Thinking it through, I realized this category-based naming convention just doesn't align with my basic mental construct of what software is. Organizing items by category makes sense in libraries and bookstores, on restaurant menus, in music and movies—but not apps. An app isn't consumable media. An app is a tool. It helps you perform an action, to do something. Modern programming languages and APIs are verb-based (think MyObject->setName() and and HTTP's GET and POST), and the user interface should be, too. That's when I settled on a verb-based folder system.

Hazel watches whatever folders you tell it to, automatically organizing your files according to the rules you create. It features a rule interface similar to that of Apple Mail so you should feel right at home. Have Hazel move files around based on name,

Among Johnson's recommendations is to update the the 17th-century practice of keeping a commonplace book. Back then, the books were akin to intellectual journals: You carried them around and copied down interesting passages, quotations and insights you came across in your daily travels. This, Johnson argues, provided a way to let slow hunches build over time. Keeping your old hunches and provocations accessible allowed you to complete them with new information and insights later, a crucial channel for innovation.

It seems that many of us otherwise computer-oriented geeks have a surprising and earth-unfriendly confession to make: we love paper. Notwithstanding the entirely digital nature of my own trade, for example, I'll freely admit that there is really nothing quite like the smooth glide of a mechanical pencil over a big sheet of crisp, white office paper to facilitate good writing and thinking.

When you love Dropbox like we do, you start syncing more and more stuff. The more stuff you sync, the harder it is to organize. Here's a simple way to sort quickly and stay organized across multiple computers, Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Last week we discussed how to organize your paperwork with a filing cabinet, some manila folders and a label maker. Today we're going to tackle that virtual yellow folder on your computer called "My Documents."

Cluetrain Manifesto coauthor David Weinberger has just released a new book and it's a good one. Titled Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Weinberger looks closely at how computers and the internet have have fundamentally altered how we organize and use information. Traditionally, because information was bound by atoms (usually paper), everything must go someplace but it can only go one place. But now through things such as tagging, contextual search, and social networks, we can, as he says, hang leaves on more that one branch (eg. Amazon's listing of books in multiple categories) and thus miscellany becomes an asset, not an incomprehensible mess.

An Everything Bucket, since you’re probably wondering, is what I call applications that encourage the user to throw anything and everything into them. They’re virtual scrapbooks, applying a lightweight organization system to (often) unrelated data of varying types. These applications typically employ a proprietary database, or at best, build atop the SQLite database technology that Apple ships with Mac OS X. They usually default to storing information in Rich Text Format (RTF) or Portable Document Format (PDF). They are Not A Good Idea.

Screw it: what if academia/colleges were organized more like Star Fleet? i.e. young bucks do research, old hands teach? http://j.mp/rjJg6
– Tim Carmody (tcarmody) http://twitter.com/tcarmody/statuses/20079826065

This organisation chart from Disney is from 1943 and yet it seems light years ahead from every Visio-produced chart in the boring corporate-sphere. So fixated on the customer were Disney, the org chart represents the process from idea to shipping, featuring all the people in the company that could have an input, rather than a typical hierarchical view. Amazing.