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January 16, 2007

SocialNetwork.In and aggregation services in general

Filed under: newsmaster

Gee these identity services are on the rise, first it was bookmarks, then startpages, now identity pages.

SocialNetwork.In seems to be going down the path of ProfileLinker, only it seems more focused in finding out what the most popular service is:
- aggregate all your profiles
- aggregate all your friends
- rate networks and leave comments

In fact aggregating services are increasing in general, perhaps we are hitting a web 2.0 milestone…startpages and the widgetisation of the web were perhaps the first indicators:

- Aggregate identity (Lijit, Ziki, pidy)

- Aggregate feeds (MySyndicaat, SuprGlu, FeedCollectors, Kinja, FeedPile, FeedRaider, SpeedyFeed, etc…)

- Aggregate IM (Meebo, ebuddy, kool IM, Mabber, I Love IM, Trillian)
NOTE: not only do startpages aggregate widgets on one page, but there is also a widget for the Meebo service that aggregates IM (aggregation within aggregation)

- Aggregate presence (Hictu)

- Aggregate bookmarklets (blummy)

- Aggregate search (there are plenty of these, I use the main one so much I’ve forgotten about others…these are usually referred to as Meta-search engines)

I’m sure there is plenty more…

[ADDED 17/01/07: Spokeo is an RSS Reader that specialises in following the latest content from social networks, you can still subscribe to any old feed, but it is really easy to subscribe to a user feed from a social network…you can also subscribe to a Spokeo user]

MobaTalk : Multimedia blog comments

Filed under: blogs, tools

MobaTalk is coming soon!

It seems to be a widget to put on your blog so people can leave a comment - whether it be text, audio or video.
It mentions that you can also send a comment, probably meaning you can comment back to that person from the widget.

Not sure what text refers to, it could be: email, IM, or SMS.
It could mean a direct email or leaving a message, and the owner is notified by email…only IM if your presence indicator says your online, otherwise the owner is notified by email…SMS is as usual.

Multimedia comments seems to be in vogue at the moment, that’s why I started collecting these services in this post.

I wonder if all this is going to happen at the post level, imagine listening to all the audio comments from one blog post, it would be like listening in on a virtual type of conversation.

OK, this seems to be the reinventing of My Chingo.

Notice that you can make the audio comments private or public, and follow the feed, I guess this is a podcast feed.

[ADDED 18/01/07: Alex from MobaTalk left a comment mentioning that it is based on MMS, you can send an MMS to the site owner - this means visitors can leave a comment (audio, picture, text) on your blog from their phone.

Or as with MyChingo just leave an audio comment (or optional text) by visiting the widget on your blog, I wonder if you can deposit a picture this way as well with MobaTalk.

The other thing I like is that it offers a feed, if this was at the post level you have have a multi media comments feed (podcast) for each post]

A Twitter about Twitter

Filed under: blogs, mobile

A Melbourne blogger has been twitting away every couple of minutes and has decided to blog the timeline of mega twitting marathon…the first tour is 2 hours, the second tour is 5 hours, that’s sore fingers!

NOTE: if you don’t know what Twitter is see this post.

I really like this, it reminds me of the way people conference blog, example here, I also like that a map is included for this type of Twittering.

One of the tour posts says that you can’t see a full archive of the Twitting, but I’m sure it has an archive, just look for the “View All” link, it also has a feed - http://twitter.com/johnt/all_updates

There is even a “With friends” view (similar to your admin view) - http://twitter.com/johnt/with_friends
This view has a feed, but doesn’t have an archive.

Questions

This has got me thinking about organising my twitterings, I wouldn’t want to tag each twitter, but could I tag a set of twitterings?
Just like both tours above could be featured on the users sidebar as 2 collection sets.

Check out datablogging timelines (time periods, and episodes) eg. http://joereger.com/entry-eventid2658.log http://www.joereger.com/episodes.log

Could I view my twitters by date, maybe a small calendar?

Could I MMS a twitter as the tour twitterings look great with photo’s?

Can you SMS a private message, you can on the web, but not sure if you can via SMS as people don’t have their own unique number?

Can I email Twitter from my phone instead of using SMS, if so, would I email the same address I IM to, ie. twitter@twitter.com, actually probably not, as Twitter wouldn’t know it’s from me, unless it identifies my email address (perhaps the one I registered with)?

The reason I ask is that my phone email only costs $3 a month to send/receive emails.
[UPDATE: I can IM from my phone for $5 a month, so that solves all]
Not sure if Twitter charges to send or to receive SMS, the help section says:

“Twitter is a free service. At some point we may introduce optional, for-pay features or services but basic usage will remain free. Note: with phone alerts turned on, Twitter makes use of texting or SMS so check with your mobile provider to find out if this will cost you extra.”

I was thinking if Twitter would allow you to form groups, but then what happens if a friend you followed is in a few groups you are in, would you get duplicate Twitters? This also would start to resemble chatting, which is what Twitter is really not about, as they don’t even have comments for each post.

But I’ve noticed that when I have gone to add a friend, it sometimes sends an invite instead, this must mean this person has a private account, and they will let you know if you can be their friend.
You can sort of hack a closed group this way, eg. you get 5 of you, each has a private account, and each decides to only add each other as friends, and no one else.

Maybe sending a private message to multiple people, with reply to sender or reply to all could be a supplement for one off scenarios.

Another thing, it would be great to find people like in Jaiku…oops you can, I didn’t see that nifty people search box.

[ADDED: Twitter Timelines]

[ADDED 19/03/07: Twittervision : real time map]

Tag2Find : tag your PC files

Filed under: tags

TechCrunch has an informative post about Tag2Find, basically tagging files o your PC…also see Stored Tagging File Utility.

Mike explains that Vista has a tagging component but it is not very prominent. Tag2Find lives in your systems tray, click on it, enter tags and drag in your files, or find files by tag, the larger view also has a tag cloud.

I wonder if you can sort by format, this way I could tag my Outlook emails (but it would be cumbersome to make msg files in order to tag them, I’ll stick to Taglocity.

Eventually in a web office we will have tags for all our documents anyway, again I wonder if these office 2.0 suites have a tag cloud merged with the tags from each product. You could then even choose to merge multiple user clouds.

Also check out Krawler[x], some sort of desktop app that lets you tag files, has an RSS Reader, a social network, etc…it seems to be an enterprise community network tool.

Swicki : post a search result

Filed under: blogs, search

I’ve blogged about Swicki before, basically a communal search engine for your blog where it suggests keywords to search based on community activity or based on the owners suggestions, users can also rate results, owners can promote or exclude results…basically a read/write engine where the community is tuning results.

Now they have enabled manual tuning by allowing people to write their only post within a search result. I like this idea, if you do a search and you feel that it was essential that a particular website should of been in the results, just blog or post about it within that Swicki page.

The various ways visitors can communicate with blog owners

Filed under: blogs, tools

Here is a list of ways blog publishers can chat with their visitors, and how visitors can chat amongst each other.
Also is asynchronous communication, ie. the different ways visitors can leave comments.

BLOG OWNERS CHATTING WITH VISITORS

Video
Wengo
Stickam
[ADDED 28/03/07: Youcams]
Wambo [ADDED 30/03/07]

Text Chat Box
Various…see my post Blog chat (this also includes visitors chatting with each other)

Create a chat room for your blog using meebo rooms, Tangler, Zpeech, even Google Groups or Facebook groups…meebo rooms also comes as a widget.

IM (same as text chatting but via your IM client)
plugoo
meebome
mabber [ADDED 28/02/07]
Wambo [ADDED 28/02/07]
livechat2im [ADDED 16/05/07]
Yackpack Walkie Talkie [ADDED 16/05/07]…either a/synchronous

VOIP
Jaxter [ADDED: 29/01/07]
Jangl - a widget where people can call you or SMS you.

VISITORS LEAVING COMMENTS

Text
The usual way via the comments form for posts, for the blog in general:
FormLogix - Send Comment Form, Question and Comment Form

Message Board
Texterize (send by SMS)
[ADDED 24/05/07: backwardblog]
…most of these may be listed in my Blog chat post.

Text Chat Box
See above…this is also a way to leave a comment

IM
See above

VOIP
Jaxter [ADDED: 29/01/07]

Email
Send you an email:
FormLogix (Contact us)
GoToMsg (widget)
There are a few from Google Widgets, not sure if they work:
Quick email
Or you can use an email icon and have some mailto: code behind it.

Video
flikzor
hellodeo (not sure if visitors can leave a video comment)
flixn (not sure if visitors can leave a video comment)
bubbletwo [ADDED 17/01/07]
vidime [ADDED 18/01/07]
blipback [ADDED 15/10/07]
Commentt [ADDED 15/10/07]

Audio
Evoca
SnapVine
odeo
SupCast
SnapVine
MyChingo
Voice2Comment [ADDED: 27/01/07]
Jangl - a widget where people can call you or SMS you.
Also see YackPack Walkie talkie
Spinvox - ring a number, voice to text [ADDED: 2/06/07]
Speakageline - ring a number leave a voice message [ADDED: 2/06/07]

SMS
otxt
buddyPing
EQO
Texterize (also a Message Board)
Cingular Text Message
DirectCall Back (widget)
GoToMsg (widget)
Jangl - a widget where people can call you or SMS you.

[ADDED: MobaTalk : Multimedia blog comments]

Ratings
JS-Kit
Bumpbox
Authorati
Newsgator ratings
Star it
Spotback Rate Everything
FeedBlitz outbrain voting box
Blogarate
Click comments
Outbrain ratings widget [ADDED: 06/11/07]

Comments
JS-Kit
LineBuzz
ZoopIn
InstaComment
Click comments
SezWho [ADDED: 23/07/07]

Polls
JS-Kit, there are so many polls…

Contact Us
Contactify]

RSS feed for this post (it’s actually the comments feed for this post, but I will leave a comment when I update the post)

RSS comments feed for this blog in general

[ADDED 13/06/07: A community or network around your blog]

[ADDED 4/06/08: Roundup : VoiceThread, Dipity, Ask500people, Intense Debate, Disqus]

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