Folders? They're passe. You want tags, my friend.

Occasionally (and in my case, very occasionally) you get hit by an idea that's so beautiful in it's simplicity that you know it must be right. You might just be walking along the street, or perhaps just about to fall asleep, when things fall into place, and you sit up with a jolt. It's usually something so obvious that you can't believe you never saw it before and you feel the urge to shout it to the world. Of course, it's also very rarely truly original, but that shouldn't diminish the joy of the self-developed insight. I need all the help I can to feel good about myself, you see.

The insight is this: that the folder metaphor structure used in just about every operating system to organise files is actually cumbersome and fiddly, and there is a much better way of doing things.

You see, the problem is that everyone sees nothing but folders when saving and opening files in Windows/Macs/Unix, so you put up with the problems it creates. For example, you can't put a single file in two folders at the same time, so you fiddle around with shortcuts or copies of the original (in Unix you have links, which is probably the best way of handling it).

Another example is that you might over-structure the folders, so to get to those meeting minutes, you go to "C:\My Documents\Company\Meetings\Operational\2005\January\Week_3\Minutes\FinalVersion\" to find them.

And there are more. Trying to keep links up-to-date. Trying to re-organise folders when you realise the old one doesn't work anymore. "Folder flooding" when you realise you've put too many files in the root folder and not enough in the subdirectories. Determining security restrictions when traversing folders. I could go on and on.

Practically all these problems disappear in a single swoop if you replace 'folders' with 'tagging'. Of course, tagging creates problems of its own, but I fairly certain it's better overall.

So what is tagging? Tagging is when you attach a list of keywords together with a file. So, if you know that a file is a meeting concerning marketing held on 5th November, you might tag "meeting marketing 5-Nov-2004" or something like that. Then when you want to find the file again, you go to your tag search engine and enter "meeting marketing Nov" and it might give you what you need.

The beauty is this: the person who creates the file determines the tags, and the assumption is that people who work in the same organisation are more than likely to use the same tags. And you can always add on to tags, or modify them.

"'What?!!' I hear you say. 'There'll be chaos in the streets', 'people will riot', 'everyone will do their own thing and everything will disappear in a confusing, chaotic smoke'".

Well, yes, maybe. But before we discuss the problems, let's look at some real life examples where it kinda works.

Incidentally, people have called this form of organising information 'folksonomy' and although the word is new, the ideas aren't.

• GMail uses 'labels' instead of folders for users to organise their email. You can choose almost any word you want as a label, and you can search emails by their labels. Or you can search emails by any word in the body.
• del.icio.us allows you to keep bookmarks on the Internet, but you use tags instead of folders to organise them. It gives you a long list of words you've used down the right-hand side as a reminder, and, of course, they're all clickable.
• Flickr was probably one of the first websites to popularise the use of tags. You can view all the kitten photos you want. Or maybe you're interested in Audrey Hepburn. Or check out my home town.
• Also, just in case you think that this is a new idea, take a look at the Internet. We've had meta keyword text that allows you to write whatever you like as a descriptor. When you search, some text is given priority (like titles and links) - those act like tag text.

Allegedly the new version of Windows ('Longhorn') was meant to move in this direction. They've dropped it, but I'm sorry they have. Folders? Pfaugh. Give me a search window any day.