Having "a good memory" isn't about the recording of events - scientists assure us that most of us have pretty good record of information we have been exposed to. The problem is recall. Accessing that information is the mystery of memory. Why can some people pull obscure facts and memories seemingly from thin air, and others not be able to remember a phone number?
Memory "experts" tell us that we can improve our memory skills by doing a better job of organizing the input. When you meet a new person, associate that person's name with a feature of the individual: Mr. Pearson has piercing eyes. When you see Mr. Pearson again, you will remember his piercing eyes, and hence his name.
Still, the human brain is a wonder of information classification and linking. Consciously or unconsciously, our brains find and recognize patterns, somehow understanding the "chairness" of a chair, and thus being able to see a item never before seen and automatically understand that it is a chair.
The Internet is all about the organization and pulling of information. If we weren't clear about that before, the Google Boys have made their intention clear: their goal is to organize all the information in the world. By organizing it, theoretically that information will become more easily accessible to us, as well.
One of the newer ways in which the information on the Internet is organized is via "tags."
Remember that example with Mr. Pearson? By associating his name with another word, or concept, you have in effect "tagged" Mr. Pearson's name.
The notion of tags probably evolved out of the metadata added to a website. HTML is written using a system of "tags," or cues that tell the computer how to interpret the information within those tags. For example, if you use the tag, (bracket)font(bracket), you instruct the computer that what follows will be information about the style and size of font to use when displaying a browser page.
Metadata is data added to the beginning of webpage coding that provides basic information about what the page is all about. It might include keywords, a title, and a description.
The "keyword" concept has become very well known, as we search for information on the web by entering a word or phrase (keyword or phrase) that defines the topic about which we want more information. A website that has identified that word as "key" to its covered material will be returned to us in our search results.
Says Wikipedia, "A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (e.g. a picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information."
If you use Google's email program, gmail, you will already be using tags when you "label" your emails. Let's say you correspond regularly with 10 people. You create a label for each correspondent, and then attach the appropriate label when an email arrives from that individual. But let's say you also correspond about your garden club, your church, and music. You can also create labels for these three things, and attach the appropriate label or labels to each email based on topic as well as sender. Then let's say you want to identify emails that contain photographs. You create a label that is called "Photographs," and attach it to those emails that come with photos. Now, if you're looking for a particular email, you can show only those emails with the appropriate label or labels, which will narrow down your search to the most likely candidates.
Another tagging system you are probably familiar with is the tags associated with mp3s. This same type of tagging system can also be associated with jpgs and other graphic images. A popular form of this type of tag is ID3. The tag, once added, will accompany that copy of a song or image where ever it goes - so if you download a tagged mp3, you also take the tags with it. The tags will give you information such as album, genre, name, artist, etc. In order to make changes to the tags, you will need a tag editor. Tag editors will usually come with media player software, like Winamp, or Windows Media Player. It is these tags which enable the kind of searching you would do using a service like LimeWire, or iTunes.
Internet drivers have gone a step further: what can we learn about how other people tag information? Google used the concept of rating relevancy based on users' responses: the more often users selected Site A when searching on Topic X, the more "relevant" a result it was - and the higher up in the search results it showed. Social tagging is a similar concept in that it allows users to decide what the topic of a website or body of information is, and label it appropriately.
Let's say you create a website that is about small animals. One user may have come across your site looking for information on squirrels, and will believe that is a good keyword, or tag. Another user might be interested in rodents, and would feel that tag is appropriate. Another might be interested in small animal nutrition, and because your website features nutrition information, he feels this tag is relevant.
There are now a number of websites where you can add tags to websites, or search for websites associated with tags. This is called "social bookmarking," and its exemplified by sites like www.del.icio.us. del.icio.us grows by each "member" adding his or her bookmarked pages (or favorites) to the site, and then tagging these book marked pages with freely chosen words. Now a searcher can enter looking for information on a particular topic, and will be directed to websites that users have marked not only as favorites for a given topic, but as highly relevant to that topic by tagging them.
Another way to "tag" data is to tag the engines that search for it. Take, for example, Ambedo. According to its creators:
"What is Ambedo?
Ambedo can be just about anything you want it to be. We prefer to call it a search engine tagger or something like that. Depending on what you search for, you often need to use different search engines. Ambedo lets you tag search engines to access them quickly.
So really, what is Ambedo?
Ambedo is a front page to many search engines. Ambedo helps you start your searches without going to each search engine's front page. That saves you a minute or two per search. Ambedo also has a lot of tags and triggers to search for specific items easier. Try searching for "actor tom hanks" and you will search Imdb.com for "tom hanks" without the trouble of going to Imdb.com and entering the search. You can access hundreds of search engines quickly from Ambedo.com."
So, if IMDB is a great way to search for information about movie stars (because it has been tagged as such), Ambedo will conduct a search for a movie star using IMDB right away, rather than let you figure that out for yourself.
Another way to "tag" your information is to use a tool like Google's Notebooks. Using this tool, you can create any number of Notebooks on particular topics, and then add clips from, or URLs of websites that are relevant to your subject of inquiry. While you won't be searching information based on tags, you have in effect "tagged" the information by adding it to a particular collection of information (or perhaps to more than one collection) based on its relevancy to that line of inquiry.
An interesting way to think of tags is to see them represented as a "tag cloud." This visualization uses the topic (or website) as the main word in the cloud (in our example, it is shown in large white letters), and all the tags associated with the topic are shown surrounding it. The more frequently a tag is used, the larger and closer that word or tag will be to the main topic.
The idea behind the "tag cloud" is one of the driving forces of the concept of Web 2.0 - bringing us around full circle to the way in which our brain stores, and then retrieves data. Users of the Internet are constantly looking for new ways to emulate that kind of associative thinking that our brains do with such ease - and tag clouds are an example of at attempt to "see" information and its associations as our brains can.
To learn more about tagging systems, look at:
Memory "experts" tell us that we can improve our memory skills by doing a better job of organizing the input. When you meet a new person, associate that person's name with a feature of the individual: Mr. Pearson has piercing eyes. When you see Mr. Pearson again, you will remember his piercing eyes, and hence his name.
Still, the human brain is a wonder of information classification and linking. Consciously or unconsciously, our brains find and recognize patterns, somehow understanding the "chairness" of a chair, and thus being able to see a item never before seen and automatically understand that it is a chair.
The Internet is all about the organization and pulling of information. If we weren't clear about that before, the Google Boys have made their intention clear: their goal is to organize all the information in the world. By organizing it, theoretically that information will become more easily accessible to us, as well.
One of the newer ways in which the information on the Internet is organized is via "tags."
Remember that example with Mr. Pearson? By associating his name with another word, or concept, you have in effect "tagged" Mr. Pearson's name.
The notion of tags probably evolved out of the metadata added to a website. HTML is written using a system of "tags," or cues that tell the computer how to interpret the information within those tags. For example, if you use the tag, (bracket)font(bracket), you instruct the computer that what follows will be information about the style and size of font to use when displaying a browser page.
Metadata is data added to the beginning of webpage coding that provides basic information about what the page is all about. It might include keywords, a title, and a description.
The "keyword" concept has become very well known, as we search for information on the web by entering a word or phrase (keyword or phrase) that defines the topic about which we want more information. A website that has identified that word as "key" to its covered material will be returned to us in our search results.
Says Wikipedia, "A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (e.g. a picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information."
If you use Google's email program, gmail, you will already be using tags when you "label" your emails. Let's say you correspond regularly with 10 people. You create a label for each correspondent, and then attach the appropriate label when an email arrives from that individual. But let's say you also correspond about your garden club, your church, and music. You can also create labels for these three things, and attach the appropriate label or labels to each email based on topic as well as sender. Then let's say you want to identify emails that contain photographs. You create a label that is called "Photographs," and attach it to those emails that come with photos. Now, if you're looking for a particular email, you can show only those emails with the appropriate label or labels, which will narrow down your search to the most likely candidates.
Another tagging system you are probably familiar with is the tags associated with mp3s. This same type of tagging system can also be associated with jpgs and other graphic images. A popular form of this type of tag is ID3. The tag, once added, will accompany that copy of a song or image where ever it goes - so if you download a tagged mp3, you also take the tags with it. The tags will give you information such as album, genre, name, artist, etc. In order to make changes to the tags, you will need a tag editor. Tag editors will usually come with media player software, like Winamp, or Windows Media Player. It is these tags which enable the kind of searching you would do using a service like LimeWire, or iTunes.
Internet drivers have gone a step further: what can we learn about how other people tag information? Google used the concept of rating relevancy based on users' responses: the more often users selected Site A when searching on Topic X, the more "relevant" a result it was - and the higher up in the search results it showed. Social tagging is a similar concept in that it allows users to decide what the topic of a website or body of information is, and label it appropriately.
Let's say you create a website that is about small animals. One user may have come across your site looking for information on squirrels, and will believe that is a good keyword, or tag. Another user might be interested in rodents, and would feel that tag is appropriate. Another might be interested in small animal nutrition, and because your website features nutrition information, he feels this tag is relevant.
There are now a number of websites where you can add tags to websites, or search for websites associated with tags. This is called "social bookmarking," and its exemplified by sites like www.del.icio.us. del.icio.us grows by each "member" adding his or her bookmarked pages (or favorites) to the site, and then tagging these book marked pages with freely chosen words. Now a searcher can enter looking for information on a particular topic, and will be directed to websites that users have marked not only as favorites for a given topic, but as highly relevant to that topic by tagging them.
Another way to "tag" data is to tag the engines that search for it. Take, for example, Ambedo. According to its creators:
"What is Ambedo?
Ambedo can be just about anything you want it to be. We prefer to call it a search engine tagger or something like that. Depending on what you search for, you often need to use different search engines. Ambedo lets you tag search engines to access them quickly.
So really, what is Ambedo?
Ambedo is a front page to many search engines. Ambedo helps you start your searches without going to each search engine's front page. That saves you a minute or two per search. Ambedo also has a lot of tags and triggers to search for specific items easier. Try searching for "actor tom hanks" and you will search Imdb.com for "tom hanks" without the trouble of going to Imdb.com and entering the search. You can access hundreds of search engines quickly from Ambedo.com."
So, if IMDB is a great way to search for information about movie stars (because it has been tagged as such), Ambedo will conduct a search for a movie star using IMDB right away, rather than let you figure that out for yourself.
Another way to "tag" your information is to use a tool like Google's Notebooks. Using this tool, you can create any number of Notebooks on particular topics, and then add clips from, or URLs of websites that are relevant to your subject of inquiry. While you won't be searching information based on tags, you have in effect "tagged" the information by adding it to a particular collection of information (or perhaps to more than one collection) based on its relevancy to that line of inquiry.
An interesting way to think of tags is to see them represented as a "tag cloud." This visualization uses the topic (or website) as the main word in the cloud (in our example, it is shown in large white letters), and all the tags associated with the topic are shown surrounding it. The more frequently a tag is used, the larger and closer that word or tag will be to the main topic.The idea behind the "tag cloud" is one of the driving forces of the concept of Web 2.0 - bringing us around full circle to the way in which our brain stores, and then retrieves data. Users of the Internet are constantly looking for new ways to emulate that kind of associative thinking that our brains do with such ease - and tag clouds are an example of at attempt to "see" information and its associations as our brains can.
To learn more about tagging systems, look at:
- Flickr - A service that allows users to tag images with many specific nouns, verbs, and adjectives that describe the picture. This is then searchable.
- Gmail - A webmail site that was one of the first to allow categorization of objects using tags, known as "labels" on emails.
- Technorati - A weblog search engine.
- Last.fm - A social music website and wiki that allows users to tag artists, albums and tracks.
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