Cadweb say “Death to folders!”

There are new developments afoot at Cadweb. Its latest news release quotes extensively from an Economist Technology Quarterly article which predicts the end of the nested directories of folders and files familiar to many computer users. Instead, it seems we will have built-in powerful search engines, ‘tagged files’ and ‘smart folders’. With version 7 of Cadweb’ extranet apparently now due for release in January 2006, does this mean that Cadweb is finally going to move away from a folders-based extranet system? Or is it simply trying put a positive spin on a system that will still essentially be folders-based?

To be honest, I didn’t find much new in the Economist article (usefully, colleague Steve Cooper had a hard copy of the 17 September Quarterly; online, you need to pay for the premium content – dated 15 September). For instance, relational database-based construction collaboration systems such as BIW’s have been using file ‘attributes’ or ‘tags’ to provide additional ways to search and index files for some years now.