Technology As Innovator

Problem defined

“An idea pops up my mind”

OK! Imagine this. It’s a nice day, and you’re away from home and from your working cubicle. While talking to your friends, or seeing some billboard along the way, or just doing the routine exercise, an idea pops up your mind.

Do you want to note it down? Of course you do, for a million reasons. Ideas sell these days.

“I need a pen and paper”

So you’ll need a pen and a piece of paper. “Oh my, why can’t I find one!” you think.

“But wait, there’s a PC right here”

Sounds cool. Computers are around: airports, public places, internet café, libraries.etc., and you have just spotted one you can use. Typing the idea to a connected PC makes it easier to save, edit and send the information.

You turn on the machine, go to the address of your mailbox, and prepare to login. Wait a sec!

“Excuse me, anybody watching?”

You might want to turn around to see if anybody is behind your back peeping your user name and password. “Phew, no one.” you relieved.

I beg your attention. Are you sure there is no one?

“Of course there is no one beside me. Are you hallucinated?” you’re getting irritated.

For your sake, I am still sane. I wonder if you have heard of keyl.ogg.er. It is a program that monitors your activities on the computer: it tracks all websites you visit and applications you launch, records all keys you type in the text boxes. It sees your user name and password and snitch your account to some a guy usually known as ha.cker. Scary?

So you see, whether you log into your Gmail, MySpace account, Google Notebook, blog, music website, all your accounts are revealed.

Solution

I am here to tell you a tip on how to take notes securely without having to authenticate yourself to any login form, and in style too

If you have got a Blogger, or a WordPress blog, simply note down anything you want as a comment. You can always proceed with these drafts when you have returned to the safety of your well-protected PC.

If you haven’t got one, setting up a blog is easy: just go to blogger.com or wordpress.com for a free blog. Well, just that you need to do this before hand because they require you to open an confirmation email, which requires you to login your mailbox.

Why in style?

Ah, there are certainly other alternative ways to take notes online without authentication. For example, some forums allow Guest to post information.

However, a blog is more stylish than a forum, correct? Furthermore, posting comments to your own blog gives you full and more personalized control.

Not only you do it, you do it in style!

***

I want to hear you: What do you usually do when you need to take notes while sparing the peepers out?

1. What is Tag

1.1. Definition

A tag is a relevant keyword associated with a piece of information, thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information.

The piece of information can be files, web pages, images, bookmarks, or blog entries.

Typically, one item contains multiple tags.

Usually a tag contains a link to display all items associated with that tag.

1.2. Tagcloud

A tag cloud is a visual depiction of a collection of tags used on a collections of items. Often, more frequently used tags are more emphasized.

Display order of tag cloud can either be alphabetical, or sorted by popularity, or random.

A tag is frequently found on websites, but there is one good example of printed media that employs tag cloud: The Van Couversun, Wednesday January 3, 2007

1.3. Tag Folksonomy

A folksonomy describes a content that employs tags. Examples of folksonomy may include: del.icio.us, Flickr, MySpace, youtube…

Alternatively, folksonomy also describes a community using a service and navigating through information by following tags and giving tags to own data to help people find them.

Some services (Xanga, Wordpress) provide site-wide tag list while others (Blogger, Yahoo! 360) only give tag list of one owner.

Folksonomy is coined by 2 words ‘folks’ and ‘taxonomy’. ‘Taxonomy’ is from the Greek ‘taxis’ and ‘nomos’ which respectively mean ‘classify’ and ‘manage’. Folksonomy can be interpreted as ‘community classification management’.

2. What are Tags used for?

2.1. Searching

Tagging allows searching. Internet users can follow the link from a tag to retrieve all information associated to that tag.

2.2. Tag vs. Category

Categories allow classification. Tags also allow classification. How are they different?

For example, you write an article about:

“web design for web 2.0, exploiting glossy design style, with images created by Adobe Photoshop”

that article can be put under 2 categories: ‘Design’, ‘Photoshop’. Because these may be the mainstream of your website. The article can be assigned with tags like: ‘web-2.0′, ‘glossy’, ‘images’, ‘Adobe’, ‘web’, ‘web-design’, ‘Design’, ‘Photoshop’

• Categories are more structurized and static | Tags are more liberal and continually added
• Categories can have unique names | Tags need to be popular and used by many
• Categories can have long names | Tags should have less than 3 words
• Posts are usually in one to four categories | A single post can list many more tags (one Flickr photo is allow to contain 70 tags)
• Categories are not tags | Tags can be used to replace categories
• Categories define the mainstream of the website | Tags define the information in each item
• Categories help visitors to get an idea what the website is about | Tags help visitors to find different items

2.3. Drawback

Inconsistency among authors

• Different people may use different terms to identify one object.
  Example: some use ‘football’ and some use ’soccer’ to refer to one kind of sport. ‘lumber’ and ‘timber’ is another example
• Plural and singular
  Example: ‘dog’ and ‘dogs’ are two different tags
• Polysemy - words which have many meanings
  Example: ‘table’ can be a thing in the dining room or on the computer screen
• Synonyms
  Example: television and TV

Inconsistency among items of one author

• One person, at different times may give different tags to one object. For example, Bob wrote about a TV show and tagged it ‘television’. The day after, he wrote about another one and tagged it ‘tv’. Yet another day, he tagged his next post ‘TV show’.
• Unpredictability: when one adds a new tag, she may discover that many previous posts may also be associated with that tag. Editing back can be a pain.

3. Giving smart Tags

3.1. Giving smart tags can do 3 things

1. Boost visitors’ navigation: with commonly found tags, visitors save time to find the information they expect
2. Push your wiki(search_engine) pagerank: when your tags match what internet users type in their wiki(search_engine), the possibility that your page appears on top results is higher
3. Save time for regressive tag addition: when you predict a collection of tags you’re going to use, it will save time for you to add tags to previously posted entries

3.2. How to give smart tags

…or more accurately, find smart tags to give

1. Compare the tags you’re planning to use to see which is more popular. This can be done by searching each keyword with Google to record the number of results returned. More efficiently, there are utilities that enable this: Go Rank
2. Study how people tag by visiting popular tagging folksonomy

   

   • del.icio.us
   • Flickr
   • wordpress
   • Xanga Tags
   • Technorati

4. The ‘other’ Tags

Tag cloud inspiration

Ideas are expressed based on the presentation of a tag cloud depiction

Mind Map

Fun Web 2.0 Logo Cloud

The outdoor tag game

Tag is a playground game that usually involves two or more players attempting to “tag” other players by touching them with their hands. It may be made more complex with various rule modifications.

The self-writing tag game

Anyone who is tagged by a friend is to write a number of truths about her/himself, then continue to tag other friends.

The secret tag game

Anyone who is tagged needs to tag three other friends before s/he can read the “secret message” left by the tagger.

Read more here

Reference

Lorelle on Wordpress