Marc Stein is the co-founder of tag2find. They are based in Linz, Upper Austria. Marc studied Software Engineering for Medicine in Hagenberg. It gives me great pleasure to bring to you Web 2.0 startups like tag2find that are making this happen outside of the United States.

For the benefit of our readers who don't know about tags, can you give us a crash course on how tags can be used to simplify the information retrieval process?

There are three key points to note about tags. Tags save you time, tags make the organization of files simpler, and tags help you to avoid troubles.

By writing three, four, or maybe five tags per file tag2find will help you save time with faster searching than through file saving and desktop browsing for that file. With tag2find, you can simply forget about the hierarchical structure of traditional desktop organization.

Tagging is a much more simple way of organizing your data compared to traditional hierarchical folder systems. In that, you will never need to restructure your desktop organization if your priorities change or if company structures change. A tagged file is always at the right spot as its “position” is defined by its content and the tags used and not by being put in a certain folder.

And by avoiding troubles, I am referring to finding old files can be an adventure, especially if other users are involved. In hierarchical systems, you have to know the specific structure of the desktop to efficiently search files. In a tagging environment, you do not have to think about structures. And your colleagues will love you for that.

Granted there is still a large population of people that do not know about the power of tags, how is tag2find going about educating the people about the usefulness of tag-based searching?

We plan to always have a free version of tag2find for home-users. We are inviting users to be part of our project, listen to their feedback, and improve tag2find accordingly. The best way to understand the power of tagging is by using it and when users recognize the advantages of tagging compared to the classical folder structure, more people will begin to use it. Currently, we are receiving ideas from all over the world and at this stage we would like to thank the users for their support. We think both worlds are a great benefit for all “taggers.”

What are some of the challenges that Tag2Find faces in developing an entirely web-based version as opposed to a downloadable version?

tag2find concentrates on the desktop where we see a great potential for tagging. On the internet, there are already great tools to tag your information and we would like to build a bridge between the desktop world and the internet world. Therefore, we are focused on a downloadable version for the tagging community.

How are you addressing the problem with tags currently?

A problem we are facing is that users are used to organize their information in folder structures. But in that case we would say - don't hesitate to experiment with new methods of organizing your world. Tags are free as your mind. Just tag it as you think about it. You can easily rearrange things later. Free your mind and your information. The beauty of tags is that they will always grow and develop with you. They will continuously adapt to your way of thinking. And tag2find tries its best to offer you the tools to quickly and easily apply your associations and thinking patterns to your information.

Using tags on your home system is only the beginning of tagging. We are already working on a network-based version which will also include external devices. This will support users by organizing their distributed information as well as work within teams.

Message to Leave with:

“We will be on a trip in California in May 2007 and we would like to grab the opportunity to meet tagging experts to get feedback on tag2find, exchange experiences and points of view. If you are interested, do not hesitate to contact us.”