The Shape of Things to Come
Franz Jachim on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 18:53 "The Shape of Things to Come" is a work by H. G. Wells, which speculates on future events from 1933 until the year 2106. Alternatively it is a song from the movie "Battlestar Galactica".
The shape of Things in Refinder is not at all futuristic, much more prosaic, entirely non-fictious and totally non-speculative, however, Refinder's concept of Thing types can help you very well in your daily work.
Refinder's concept of Things
Every information collected and stored in Refinder is called a "Thing". Whenever we talk about "Things", we mean the countless pieces of information, which you create, capture, keep and share through Refinder. When it comes to collaborative work, information simply falls into different categories. The very basic distinction between information types in Refinder is accomplished via it's class of Things.
To make information management easier, Refinder distinguishes between more than a dozen Thing types.
Let's walk over these Thing types to understand, what thy are, how they are created and how to extract most value from them.
How to create a Thing
There are two main ways to create a piece of information in Refinder:
- Either you create a Thing manually or you import it from an external data source, such as a webpage, a RSS feed, Twitter or an Email.
- To create a Thing manually, hover over the "New Thing" button in the main menu and select the desired Thing type from the drop-down menu:
The Refinder Thing list
| Icon | Type | What is it for | How to create it |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Bookmark
|
information captured from the web (web-clippings) |
 or use the bookmarklet  |
 |
File
|
all kinds of uploads
(e.g. pdf, ppt, doc, images, sounds) |
|
 |
Note
|
notes, minutes, pasted text
|
|
 |
Person
|
contact data
|
or import contacts from Outlook |
 |
Task
|
task, jobs, to-dos
|
or import tasks from Outlook |
 |
Event
|
calendar data
|
or import calendar entries from Outlook |
 |
Location
|
geographical data
|
|
 |
Organization
|
to label a company
|
|
 |
Question
|
to broadcast a question
into your network |
|
 |
Topic
|
to tag information
|
|
 |
Twitter message
|
an individual tweet
|
setup the Twitter importer |
 |
Blogpost
|
an individual blogpost
|
setup the RSS Feed importer |
 |
Email
|
an individual email
|
import emails from Outlook |
Thing types and the Filter panel
Thing types are extremely useful when you want to filter your information. The Refinder filter panel lets you set Thing types as filters. This means, you can select a Thing type in the filter panel to filter off all other Things.
Changing the Thing type
Sometimes you might want to change a Thing type. For example, you have tagged "McKinsey" as a Thing of type "Topic" and want to change that into a Thing of Type "Organization. To do so, open the Thing and modify the property in the dropdown menu labeled "Type".
Don't forget to click "Save" after you modified the Thing type.
Summary
Things will accompany you through all your endeavors in Refinder. We gave them a strong iconographic appearance, to provide you explicit visual cues, which type of Thing you create or deal with. Thing types unobtrusively help to separate information into distinct categories. When retrieving information from Refinder, Thing types act as explicit filters.
As Refinder evolves and the need emerges for all or for individual customers, new Thing types can be introduced. If you miss a particular Thing type already now, give us a shout, so we can incorporate it in our roadmap ....
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