The death of folders?

Slashdot has a fascinating article on the Macs new Spotlight tool in Tiger called The Death of folders?.

When saving files, you add meta data information to them and just save them – the Spotlight tool keeps an index of this meta data and the files that relate to it. The meta data becomes virtual folders, displaying the “files” contained within. This is very similiar to Gmails “labels” for organising your email. Now this is pretty cool because it means you can now have the one file “stored” under two/three/four/+ virtual folders. You got a bill from your University? Well file it under “Finances” & “University”. It’s not ground break stuff, I agree, it fact it’s quite simplistic but it does address a need for better searching of files on our computers.

Having said that, do I believe the classic Folder is dead? No way. For starters, adding meta data to files can be a real pain. For instance, photos. I’ve taking thousands of photos, do I really want to have to add meta tags to all my photos just so I can find them at a later date? No way. I’d prefer to use a directory structure to store them. “What am I looking for? That’s right, photos from Christmas 2003”. So I goto my Photos directory, events, christmas 2005. Simple.

Also, Folders are necessary to segment data efficiently. Do I really want application installs, word documents, photos, videos, emails etc all stored in some flat directory structure? That basic thought goes against all the organisational processes we learn or are taught during our lives. Would you organise your house like this? Just throw everything into the living room? Nope – you use draws for clothes, cupboards for dishes, entertainment unit for tv/stereo etc etc.

So I prefer to see a convergence of the two worlds. The use of folders to store your files efficiently, while using a meta data “virtual” folder for finding files.

I think we’ll find it’s the best of both worlds.

Media hysteria 2

Now starring at a cinema near you: Kylie Minogue – Episode Two, Clearing of the Ward.

Apparently the Cabrini Hospital in Melbourne cleared out an 8 bed cardio ward last month, to make room/privacy for Kylie. Read about it here: Kylie Cleared. Obviously the elderly patients, and doctors, that were in that ward weren’t too impressed.

Festival Mushroom Records states, “Kylie made no request to where she was staying within the hospital”. Sure, Kylie didn’t – but who’s to say YOU didn’t Mushie!?

Pathetic.

Time for a laugh

I came across the following while reading /. today: Zalman get extreme with P4 cooling. As one person so wisely commented:

This CPU cooler would be good for the guy who buys that dumb “type R” PSU that was featured earlier. It seems the PC-modder crowd is seeing more and more “rice boxes” out there.

I can picture it now…”cool” nerd going a LAN party, driving a brightly painted Civic with that screaming 115HP motor, windows tinted almost opaque with 18″ wheels on a goofy camber due to the chopped springs/hack lowering job and glowing neon and red “R” stickers all over the place.

In the passenger seat sits his ‘leet gamer PC (the trunk is full of amps and speakers). It is an amazing construction of aluminum, plexiglass, neon and silver and gold Tremclad housing a type R power supply (as advertised on /.!), the biggest heat sink that’ll fit inside and six fans to coll that screamin’ $80 mobo and Celeron CPU. Good thing that mobo has built in audio, video and LAN becasue the slots are blocked by all the other gear…

Just a word of advice…if you “pimp your ride”, then “pimp your PC” to match your ride, it is time to seek therapy.

Pretty hilarious but in fact it’s an enlarged display model of the real product. Someone tried a late April fools joke… 😉

Further browsing today revealed: Hyper Type-R Modular Blue Line 580W. Yepo, that’s the name of a newly released PSU. Type-R!? Whadda!? As if the stupid craze of plastering Type-R stickers on riced up cars wasn’t bad enough, people are now doing the same for computer modding. Sad, very sad.