Tagamac

Although tagging for productivity can be fun, tagging any old file on their computer is one of the main things people want to be able to do (right up there with tagging photos). If you’re into tagging your files, then you’ve probably run across two different ways to do it: file system tagging and file libraries. I’ll get to specific software in the next article; for now, here’s the differences between the two.

Wether you use file system tagging or a file library depends mostly on personal preference. Both have their pros and cons, and both have a selection of different software available (although file system tagging still doesn’t have any standout fantastic options). [read more...]

Tagging as a popular phenomenon was developed online, where many tagging systems feature tags created by the members of a site. Thanks to this phenomenon, a lot of the intellectual thought about tagging centers around “folksonomies” and other ideas of collaborative tagging.

However, there are actually three distinct realms of tagging, and each requires you think about tagging in a slightly different way: private, public, and collaborative. [read more...]

One of the reasons that tagging can be difficult to get into is because few tagging systems are alike. Although there are similarities, tagging is not only still evolving as a way of organizing but there are also several different ways to think about tags.

The most striking difference between different tagging programs is generally the tag browser. The act of tagging is fairly standardized (auto-complete, drag and drop, etc.), but browsing is much more heterogeneous. Most browsers fall into one of three types: tag clouds, tag trees, or tag recipes. [read more...]

I like to think that tagging is straightforward. It may seem like a strange way to organize and find information at first, but once you get used to it the whole process is not that complicated.

However, even when a subject is not particularly complicated, it can still be difficult to talk about. I have found in my journey through life (and academia, which are not one and the same no matter what they tell you) that one of the most important parts of any discussion of a topic is solid definitions. As a result, I am going to try to break down using tags into simple definitions over the course of several articles. This article is the first, and defines the three actions that you will perform when working with tags: [read more...]