Tagamac

When I first started using Things to organize my daily tasks, I sat down and took the time to carefully craft a list of tags that I wanted to use. I knew what what kinds of tasks I’d be tagging, so I was able with some creativity to come up with a list that was succinct yet exhaustive. Having worked with that list of tags for a few months, I’ve only added one or two tags.

This tells me my system was a good one. Aside from not needing to expand the tag cloud, most tasks I only need to assign 1-2 tags per task, and and tasks inherit one more based on which project I stick them into. My tag filter bar is clean, and small enough to be useful even in lists with lots of tasks. When I posted the list in the Things wiki I got some very positive feedback. But having used the list religiously for a couple months, I have realized something: about 80% of my tags are completely useless. [read more...]

Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders asked me to share some of my tagging feng shui with him and his readers. The result is a little how-to article on building a consistent tagging system called Becoming a tagging kung-fu master. It’s a rather good read, if I do say so myself, with similar ideas to The what and a couple other articles in the “Tagging guidelines” series.

For visitors from 43 Folders exploring Tagamac for the first time, welcome! you might want to check out Tagging best practices (the site’s most popular article to date), Easy choices (a short counterpoint to some of the thoughts from the 43 Folders article and my previous “The what” article), or the software reviews. There is also a list of the most popular articles in the archives.

I like to think about things. I especially like thinking about things logically, piece-by-piece. Tagamac itself is a great example of this; it seems to me that most blogs get started because someone thinks to themselves, “I wanna blog about Spam!” (or whatever random topic) and sits down and does it. I thought to myself, “Gee, tagging is swell!” and then sat down and methodically listed out the things that I would write about. Seriously; I’ve got the OmniOutliner documents to prove it.

This tendency also translates into my advice on tagging. When I came up with the idea of “the what“, it was because I had sat down and tried to think of the most efficient way to tag. The article didn’t come from a system; the system came from the article. But mine is not the only way. [read more...]

Creating a consistent tagging system is like baking a perfect pie crust: it makes you salivate to think about, but some days it just doesn’t work out. Fortunately, consistent tagging (unlike a perfect pie crust) isn’t affected by humidity; all you need is some careful attention to detail. And perhaps the most important detail to keep in mind while you are tagging is “the what”.

Quite simply, the what is just your answer to a two-part question: what item and what attributes? Despite the simplicity of the question, knowing the what is a vital part of creating a consistent tagging system. You can take or leave my SLS guidelines, but if you really want consistency you’re going to have to ask yourself about attributes. [read more...]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: tags are an extremely flexible way to organize the mad rush of information that is your computer. As you no doubt have picked up (from the existence of this blog, if nothing else), I have a bit of a love affair with tags.

However, while tag-love is a special and beautiful thing, if you are going to create a really great tagging system one of the most important things you have to know is when not to tag. [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...]

Sadly, not all tagging software is coded equal. Sometimes tags are thrown in as just one more bell or whistle, intended to plump up a feature-set without being particularly useful. Other times developers don’t understand tags themselves and end up implementing them in a way that is not as friendly as it should be. Sometimes supporting spaces in tags causes other problems (such is the case when trying to roll your own tagging system using Spotlight comments).

In any case, you may well run across a piece of tagging software that does not allow you to use spaces in your tags, which can be a major pain in the nether regions. What you do about it is really up to you (although of course I have some suggestions), but when you decide remember the tagging mantra: consistency, consistency, consistency. Pick something and stick with it. [read more...]

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. [read more...]

Although this isn’t really a piece of software, per se, Circle Six Design updated their UTW-RPC WordPress plugin to work with WordPress 2.2.1+. The plugin allows remote editing using tools such as ecto or MarsEdit to assign tags using the popular Ultimate Tag Warrior or Simple Tagging plugins. The WordPress admin area is alright, but I’ve long been a fan of ecto, and this plugin is the magic that allows me to use it.

To download the plugin and for more info, visit the UTW-RPC and AutoTag download page.

Since I published my advice on tagging best practices, the most common question I’ve received has been something along the lines of “why the heck would you use singular tags?” Everyone agrees that consistency is the name of the game, and it’s hard to argue with succinctness. Some people disagree with using lowercase tags, but quite honestly it’s mainly personal preference (unless the program uses case-sensitive searching).

Whether or not to use singular tags, though, is a much more open question, and I’d like to lay out the reasons that I included a recommendation to stick to singular. [read more...]