I'm amazed that we still use file "folders" to store information on computers. Talk about an outmoded metaphor! With today's huge hard disks, storing our stuff in folders is like having a file cabinet that's a mile deep, in which your file might be found under numerous possible names. Windows' inefficient search system is hardly the answer.

So I was glad to find Scopeware Vision, a program from Mirror Worlds Technologies of New Haven Conn. Scopeware tracks your information by time and type, presenting it in what the company calls a "flowing narrative stream."

That stream appears on your screen as a fan of index cards. The most recent stuff is in front, the older material stretching out behind. Move the cursor over any card and you can expand it to see the original document. You can choose which information type you want to see (the default is "all documents") and then add qualifying statements like search terms or a range of dates.

Scopeware tracks everything, including Microsoft Office documents, MP3s, Web pages, and even calendar entries and addresses. For me, its biggest plus is that it handles e-mail. I quickly put it to work indexing Outlook. When it was through, I could enter a name or a key word to pull up all correspondence from the person in question. By specifying a date range, I could tighten the results.

Or I could run a wider search under "all documents" and see not only all e-mail to and from that person, but all documents, images, spreadsheets or notes I have that refer to him or her. Once I let it index my backup files from six earlier generations of PCs, I had created a searchable archive covering twenty years of writing.

For big projects, this is a winning solution. Working on a new book, I've used Scopeware to pull up the complete correspondence history I've had with certain sources, along with the chapters in which I've quoted them and any notes. Tools like this are said to be coming in Longhorn, the next Windows release, but Longhorn is at least two years away.

Scopeware also lets you create a database of what it calls V-Notes that integrate with your other data, so you can jot down reminders or comments on other information types. This is helpful since the program indexes multimedia files, which you may want to add commentary on. Pull up a video of last summer's vacation and you'll get the raw video file but also your synopsis of what's in the file.

Scopeware is also an RSS newsreader. RSS stands for "rich site summary," a way of distributing a Web site's content. A site that is RSS-enabled is one that can be subscribed to, so that you get the headlines from the site whenever they are updated. Scopeware will add these to its display, so a search for your own data can be supplemented with any number of Internet sites with current information.

Some quick caveats: Scopeware does its indexing in real time by default, and that's a setting I recommend you change. Let it index in the background to avoid any impact on system performance. Other than that, the only bug I found was that the program couldn't find PDF files on my system, despite my adding them to the data mix. Finally, Scopeware needs a "stop" button to halt lengthy searches.

But try the free trial version at www.scopeware.com. The professional edition ($80) can index across a network, while the $30 personal edition packs most of the primary features. I find the program increasingly helpful in managing my matrix of writing and references, and the slick integration with Web-based sources makes it addictive.