Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Tagging is so passe'

Tagging is so passe'.

Manually adding keywords to stuff you do.

What we need is "tag suggestion" software.  Software that looks at what you have written, compares it to a corpus - perhaps your stuff, but perhaps stuff from others - and gives you the choice.

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Automatic email folder classification rules are so passe'...

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Gmail's labels are so passe'.  Same reasons.

(Plus the absolute lack of structure.)

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I have played around with Bayesian codes, for determining if tags or labels should apply.

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Gmail's "important" filter is a step.  But more needed.  Plus, a more personal classification system.

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I remember GNUS gnus-topic-mode.el  in EMACS fondly.  Realizes that at different times of the day, or in different modes, I may prioritize things differehntly.

THERE ARE NO FIXED PRIORITIES for personal information management.

My priorities when I am reading email on vacation, or in the evening at home, are different than in the day at work.

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Why tag?

Why not just use search?

Tagging is a crystallization of information content.  E.g. it records the fact that, at some time, you decided that a post was about VCS, Version Control Software, even though it might not contain the phrase in a way that seach would turn up.

Tags make it easier to track [[terminology drift]].  (TBD, need to write a wiki/blog on that).

E.g. what we call now VCS (Version Control) might have been called REvision Control years ago, or CM (Configuration Management).

Terminology drifts over time.  Tags make it easier to track such drift, although even tags drift.


AAdvantage versus Account Aggregation

I just learned that American Airlines' AAdvantage frequent flyer program has sent cease and desist letters to account aggregators.

(This shows how often I check my AAdvantage miles balance - only when I am planning vacation.  It also shows exactly why I depend on an account aggregator - for all of these bleeding accounts...)

Now, perhaps I am exposing myself to hackers because I admit that I use an account aggregator.  Single point of failure, and all that.

(By the way, I would be much happier if the aggregators had read-only access to my accounts - if they could only see balances, but not change passwords.)

But the overall thing is: there are, I have, too many bleeding accounts. Too many blinking passwords.

Account aggregators are one major tool to manage this.

If a company will not let *any* account aggregator access them, well, then I do not need to be a customer of that company.

I was considering dropping American Airlines anyway, because of their financial position. This is just more incentive.

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Heck, if AAdvantage was implementing better security, such as captchas, I would be happy.But sending "cease and desist" letters - that's garbage.