Spring cleaning came a little late this year: I just switched to Google’s Chrome browser. As part of an on-going battle against digital hoarding, time usurpation and information overload, Chrome looks to be a formidable weapon. Let’s see how it fits into my arsenal.

Photo by michperu

Aggregation and filtering are two themes that I believe are important to the process of simplifying my computing experience. The first pulls everything together; the second rips everything apart. While that may seem counter-productive, I will show how aggregation saves time on the front end and how filtering saves time on the back-end.

Aggregation Beats Aggravation

Long-time readers know that I am obsessed with simplifying systems. I search for and often switch to the best tools that I can handle for attaining this lofty ideal. Such adaptability does require an investment of time, which is returned seven-fold as I become comfortable with the tools. Here are a few tools that I have written about:

• PhraseExpress: text replacement and auto-completion
• RoboForm: website password manager and form filler
• TiddlyWiki: mindmapping and documentation

The tools are not always separate pieces of software: sometimes they are preference settings, such as telling my browser to always download files to \Downloads and making Microsoft Word save documents to \Blog Posts by default. Those may not seem like a big deal, but I also tell my image processor to load and save images in\Downloads. I tell my FTP program to upload images from the same place! Taken together, these tools adhere to my overarching aggregation philosophy:

My solution is called Flat-Earth. Think of what happens when you chop down all the trees in a forest: it’s easy to see daylight! Basically, I recreated the Wagon Wheel in a folder outside of My Documents. I called the folder FlatEarth and dumped all spreadsheets into the Spreadsheet folder, all Word documents and text files into the Docs folder and so on. Just like my spiral notebook, I know that file is in there somewhere.

- From Flat Earth Wagon Wheel

To be sure, this system is not etched in stone. I’ve modified it a bit since I started using it two years ago. The main point is that aggregation saves time when I know exactly where to retrieve files.

Aggregation and Chrome

I had ignored Chrome until recently. Sharon Hurley Hall wrote a guest post about Chrome Extensions on Ileane Smith’s blog. Both of these ladies are enthusiastic about Google Chrome. The more they talked, the more appealing the browser became.

Web browsers, by their very nature, are amazing aggregators. They collect everything from bookmarks to cookies, from cached pages to useful plugins and extensions. The differentiator is speed, security and convenience. I haven’t used Chrome long enough to assess security and convenience. However, the speed improvement is apparent, compared to every other browser I’ve used.

Filtering Brings Focus

While aggregation serves to bring everything together, filtering is needed to make sense of the dog pile. Sifting through a collection of files with filtering tools helps me complete tasks more quickly. I have the usual weapons of mass dissection:

• Gmail, with its filters and labels
• Google Desktop, for indexing and retrieving files
• Unsubscribe, the ultimate email filter

I’m always on the prowl for filters. Here is a Google search that yields a mother lode:

site:lifehacker.com gmail filter notifications

My favorite from among these is Ten Must-Have Gmail Filters.
Another intriguing prospect is Nest Unclutterer for my Twitter account. (I’ve made some poor decisions with auto-follow schemes.)

Filtering and Chrome

While I have never considered web browsers to be filtering tools – apart from their role in blocking pop-ups and whatnot – Chrome does have a nice page showing recent sites, which it displays whenever you open a new tab. That helps me if I need to revisit a page.

More importantly, Chrome gave me the opportunity to revisit Feedly, based on Sharon’s endorsement. I like the Must-Read preference, which increases the chances that something I want to read will be included in the digest. As I learn more about Feedly, I expect it to be more useful as an aggregator.

Simplification Summary

If aggregation and filtering were the only concepts required to achieve simplicity, we’d all have more time. Alas, it is not that, well, simple. Aggregation has a dark side that filtering merely hides: the pack-rat syndrome. With my monster hard drives and generous online storage capacities for email, I rarely get rid of the junk. In the olden days, my computers would have ground to a halt when their 10 megabyte hard drives exploded like a George Costanza over-stuffed wallet. That attention-getting event would prompt me to clean house right then and there.

Today, my hard drive has become a file repository fortress atop a toxic dump of forgotten folders, unplayed games and outdated documents. While it won’t do much for my hard drive, Google’s Chrome still will play a large part in my continuing quest for computer simplification.