Metadata Blues
Why can’t I associate a caption with a .jpg or .png file and have it recognized (and, if appropriate, displayed) no matter what file browser, photo manager, photo editor, layout program or web publishing platform I use and no matter which operating system I use?
How come we still don’t have a standard for e-books and web pages that represents a page-like unit of text so that it’s easier to reference where one is in an electronic text no matter the font size?
Why doesn’t WordPress auto-de-dupe the tags that are only off by a misspelling, shortening of a word, or the use of hyphens?
Why doesn’t every e-mail program (web or client-based) have an option where you can add tags to and file to a folder to an e-mail you are sending right before you hit the send button?
Why are tables of contents in e-books so lame?
Why do content management systems still spit out incomprehensible URLs?
How come stories on newspaper websites don’t thread over time? (or at least: why are the “suggest” or “related” features on newspaper websites so often incomplete or irrelevant?)
How come you don’t get both a “last saved” and a “last edited” timestamp that’s easy to view on all OSes with files of any type that displays in the same way across operating systems?
Why don’t people add metadata to PDF files, like ever? (even people who should know better)
I don’t know for sure. Perhaps it’s that technology, especially search, makes allowances for us. Perhaps it’s that there are no consequences to the lack of speed and piling up of un-indexed or un-easily-searched image files and documents and e-mails. Perhaps metadata doesn’t have the right branding*. Perhaps we simply don’t expect the same sense and consistency across products that we do from, say, prescriptions or ingredients labels. We just don’t have the same expectations for electronic files that we have for physical objects.
Of course, when augmented reality — when the internet of things — really takes off, well, we’re going to be singing the blues with much more feeling if everyday users (and the companies that sell to them) don’t embrace the smart use of metadata.
*Maybe we need a metadata button (like an rss button or the x that means “close this window”) that displays metadata when clicked
Wm’s Twitter stream- morriswm: Whole Foods on one end of Hennepin, Lund's on the other. Does that mean we should expect a Trader Joe's to go into Block E? February 8, 2012
- morriswm: RT @BusinessMN: Whole Foods commits to old Jaguar dealership site in Minneapolis http://t.co/QfwcbTF1 February 8, 2012
- morriswm: RT @fakebaldur: This: http://t.co/NTaIPRJx “Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time” February 5, 2012
- morriswm: RT @Nobilis: I figured out why I don't like Tumblr: There's no room for conversation. It's a place to put up billboards. February 2, 2012
- morriswm: @ImaginaryZina @mel_leilani Yep. That's what I do. But I only do it on 1 out of the 4 times that I would normally click. So. Lost pageviews. February 2, 2012
- morriswm: @HeidiTighe 3/4 of the time I will just forget it. The other 1/4 I'll just Google the headline. February 2, 2012
