Tying into another thread, one of the reasons I like gmail is that it was the first mail app that got me away from the folder paradigm. I don't use folders in gmail and sparingly use tags. Gmails search is good enough to help me find any email I need from a backlog of several years worth.
Interesting to see this now being applied to apps. On my windows 7 laptop I use search to find apps and almost never resort to the folder structure under the start menu. I've long hated folders because it becomes too difficult to find where you've filed things. Folders rely on a well thought out ontology. Clay Christensen touches on this problem when he talks about ontologies (folders) vs folksonomies (tags). Another observation is that I think the folder paradigm is more aimed at the "inexpert" user. At the majority of two finger typists who hack away at their keyboards all day because they have to. For the expert user I think a command line is far more efficient, but it requires a high investment to learn and internalize. Many years ago I used a CAD system called GDS which predated graphic terminals. It had a command line which could do anything you could now do with a mouse or digitizing tablet. Most of my colleagues used digitizers, but the real experts used the command line and were way more efficient. Regards, Saul On 11/06/2011, at 11:00 AM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]> wrote: [Sorry if this is a repeat, gmail problems] On Jun 10, 2011, at 11:16 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: How do you organize your 10,000 apps and find the one you want at any particular time? *-- Russ Abbott* *_____________________________________________* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 * blog: *http://russabbott.blogspot.com/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ *_____________________________________________* Use Google Quick Search Box. They've fixed all the weird indexing problems and performance issues, apparently on my system (Snow Leopard). Now this does presume the Modern User can type and remember the name of the app. Note that android and iphone/pad have search built in for finding apps. BTW: Yet another gmail problem is that several gmail users, when I get their email in a mail client, show the text in a tiny font .. and show various parts like the sig, in a larger font. I have no idea what's up but its common, and I believe unique to gmail. Looks fine in the gmail WUI. -- Owen <Finder004a.jpg> On Jun 10, 2011, at 11:16 AM, Russ Abbott wrote: How do you organize your 10,000 apps and find the one you want at any particular time? *-- Russ Abbott* *_____________________________________________* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 * blog: *http://russabbott.blogspot.com/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ *_____________________________________________* ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
