The internet is a big cloud in every network diagram I have ever seen, but the concept of little clouds never really occurred to me until recently. In the big cloud that is the internet there are a whole lot of rain drops, lightning bolts, and some golf ball sized hail stones that leave holes in my monitor (my cyber windshield).

But in my own little cloud there is peace and harmony. My bookmarks play well with each other and are sorted. My mail is all in its own folders. My calendar is sorted by what kind of event I'm looking at. All of my information is being jammed into its own neat little category.

But this is not how my brain works. My brain is a form of organized chaos. One idea bounces off another which triggers another. Like rain drops in a cloud. Hah! I stuck with the metaphor! Take that, doubters and naysayers!

Okay, I'll get serious.

The point is that my world is not black and white and neither should the way I handle the information that makes it revolve be. To that end, I think that tags are a great tool. Putting tags on everything makes them searchable. They may live in folders like "work" and "home," but they also have little words attached like "humor" or "television" or "perl" or "email" or who knows what else. Any word that comes to mind when I create or save a piece of information becomes a tag, and I can then go back and search through my own little cloud. And a proper search, too. Programatic, not reading through each folder wondering, "did I file this article under architecture or business?" It just is.

I think that bookmarks are a good place to start with this, and I think a good way to handle that is to keep it all both online and locally. This means that wherever I am I can reach into my cloud and fetch what I'm looking for. To that end, it's time to start looking at my options: Del.icio.us, Magnolia, and Google bookmarks. I have not looked closely enough to make a decision, but I can say this much - important factors are integration with my browser(s), privacy control, and ability to share what I've found with the world.

Let's see where this goes.