Tried iGoogle yet?

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with iGoogle, Google's dashboard-desktop application. Right now, it's "on" again between us.

I'm continually trying to improve and smooth the way I work on my computer, particularly since I gave up paper almost entirely, and this is part of that effort. I depend heavily upon GMail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs; in fact, those three applications are crucial to my operations these days. The iGoogle page allows me to see all of them on a single page, creating a sort of central control panel for my digital and online life which I like. Sometimes.

iGoogle also offers hundreds of other widgets, gadgets and thingies that can be added to this desktop - clock, weather, quote of the day, puzzles, currency converters - you name it, there probably is one. Most of these are created by third parties, so your mileage will vary, as they say.

It may be "off" again between iGoogle and I in a few days; we'll see how it goes.

Out with hierarchical filing; in with tags

This week I spent some time organizing two systems which are important to my business and particularly to my "mobile office". Both are Google applications: GMail and Google Docs.

I use both heavily, and because I'm keeping much less information on paper these days, it's crucial that I keep both my emails and documents highly organized. I have to be able to find an email or a Google document when I need it.

Now, the search functions in both of these applications may almost be enough to render unnecessary the efforts I'm about to describe. They work so well that I sometimes suspect that this is true. But I'm just not quite ready to throw everything into one "place" and trust that I'll be able to pull up what I need only by entering search terms. What if I can't quite remember the spelling of a name, or the search terms I feel sure appear in the document aren't there in the form I expect them to be? That could be bad.

But GMail has "labels" and Google Docs has "folders", and I think I've finally begun using both in a smart way.

Despite the names "labels" and "folders", both are really best understood as tags. The concept of tags is somewhat new, and fairly new to me, but I'm beginning to really like it. But it takes a certain shift in thinking to use them well.

Many of us, I guess pretty much distinguishable by age, have always lived in an office environment in which information is organized hierarchically. A document "lives" in only one place, typically a folder or directory, either physical or digital. Files on a PC are arranged this way. In order to find something, it's been necessary to remember the whole hierarchical position of the item.

Hierarchical organization of information can be just right for some things. But for my thousands of emails and Google documents, I quickly realized that my initial "folder" way of thinking and organizing was clumsy and inefficient. As I began to see tags used in other contexts (in Blogger, for example), it dawned on me how much better this system was.

With tags, the idea is simple. To organize your documents, you tack on one, two, or more tags - words or phrases which identify the subject matter of the document. Ideally, the list of tags in your system is kept to a minimum; you don't want to use "United States", "USA" and "The United States of America", but only one of those three.

When I want to find documents that have to do with family, for example, I just click on the tag "family", and there they all are, just as if there was a folder called "family". But several of them are also tagged "travel", and those documents appear in my list of documents tagged "travel". Some of those are also tagged "purchases", and I can see them in that list as well.

In GMail, again, the term used is labels, which fits well. In Google Docs, they're called folders, which I think is a poor choice. My guess is that the designers of the application wanted people to be able to think in the old folder-thinking if they wanted, and in fact, I did for quite some time. But Google Docs items can be "placed in several different folders", and so, if used that way, they're really functioning as tags.

My main point here (since I'm afraid it's buried in verbosity) is that the fairly new concept of using tags or labels to file digital documents is far superior to the old hierarchical way of thinking. And, dull as this subject might seem, it's strategies like this that are allowing me to be organized enough, and mobile enough, to work from Mexico this winter, rendering them considerably less dull, in my humble opinion.

Zoho: Online Word Processor, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Customer Relations Management, and more

As readers of this blog know, I'm an avid student of ways to work which allow me to be unattached from my own office, and even from my own computer. Online applications and services are a primary strategy in this quest. I use many of Google's online applications: GMail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Picasa, Google Reader, Blogger, and probably others I'm forgetting. Just yesterday I found out about a somewhat similar suite of online applications/services: Zoho.

According to their FAQ, Zoho is "...a suite of online applications (services) that you sign up for and access from our Website. The applications are free for individuals and some have a subscription fee for organizations. Our vision is to provide our customers (individuals, students, educators, non-profits, small and medium sized businesses) with the most comprehensive set of applications available anywhere (breadth); and for those applications to have enough features (depth) to make your user experience worthwhile."

There's word processor, a spreadsheet program, a note-taking tool, a presentation application, a CRM (customer relationship management) application, a wiki program, a planner, an email application, project management, invoicing, web conferencing, database creation and reporting applications, a recruitment management tool, and even a few more. The scope of applications is quite impressive.

And who is behind all of this? Again quoting their FAQ, Zoho is "...a division of AdventNet Inc. A US-based company that has been creating and selling cutting edge software solutions since 1996. The company has tens of thousands of customers worldwide, is privately held and profitable."

They aren't all free, but many are. I've signed up for a free account but haven't tried any yet; I'll try and post again when I have more of a review. But from what I've seen, Zoho has a good possibility of becoming part of my steadily increasing set of important online business tools.