How do you organize your Woodworking articles and pictures?

[Nate Secrist]

So - I have "collected" hundreds or thousands of cool woodworking tips, pics, plans, ideas and other neat stuff from all of you. As I read posts that sound interesting to me, I save the web pages as .html files in a Woodworking folder. I also save .jpg's of cool furniture, or shop ideas. I also have a Word .doc file that I keep woodworking tips and finishing tips in also. Some of the articles and plans I have downloaded are in .pdf file format.

I have managed to make sub-folders under my Woodworking directory to keep things organized, but I am wondering if there is some software available (other than Firefox and Windows Explorer) to make this a little easier.

Would like to know how all of you keep all these different types of files organized in one "view". I save off alot of cool .jpg's, but I can't seem to find a way to save the URL that the .jpg came from, so I can go back to it later, if I want to.

Any software out there that allows you to "tag" or label or .html files in a "collection". Hopefully this makes sense.

Any Ideas?

Thanks in Advance.

[Harry Hagan]

I "print" everything with PDFCreator, name it appropriately, and then file it away. That way there's no paper to deal with and it's readily accessible with a search on the computer. The PDF format also decreases memory storage requirements and enables me to email stuff.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

[glenn bradley]

I file articles in folders named after the author; Rogowski, Jewitt, etc. Pics by subject and sub-subject; Safety, Push Blocks or Workbench, Vise.

[Mike Henderson]

I file in folders named for the type of furniture or tool - cabinets, chests of drawers, chairs, etc. For tools, table saw, router, etc.

This is all electronic, of course. If I have an article in paper, I scan it and file it on my computer. I'd never find paper.

Mike

[Jeff Hallam]

I also use Harry's technique of creating PDF documents of the webpage or article. As far as organizing by folder etc.. you may be able to save some of that overhead with a good index program. Depending on your version of Windows you may have one built in. If you are on XP like me, you can use Google Desktop. Essentially you have the search abilities of Google, but on your own hard drive. For example, if I want to check for an article (in many possible formats) about a finger joint jig, I just google my hard drive and have instant results listed. It comes in very handy.

However, that won't help you with pictures. For that I use Picasa, its a free program that lets you add information to your photos including location, people, keywords, and captions. This is another Google product (honestly I have no affiliation with Google, but I do find myself using many of their free programs).

Good question though! I'm surprised I haven't seen other people ask this as we all accumulate more digital material alongside our piles of magazine subscriptions.

Jeff

[Jerome Hanby]

All of the PDF's I look at from FWW, I save in "My Documents" as fww_Whatever_The_Title_Was. I didn't originally start doing this to save the articles but because I noticed content disappearing. Now I save every PDF I look at there. Printing SMC stuff to a PDF and saving as smc_Thread_Name is something I might start doing. That would be a useful feature for SMC, mabe something to charge for (as in only for contributors), download a thread as a PDF. UBBSThread stuff I use has a feature something like that to receive new traffic as a digest...

Shopnotes, I have scans of all the issues stored in issue number named PDFs. I wrote a perl program to snag the table of content info and issue cover thumbnails off of their site and automatically generate html pages locally that link together with prev and next links. I turn all the TOC entries into links that fire up the particular PDF at the specified page. I've started scanning Woodsmith's but haven't retooled my snag program to get their information yet. Popular Woodworking and FWW are easy, you can just buy the disks from them. I think Wood Magazine may have (or be working on something similar).

[Jim Crockett]

I save everything except images unaccompanied by text as pdf files, either with PDFill Image Writer (printer) or by copying/pasting text/images to WP and then saving as a PDF.

To find things quickly and easily, I use a neat little utility called (Find) Everything. Doesn't use much space and finds whatever I'm looking for (file name search only) instantaneously.

Works for me!

Jim

[Jim Rimmer]

Organize?

[Scot Roberge]

I use a similar file folder arrangement and PDFs where possible with appropriate names. I got tired of trying to find something I remembered reading a while back, so now I also have an Access database in which I put notes on anything I find interesting. By searching on some key words in a description field, I can now find things that sparked my interest - whether they be text or photo.

[Randy Klein]

I keep mine on the internet, scattered amongst many different sites, and use Google to find them again when I need it.

[Jerome Hanby]

I haven't started using it for non-work information, but Microsoft's OneNote is pretty cool. I keep command lines,file locations, to-do lists, project notes and what not in it. Just played a little more with it and it will let you drop hyperlinks to files (local or Internet), files (either as just files or print outs, worked with pdfs), pictures...

I use a similar file folder arrangement and PDFs where possible with appropriate names. I got tired of trying to find something I remembered reading a while back, so now I also have an Access database in which I put notes on anything I find interesting. By searching on some key words in a description field, I can now find things that sparked my interest - whether they be text or photo.

[Brice Burrell]

....However, that won't help you with pictures. For that I use Picasa, its a free program that lets you add information to your photos including location, people, keywords, and captions. This is another Google product (honestly I have no affiliation with Google, but I do find myself using many of their free programs)....


Jeff

Vista's Window's photo gallery (photo viewing program) allows you to add tags to images that you can search your drive for.