Comments on: Tagging Files—Or How to Keep Research Organized

By: James

James — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 01:57:30 +0000

So I had the idea to tag curriculums objectives, state standards, other standards for cross-curriculum and regular curriculum lesson/unit planning for a website. How would I do this?

By: Olivier Istace

Olivier Istace — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:27:56 +0000

A windows application called TagAndFacet is available on http://www.tagandfacet.com. It is running on windows Vista and Windows XP. It enables users to tag all types of files and folders. It also integrates Outlook email tagging and Internet Explorer tagging. Fot both tagging an autocompletion option is available to help users keeping coherence between tagging. Search capability is integrated for all sources (files, emails and urls).
It is available in pre-release mode for free.

By: Jose Luis Pajares

Jose Luis Pajares — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:08:31 +0000

Now you can tag every file in Windows Vista. Read more here: http://lifehacker.com/software/vista/geek-to-live–tag-files-and-save-searches-in-windows-vista-232891.php

By: G. Curt Fiedler

G. Curt Fiedler — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:16:53 +0000

If the notes are files on the hard drive, try Punakea, a free app that lets you tag anything on your Mac, including book marks. It’s very easy to use. Get it here: http://nudgenudge.eu/punakea

BTW, I have both Devon and Yojimbo and find it really difficult to get into using Devon. The interface leaves a lot to be desired, though it’s certainly more powerful than Yojimbo.

By: Zotero « Virtual Turmberg

Zotero « Virtual Turmberg — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 17:45:18 +0000

[...] Bis jetzt verwende ich vor allem Safari, Firefox kommt mir irgendwie langsamer vor. Leider gibt es diese wundervollen Firefox-Erweiterungen wie Greasemonkey oder Firebug nicht in Safari-Land. Heute bin ich in einem Kommentar bei academhacks auf die Erweiterung Zotero gestoÃŸen, dazu: [...]

By: dave

dave — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 20:04:28 +0000

I haven’t tried Tinderbox, I prefer Devon (really a matter of preference though). These are by far the best solution. But they don’t solve the PC problem. But that aside having a database/information program is the better way to go I think. Maybe we should do a breakdown of the differences advantages of each of the three big ones: Devon, Yojimbo, Tinderbox. (My sense is that Devon is the most powerful but hardest to learn-with Yojimbo being the easiest, and Tinderbox falling somewhere in the middle.)

By: Lew Friedland

Lew Friedland — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 18:19:03 +0000

I agree that Tinderbox (with caveat about learning curve) would actually be ideal for what you are trying to do. Tinderbox does (at least) two things that regular meta-tagging does not. First, it allows you, to find emergent structure. Rather than pre-tagging your notes as XYZ and WXY you can do a search on all of your notes. If they contain references to WXYZ or any defined combination, you can bring them up. You can also do truncated searches, and more important, you can combine a search for XYZ with GHK later, after you’ve realized that GHK is actually relevant. In otherwords, Tinderbox lets you both see and manage emergent structures in your data. Metatagging goes part of the way towards this, but the problems are 1) you have to pre-tag, knowing in advance the metatags you need for each note and then 2) re-tag as your structure changes (adding or deleting). The second feature of Tinderbox is that it very easily allows you to find emergent collections, e.g. XYZ and GHK, and then automatically retag all of these notes. It’s much, much more flexible and dynamic. The price for this is its learning curve. But once you realize that the learning curve is less related to the software (although it can be picky) than managing emergent structure, things go a bit easier.

By: Jim C.

Jim C. — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:27:43 +0000

Since the reader in question seems to be looking for a way to store and tag notes, I’m a little surprised that no one has mentioned Tinderbox. Yes, it’s a touch pricey, and has a bit of a learning curve… but it’s one heck of a tool for storing, organizing, and manipulating notes.

I keep a master files with notes containing everything I’ve read that’s even tangentially related to my research. Multiple notes are made for each reading, since the problem with tagging entire files is that while a document may relate to many subjects, it’s sometimes difficult to find what you want if you need to search through an entire document to find what you need. NY Times writer Steven Johnson discussed this issue in his well known “Tool for Thought” post as it regards to DevonThink.

As for cross-platform compatibility, Mark Bernstein (the developer of Tinderbox) keeps teasing with the mention that Tinderbox for Windows (TinderWin) is in active development, but no firm release date has been mentioned. Still, the files are XML, so they’re pretty easy to edit in any text editor, and exporting notes out of Tinderbox as an HTML or TXT files is also fairly simple, and obviously can be used on Windows computers.

By: dave

dave — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:38:56 +0000

Yeah, big fan of Zotero, you can actually search this site, I have talked about it a couple of time, but it doesn’t necessarily handle the problem this emailer was having. But in general I think Zotero has the potential to become one of the essential tools for scholarship in the age of the digital, incidentally, the post prior to this one about the podcast is from the center that developed Zotero worth listening to.

By: james

james — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 22:33:05 +0000

The free and open source Zotero (formerly known as firefox scholar) works great, with tagging and searches for anything you access in a web browser (and it doubles as a bibliographic citation program, like endnote). However, it’s not so good for other files.

http://www.zotero.org/