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How Do You Organize Your Data?
kpellegr asks: "After returning from a well deserved holiday, I was faced with an exploding inbox. While organizing and deleting my mail, I realised I was having trouble classifying each mail into one specific folder. I had the feeling I should be able to link to one email from several folders (e.g. product information should be linked to from the 'vendor' folder, as well as from a specific project folder where this product is used). The more I thought about this, the more I realised that trees (such as the Windows filesystems) are not really ideally suited for organizing data. On UNIX-like filesystems, symbolic links allow the creation of simple graphs for organising data, but I have the feeling data could be organized more efficiently. How does the Slashdot crowd organize their data? How do you manage files, email, contacts, meetings and all the relationships that might exist between them?"
I think that Evolution's Virtual Folders will let you do what you describe, for email.
...it's a windows only product, but for organizing email on windows boxes, I would recommend Nelson. I use it at work, and it allows me to organize a single email using multiple classifications and has a ton of other feartures. Check it out.
There is a application called "Spring" which has been out for a while now. The company that released it a revolutionary new way to organize and completely tasks.
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Links to check out:
-Their site(scroll down to "PATHS" for what probably will interest you) http://usercreations.com/spring/SpringContent.htm
tilTrue.info contechtext.info prettypowerful.info twitter.com/frets fb.com/prosody
I love wikis (see also Twiki, a very flexible one, and Openwiki if you prefer M$ technologies): you can organize anything you want, with anyone you want. It's more suited to a workgroup of people, but they work for individuals too. They're totally flexible, extensible, and templatable.
I'm sure people here will come up with ideas like knowledge trees and weird topological concepts, but gimme a wiki any day.
Someone has to bring it up, so it might as well be me! Opera7 mail folders are really filters onto the mail database, meaning you can have the same message in multiple folders. Just in case you didnt know :)
Lotus Notes (domino) has been doing this for years.
"linux is only free if your time has no value" - Jamie Zawinski
It also sounds similar to how Opera handles mail with the M2 e-mail client. It defines "access points" that can (but don't have to) look like folders for jumping into messages that meet a certain criteria. For example, all messages with an attached image are grouped together, as are all messages from a specific person, and all messages meeting some sort of user-defined criteria might also be lumped together under an "access point." In the end though, there really is only one mail box, these tools just allow you to "slice and dice" through your mail.
Check out Opera's M2 email client. It uses one massive "received" box and then the emails are distributed, well not actually moved but sorted, into different "views". It is a radical approach to email sorting. Messages from contacts will show up next to their names and also in and of the views you like. You can sort your email in many diffrent ways. You can set one view for, in my case "financial", where all my bank and dreaded credit card stuff goes, and also by "bank" and "credit card". It took a while to get used to but I LOVE IT.
"If this is a sig, and sigs are for losers, then I am a loser..."
It's just undocumented.
See this nice app here which set itself as a shell extension. I use it extensively and it works wonder for organizing music, photos, etc.
Intelligence shared is intelligence squared.
As a Mac user, I rely -- live in -- on a product called Boswell for my e-mail contacts, appointments, research, and writings.
It works with imported text files (for my e-mail), pasted text (stuff I find on the Web) and lets you create text within it (I _am_ going to finish that novel someday). Everything you create can go in multiple categories and they can go in them _automatically_.
And everything is searchable by multiple criteria -- time, content, and how it is already categorized. There are no hierarchies or links. With the searches it does, you' don't need them.
Their site is at www.boswell.com.
Opera's new email client does exactly this.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I don't use evolution myself at the moment (currently preferring mozilla-mail for some weird reason) but vfolders are supposed to be good at handling your kind of situation, where you want to classify certain mails in more than one way. Just put everything in a big archive folder and have various vfolders set up to categorise mail in different ways.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Why not just reverse sort?
alias recent='ls -lrt'
Ok, now to actually answer the question posed here (as opposed to what a lot of other people here are doing, which is either come up with something witty or else attempt to codify a sweeping new all-inclusive whiz-bang OS change).
Ahem.
I know the question is asking about emails, files, contacts, and meetings, but as I keep relatively few contacts permanently filed and don't much like meetings, I'll address what I do about files and emails.
Files: I start with a simple folder: "Files". In my case, "D:\Files". (I like folders Windows doesn't much know about, nor mess with.) Inside that, I have pretty much a heterogeneous hodgepodge of hierarchies of folders: "Projects", "Photos", "Temp" (big one, that), etc. Nothing earth-shattering.
Emails: I try to organize these into folders denoting conversational thread ("Buddies", "List Stuff", "Family", "Work", etc.), combined with where they are in my email-processing conveyor belt ("To Do" (I haven't replied yet), then "Transfer" (I've replied, but not archived), then "Done" (archived and ready for deletion)), for whichever conversational threads I want to save. Using the examples above would result in:
- List Stuff
- Work
- To Do - Buddies
- To Do - Family
- Transfer - Buddies
- Transfer - Family
- Done - Buddies
- Done - Family
(I would use a bit of hierarchy here, like:- List Stuff
- Work
- To Do
- Buddies
- Family
- Transfer
- Buddies
- Family
- Done
- Buddies
- Family
, except Yahoo! Mail doesn't allow folder nesting. (And before you laugh at me for using Yahoo! Mail, can you access your mail at any web browser anywhere? How many times have you changed addresses in the last 5 years? I haven't at all.))And that's pretty much it.
(Hey, you asked...)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Virtual Folders (in Evolution) are quite handy. I used to dump all of my email in silly folders until I came to the same realization as our poster. These messages really fall into multiple categories. So, I use Evolution's virtual folder feature to create folders such as "customer, vendors, eFaxes, Follow-up, Important". In the rules for folders such as vendor or customer, I add applicable email addresses or domain names under the 'sender' filter. Another helpful categorization method is to create folders named after the person who sent the email. These days, its not uncommon for Joe Bob customer to have multiple email addresses. Virtual folders can easily consolidate all of those messages into one place. It all boils down to how we think and associate data, as the ultimate goal is easy retrieval of the data. If one associates events with a person, by golly, create vfolders w/ peoples names. :)
And when you delete a message from one folder, it's deleted from all of them!
If you are deleting an email, that implies that you are done with the information. If you just want to reorganize it, then you (the user) should understand what it means to organize.
The problem is that users are trained on the MS vision that everything can only exist in one place and to put it in two places requires making a copy. This approach has problems:
1. Very wasteful of hard drive space. You need to have complete copies of a document in every folder/directory it belongs. Today hard drive space is cheap, but MS is trying to grow the data file sizes to keep up.
2. Each copy is not updated with the others. You usually forget which should be the master copy. And the users don't care about maintaining the master copy; they want to work on the one to which they have access. Making it read-only means there will be even more copies made so people can get their work done.
Unix/Linux users have symbolic links. They are exposed to them very early, and learn that a link to a file can be treated as the file, for everything except its organization. Updating the file updates it everywhere.
Lotus Notes allows all approaches:
1. You can make copies. Copy/Paste always does this.
2. You can make links. Dragging always does this.
3. You can put links to anything inside other documents. This allows you to send a memo with links to the documents that need your attention.
4. You have Views, which show all documents based on selection formulas.
5. It has great filtering capabilities. You can show all documents that contain the word "slashdot" that were created between 2 dates.
But is a first-time user going to expect it? Of course not, he thinks the folders work like everywhere else, and copy means make a copy, not just a link.
Your "first-time user" expects "the folders work like everywhere else"?
- A first-time user should not have a problem. They learn what happens without any expectations.
- A "first-time user" that has been using MS products for a while should know never to expect consistent results. Try dragging a file in MSWindows:
1. If it is an executable, it will create a Shortcut.
2. If it is to the same hard drive, it will move the file. (And remember that "My Documents" and "Desktop" are usually on the C Drive.)
3. If it is to a different hard drive, it will make a copy. (What happens if it is a mapped network share on the same computer?)
That is 3 different results from the same user action! So how do folders work everywhere else?
---
Anyway, I expect MS to die soon. Windows will wither without MS. The next generation of users will probably start with Linux and be better off.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
It's worked well for me and my tens of thousands of email messages.
I've got a directory archive of mail going back well into the 80's. The only detail about a given message I can usually count on remembering is the sender or recipient. I give each correspondent a separate subdirectory with the name of email alias (last name, sometimes with initials). I have a few special folders for "receipts," "strangers," and corporate spam. Special folders for specific topics have never worked out, mostly because topics overlap too heavily. Grep works fine for the rare cases where I remember the content but forget the correspondent.
(Reality reasserts itself sooner or later.)
I've been trying to figure out a good solution to this question myself, and I think I'm just going to have to make one I like. It's hard to find something someone else has programmed that suits your own needs for such a personalized usage, in my opinion.
What I've planned out is something that would have a calendar, address book, to-do list, misc storage, etc. Problem is, I don't want to have to do all the categorizing myself. So I figured, so long as I enter appointments in a predictable way (e.g. LL1: Date LL2: Time LL3: Place LL4: Comment) I can make the computer work out what kind of information it is. Same with the other types. I can even add simple stuff like URL's I want to remember. Then, I can just enter in a generic text-area any information, and have the machine do the categorization and organizing. Have it recognize dates and give me a timeline for my day, week, month, etc. Have it recognize contacts and store them in my addressbook. Etc.
What I think could make this really nice, though, would be something you see a lot of in Wikis (and some neat ideas like infocalypse)--the ability to link elements together with some sort of simple syntax, e.g. [link]. Better yet, have the machine link it.
The point is that it isn't just the information, but the relationships it makes, that are important. If I have an appointment for a certain job, I might want a list of "relevant links" next to it, such as the contact information of the people involved, any notes I've made in relation to that job, and so forth. I'm not sure how to do this, exactly, by automation (keywords are limited but may work, making me do it by hand defeats the purpose; I'm far too lazy to do anything by hand) but I probably won't actually start coding this for a long time anyway, so I suppose I have time to think. Any suggestions?
It sounds like what you want is the file system from Windows Longhorn. As I understand it, it will be using SQL Server 2004 (Yukon) for the entire file system. It seems self-evident that using a relational database for all files would result in a single table for files, and a table of attributes, search terms, subjects, etc., so that a file could be found any number of ways.
This is pretty clearly a better system. The only thing that concerns me is that every existing set of programming-language file system tools expects to be working with directory trees, even if they do support different delimiter characters, name length limits, multiple vs. single roots (drive letters vs. '/'), etc. I expect they will include some sort of mapping to a traditional hierarchy, though, as VB will have just as much trouble with the new system as Java will.
News story about it (news.com)
It works great for me, although I must admit, I'm far more comfortable on the command line than the GUI -- my setup is not for the faint of heart or inexperienced.
- Keeping a master database "brain" of all of the RPG characters, players, and NPCs, along with web resources and useful files (e.g. PDFs of character sheets).
- A logical map of the corporate network, including routers, switches, and whatnot. Since the "thoughts" can be links, files, or just text, I set it so that opening a router "thought" will start a telnet session, a server thought starts a terminal server session to that server, etc. Those were purely arbitrary. The links between network devices are color-coded by type (T1, dialup, DSL, etc). The network admin about crapped himself when I showed him--and then appropriated it for his own use.
- Story aid. My wife likes to write, and she can link up characters, locations, events, and plot points in entirely arbitrary manners however she pleases.
It's worth playing with, and some may find it worth purchasing. If I used Windows more, I would.I'd still like to get into wikis, though. =)
I've used Opera's email client for a while, and am pretty happy with it. It provides what they call 'access points', which seem to be about the same conept as the above mentioned virtual folders. New access points can be created along with filtering criteria for each, and incoming email is assigned to one or more access points, if the filtering criteria match. I've found this to be a pretty powerful way of managing my email, since I can change the... well, the 'perspective' or angle, from which I look at my inbox. I can view email by contacts (sender addresses), unread, or any arbitrary access point I have created. That makes managing email, especially when having to assign email to several 'view points' in lack of a better term, based on several criteria, as described above.
Have you given a thought to this guy's work? The links are funky because he moved servers, but PhotoSeek indexes documents as well. Not sure if this is what you're after, but it does a variety of formats and such.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
This solution only works for email, but it's very nice once it's set up.
.txt with form feed separated emails.
I used a free app (the name eludes me) to export my PST folders to
Then I wrote a python script that could recognize the different plain-text formats of the various clients I have used (The Bat, Rebecca Mail, etc) and chew them all into one the same format (plaintext with FF separation), after which I wrote another script that put them all into a MySQL database with separate fields for headers, body and the most used fields like from, to and subject.
Then I set every email program I have to leave messages on the server, and instead I now have a script that takes all my email every 3 days and sticks it into my database.
Then I made a nice little interface for searching emails, and it is SO much nicer and faster than anything any email program has ever offered me in terms of searching, and I am free to switch email clients as much as I want to.
Give me liberty or give me kill -s 9
I use nmh with exmh as a GUI. It does all the above: sort by most recent, symbolic links to multiple directories, etc. The O'Reilly book is now freely (beer) available on the Web.
This is a tautology.
Categories are a feature of MS Outlook; it probably exists in other clients as well (Evolution?), but my experience is with Outlook.
Outlook allows you to assign any number of categories to any object. An object can be an e-mail, task, contact, appointment, etc. Outlook comes with a list of "common sense" categories out of the box, but the user can make up categories as he/she sees fit.
If you keep all your messages in one folder and assign them to categories, you can use Outlook views to sort through the data however is most applicable at the time. One of the built-in views is "By Category". Items are grouped by category, then further sorted by whichever field you prefer within each category. If an item is in more than one category, it will be displayed multiple times in the list, inside the appropriate category grouping. It is better than folders, I assure you!
You can assign categories to objects multiple ways:
I find categories particularly useful for contacts and appointments, as they quite often fall into multiple categories. For example, a contact might be a family member, but also a member of my local LUG (Linux Users Group), and also works at a certain company where I have several business contacts. Folders simply won't do in this situation; I have no desire to maintain three seperate contact entires, but I want the contact to show in all three groups. But with categories, happiness ensues.
At work I'm forced to use Lotus Notes 4.5.5 (yup, the 1995 version).
I do not like its interface, its menu structure and generally the way it works. (see the interface hall of shame for details on that)
However, it has some excellent search features built in (fast & reliable) and my only favorite option: the "All documents" folder, where all records are piled onto one big pile for me to search in. Really handy. So I can make folders and organise, but if I want I can just pretend there's only this one big folder.
The Bigger The Headache The Bigger the Pill
I personally use ls -Flatrck
.files
;P
F = show file type with final character
l = long directory format (detailed)
a = even the
t = sort by time
r = reverse the order
c = by change date
k = block size of 1k... not really useful, but helps me remember the alias to make on a new system.
On FreeBSD, before BSD died(*) I would use ls -Flatrock but the 'o' has a different meaning with the GNU ls (omit group column in long output) than the BSD ls (include the file flags in the long output).
(*) Before the -1 Flamebait, I mean 'Died on my system'. I decided to install RedHat instead though, because as everyone knows: BSD is dying.
Evolution has this virtual folder concept, which allows you to set up filters that will decide in which folders mail appear - allowing one mail to apper in multiple folders (but still only having one copy of the mail).
:)
Furthermore when you update the filters, your virtual folders are (of course, by means of the way that it is implemented) updated.
I used it for a while and it worked great. Until I started having more mail, then it started getting slow. Then it got really slow. I quit evolution entirely when it was unable to show any of the mails in my inbox, using virtual folders or not.
In short, the feature is in evolution, but if you have a lot of mail lying around (an inbox with 20-30k e-mails), it just doesn't work. Evolution has some nice features, they're just not implemented in a way so that they work on anything but toy mailboxes. Which is really a pity, since the ideas were great.
Now, I'm on bogofilter+procmail+kmail, and I'm fairly happy with that. No virtual folders, but I can read my mail again. Yippie!
Hi,
the problem you describe is really terrible - with the folder structure you always have to decide on the order of folders. What I want are not exactly folders but keywords, and then you can search by keyword.
Actually, there is a tool available at
http://www.mail-sleuth.comwhich does this. You can assign keywords which then appear as folders. But if you give for example the keywords "Slashdot" and "interesting" you'll find the "Slashdot" folder as subfolder in the "interesting" folder and vice-versa. Also it comes with a nice graphical representation.
Unfortunately, it's currently only available as MS Outlook-plugin, but they plan to develop also a plugin for Mozilla (at least I was told so at the conference I saw the presentation of the tool). If you want other things, just bug them - the e-mail address is on the website.
Cheers,
Jols -lart
which has the added bonus of being mnemonic as well as including an obligatory BOFH reference :)
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
http://m-arriaga.net/software/newdocms/
You actually can have *your* Slashdot automatically mod all "Funny" moderations down as far as -6 from where they already are. Just go to your preferences and it's under "comments". You can adjust how moderation is calculated for you.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Take a look at
ZOE. It does all this and more.