Folders are dead? - Issue #002
Let's hear the argument of those who think so.
You’re reading issue #002 of the TK brief, the newsletter brought to you by the TK team. Of course, the list is zero-indexed, so post #000 was the TK brief debut! Please subscribe below and read the archive here.
Newsletter format / Table of contents (TOC):
Today’s tech word
Musings on tech
More on REST
Are folders dead?
From TK community
Today’s tech word: REST
To rest means to cease action or motion: refrain from labour (US: labor) or exertion.
However, the REST I’m highlighting today is Representational State Transfer, a standard for communication between systems or components on the web. Web services and APIs (Application Program Interfaces) which follow the REST architectural style are known as RESTful web services and APIs, hence the popular term REST API.
Back to the non-IT meaning of rest, don’t be like my overzealous seniors in high school who would say, “Sleep is for the weak. I will sleep when I die”. While maximizing your awake time differentiates the effective and the non-effective - take time to rest and have enough sleep (says the person penning this down in the wee hours of the morning 😅)
Musings on tech
More on REST
NB: REST (today’s tech word 👆) succeeded SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture).
It’s incredible how one dissertation paper by Roy Fielding and his colleagues has come so far. He had one bold objective: to standardise the web by creating a standard such that any server can talk to any other server worldwide. Let’s be encouraged that we also can impact our generation as he did.
The critical point to consider; is that collaboration is your friend. He had help from over 500 developers to model it and was taken up by Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to see it to its contemporary significance.
Totally aside, I’m aware that I’m pushing the rest word here a bit too much…
Did you know that you can get a .rest domain name?
While .rest was intended for restaurants, one indie-hacker decided to register insomnia.rest for a collaborative API Client and Design Tool he was building. I just like the wordplay here: insomnia + rest … get it? 😉
Btw, an indie hacker is an individual who builds and launches a business or product independently, without the support of a large organization or team. You can read more about the founding story here. PS: I’m a fan of insomnia, mainly because of the indie hacking roots. It’s also a REST and GraphQL client and is considered an underdog compared to Postman.
Are folders dead?
In last week’s issue, I discussed the idea of Apps being dead. I promise I’m not on a streak of #dead. I’m merely noticing the shifts in the tech landscape.
When I think of folders, I see organization… structure. So if no folders are involved does that mean disorder?
I think the argument for folders, both physically and digitally, is straightforward. During my school days, mostly in university, when I first owned a personal computer, thanks to my Dad and Mum, we structured assignments, notes etc., in document folders. That translated to the cloud, too; Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox etc.
However, with the onset of a generation that generates loads of data daily more indirectly than directly, you’ll see the concept of folders disappear. How?
Behold the power of the # hash-tag
(OR number sign OR pound sign OR hash sign)Just like tweets are grouped in tags, for example, #TKQuiz, folders are obfuscated so much that the end users use tags for organization. For example, note-taking apps like Obsidian and Roam Research advocate using tags for organization.
Obsidian snippet of my day's notes showing the use of tags Tags are everywhere and can go by different names:
Tags in macOS Finder
Labels in Gmail
Behold the power of the search (with autocomplete)
Students nowadays tend to use many Google docs or other online or offline documents in a heap and rely on searching to get to a particular one. Search and autocomplete makes it almost unnecessary for folders to existing. Title the document with a meaningful title, and you’re covered!
Google Drive snippet showing search Behold the power of links, backlinks and deep links
Links and backlinks connect to documents or pages, while deep links connect to specific locations in a document or page.
A great use case is a graph view of linked documents which works so well for the networked mind.
Obsidian snippet of graph view
From TK community
Opportunities:
Events:
Africa's Talking Women in Tech - Open Hackathon
Jan 25, 2023, at 8:30 AM (UTC + 3)AI Kenya Expert Talk: Breaking into MLOps with Kevin Karobia
January 26, 2023, at 7:00 PM (UTC + 3)
#TKQuiz question from last week:
The weekly TKQuiz takes place on Thursdays at 9 PM UTC+3 at https://techkln.org/quiz
Add TKQuiz to your calendar here.
Question: What is the name of the Nigerian entrepreneur who is the first African to be the co-founder of two startups worth over $1 billion dollars?
Answer: Iyinoluwa Aboyeji.
Interesting comments to this tweet by AfricaFactsZone
Listen in to this great interview of Iyinoluwa (E) by Peace Itimi
Et al. (Others)
This past week, some news has hit my feed that’s to be celebrated.
Theme: Startups making leaps
Nadayar Enegesi (the first option in the choices above), the CEO and Co-Founder of Eden Life Inc, in a video, shared 2022 wins, including the completion of their food production facility and what 2023 has in store. Big up Nad, Prosper, Orafiri, et al.
Listen in to this great interview of Nad by Peace ItimiKwara raises more capital and acquires software company, IRNET Coop. Big up Cynthia, David, Austin et al.
Listen to Kwara’s demo in Norrsken Impact Accelerator here.
That’s it for now. Comment below or DM to give feedback. I hope the series is of value. Share if you can.
Signing off,
StanMD - Editor: TechKln blog and TechKln newsletter
For the TechKln team.
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