One of the things that's been on my list for a while is to update how I organize the content I create and consume. I'd like to better organize my blog posts, photos, bookmarks, news feeds, and music collection. So I'm taking some time to define a personal taxonomy. I will focus on developing better content tagging habits and hopefully find a few tools to help me do the job.

I expect the fruits of my labor will be:

• The ability to more quickly browse to and search for content
• The ability to mix and match content that I consume, like linking bookmarks to blog posts
• To better earmark action items
• To prepare for the predicted golden age of recommendation engines

My plan is to:

• Research taxonomy and tagging best practices and processes (see Related Links)
• Prioritize the content I'm going to organize
• Brainstorm how I want to organize each content type
• Finalize and document my personal taxonomy
• Find/develop tools to help manage my taxonomy
• Apply what I've learned to all content from this point forward
• Go back and update my data, when possible

Available Tools

The Mac applications that I've come across are geared specifically towards one type of content (i.e. music, bookmarks, desktop documents/email, blog tag management). I'm a bit disappointed by this and hope that something comes out of the Data Portability workgroup or Google's OpenSocial API.

Progress So Far

Last week I created tag bundles for my del.icio.us account. I then proceeded to prune redundant and unused tags and assigned what was left to the bundles. This has already proven useful since I was beginning to question the context of several of my tags. Now I just open up a bundle and I have context. I've also taken Marshall Kirkpatrick's and Ian Beck's recommendation of cross referencing RSS content and bookmarks by marking them with toread, toshare, and totag.

I'll add updates as they're available. Chime in with your tips, tricks, and any tools that make your tagging life easier.