This is just a quick (and non-exhaustive) list of tools that I use to tag various system objects:
Stay tuned, I will review these and other applications in the coming weeks.
Many of the tools that I use everyday are based on tags, or integrate tags in some ways. In the upcoming posts, I plan to review and describe how these tools are part of my workflow, so it is a good idea to explain why a tag-based system is superior to a classical tree structure.
The goal of an organization system, be it based on a hierarchical structure of folders, or on a flat structure of tags, is to help us finding specific objects in our information system, quickly and effectively. A beautiful organization system must not become an end in itself. It is a mean to access our information.
The best way to prove that tags are superior to folders is probably an example. Let’s suppose that we work with different Companies, some of which are Clients, while some are Partners (for simplicity, let’s assume that a client cannot be also a partner). With Clients, we can have documents relative to three activities: Pre-sales, Training, and Support. With Partners, we can only have documents related to Pre-sales and Training.
No matter how we organize our folder structure, some duplication is unavoidable. In this first example we start from the company type: Client or Partner, and we drill down to the activities, which are replicated for each of the four companies:
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We can organize things differently, starting from the activities, but in this case we must replicate the companies within each activity:
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Things can get worse in case a document can be related to multiple companies, or multiple activities: this obliges us to replicate the document as well, not only the folders. We can try to find other creative solutions, like using links to the single instance of a document, but there is no clean way to manage this case with a hierarchical structure.
In most common cases, a tree structure brings information replication.
If wrongly categorized, finding an object in a tree structure is more difficult than in a flat structure.
Using tags instead of folders, no replication is necessary (neither of folders, nor of documents and other objects), as there are no hierarchical relationships among our attributes (company type, company, and activity). We can freely tag a document with whatever attribute we want to give it:
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Using tags is not so easy at the beginning, and requires some discipline; the biggest risk is to end up with hundreds of tags, many of which are duplicates of each other, with a slightly different spelling (i.e. travel vs traveling, partner vs partners, work vs Work). In this situation, tags are worthless, as they do not help to find the information.
Coming from a long experience with a classical hierarchical structures, it took me a long time to be able to use effectively to a tag-based system. Looking back, I do not regret having switched and I now use tags to organize everything: email messages, documents, photos, music, bookmarks, and whatever needs to be organized in some way.
Some tools allow us to define relationships among tags. While this is not necessary, it can help to tag objects more quickly. For example, if we can define that Singapore is part of Asia, whenever we use the tag “Singapore”, “Asia” will be automatically added.
You do have one, haven’t you? If you don’t, you might find what follows interesting. I will describe my own backup strategy, which is probably an overkill for most users’ needs, but will give you an idea of some available options and the corresponding “recovery time”. I mention the recovery time because for me it’s a key point in a backup strategy: how long will it take, in case of data loss, to get back to an acceptable working condition?
My strategy consists of three different backup techniques.
This is a complete backup of a machine, which offers very fast recovery and is easy to set up. If you use this strategy the way it was designed to work, you simply have to plug your backup hard disk to a new machine, or use it to replace a faulty hard drive, and you are up and running. To increase the security, I actually backup to an encrypted disk image (two of them in truth, swapped weekly). The advantage of using a disk image, besides securing your data, is the possibility to store multiple backups on the same disk, with no interference with other data which might be on the backup drive. I use a mirrored RAID for this. Obviously, you cannot boot from an encrypted disk image; you can, however, restore it onto a new hard drive and the result will be bootable. The application that I use for the backup is called SuperDuper!, and has the advantage of supporting incremental backups very well, therefore being fast.
I have set up a Time Machine backup as well, to benefit from the versioning of the files and the tight integration in the OS. To guarantee security, my Time Machine destination disk is fully encrypted using PGP WDE. Time Machine also guarantees a short recovery time (though not as short as a clone), allowing you to re-create quickly a bootable copy of the disk you backed up. The catch, when using PGP WDE, is that you can’t restore booting from a Leopard DVD: you need a recovery system with PGP installed (and a copy of your encryption key as well). I keep such a system on a USB thumb-drive.
The previous two solutions can be more than sufficient, especially if you implement them at different locations. If you want to add even more security, you can use an off-site backup solution. I have tested a couple of them a long time back, and selected CrashPlan. The program is now free and it allows you to backup virtually everywhere: external disks, remote machines (folks at CrashPlan suggest using friends’ machines), and CrashPlan own data vault.
Obviously, data are encrypted before leaving your machine, and nobody but you can access the backup. Two big advantages of this strategy: you files are backed up in real-time (i.e. every time a file is modified, it is sent over), and you can access your data from everywhere. Ever needed that important file you accidentally deleted or overwritten? The files are versioned as well, so you can get back to previous versions of your files. Downside of this solution is the offsite storage cost, and the bandwidth usage: I do not recommend backing up an entire system this way, but for important data it’s probably the best solution. Also, depending on where your data are stored, the recovery time may be extremely long.
Remember: better safe than sorry!
Since I still have two iPhones (a 3G and a 3GS) with almost identical content, I decided to compare the speed of some common operations: the boot time, and the launch time of some applications.
I have chosen some applications that I use very often: OmniFocus and Twittellator Pro, and some that are quite heavy. The results are self explanatory.
The last section of the video shows the available memory on the two phones (using iStat).
Apologies for the reflections on the 3GS screen, I don’t have an anti-glare screen protector on it.
When will somebody have a look into data roaming prices? The situation today is becoming quite difficult for people who travel regularly. I remember a couple of years ago, I used to tether my 3G phone without worries, especially while traveling abroad; the service worked well, and it wasn’t even billed. Now, since the introduction of more powerful mobile devices, the cost of data has become unbearable. Ironically, the application that I use most often on my iPhone is “System Preferences”, to check if I’m still within the boundaries of what I’m allowed to consume (a mere 40MB per month while abroad…). Even doing that, nobody is protected against a wrong report from some telcos around the world. I had a huge bill recently for data I did not consume, so I started taking screenshots of the iPhone “Usage” screen after each trip. Not a proof, but at least some elements to contest the bill in case of errors.
Let’s do a quick calculation, with figures from countries that I know well:
| Price | Comment | |
|---|---|---|
| Price of a 2GB/month contract in France | €50/month | Standard iPhone 3G contract |
| Price of 1MB while roaming in France | €12 | With a SingTel contract: SGD 24 (Singapore) |
| Price of 2GB while roaming in France with SingTel | €24,576 | 1GB = 1024MB |
Note: Prices are approximate
Does it sound fair to you that the cost of 2GB of traffic while roaming is roughly 500 times higher than the cost of the same amount of data for a domestic user?
The official reason for such outrageous prices, is the scarcity of the 3G bandwitdh. I could agree with that, but I don’t understand how roaming users can have a significant impact on a network. The number of foreigners visiting a country is small compared to domestic users, and only a small party of them are likely to make an intensive use of data.
Let’s face it, nobody would accept to download even a single email message given the current prices. I understand that telcos want to avoid people downloading movies or other big media files while roaming, but why don’t simply cap the use to a certain amount and price that reasonably? In the current situation one can have bills of tens of thausands euros simply by ignorance or inadvertence.
Let’s hope change will come soon.
