Library clips

No longer have to rely soley on Technorati to track conversations in the blogosphere. This post from Micropersuation points to new developments on Blogpulse. It goes a step further and attempts to track a conversation as a thread as you usually see in discussion groups or forums…this is good stuff!

For example, check out the thread here, seeded from that Micropersuation post mentioned above.

Here is the conversation tracker page…what they say is:

“Give the Conversation Tracker a whirl by typing in a permalink to a post or to a news article. For perfomance reasons, the default depth of the tree is set to 3 and the default breadth is set to 25. The breadth can be adjusted, as can the expected start date of the conversation”.

I find Blogpulse conversation tracker very clear and neat…you can do this to some extent on their normal or advanced (date range) search screen by typing in a link or a permalink, but it won’t show the depth and thread of the conversation as it happens.

Although what I like about the general search is at the click of a button you can see this information on a graph, providing a visual perspective of the frequency of links to your blog.

Blogpulse mentions that the trend search is a good way of finding out when a conversation started or seeded, once you have found the starting date you can go back to the conversation tracker and enter that value in your date range. (Mind you, their index only goes back to 60 days at the moment)

The only thing it lacks is an RSS feed, or even a bookmarklet…well, I can’t find one!

Also, while you’re there, check out their trends page..they are presenting pre-searched topic packages (within a date range)…make your own trends for analysis…cool!

Check out their analysis report of the blogosphere for the recent tsunami crisis…now this is taking the blogosphere and showing everyone what it’s got!

Also see the searchenginewatch review with a link to the news release.

What a great spinoff of del.icio.us.

A post from Library Stuff describes a new tool called de.lirio.us.

Steven says:

“What’s really sweet about this is that you can include a long detailed note with each post in addition to a one line description.”

Similar interface to del.icio.us, all you do is click expand notes link to view more information, good for long abstracts.

Also new is a great extension to del.icio.us called
Delicious Linkbacks

Click the bookmarklet to see a list of who has bookmarked (with tags) the page you are on. Beforehand you had to see the page bookmarked on the del.icio.us interface and click on a link to see who else has bookmarked the item, now you no longer have to do this manually via del.icio.us. You could be on any web page and think…hmmm…I wonder if anyone has bookmarked this page on del.icio.us…wow they have…cool!

Augments the folksonomy value as you can see what tags were used before you apply your own tags…primo!

I’d like to see who has bookmarked webpages from my blog into del.icio.us. I can see who has bookmarked a particular page (using the URL function - clicking on a link under the bookmark title called …"and ? others", here’s a random example of a bookmark), but I’d like to see in one search who has bookmarked any page on my blog.

I’d also like to get an RSS feed for this type of search…at the moment I only know of Durl (generates an RSS feed for only a single webpage on del.icio.us)

Technorati performs this kind of result, I can "link:" search a particular post on my blog… I can also "link:" search my home page address and get all links to my homepage as well as all my blogposts (permalinks).

Has anyone come up with a way that del.icious can find all bookmarks saved to a whole website (including all webpages) rather than just theURL of one webpage…and also generate an RSS feed?

What a big ask!

…or even better, what about this not being limited to just del.icio.us but including other social bookmark managers as well.

More musings…

At the end of blog posts some people have citation links to Technorati, Bloglines, Google, etc..it would be good to add Furl or del.icio.us to the bunch.

…and more

From on of my blog posts:

"I also like the little button on the DURL page that acts as a counter for the number of times your post has been bookmarked by a particular service"

The button mentioned above is by SPURL, having one for del.icio.us or Furl would be great. But you’d have to have one for every blog post! …unless, it could record all your blogpages, as per the topic of this current post.

…or here I go again, one bookmark counter encompassing all the social bookmark services!

Here’s something that I think is achievable, not by me that’s for sure (otherwise I’d be be talking less and tinkering more)..what about having a Technorati counter button on your blog home page (recording the number of citations links to your blog)

By the way has anyone made a bookmarklet for Durl? …at the moment I have to go to the website to submit my query.

Gee I’m asking a lot of questions, that’s enough for now!

Haven’t used Google news a great deal but I just realised that they collapse duplicate articles. At the end of an item there is a link called "related" which shows all other posts..I’m not sure how the system works out that 2 articles are alike.

Here is an example:

Yahoo, Flicker deal confirmed
Xinhua - all 238 related »

I’ve had a little experience on Newsgator but have found they sometimes have a link at the end of a post called "incoming links", I think this is collapsing duplicates as well. Maybe it’s exactly reflecting what the website, the feed is from, is doing. If the feeds website has a post that collapses duplicate links then when that post appears in Newsgator it does the same…I’m not sure on this one!

What about your personal RSS aggregator performing this same function as News Aggregators such as Google news. Now wouldn’t this be a great feature in Bloglines, I find so many posts are about the same thing within my account. I’d like one post, and all other posts about the same thing as a collapsable link at the end of the post.

But how would the system choose which post to show you amongst the others (maybe this could be done by previous reading behaviour, a la Chameleon, Findory)..choosing to show you the post that you read from the most.

The next question is that blog posts unlike news stories are unique in their own way, wandering in different directions, including off topic information…some are indepth reviews while others are re-published clips. In this respect not all posts are the same every time, even if the content covers mutual ground.

 Regardless you could click on a link at the end of a post called "similar sub" that expands and shows you new links to other posts with similar content in your account (presumably the same content, similar is too broad in this respect). Now these are similar links to posts from feeds that you have subscribed to, in effect "your subscriptions".

I guess there could also be another link called "similar non-sub" which shows you the same/similar content to posts you aren’t subscribed to (a great discovery tool).

While you’re there the same could go for "past similar sub" and "past similar non-sub" showing you links in your cache that are similar in content to the new post…and so on.

You’d have to think of better label names for these links than I have quickly conjured up!

Always wanted to make use of bookmarking add on tools such as Pasta and Wetaste. Of late I’ve been reading posts which have an enormous amounts of feedback and discussion in their comments. I was thinking some of this is magic, how am I going to remember it’s in the comments of this post. Wetaste to the rescue…I highlighted the comments and hit the "Taste It" bookmarklet, the title and url were automatically generated, then I hit the submit button transferring the information to del.icio.us. Before I hit save I annotated the extended field that this bookmark is a comment within this blog post title. 

Talking about the extended field, I’ve noticed of late that people are using this as a means of leaving comments for communication or discussion. An add on tool such as mentioned above could augment this usability.

Say you share a common tag with someone (if you make the tag name unique enough the content of this tag will have more of a chance just being from you and your mate - your only little space within del.icio.us.

Now if you bookmark a URL and leave comments (extended field) to your mate, your mate can respond by highlighting a little portion of the post, via wetaste, and leave comments about that specific bit, and so on.

Gigablast is offering some unique features:

Gigablast Custom Topic Search

Create your own topic search engine (include up to 200 web-sites), include the code to put a search box on your web-site or blog.

Furl can also act as your own mini-search engine (along with being a social bookmark manager), but it is limited to searching full-text of web-pages not web-sites (which consist of many pages)…this is what makes this Gigablast offering so powerful. This system goes one step further than Google Personalized and gives you the power, letting you customise your own search engine, true personalisation!

What a great application for business, you could include 200 web-sites of your competitors to gather intelligence or web-sites of work related topics to help relieve employees of information overload…if there are fewer sites in the search pot employees won’t spend as much time reading irrelevant hits.

Of course this is good as a first base, if you then can’t find your needed information search the web at large. The same example applies to libraries and schools, a teacher can make a mini-search engine for their class topic, a librarian can make a subject guide search engine…or even many search engines within a subject guide, eg. one for associations, one for journals, one for government information, etc..

Gigablast Site Search

Similar to Google, but claimed better, is Gigablast’s site search, including code for a search box.

Great post at Fred On Something… about the Omea RSS reader

Has anyone used reBlog, it seems like a really cool RSS reader and blog publisher plug-in to use for those who clip rather than write their own blog posts.

From their website:

This sounds similar to reading feeds in Bloglines and then just clipping relevant posts to the Bloglines clip blog…although reBlog enables you to clip in this fashion using any type of blog software (well 4 or 5 at the moment)…this is a great idea as it is versatile and the Bloglines clip blog isn’t a robust enough blog at the moment.

Clip blogs can also be fashioned by using a bookmarking service, RSS-to-HTML, and a blog. CCTE distributed research blog gets it’s content by bookmarking posts in del.icio.us (adding comments in the extended field), then using RSS Digest, these bookmarks are transfered to automatically populate the blog.

Here is an example of a blog post using reBlog:

Cell Phones Put to Novel Use

Forget conversations and even e-mail. Japanese gadget freaks get literary with their mobile phones, reading everything from sex manuals to full-length classics on the devices, a few lines at a time.

Originally from Wired News, ReBlogged by Gavin on March 20, 2005 | edit

Burning bird has induced a great discussion from one of her posts on tagback.

Trackback is a system where you can tell someone (pinging them) you are including a link to one of their posts in your own post. You can also use it as a referrer, just simply pinging them to say I linked to you because this seems relevant.

Now because of the increased spamming occuring the trackback system is starting to be less useful as a referrer system, although I still find it useful. (This would be moreso on popular blogs as spammers get more visibility)

The suggested replacement (using Technorati tags) is called Tagback. For example at the end of this post I could state a tag called http://technorati.com/tag/jttagsfortrackbacks.

…then people can use this "Technorati tag link" in their post (as a new form of trackback) which will be pinged and appear in the Technorati tag. I can look up this tag daily to see the latest…Technorati tags don’t have RSS feeds yet!

NOTE: It seems you don’t have to ping like trackback, you only have to include the link in your post and as usual Technorati will pick it up.

Good idea as anything used with this tag (via other systems such as del.icio.us, Furl, Flickr) is picked up by Technorati…so there is a place where some discussion around this post is stored and available for public viewing. Before hand you would go to the actual blog post to see the trackbacks or go to Technorati and do a (link) blog post search to view who is talking about that post. Now you go to a "blog post specific Technorati tag" to view this information plus anything else that has been included in this tag (so it extends beyond just including trackbacks)…although you still commonly go to the actual blog post to view discussion in the comments.

The issues against this system (from the comments):

Improper use of tags, as the folksonomy system is a balance between personal and public use and ultimately trying to create an emerging vocabularly…using tags to represent blog posts is littering the folksonomy.

Why this system, when we have Topic Exchange?(although I find a lot of spam at Topic Exchange)…I guess the difference is that the tagback topic is for individual posts not just a broad topic…and that the use of these tags are extensible (not just limited to blog posts, and not limited to pinging). That is, if you see something similar to what I’m taking about in this post you could bookmark it in Furl or del.icio.us or Flickr with the tag jttagsfortrackbacks.

…although in Burningbird’s next post she used the same tagback tag as her previous one, mentioning that not every post has to have a tagback tag and the some tags can be re-used.

The jt prefix in the tagback are my initials acting as a unique identifier (along with the title)…many of the comments in Burningbird’s post feel that initials and title aren’t unique enough, and their is nothing more unique than the posts permalink.

We are relying on a third party being Technorati (also del.icio.us, Furl, and Flickr to some extent)…if these systems cease to exist one day (heaven forbid) then the content is lost…we need a sure system.

Also mentioned is that the proposed system will be more free of spam if Technorati rejects Google bots, in this way if there is no page rank spammers will be less inclined to do their dirty work

A quote from the lastest discussions on folksonomies via Test…

"Bowker and Star identify three values that are in competition within classfication structures: comparability, visibility and control. Folksonomies have elevated visibility, but at the expense of comparability (being able to translate classifications across taxonomies or contexts) and control (the ability of the classification to limit interpretation, rather than interpret ‘emergent’ behaviour). Whilst nothing is at stake, and there is little lost by not being able to transfer taxonomies from one context to the other, or users are not disadvantaged by the need to independently assess and contextualise meaning, folksonomies will provide a useful service."

Convergence (agreement on terminology) is the key for folksonomy groups…need to form group rules or agreed upon tags so as the index of tags is succinct and meaningful to the group as a whole. As long as it is controlled as it grows doesn’t mean it’s not innovative and free, the unique value of folksonomy in the first place is it’s social aspect (and personal retrieval), it increases serendipity as an item can sit on many shelves (next to like items). As it has organically grown we can see that it may have uses in the areas where taxonomies are usually applied, but for this to happen we need a consistent vocabularly (that is uniquely user defined, and then subject to review in order to control the inconsistencies in the emerging vocabularly) 

A great blog post related to taxonomies, faceted classification, and folksonomies is Taxonomies and Tags: From Trees to Piles of Leaves…explains the philosophy in using these systems, and that they all cover unique ground, having the unique uses…