For decades, we have been organising digital information in roughly the same way. There are folders, folders inside folders, and files inside those folders. Save some bookmarks and, before you know it, you have another list. A very long list, usually.
I have always been fascinated by people who try something different. Tags are one obvious alternative. Instead of forcing something into one particular folder, you can describe it from several different angles. That is one of the things I like about the way I currently use Capacities.io (https://capacities.io/): pages, objects and tags allow information to be connected rather than simply stored somewhere in a hierarchy. Word clouds are another simple example. They don’t necessarily organise information better, but they do allow you to look at it differently.
And then I came across Pixel Area (https://pxlarea.com/). Pixel Area — or pxlarea — takes yet another approach. It is basically a 100 × 100 grid containing room for 10,000 links to websites. Instead of browsing through a directory or looking at a ranked list of recommended sites, you wander around a field of pixels. Each claimed square represents someone’s blog, digital garden, photo journal or other personal corner of the web. Move around, discover a pixel and see where it takes you.
There are deliberately no rankings and no “top blogs”. Sites can have tags, so you can make pixels matching particular subjects appear like a little constellation. There is also a random option if you simply want to see where you end up. If a site has been updated recently, Pixel Area can show that too. It turns discovering websites into something much more spatial and slightly more accidental than scrolling through yet another list.
Kobala (https://kobala.nl/startpagina-functies/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) is another example of a different way to organise links. Instead of relying on a traditional bookmark list hidden somewhere in your browser, it lets you create a visual start page made up of blocks for websites and other online resources. It is a simple idea, but that is exactly what makes it interesting: the information is still basically a collection of links, yet changing the way those links are presented can make them much easier to scan and use.
And let’s not forget Start.me (https://start.me). Start.me is yet another take on the browser start page, turning bookmarks, feeds, notes and widgets into a visual dashboard of blocks. Instead of digging through folders or long bookmark lists, you can arrange the information you use most often in one clear, customisable overview.
I like all these ideas. Perhaps one of the most fascinating is Surf by Berlin-based Deta (https://deta.surf/). Surf describes itself as an intelligent notebook that brings your files and the web into your stream of thought. The interesting part for me was the way it blurred the distinction between my own information and information somewhere else. You could put your own files, notes, PDFs, websites and other material together inside one notebook and then use AI on top of that collection. Instead of constantly jumping between a file manager, browser, notes app and AI tool, the notebook became the place where all those different kinds of information met. Unfortunately I had to stop using Surf when I moved from macOS to Linux.
And while writing this post I discovered something rather nice: that is no longer true. Surf is now available for Linux and Windows as well, and Deta has made its core open source. It is also local-first, with notes and resources stored on your own device (https://github.com/deta/surf/blob/main/docs/INSTALL.md). Hmm. I may have to have another look.
Is this an exhaustive overview of alternative ways of organising and presenting information? No absolutely not. I haven’t even mentioned things I wrote about earlier, such as TabFS (https://justme.website/content-creation/maybe-screenshots-are-the-simplest-personal-knowledge-management-tool-we-already-have/) or Screenshot Conf (https://justme.website/content-creation/i-went-looking-at-a-conference-about-screenshots-about-what-and-found-a-filesystem-for-browser-tabs/). And there must be hundreds of other experiments I have never heard of.
That is actually the part I find most interesting. We have had folders, files and lists for such a long time that they can start to feel like the natural shape of information. But they aren’t. They are simply conventions we became used to. Every now and then someone comes along and asks: what if we did this differently?
At the moment, Capacities, and their pages and tags work well for me. Pixel Area probably isn’t going to replace that. Nor do I think Pixel Area is the ideal way of navigating information or discovering websites. But that isn’t really the point. Someone builds Pixel Area. Other people try it. Someone sees an interesting idea in it, combines it with something completely different and builds something new. Then someone else improves on that. And step by step we discover, hopefully, slightly better ways of dealing with all the information we keep creating.