Google and Yahoo are betting that you re-search. Yahoo's new My Web claims to be 'better than bookmarks', encouraging people to import their bookmarks and then forget about them. I'm not quite sure I want to completely forego my bookmarks for My Web, though.
Nevertheless, I am quite impressed with Yahoo's My Web. I've set up a few folders to put stuff in, but I've found an unexpected use for the default Saved folder. I use it as sort of to-do list, web sites that I need to get back soon. It's kind of an object-oriented to-do list - I don't have to make a list of what I'm going to do on the site - just seeing the name of the site reminds me what I'm going to do there, whether it be listen to music, read an article, search for a job, or whatever.
Back to searching versus filing. Obviously Google and Yahoo are in the searching camp. On the other hand, Microsoft is making inroads on the organizing front. In a recent Computerworld article, Scarlet Pruitt interviewed Brad Goldberg, general manager of the Windows Client Business Group:
Goldberg said he believes that the way people gather information will change and users will spend less time searching the Web. Instead, they will use tools like RSS (really simple syndication) feeds and XML to have information they want pushed to them, he said. With that in mind, Microsoft has been working on making data stored on PCs easier to find by offering Longhorn features such as virtual folders and keywords, Goldberg said.
I love the concept of a virtual folder. Suppose I have something I want to file from a musician friend named Phil. Do I file it under 'Friends' or 'Musicians'? The answer I want to give is both. Virtuals folders allow you to do this. I'm telling my computer to make it so that when I look in 'Friends', it's there. When I look in 'Musicians', it's there. No. don't make a copy of it. Just make it work.
Several email clients now have this capability. Microsoft Outlook calls it 'search folders'. Evolution calls it virtual folders. Thunderbird calls it saved search folders.
Meanwhile, a hot topic in the blogging community is tagging or folksonomy. The basic idea is to categorize things (blog entries, web sites, whatever) by assigning one or more tags. I tag this blog using both Del.icio.us and Technorati. The neat thing is that using multiple tags is basically the same concept as virtual folders.
When filing web pages in my folders in My Web, I can achieve the same effect of virtual folders by using the Notes field to record my multiple tags, thus allowing easy access by searching for the tag I'm interested in.
So which is better, organizing things carefully, or making things easy to search for? As with most things, the answer is both.
Categories: search, tags, bookmarks, yahoo
