Library clips

Not sure about the name Otavo, it could have a more memorable name like Questr…why, well it seems to be a list bookmarking site where the lists you create are called Quests (you can track a users quests via their user feed, and each quest also has a feed).

More list bookmarking sites are H20 Playlist…others like Listible, ListerLister, and Votelists allow others to add to your list.

Otavo also allows others to add bookmarks to your Quests and also leave comments…it reminds me of FAQQLY (scroll down) in a slight way as your Quest title can be a question for help eg. What are the best web 2.0 blogs?…Yahoo! Answers is also similar…also reminds me of a wishlist like 43Things (although, like del.icio.us this quite isn’t list based).

I guess the idea is that users can join your quest by adding a bookmark with a description that may help you, or by adding a comment…you can even manually invite friends to help you on your quest.

What makes Otavo different is that it kind of doubles up as a social bookmarking service, as you can use a bookmarklet to add websites to a quest and give them a tag.

They also have a search and a points system.

Here is my user view.

Here are my bookmarks (my items) for the tag firefox, you can also see all items for the same tag, and both have a feed.

It seems to me that the only way you can store bookmarks (storemarks) is when adding it to any quest, you can’t store bookmarks just for the hell of it.

It also seems that you can’t view all your storemarks in a stream…well you kind of can in a section called Your posts, but this lists your Storemarks, Quests, blog posts, forum posts…I’d like to limit or sort this view, also I see it doesn’t store your comments.

That’s right it also has a built in blog (and feed), here’s mine…others can leave comments.

My user page doesn’t seem to re-syndicate my blog posts…also the home page doesn’t seem to aggregate blog posts. Aha, there are section home pages, one for Quests, Blogs, even Forums.

To recap, your blog posts don’t have to be related to a quest, but your storemarks do…if storemarks had the option of not relating to a quest then this would double up as a real social bookmark service, but I think the purpose of Otavo storemarks is not so much of a personal library of websites, but more related to a question…that is, you can’t store a bookmark if you can’t find a question (quest) to assign it to.

On the other hand it would also be good to relate blog posts to a quest, kind of like a trackback.

I really like the idea of these social Q&A services (especially Otavo as it incorporates lists and bookmarking)…they would really be handy for library reference. People can ask a question where librarians and others can provide answers, everyone can be an expert…and it doubles up as a knowlegde base. Like I said, it is not simple Q&A, it is social, and some questions can end up being a complied subject guide list.

Feedback

Connect blog posts to Quests to keep the focus on Q & A, otherwise it does too much, how do blogs fit into the picture at the moment…blogs just seem a separate part that have nothing to do with the prime directive of the service…assigning blog posts to quests will make this more integrated…I mean you can’t bookmark without assigning it to a quest.
An example of this is CommonGate, everyone has their own blog, but their blog posts have to published within a gate (topic), this is like a communal blog…you can’t post without relating to a topic. Then your own user space aggregates all the posts you have made around town.
Otavo basically takes this approach with bookmarking, but as mentioned you can’t view your stream of bookmarks, you can only view a stream by tag.
Anyway if Otavo took the CommonGate approach, then you could only publish a post in relation to a quest, rove around publishing posts to Quests, then in your user space see all your aggregated blog posts from your travels.

In this respect, you can create a Quest and you can add to a Quest via comments, bookmarks, and blog posts.

Or maybe the blogs module isn’t needed at all, as you can already rove around leaving comments everywhere, and these are aggregated in the Your Posts section (just need to be able to limit this section to just see comments).

Maybe each Quest can have a trackback URL, so others in the blogosphere that aren’t registered can still add to Quests.

[via TechCrunch and Mashable]