Desktop Organizer software applications are applications that automatically create useful organizational structures from desktop content from heterogeneous types of content including email, files, contacts, companies, RSS news feeds, photos, music and chat sessions. The organization is based on a combination of automated scanning of
metadataMetadata is "data about data", of any sort in any media. Metadata is text, voice, or image that describes what the audience wants or needs to see or experience. The audience could be a person, group, or software program...
similar to
data miningData mining is the process of extracting patterns from data. As more data are gathered, with the amount of data doubling every three years, data mining is becoming an increasingly important tool to transform these data into information...
and manual tagging of content. The metadata stored in applications is correlated based on a structure for the data type handled by the organizer tool.
Desktop Organizer software applications are applications that automatically create useful organizational structures from desktop content from heterogeneous types of content including email, files, contacts, companies, RSS news feeds, photos, music and chat sessions. The organization is based on a combination of automated scanning of
metadataMetadata is "data about data", of any sort in any media. Metadata is text, voice, or image that describes what the audience wants or needs to see or experience. The audience could be a person, group, or software program...
similar to
data miningData mining is the process of extracting patterns from data. As more data are gathered, with the amount of data doubling every three years, data mining is becoming an increasingly important tool to transform these data into information...
and manual tagging of content. The metadata stored in applications is correlated based on a structure for the data type handled by the organizer tool. For example the email address of a sender of an email allows the email to be filed in a
virtual folderIn computing, a virtual folder generally denotes an organizing principle for files that is not dependent on location in a hierarchical directory tree...
for the author and company the author works for or a music file is filed by the musician and album label. The resulting visualization simplifies use of desktop content to navigate, search, and use related information stored on the desktop computer. The data in desktop organizer tools is normally stored in a
databaseA database is an integrated collection of logically related records or files consolidated into a common pool that provides data for one or more multiple uses....
rather than the computer's
file systemIn computing, a file system is a method for storing and organizing computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them...
in order to produce virtual folders where the same item can appear in multiple folders to the user based on its relationship to the folder.
Desktop organizers are related to
desktop searchDesktop search is the name for the field of search tools which search the contents of a user's own computer files, rather than searching the Internet...
because both sets of tools allow users to locate desktop resources. The primary differences between the two are that desktop organizers perform post-search functionality related to the primary purpose of the organizer, offer manual
taxonomyTaxonomy is the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek , taxis and , nomos...
creation and tagging by the desktop user, and help gather additional related resources for taxonomy or related content from Internet resources.
Communications Organizers
Organization tools of contacts and correspondences involve the tracking and management of information stored in multiple communications tools. Due to the rise of computers for use in communications including email, voIP applications like
SkypeSkype is a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and, in some countries, to free-of-charge numbers, are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee...
,
chat-Conversation :* Casual conversation* Online chat in an internet chat room or instant messaging system* Synchronous conferencing is the formal term for online chat technology* Bluechat with bluetooth devices* SMS chat with mobil-Geography:...
,
web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
s,
blogA blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order...
s,
RSSRSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
and
CRMCustomer relationship management are methods that companies use to interact with customers. The methods include employee training and special purpose CRM software...
content relating to companies and contacts is often spread across multiple applications. Desktop communications organizers collect and correlate information stored in these applications.
Common features of communications organizers include:
- Connectivity through scanners and listeners to communications tools including email, chat, bookmarks, and VoIP
- RSS newsfeed subscriptions
- Filing of desktop files and documents
- Connectivity to desktop search
Desktop search is the name for the field of search tools which search the contents of a user's own computer files, rather than searching the Internet...
or desktop search capabilities
- Virtual folders to locate the same item in multiple locations
- Workflow utilities to mark items for follow-up and annotate items
Picture Organizers
Also referred to as
image viewerAn image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
s, picture organizers provide utilities to file and view pictures in folders and to tag pictures with metadata for future use. Picture organizers may also integrate with
photo sharingPhoto sharing is the publishing or transfer of a user's digital photos online, thus enabling the user to share them with others . This functionality is provided through both websites and applications that facilitate the upload and display of images...
sites that also organize pictures but through a
social networkA social network is a social structure made of individuals called "nodes," which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social network analysis...
.
There are two classes of picture organizers:
- Automatic picture organizers. These are software packages that read data present in digital pictures and use this data to automatically create an organization structure. Each digital picture contains information about the date when the picture was taken. It is this piece of information that serves as the basis for automatic picture organization. The user usually has little or no control over the automatically created organization structure. Some tools create this structure on the hard drive (physical structure), while other tools create a virtual structure (it exists only within the tool).
- Manual picture organizers. This kind of software provides a direct view of the folders present on a user's hard disk. Sometimes referred to as image viewer
An image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
s, they only allow the user to see the pictures but do not provide any automatic organization features. They give maximum flexibility to a user and show exactly what the user has created on his hard drive. While they provide maximum flexibility, manual organizers rely on the user to have his/her own method to organize their pictures. Currently there are two main methods for organizing pictures manually: tag and folder based methods. While not mutually exclusive, these methods are different in their methodology, outcome and purpose.
Presently, many commercial image organization software offer both automatic and manual picture organization features. A
comparison of image viewersThis article presents a comparison of image viewers and image organizers which can be used for image viewing.-General information:Note 1: Adobe Bridge comes free with the Adobe Creative Suite CS2, Adobe Production Studio and Photoshop Elements 4 for Mac OS X...
reveals that many freely available software packages are available that offer most of the organization features available in commercial software. However, not all
image viewerAn image viewer or image browser is a computer program that can display stored graphical image; it can often handle various graphics file formats...
s offer organizational tools. Popular picture organizers include
GoogleGoogle Inc. is an American public corporation, earning revenue from advertising related to its Internet search, e-mail, online mapping, office productivity, social networking, and video sharing services as well as selling advertising-free versions of the same technologies. Google has also...
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PicasaPicasa is a software application for organizing and editing digital photos, originally created by Idealab and owned by Google since 2004. "Picasa" is a blend of the name of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, the phrase mi casa for "my house" and "pic" for pictures...
,
Adobe SystemsAdobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. The company has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more-recent foray towards rich Internet application software...
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ElementsAdobe Photoshop Elements is the consumer version of the Adobe Photoshop raster image editing product, targeted at hobbyist group of users and hence sold at a fraction of the cost of the professional product. It contains most of the features of the professional version but with fewer and simpler...
,
AppleApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
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iPhotoiPhoto is a software application made by Apple Inc. exclusively for their Mac OS X operating system. The first version of iPhoto was released in 2002. It is part of the iLife suite of applications and comes bundled with every new Macintosh computer. iPhoto can import, organize, edit, print and...
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NovellNovell, Inc. is a global software corporation based in the United States specializing in enterprise operating systems such as SUSE Linux Enterprise and Novell NetWare; identity, security and systems management solutions; and collaboration solutions. Together with WordPerfect, Novell was...
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F-spotF-Spot is an image organizer, designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop.- Features :F-Spot aims to have an interface that is simple to use, yet still supports advanced features such as tagging images and displaying and exporting Exif and XMP metadata.All major photographic...
and
DigiKamDigiKam is an image organizer and editor using the KDE desktop environment technologies. It runs on most known desktop environments and window managers if needed libraries are installed. It supports all major image file formats, and can organize collections of photographs in directory-based albums,...
.
Common key organizational tools provided by picture organizers are:
- Organization by date or date range
- Tagging of pictures with attributes including location, people, and
- Storing the same picture in multiple virtual folders
- Rating of pictures
Music Organizers
Music contains unique attributes such as artist, album, genre, era, and song title used to organize the songs. The desktop organization of music is primarily embedded into
audio playerAn audio player is a kind of media player for playing back digital audio, including optical discs such as CDs, SACDs, DVD-Audio, HDCD, audio files and streaming audio....
s and media players like Amarok,
RhythmboxRhythmbox is an audio player that plays and helps organize digital music. Originally inspired by Apple's iTunes, it is free software, designed to work well under the GNOME Desktop using the GStreamer media framework.- Music playback :...
,
BansheeBanshee is an open-source media player, originally called Sonance until 2005. Built upon Mono and Gtk#, it uses the Helix and GStreamer multimedia platform for encoding and decoding various media formats, including Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and FLAC. Banshee can play and import audio CDs and supports many...
,
MediamonkeyMediaMonkey is an award winning digital media player and media library application developed by Ventis Media Inc., for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows operating systems. By using plugins, it can be extended to handle video and other media formats as well.MediaMonkey is available...
,
SongbirdSongbird is a free and open source software audio player and web browser founded by Rob Lord and developed by Pioneers of the Inevitable , with a stated mission "to incubate Songbird, the first Web player, to catalyze and champion a diverse, open Media Web."Songbird employs Mozilla's XULRunner...
,
AppleApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and computer software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone...
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iTunesiTunes is a proprietary digital media player application, used for playing and organizing digital music and video files. The program is also an interface to manage the contents on Apple's popular iPod digital media players as well as the iPhone...
and
MicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is a multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices...
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Windows Media PlayerWindows Media Player is a digital media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
. Organization is used to create playlists, or to organize the media collection into a folder hierarchy, by specific artists, albums, or genres.
By connecting the audio players to databases of tagged music to compare a collection with a professionally organized and tagged collection of music, MP3 collections can be enhanced with metadata corrections to support the organization process when metadata is not complete in the original items.