Comments on: Files, Storage, Google, Python, and UnConference Software

By: Jack Diederich

Jack Diederich — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:24:44 +0000

I saw the post on ycombinator or reddit tagged with "Canadian World Domination" or similar. This isn't as far from the mark. I was quite surprised when I put together a list of python-devs for German, American, or Other that the "Other" category was dominated by Canadians. There aren't many of them, after all.

By: doug

doug — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:47:55 +0000

@Eric:

Thanks for the comments! They are about as far from flames as you can get!

I am not confused about tags or how they are intended to work. I just did a really crappy job of explaining my position. I started to write a response comment explaining myself further, but it is just to big for the comment space, so I will turn it into a follow-up post tonight.

Ultimately I want better multi-modal interfaces to the ‘data store’ where tags are just one type of meta-data on which the data is organized. The underlying implementation for the storage should not be determined by the multi-modal views which is what the OLPC initial implementation attempted and failed at. We have file systems and they serve a purpose. They should neither be reinvented, nor replaced by new modalities which can be implemented on top of them. A middle ground must be achieved to move forward.

That is my cryptic response for now

By: Sarah Elkins

Sarah Elkins — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:41:00 +0000

Connotea (Nature’s research-oriented answer to del.icio.us) lets you take intersections of tags. E.g., http://www.connotea.org/user/selkins/tag/OLPC+how-to takes you to everything I’ve tagged both OLPC and how-to. http://www.connotea.org/user/selkins/tag/OLPC/how-to takes you to everything I’ve tagged with OLPC or how-to. There are other tag tricks one can do with Connotea.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:40:06 +0000

Would you’d want is a tag grouping system where you can create a tag grouping system so you can have a “python people” tag group that is the intersection of the two tags. I’ve only seen this tag grouping in a few places, and usually it’s for the union of the tag group, not the intersection.

del.icio.us lets you bundle tags, but you can’t take the intersection or even the union of those bundles.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:34:14 +0000

Don’t take this as a flame, but I think you’re missing the point of tags. If you tag something as “python” and “people” you can combine the two and get the intersection of the two, i.e. get only emails that are tagged “people” and “python”.

This is handy because, for instance, you could have a message that’s tagged “people”, “python” and “olpc”, when you want to send a message to all your olpc friends, you’d just have send it to those tagged “people” and “olpc” instead of using a bunch of folders, /people/olpc/python, /people/olpc/hardware and /people/olpc to get everyone. I guess if the system was smart enough /people/olpc would get everyone. However when you want to send a message to all your python buddies, you’d have to find /people/python and /people/olpc/python and /people/google/python, etc.

The beauty of tags is it allows for dynamic unions and interceptions of categories. Where a structured hierarchy of categories would fall down.

By: Phil Hassey » Blog Archive » The Canadian Invasion .. and MORE!

Phil Hassey » Blog Archive » The Canadian Invasion .. and MORE! — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 06:44:43 +0000

[...] only bit I remember from that conversation is all the stuff about Canadian global domination. Let me tell you, if Mike Fletcher has his way, [...]