Library clips

xFruits is an RSS conversion social network, basically it lets you do lots of stuff with RSS, and even hosts your creations and allows you to see others…see my earlier post.

The latest 2 offerings are in the OPML space:

- RSS to OPML (basically create an OPML from various feeds)

- OPML to mobile (feed graze a mobile friendly OPML)

Gabmail allows you to use your webcam to record a video clip and will host it. Then you can place a link to this clip in an email…isn’t this just like linking to a YouTube clip.

I guess Gabmail is a place to record and host these video messages rather than using YouTube, which is more a generic service.

What needs to happen is that you can watch the video within your email, and this is what helloWorld exactly does.

Mashable also points to Gigya, and Flixn.

Fwiki seems to be an RSS Reader that you can make private or public, not only that you can tailor its look and even blend it into your blog.
The main premise is that it is not only an RSS Reader, you can further create spliced feeds, each called a master feed, basically a river of news…see more.

Add feeds (and tag them) or view a list of tagged feeds to choose from and add, you can view these in the Feed Reader, from these feeds you can create a Fwicki ie. a spliced feed with a page to view it (kind of like a folder river of news), make as many as you like (you can even tag your Fwicki’s).

Other Public RSS Readers

MySyndicaat
Top 10 Sources
Technorati Favourites
SuprGlu
FeedRaider
Feedpile
Feedshow Public
Bloglines Public
PageFlakes Public
Protopage Public
BozPages
Blogdigger Groups
Kinja
Feedbite
FeedCollectors
kickRSS

Newgie is a social RSS Reader similar to Rojo and NEooWS as you submit stories from within your Newgie RSS Reader, only these stories are not tagged by the users, they are categorised by the machine into topic streams (feeds).
Visitors can subscribe to a topic feed in their own RSS Reader or use the Newgie RSS Reader.

NOTE: you don’t have to submit stories, it just learns by your actions (page views, saved items, discuss and share, recommended, etc…)

Basically you have a fixed feed set, but there is just too much to read, so Newgie gets a community to subscribe to these feeds, users find certain stories interesting by viewing it, saving it, etc…then Newgie picks up on this by using it as a filter for worthy news, it then pushes these stories through a machine to be labelled with a topic (and a feed).
There you have it, filtered news (according to a community) based on a fixed feed set, and organised into machine topic streams.

NOTE: You not only have a space to subscribe to feeds, but there is also a section to subscribe to topic/category feeds.

I guess digg does this for the world at large, as it is not based on a feedset, it’s just based on webpages you come across…but it mostly of reminds me of Feed Butler as it is submitting worthy stories based on a fixed feed set.

See how it works.

The people using the Newgie RSS Reader are doing all the work, as their submissions are populating these Newgie topic feeds, and unlike Rojo or NEooWS the stories the community submits are organised by the machine into topic feeds, ie. machine tags (eg. Tagcloud/ZoomCloud), not user tags.

Your account will be divided into:
- “Todays Newsy” headlines
- “My Category” subscriptions
- “My Communities” subscriptions
- “My Feeds” subscriptions

NOTE: It seems you can add your own feeds, but these are listed in your “My Feeds”, and are not added to the directory…you have to suggest a feed by filling out a form. Since you can subscribe to outside feeds, this means you can submit these stories.

NOTE: It seems that you can also submit a story from outside Newgie via a manual form.

You can also form Newgie groups, where everyone in the group uses a Newgie RSS Reader and submits stories to the group, kind of like digg, but in groups.
I guess submitting a story to a group will also submit it to the general community, but only the users within the group can submit a story to the group.

I guess another way is the network option or the user centric option, ie. instead of subscribing to a group general stream or one of the group topic streams, what about subscribing to a users submitted stories.
This is a less formal approach as you are not setting up anything, you are just adding lots of users to your space so you can see a friend/s stream of stories…and I guess these stories can be organised into topic streams.

NEooWS is a social network RSS Reader that looks like a start page.

Browse feeds or submit feeds, then read them as a box or list view, you can also vote, save and tag stories, which can be accessed like tabs in a start page.

Since it is a social place (community) you can browse for feeds, browse/search stories and save them, or even find stories via a tag cloud, and even subscribe to a tag, so far this is the same as Rojo.
NOTE: if you subscribe to a tag, this subscription will live in your “My Tags” page, keeping separate from your “My Feeds” page, so I guess these tags don’t have an RSS feed for non-NEooWS readers to add to other RSS Readers…I don’t think Rojo have the ease to subscribe to tags, but I do remember each community tag has an RSS feed.

I guess NEooWS really promotes the social aspect with its layout and easy features, whereas with Rojo your more on your own to find this out.

You can add friends like Rojo contacts, but unlike Rojo you get to see a minimal user page, that is you just get to see their recommended stories, you can’t see their tagged stories or subscriptions…but it does feel they are pushing this from a community to a social network.
It is one thing to share content to form a public aggregate stream, but it is another thing to view a users world…Spokeo even lets you can add a user as a subscription.

Recap

- List view or box view
- Flagging a story is missing
- Communal feed directory (users of the system can add to this, but unlike Rojo you can’t tag your own feeds, or even discover feeds by tag)
- Communal story discovery (stories come from all users subscriptions)
- Recommended stories (find stories as recommended by the users of the system)
- Communal tags (find and subscribe to a tag stream of stories populated by the users as they tag their stories)
- My Network (add another user as a friend and see their recommended stories)

So far, they have got the communal part right, they need to just build into the social network part; “My Network” has to be more social:
- view a users subscribed feeds
- view a users subscribed tags (and subscribe to a user tag/s)
- view a users saved stories…this lacks tags (and subscribe to a user tag/s of their saved stories)

Tagging a story seems to be purely unselfish, as it does nothing for you personally, whereas saving a story adds it to your personal collection. At the moment this doesn’t feel right, I think tagging a story could save it for you as well (blend these two functions into one).

- view a users recommended stories
- view a users network
- subscribe to a user
- message a user

I dont know why an RSS Reader in a community verging on a network environment took so long, I really think it is a great idea.

Adesso Tubes acts as a virtual pipe between you and your friends to share files; notes, music, apps, documents, emails, etc…

Firstly you have to download the software to send/receive files, then all you do is put files in a special desktop folder/icon, and these files will instantly distribute to who ever is on that list, to what ever device they use (as long as tubes is installed), good way to send stuff from work to home.

Gigasize is good for big files, but it is not as simple as dragging a file into a folder which automatically gets distributed to multiple people, and the other great feature of tubes is it also works offline and synchs when you are back online.
Also when members of the tube makes changes to files, everyone is synched, kept up to date with the latest version.

An alternative for synchronous one to one file distribution is GoogleTalk.

Again you can use a file hosting/sharing service like Box.net, but it just doesn’t have the distribution capabilities, it’s just the usual email.

Another way to share files is using Zapr, where you can create a link for folders and documents on your PC, and others can click on these links to see these documents…but again this is just access, you still need to manually notify a list by email or IM, etc…

Anyway, all these tools deal with file sharing/distribution some how, but not with the ease and direct power of tubes…check out the post by Don Dodge, it evens explains using a tube for document collaboration.

A great use case would be in education, teachers could distribute homework to the whole class in one click and drag…students could even hand in homework with one click and drag.

A lot of the time when I’m RSS Reading I like to send the same friends some links, and I was tired of emailing these links even though I can do it from within the RSS Reader. The next choice was to clip these links with Google Reader and then get my friends to subscribe to the RSS feed of my clips page, but since they are not all RSS savvy even convert the feed to email…this is all too much.
I think a tube is the answer, I can make a tube called “Links for friends” and throughout the day I can just drag these links to the tube, these links will automatically distibute to my friends on the list. All that I require from them is to respond to my initial email and download the software.
The next logical step is tube widgets, or plugins, from within my RSS Reader I could send a story to a tube.

[ADDED 08/01/07: TubesNow is the new URL]

[ADDED 08/01/07: FolderShare and OnShare]

[ADDED 15/01/07: BoxCloud]

Solution Watch has posted about Glue, a site where you can publish content, but you don’t get a public webpage to display it, but there are choices to display your output: RSS, javascript, flash, etc…

So basically you show off your content as a feed widget or re-syndicate it somehow, similar to publi.sh or LinkRSS…you can also post by email just like publi.sh, what about IM like Sabifoo. You can also upload photos, and it is very mobile friendly.

Publishing content to the web or to an SMS group or both is becoming very easy, especially of late it is moving to more disposable content and more accessible and immediate for on the go (mobiles).

Examples of late:
Loopnote - publish/receive via SMS
Zemble, Mixd, Joopz, Kiboze, Mozeo, 3jam Twitter, Jaiku - publish/receive via SMS
Rasasa, ZapTXT, Blastfeed - alert via several formats

Ziki is a personal content management service within a social network, so I guess you could call it a personal network service. The premise is one spot to host (re-syndicate) all the content from your social networks, blogs, etc.. This way if someome wants to browse/search your content, thay can do it from the one spot.

Other features:
- Host a Reading List
- Tag yourself (people can find you by tag…expert locator)
- Tag contacts (when you add a contact you can organise them by personal tags)
- Search a Ziki (unlike Lijit you can’t search across a persons personal network)
- Browse a tag cloud of your content (it re-syndicates tags within the RSS feed)

Now posting has been added to the mix, that’s right, Ziki is not just about re-syndication, it is also now a place to post content, basically an inbuilt blog.

It’s not just a text blog you can include images, and code widgets from other services, just like a regular blog.

Next I’m thinking is a bookmarklet to post to my Ziki blog, this is great you can use it to blog or even clip content I guess, similar to the new feature in Top 10 Sources.

These Ziki posts are grouped in the “posts” stream, like all the other feeds you are re-syndicating, you can’t limit content to just one feed, this means you can’t see just all posts from your personal ziki blog.
Same applies to other streams like “bookmarks”, if you are re-syndicating feeds from various bookmark services, you can’t view content limited to one bookmark service, you can only view content from the “bookmarks” stream (mixed posts from all the bookmark services you use).

Come to think of it, this means your Ziki blog doesn’t have it’s own RSS feed, not that I can see anyway.

A similar service to Jaiku, here you can re-syndicate your personal content in the one site and you can also post content…but Jaiku has a different concept, more based on chronic posting.

Lijit is similar to personal network services like Ziki, these are services where you can collate all your web 2.0 interactions…I like SuprGlu as it is in a blog format, but Ziki and Lijit are different as they are in a network environment. I suppose Jaiku is similar, but its focus is moreso on manually posting about what you are doing.

Identity sites like claimID, simplifID, Namyz are kind of similar as personal network sites, but they are not networked in a social environment.
Then there Hictu which displays your current IM network status, ie. you are able to see the availability status of a person across various services…it also serves as an online contact book.

Basically Lijit, like Ziki, is a place to manage all you online identities, further to this people can then search across all your content, including content of your contacts, etc…

Lijit believe if you are searching for something you can search across the social filter of your Lijit contacts…so far Ziki lets you search in the content of one user, but not across that users network.

When you join Lijit it attempts to find your username across several social networks, you can also manually add a feed. Then what it will do is re-syndicate a stream of all your stuff just like Jaiku and Ziki. Add some contacts and search across them.

From the website:

“What if, you could search a person?
A single search for ‘television’ through that person’s eyes could returns blog posts the person had authored as well as bookmarks they made of TV related content

What if, you could search a group of people, through a person?

What if, you could search a group of people and their connections, through a person?”

Check out the widgit…and this blog post.

He is a random example of a user.

This is the idea for Topic Network services like Squidoo and the rest, the difference here is that it is more intimate, as you are searching across your contacts and degrees of connection thereof.

At the moment I use Ziki for personal content management, reason being is that it doubles up as an expert locator, ie. you can describe yourself with tags, then you can search the network to find people that match your search term. Further to that, when you add someone to your network you get to privately tag them.
Ziki also allows you to upload your OPML Reading List.

[ADDED: Searching your Ziki network is coming]

RSS filtering and personalisation are 2 ways to reduce the information overload, and hone in, target or tune exactly what your interested in. Then there is also the delivery - how are you going to read this content, the delivery will match the immediacy of your informations needs.

RSS filtering is creating search feeds across the blogosphere, tagosphere or across your subscriptions, you can even splice up lots of feeds and create a search filter, or you can create a search filter on each feed first and then splice it.

Some great tools are Feed Digest, Feed Rinse, Blast feed, Rasasa, ZapTXT, MySyndicaat, etc…

RSS personalisation is reading content quality according to your personal reading behaviour and perhaps even a social influence, a classic example of this is Rojo, it tracks what you click on flag, tag, rate, etc…

Touchstone has been around for some time and has taken RSS alerts to a level of sophistication, both in tuning content and delivery methods…see the TechCrunch review.

It is an RSS gadget that lives in your tray, it learns from you and delivers you content the ways you choose. It’s different than gadgets like klipfolio as there is only one interface to all information - not a clip per data source.

What I like about it is that besides scanning your reading behaviour and feeding you content based on your interests (APML), it delivers content in a various ways depending on how relevant it is to you, from an IM exchange Chris Saad says:

“it chooses the presentation style depending on the “Personal Relevancy” of the information - the more relevant the info to u the more disruptive a presentation style it uses so that u can stay informed while you work with minimal screen realetate and distruption.”

Just to clarify, I don’t think it so much personalises content via tuning to your reading behaviour (although it may do), it has a more complete method by scanning what you pay attention to, eg. scanning your harddrive to determine your browsing, email, favorites, documents, etc

Then, from your feed set it will deliver content that it thinks you like in the delivery method you like, so it is not really filtering, but more ranking.

It is similar to a toast systems tray pop up, but the delivery goes way further than that, more from Chris:

“…u can discard items below a certain rank, while alerting others of a higher rank
well the presentation style is not river of news, it is alerts
so it is a heads up display - u see them as soon as they are added to the feed - while u work - no need to open a program and see them in ANY order…”

“…it only toasts items that are of a certain rank or higher
items that rank even more highly might be SMSed (for example)
we call it ‘escalating alerts’…the result is something like this.

Even though certain posts are ranked higher than others (and in turn delivered differently) you can still get to show every post in your feed set (but this is more for traditional RSS Readers), Touchstone is more designed to show certain posts you like from a feed, and confidentally ditch the rest, this is Chris’s response to my question:

“it’s up to u - but the most important posts will be more prominantly alerted…it’s not an all or nothing situation - it is a ‘more important = more interruption’ situation
it is not designed to replace the feed reader though - only give u a heads up display while u work on other stuff”

In essence, according to your APML a heavily matched post will be more intrusive…but I think there is more than just APML in deciding personal relevancy.

Delivery Methods or Levels of Interruption

There’s lots of delivery methods depending on the personal importance of the content, and the good thing is that the Touchstone community can develop their own delivery gadgets.

- Ticker (for generally interesting stuff)
- Popup toast (for important stuff)
- Cusour trail that follows your mouse around for a few seconds (for even more important stuff)
- Not sure if it does SMS or IM (I guess the toast is as good as IM)
- Sticky note pop-ups on your desktop

It seems it is complementary to your RSS Reader, for some people Touchstone may be their only tool, but for others it is just an alert system so you know what you want to know, when you want to know, and how you want to know. Later on when you have time you can dig into your RSS Reader and read other posts, and tag stuff, etc…

I suppose if you wanted to see every post from every feed in Touchstone, it would be going beserk all day, tickering, cursor trailing, toasting, sticky noting, etc…that’s why it seems to work best only showing the cream of posts from your feed set according to you.

Manual tuning

- Rank sources of information, eg. rank your 10 most favorite feeds as 5 stars, that way they are sure to be alerted in the most disruptive way every time

- Filter posts by typing in phrases to look for and rating those phrases as negative/positive importance to you

Chris says: “…there is an ‘attention spectrum’ of -5 to +5
and most of the output ‘widgets’ catch items that rank from 0 to 5
so anything that ranks in the negatives is usually filtered out anyway
but u can always change that so they catch all items, even if they have a negative rank”

They also have widgets (called Pebbles) to put on your blog, it re-syndicates an RSS feed of your ‘most personally relevant content’.

Touchstone is not just about RSS, it also pulls in email and other types of data, check out the ideas for adaptors.

There’s much more to this service, I’ve only started to scratch the surface…and there is some interesting things coming up, keep in touch with their blog.

Related:
RSS smarts