I am excited about the 'virtual folders' ability included in the first beta release of Vista. While I keep my files quite organized (C partition for Windows, D for programs, E for documents and research, and F for pictures and music), some sort of balance between organization and accessibility has to be reached. What I'm wondering is if there already exists an application that allows the user to easily enter meta data that is then used to group files that are presented in a folder like way.
Here's my issue. I am in the early stages of writing my dissertation right now. So I have a folder named dissertation, inside with there are three main folders--writing, notes, and research. The notes are the argument outlines created for the various sources I am working with (if any of you have done this before, you know how broad a literature review can get). I name the all of the research according to the following convention: last name_title, and the notes as NOTES_last name_title. This works well, but its not very useful when I need to look at all the research on some specific sub-portion of my project (or an even smaller portion). Desktop search is great for many other things, but not this. I need to be able to click on a shortcut and pull up everything on the relevant topic (defined with meta data) so that I can see what is there. My convention for meta data is to start broad and add more restrictive keywords as well. I would like to be able to call up whichever group is relevant to what I am doing at the time.
I guess I sort of want something in between desktop search functionality and explorer. I'd like to be able to have shortcuts lead directly to the groups and I would like the database to update itself automatically. I also need it to be easy to enter the meta data--this is far too difficult now. Is there anything out there already, or should I start working on a script to do the job for me.