Some tagging resources
My vision for Tagamac involves turning it into a resource that helps people with all aspects of tagging: understanding the concepts, finding software, creating a workflow, tagging consistently, etc. However, that’s a lot to cover, and it’s going to take me time to get to everything. While I’m plugging away at it, though, there are people out there who want to know how to tag right now. Quite frankly, in its current inception, Tagamac is not particularly helpful when it comes to jumping straight into tags. I don’t have any software recommendations or workflow advice; so far I’ve mainly been defining and offering basic guidelines.
I will try to get some software recommendations and reviews written in the near future, but it may be some time before I’m able to jump headfirst into real workflows. In the meantime, I’d like to offer some good resources elsewhere on the web that you can use to get your tagging system off the ground. Sadly, I haven’t been able to locate many good resources (which is a big reason I started Tagamac, actually), but at least there’s a few.
Probably your best bet when thinking about tagging is The Apple Blog’s wonderful, step-by-step overview of file system tagging using Quicksilver and Default Folder X. Here are the links to the complete five part series:
- Part One: Using Metadata Effectively
- Part Two: The Tools
- Part Three: Screencast
- Part Four: Answering Screencast Questions
- Part Five: Wrap Up
If you are interested in collaborative or public tagging (through services such as del.icio.us), then you may find Wired’s Tips from Top Taggers or TechSoup’s Thirteen Tips for Effective Tagging interesting.
I’ve found some other articles on tagging, but they tend to either focus on very limited tagging systems (such as those on a single website), or not provide much of use. If you know of any other great articles or websites that offer good tips on tagging, please let me know! I don’t want to leave anyone out in the cold while I’m working on my great crusade to create a full and complete tagging resource, but I certainly don’t have encyclopedic knowledge of everything that’s been written about tags.