Asked Jeeves announced the newest version of bottled their newest version of My Jeeves with a couple of new features (sort of) packing into the vial of Jeeves juice.
The biggest thing most folks are mentioning is the tagging feature. The Jeeves blog, Ask.com.blog, they discuss the reasoning behind the use of tags in the new release.
Having sat through half a dozen usability tests for MyJeeves, however, it is pretty clear to me that foldering is a more intuitive way of organizing, especially to those new to the exciting world of personal information management. Foldering may be clunky, but it’s how people think – at least that’s how they think today. Maybe it’s because we are naturally wired that way, or maybe it’s because most of us grew up with Windows. What is certain is that after a while, most users end up with an unmanageable folder hierarchy and start losing track of where things are.
They bring a real interesting point. People will have to rework their thinking in order for tagging to catch on further and honestly, since Windows is still the dominant force, Microsoft will have to start making those changes in either updates to XP, which is unlikely, or in Vista. They seem to dictate terms in much of this business.
Gary Price at SearchEngineWatch commented the Jeeves had inserted tags several months ago but perhaps this was just the official version of it.
The other addition was photo capacity. This should be useful to many users and give it a little more broader appeal in the never ending quest of market share.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
