Step Outside Your Own Head (includes insights into DHH, Gmail, and Quicksilver)

I keep get the feeling that we (technical folks) are doing a great job of solving our problems while most of the non-technical folks get left behind.

It seems as though if we better understood the world from their perspective, there's a lot of value yet to be create by us for the needs of non-technical people. Generally speaking, creating value is profitable.

Good article.

Folders are a good tool, but once you create more than one level in your hierarchy, you are lost and you end up searching documents by text patterns. Still, a single level folder system works, especially if all folders somehow fit your screen so that you can see all at once.

Leaving only search/tagging is an extreme and I think developers will eventually come to the idea of one-level folder system combined with optional tagging (i.e. you tag only if a word can't be found in the document but you feel it's relevant).

His point about cross-polination of fields leading to innovation is also made extensively by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his two books "Flow" and "Creativity". I'd highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in the process of creativity (he looks at it in a number of different fields), or who is interested in human behavior (especially one's own).

I have never hated any feature so much as tagging...

Alternatives?

Arg, my roommate shows up yet again on news.YC yet again :P