Library clips

People tagging is certainly in vogue…peoplicious is very similar to the idea of Ziki (others are peoplefeeds, tagalag, fringe contacts).

The notion is simply to tag people, well it’s not really, you can only put people in lists.

All you can do is add a person to the system, find them by the user section or if they are in a list (topic).
When you find a person, you can see an aggregation stream of their web2.0 content (blog posts, bookmarks, photo’s, etc…).

Another interesting thing you can do is add a bookmark to the system and tag it, and also associate it with a person.

I think Ziki is much more advanced and primed in this space…plus you can see an archive of personal feed content by feed type, and search it.
Most of all you can be in a group, but you can also tag yourself, in the future it may turn into a people folksonomy, where you can also tag other people.

Although I do like the peoplicious feature of adding a bookmark and associating it with someone, I guess it is a way of socially making up the profile part of a person eg. conferences they have spoken at, journal articles they have written, companies they worked for.

Check out the blog post on peoplicious for more.

ListerLister is basically the same as Listible.

Create a list and tag it…others can add items to your list, add comments, give a rating.

View lists by tag, view a user space, view a user list by tag…keep up to date with RSS.

H20 Playlist is similar but not as social, I like that you can make section headings…all in OPML.

Other ways to make lists:
- Outliners (eg. OPML Workstation)
- Notes (eg. Google Notebook, Notefish)
- Office 2.0 (eg. Zoho suite)
- FLEXlists
- ListRing
- Social boomarks
- Wiki
- Squidoo

Notefish is similar to Google Notebook but is less of an outlining tool, actually Notefish is a very simple but effective tool.

Notefish simply allows use to highlight sections of webpages and send it to your project.
- Create as many projects as you like
- Create section headings in a project
- Drag and drop your notes around
- Add notes, hyperlinks, formatting to your notes
- Search your notes
- Share your notes

Here’s an example project.

Here’s an example of using Diigo in a similar way.

I’ve been doing literature research for a client and presented my results in a Notefish project, all the clips are organised in section headings, and colour coded.
I also created a section heading for the top of the page and added my own clips (notes)…here I made a note for my email, another note for sources searched, another note as a message to the client, and another note for the research question.

The alternative is to use an Office 2.0 application, a wiki, or a MS Word file in our document management system (this way the word doc has a URL, and you can allow others to edit it).
I really like Notefish because there is no fuss clipping a section of a page, or making your own notes, then you can drag ‘n drop…it’s visually smoother.

Only limitation is that others cannot edit your project, they can only see it by invite, or your public version.

WeblogWire is a clever service if it takes off…it basically connects press releases to bloggers.

Why would product developers use WeblogWire to announce press releases over other PR sites?

Since bloggers jump on new products in an instant and it is considered free publicity, why not get bloggers to subscribe to a channel that will have the absolute latest information (no second hand blogging here, you can be the first to break stories).

Now if WeblogWire can get bloggers to track the latest from their website, then companies are going to choose this PR service over others as they are assured that the movers and shakers in the blogosphere will read their press release, and get it out there pronto (all bloggers like to break a story first, this is a great by product for companies trying to get out a message).

WeblogWire in the end will be achieving something kind of similar to TechCrunch, only they will let others (the companies themselves) break news through their channel…the main difference is it is not a review/opinion site like a blog, but a press release from the company itself.

Gee TechCrunch might as well set up a system like this, they already have the bloggers on board (readership), and I’m sure they get inundated with new products to review…they could have a press release channel, and a blog review channel.

I guess not all products have press releases…WeblogWire will only be hosting news that is a press release format. In this respect I’d be crazy to give up e-hub, mashable and TechCrunch (the 3 essentials). These guys break stuff via emails they receive from the companies themselves, or information and rumours they receive by following venture capital blogs…this is going to reach people before the company releases a press release (if they do have one).

I guess I shouldn’t be comparing press releases to actual blog reviewing…I’m just looking at the breaking news factor…by following WeblogWire will I see something before the TechCrunch team, if not, then I might as well just wait till TechCrunch tell me about it (and I sure don’t want to follow the TechCrunch Reading List - I’ve got enough to read - I’d rather wait and hear it from them).

Anyway, when you sign up as a blogger you can get email alerts or RSS feeds for topics…that’s it, all you are doing is signing up to subscribe to feeds.

I guess you have to sign up so WeblogWire can guarantee companies that it’s worth their while because so many bloggers are subscribed to the WeblogWire ready to consume and publish a story…but can’t WeblogWire just use Feedburner to track readership numbers without requiring bloggers to subscribe to feeds via a registration process.

Well, you don’t have to register anyway, you can just look at their homepage every day, it’s not private information, but if you want the feeds you have to register. If you really want the feeds without registering I’m sure you’ll come across them in shared OPML’s or RSS Reader directories.

If they were really cunning they would make it worth your while to register, the more you post stories (positive or negative) on press releases you read via by the WeblogWire the more they give you exclusive stories…get bloggers fighting over exclusives.
But how would they know you published a post based on reading the press release at WeblogWire, you may have heard it at TechCrunch first.

Anyway it’s early days yet, I’m sure they will develop more product features, as it is a great concept…keep posted to their blog.

Other press release sites that have feeds:
PR Web
PR Newswire (click RSS tab)
BusinessWire
market WIRE
Prime Zone

These above sites offer feeds that bloggers can track and they don’t even have to register, so how is WeblogWire doing something different, other than explicitly promoting their service to the blogosphere.

Related:
PayPerPost : blog posting for money

The experimental Alpha version 0.11 of Grazr is released and hopes to be official in a week or so.

Grazr now has a choice of view: slider or outline…this makes it the most versatile OPML grazer so far (graze not only OPML URL’s but also feed URL’s)…don’t forget you can also pop it open in a new window.

They have also changed the icon for OPML include from a red arrow to a blue target, as suggested by Chris Pirillo as the new OPML standard…soon you will be able to choose from a gallery of icons.

Right-click > Copy Shortcut OPML includes or feeds…for feed article titles just right click the “#” permalink to the native story or click on it to open it in a new window…or simply click on the story title to read the story right there in Grazr (from here you still have the choice to click on the title to see the native post).

I’m providing some feedback for Grazr Labs and there is lots more to come.