Anderson Report

Link: http://www.tobyandmg.com/filingcabinet/listview.php

It must be exam time at SMBC. I can tell this because many students are going to my online file storage system Filing Cabinet to download exam study papers. The reason I can tell this is what is happening is because everytime someone makes an account in the system I get an email. Also I notice that people are stumbling upon this blog in their search for the study papers (I hope this entry serves to help redirect them)

Either lots of students are keen to add files to my collection or they are not aware that it's actually not necessary to create an account to download public files such as the exam study papers. I have a strong feeling that the latter is the case. I really should make it more clear on the site.

Though the majority of files in Filing Cabinet are study papers for SMBC exams, there are some other tid bits, and I've been meaning to upload a lot of other resources, but haven't got round to it yet. The actual Filing Cabinet web service is still very much unfinished. If I ever have time I'll finish it, then sell it to Google for $$$ :-)

Filing Cabinet came about as a result of a 3 frustrations for me:

1. We collect a lot of resources in paper form - things like handouts, sermon notes, Bible studies, etc. People put the effort in to prepare them, so we don't want to throw them out then later have to put in that same effort when we need to provide something similar. As a result our filing cabinets at home go full and our bedroom floor was going the same way.
2. There's many system for filing files in folders, but none that actually work. Invariable most of you files will belong in more than one folder. E.g. a children's talk on how Daniel relied on prayer and it paid off for him. Do I file it under 'Prayer' or 'Daniel (OT)' or 'Children's resources' (we had a folder for each of these)?
3. No only did we have all these paper resources, but also lots of digital resources collected over many years, but noone had access to them except us, and we weren't making very good use of them, partly because they weren't filed very well (see frustration 1 and 2)

Filing Cabinet solves these issues in a number of ways. Firstly digital storage is less space-restricted than physical storage. Secondly files in Filing Cabinet are not stored in folders, but instead are tagged with labels. One file can have as many labels as you like, thereby eliminating frustration number 2. If I want find resources to prepare a study on Daniel I just need to apply the filter "Daniel" and all files with that tag will be presented to me. Thirdly, anyone with an Internet connection and a web browser (yes that's you) can access and make use of all these resources for free.

Also the code is open, so if you want to make improvements or set up your own Filing Cabinet feel free.

One thing you can find on Filing Cabinet is an essay about how the Internet affects languages around the world. I submitted it last week to finish off my sociolinguistics subject here at EQUIP. The Wordle is here:

I think that a lot more of Africa will be joining the online world over the next decade. That should be interesting in a linguistic sense.