. With tags, an info can be on many places at the same time.
My ideal software for handling information would be such a PIM, with an ‘capture agent’ sitting unobtrusively on background, just waiting to be called by a keyboard shortcut (or by clicking on an icon at the tray) for new information to be filed. If you have a selection when you call it, it is acknowledged, and you just need to tag it and make minor edits to the text. If you don’t have a selection, you can always call the capture agent, type the new entry manually and then tag it. It can be anything, a phone number, an URL (del.icio.us style here), an inspiring prose, etc. It’s all stored in the same place, and at the same time it is on a multitude of different places, because you can always choose to just see a particular tag on the main window. This can be very good to implementing GTD contexts.
Speaking of the main window (and since the thread starter asked for our thoughts on the subject) i think that my ideal PIM would be very similar to a web browser. But instead of an address bar, you have a tag bar, on which you can enter the desired tag or tag intersection to enforce. Similarly to an Internet URL, each and every possible tag or combination of tags could be treated, as a matter of fact, as different locations, each one being customized for displaying its data on different ways. So, in some, you can just have your entries as a simple list on reverse-chronological order, like a blog. On others, you can display your entries alphabetically. Yet, for another tag or intersection of tags, you can create ‘specific data fields’ for the entries that bear those, and having the respective location to show the entries on a grid, just like a spreadsheet, with a variety of ways of sorting the grid based on the specific data fields of the entries on that location. This way, one could create specific mini-databases inside the general purpose knowledge base. And better, if you are filing a new entry in the ‘capture agent’ described on the preceding paragraph, and you manage to tag an entry with tags where you have created specific data-fields, the software could acknowledge that and let you fill all of those fields on-the-fly, just because you have tagged the entry on a particular way. (Zoot meets del.icio.us?)
Not letting the webbrowser analogy go, it would also be good if the user could bookmark some locations (tags or combination of tags), so he doesn’t need to type an often-used long tag intersection every time he needs to reach it. He could even make an outline hierarchy out of his bookmarks if he wanted, and this, IMO, would be acceptable because each bookmark would really act as a smart folder, and not like a regular node on a hierarchic structure. The cost of deciding where things go would still be low because it would still be all about what tags you do give to each entry, and not to where you put the new info on a huge structure. Of course, outliners are great for their own stuff, mostly when you want to structure a specific subject and can expect the outline to reach a given size and not grow beyond that. But i don’t think you can manage all your life’s information on an outliner.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 23, 2006 at 01:19 PM
Paulo, there is a program that does a lot of what you describe on your blog.
It is called MDE InfoHandler. InfoHandler is all about tags and tag combinations.
Anyone who is into tagging to any extent needs to look at InfoHandler.
IH frees you from dependency on a hierarchical tree structure—yet if you want an overview of your tags it can be presented in a convenient tree-like form.
What I like about IH is the combination of categories or tags.
In some programs if you had an article about Freud you might assign the tags Freud, unconscious, seduction.
But later you could not do a search that would bring up only those articles about Freud that dealt with the unconscious and seduction.
IH allows for unique search combinations that can be very, very specific based on the tags used for a search.
As well, IH has the normal search capabilities, including the ability to do line or page searches where the actual context of the found search words is shown.
IH is a very neat program. Given all the talk these days about tags, I find it interesting to realize just how far ahead of its time IH is, as well as the fact that people often dream about an ideal program, not realizing that something similar already exists.
IH is at http://www.mdesoft.com/eng.htm .
Daly
Posted by Paulo Diniz
Nov 23, 2006 at 03:06 PM
Thanks Daly, but i already knew MDE Infohandler.
It is a huge of a job considering that the author does it alone, but i really don’t like the interface…
I have a reason for that. It’s crowded and cumbersome. Changing from hierarchical to tagging isn’t only because you can intersect tags, but mostly because tags have a low ‘cognitive’ cost, so to speak. If the interface makes it hard instead, you lose a big reason for using tags.
Maybe i just didn’t get it the first time. I’ll download it and test it again with more patience… Thanks