While following Friday’s ruckus on Signal vs. Noise, I noticed the prior post was a reader shoutback entitled “The tools you use”. I like monkeying with new tools and toys as much as anyone, so I scanned through it and noticed a reference to a web application called iUseThis. Think of it as Digg for your hard drive. You can submit a program to the site, and everyone else who uses that app can sign up and say “I use this application.”

I went ahead and created a profile of the software I use. I was going to add it to the Signal vs. Noise comment thread, but said thread is several days old now, so I won’t bother. Feel free to link up your own profile here, though.

iUseThis, being a good little Web 2.0 app, features application tagging. However, only the “owner” of an application (is that the author, the submitter, or both?) can add tags to that app. I think that’s missing the point. People use tags to categorize their own data. The list of apps I use is my data and I can’t organize it (actually, there’s not even a way to sort the list). Compare it to my del.icio.us page — I can add whatever tags I want to my links, and that adds value to my information. On iUseThis, I would have liked to tag my “work” apps (TextMate, Transmit, Minuteur) and my “play” apps (Google Earth, iTunes) separately. Do all the programmers out there care that I manage my photos with iPhoto, or that I like to write with Scrivener? I’m guessing not so much. I hope the folks behind iUseThis pick up on that, and add user tagging to applications.

And finally — yes, I recognize the irony of trying a new toy that helps you find new toys to try. It’s almost as bad as writing about writing…

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