Category: Access to Info

It is Getting Personal

May 31, 2005

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Calendar, Devices, Folksonomy, Mobile, Personal Info, PKM

One of the main concepts around the Personal InfoCloud is access to our information when we need it. It has become relatively easy to find digital information on the internet these days, but keeping track of information for ourselves is a huge problem. Not only do we have the problem of tracking our information on…
Focus of Startups

Apr 14, 2005

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Information Architecture, Personal Info, Social Software, Technology, User Experience

David Weingberger discusses Meet-up new charge to use plan and wonders about free competition. David, and those commenting on the posting, offer alternatives to Meetup. I am not so concerned with Meetup charging money as I am the changes that have come to Meetup in the past year, some have been very good. I have…
Good Bye to the User?

Apr 12, 2005

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Accessibility, Devices, Location, Mobile, Personal Info, Portability, User Experience

One of the side-effects of my focus on the Personal InfoCloud has been finding putting the focus on the person gets to more options than focussing on the “user”. When doing user interviews for existing systems and sites, we are interviewing people. These people we ask: What works for them; what is missing; What are…
SXSW Calendar the Personal Way

Mar 26, 2005

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Applications, Information Creation, Personal Info, Portability

I really enjoyed my short time at SXSW Interactive Festival this year. One of the things that helped me was their step to help people interested in SXSW to build their “own” calendar. Yes, they understood the people attending have a lot of offerings to consider and nobody wants to miss anything they really would…
Recent Speaking Engagements

Mar 10, 2005

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Conferences, Folksonomy, Information Architecture, Location, Mobile, Personal Info, Portability

I have posted the last three presentations I have given in the last five days. The presentations and a little about each presentation are available as follows: IA for the Personal InfoCloud from the IA Summit, Folksonomy: A Wrapper’s Delight a panel at the IA Summit, and The Blog as Personal Knowledge Managment from a…
Explaining and Showing Broad and Narrow Folksonomies

Feb 21, 2005

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Folksonomy, Information Creation, Social Software, Web

I have been explaining the broad and narrow folksonomy in e-mail and in comments on others sites, as well as in the media (Wired News). There has still been some confusion, which is very understandable as it is a different concept that goes beyond a simple understanding of tagging. I have put together a couple…
Stitching our Lives Together

Apr 11, 2004

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Community, Information Creation, Mobile, Personal Info, Portability, Social Software, Standards, Syndication, User Experience

Not long ago Jeffrey Veen posted about Will you be my friend, which brought up some needs to better stitch together our own disperse information. An excellent example is: For example, when I plan a trip, I try to find out who else will be around so I have people to hang out with. So…
Upcoming.org and Others Understand Ease of Information Reuse

Mar 21, 2004

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Personal Info, Standards, User Experience

Some sites are getting that helping the user with date related information by providing the information in a standard format that allows the user to drop the information into their calendar tool. One such site is Upcoming.org’s iCal Integration. The I recently ran across a similar tool, but for vCal, on the Hilton site. When…
Tools to Manage Information On Your Personal Hard Drive

Mar 5, 2004

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Applications, Content Mangement, Information Creation, Reference, Ubiquitous Computing

I have been battling the management of information on my personal hard drive on my TiBook. This is one element in my Personal Info Cloud (a self-organized information system that is managed by me and is there to assist me when I need information). I have been finding that my organizational structure is lacking on…
Keeping Found Things Found

Jan 23, 2004

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by

Thomas Vander Wal

in Access to Info, Applications, Devices, Personal Info, Research, Web

This weeks New York Times Circuits article: Now Where Was I? New Ways to Revisit Web Sites, which covers the Keep Found Things Found research project at University of Washington. The program is summarized: The classic problem of information retrieval, simply put, is to help people find the relatively small number of things they are…