The irrelevance of folders

It’s been a while since I read Wired. That made my latest trip to the site a pretty neat way to immerse myself in technogeek goodies for an hour or two. Here are a few of the goodies I came across.

• The folder is becoming irrelevant. Apple’s recent introduction of Spotlight is getting a lot of great attention, and Wired isn’t missing the point. Silicon Valley’s frog design makes a good case that the Finder is on the way out in favor of powerful, instantaneous information retrieval. Personally I’d like to see another innovation or two, but I agree — simple hierarchical storage is inadequate. Personally, I favor systems that don’t force categorization and “place” on information. Quite often information can’t live in one place. The gelfrog’s knowledge tree and “brain slider” look like a step in the right direction. Our brain works well with three-dimensional, spacial navigation concepts — now that the hardware can support it we’ll start to see real-world products like this.
• How would you like a super computer the size of a postage stamp? Memory that makes hard drive storage obsolete? It may well be on the way. The University of Arizona has discovered how to use quantum mechanics to build single-molecule transistors. This represents a potential size reduction from thousands, even millions, of electrons to a single electron. That’s on the same order as moving from vacuum tubes to electronics. It’s years from real-world applications, but quite intriguing nonetheless. I’m sure we’ll be seeing gelfrogs when it hits the streets.
• Podcasting is catching on fast, with Rush Limbaugh offering his shows for $50 a year, according to Wired. It looks like the radio stations are hot on the trail of how to turn a profit here. Many thanks to Wired for introducing me to my word of the day: bloviate.

And just on a totally unrelated topic, if you like a window into what your system is doing check out the Systat widget. Nicely done and it doesn’t seem to use much system resource. I suppose, now that someone has beaten me to it, I’ll stop working on my own take on this. I hate it when that happens…