Library clips

Not long ago I posted about mashtracker, the memetracker for the mashable blog. This is another way to read mashable, you will see inlinks and related posts clustered instead of in a linear fashion…now you can visually see the buzz around all blog posts from the one blog.

They have just released the mashtracker top 25 blogs.
This is the most frequently appearing blogs from the post in the “Discussions” section.

This reminded me of a feed grazing hack from Adam Green from while back now, and I think the mashtracker top blogs could add the feed grazing concept to this page.

What this hack does is enable feed grazing from machine generated Reading Lists.
A usual Reading List is a bunch of feed subscriptions on a topic or from a users RSS Reader subscriptions, this list may sometimes change depending on the owner of this list deleted/adding feeds.

Whereas a pure Grazing List is not created by a user, but moreso by a machine, and the feeds in the Grazing List are always changing.
The same list tomorrow or later today will have a different set of feeds, so it’s kind of like feed shopping, every day you look at the same window for bargains, the mannequin’s will be wearing different clothes.

What Adam did was automatically scan the latest posts in Techmeme and grab the feeds of those posts, put them in a mini-RSS Reader so you can graze the contents of those feeds, if you like what you read, maybe you may commit to subscribing to it in your RSS Reader.
The last thing I need is more feeds, but I like the idea of discovering feeds in this fashion.

Maybe I can do this for my megite OPML, now that would be nice.

So the top blogs at mashtracker is doing this very thing, only it lacks the last step, reading the feed contents from within this page. At the moment it is a dynamic list of blog home pages, where as I want a dynamic list of feeds that I can read like an RSS Reader.

What about doing the same thing for a Technorati Search, see here.
Basically we are saying, can I see all the blog feeds from the blog posts in this search result in an on the fly RSS Reader so I can see their other posts.

More

Now wait for it, look what else the mashtracker top blogs could do, for every feed in the top 25 it could list the author, Technorati Tags, Rank and Inlinks…see how Adam extended his original hack.

Annotated Grazing Lists add so much more context to information, the data is just waiting to be pulled in to join the party.

Not long ago I posted about Blogtronix, and how it enables you to create a portal by re-syndicating feed content, a perfect example is Social Media Today.

Check out ScienceBlogs, I’m not sure of what service they are using to run this, but it is an amazing portal for re-syndicating Science Blogs.

Features
- on the sidebar of the home page they have a blog index, this is a link to see each blog within the portal.
- search all blogs
- “channels” is also on the sidebar, these channels give context to the blog index…so you can find a blog via the blog index or via the channel (topic folder).

Notice one of the channels is called “24 hours”, this allows you to see the latest posts from all blogs within a 24 hour time period, this type of feed could probably be created with Yahoo! Pipes.

- “more hot topics” are links to pre-done searches
- along the top is a bar that scrolls the latest posts
- in the middle is a kind of memetracker as it lists the latest posts around a hot topic, not sure how often this changes, or how they decide on the hot topic, maybe it’s based on the most frequent appearing word (word burst), or probably something more clever.
- the second half of the page has a selection of the latest posts from each channel

That’s the front page, if you want to read a blog or a channel just click on it.

Here’s an example of a blog.

Only feedback is that when you are on a blog you don’t know what channel it belongs to, so I have to click through all the channels to see which one a blog belongs in, once I have located the channel, then I can discover similar blogs.
Each blog has a drop down menu to jump to another blog, but as I mentioned there lacks a drop down menu to jump to a channel, where the default could be set to the channel the blog you are looking at belongs to.

I like that you can see the top 5 most emailed posts, but what’s this mean I don’t see an email this post link, wouldn’t they need this so they can register when it is clicked.

A similar version of the scrolling latest post from the portal is still along the top bar, even if you are viewing a single blog.

Here’s an example of a topic channel.

Again we still have the scrolling bar for the latest posts, we can still jump to other blogs, and we can also jump to another channel.
We also have the top 5 most emailed posts, most active posts (what does this mean?), and most searched posts…this applies to the portal as a whole.

My feedback is that it shows you the latest posts from all blogs in this channel, but where exactly is the list of all blogs in this channel.

Also where’s the feed, I have to instead click on the main feed page:
- subscribe to a channel or a blog, I’d like a selection box to pick and choose. There’s also a mother spliced feed of the whole lot and a filtered feed of the best posts from the network, not sure how they work this out…Original Signal have just introduced something similar based on visitor clicks.

More
From what I can see it seems this is not re-syndicated content, but rather in house blogs, as the posts don’t seem to point back to an original site…from my little surfing around I only noticed the Gene Expression blog had another version outside of ScienceBlogs.

So this may not be newsmastering after all but more a multi-blog collective like ZDNet blogs, and ITToolbox.

Zimbra - web mail client with new offline features, when will this happen with Gmail, offline is in vogue.
[via TC]

Zenbe - like Jubii, and Zimbra above, and perhaps Foldera (this is more project/task management than email).
Check out the Zenbe features:
- drag rich text, like maps
- conversation collapsing like Gmail
- newspaper view displays multiple messages
- calendar, to-do, etc…with sharing
- RSS Reader module
- send/recieve emails from your current address (POP, IMAP)
- file manager
- create alias email addresses
[via CT]

Jott - call a number, leave a voicemail and it will be converted to text and published on your blog. Seems you can also link a Jott to a blog post.
Jott to self, Jott to a group, Jott to an individual…ring, leave voicemail, goes to your email inbox…for a group and individual it goes to their inbox, and their phone…added to groups SMS post.

Maybe you can use Twitter in this way…leave a voicemail Tweet, which will convert to text in your blog or your feed, then send that feed to Twitter using RSS2Twitter.

Bzzster
- save links in your userspace and send them to friends and the Bzzster community via a bookmarklet…also see share2me. [via Go2web2, SF]

Jabbits - video message board Q&A, this is one up on Qunu which is text IM, well not quite, as Qunu is in real time, what next I see is Video chat Q&A…see more. Others are Vlip and CrowdRules. [via FI, mashable]

Bonus links:
Cheddarvision.tv and Watching Paint Dry - a bit less exiting than Justin.tv

Justin.tv - 24 hour video streaming blog, the ultimate DIY reality show…chat with Justin and others, send an SMS to Justin, view his Twitter updates. [via MNM]

Ustream.tv and Stickam - create your own 24 hour video stream blog, just like Justin [via TC]

Youcams - chat video widget, that also enable you to add widgets within your widget [via Mashable, WW]

mobileplay - create your own mobile webpages

Zoolit - meta-identity service with a widget, see Show Yourself and others [via mashable]

Congoo allows you to choose from various categories, then generates a public URL for your personalised news page.
Read news by category or latest stream, also has Google News style memtracking

Actually it reminds me a lot of customising Google News, only this is done by search strings.

It looks great, but isn’t very web 2.0, I want to get in there and choose my own sources, and remix them, once I created the RSS radar feeds, then I’d like to use Congoo to present my news.

What about allowing you to create your own Congoo for the enterprise, select (and remix) your sources, bunch them into categories, and then give them to the knowledge worker to select channels for their own personalised news page…also has a public URL, so you can make one for your business unit.

Maybe this is what the BlogBridge Feed Library could offer.

Related:
Daylife news Portal
newscri.be
Spotback
Top 10 Sources

[ADDED 29/03/07: I just noticed more features
- widgets for your blog sidebar
- add your own posts, also has comments
- comments for any item
- a links box
- favourite circles (bookmark other Congoo’s)
- keyword searches…I’d like to include these as a focus channel
- personal alerts]

I’ve been waiting for a little Twitter app to post and keep up-to-date, and TriQQr is just that thing.

The blog post explains it all:
- it updates every 2 minutes, or you can manually refresh
- click arrows to see tweets in full
- click on the avatar of the tweet you have displayed to see a profile (basically the “whois” command)
- view friends or public timeline
- displays the last 10 or so tweet headlines (even scroll for more), click on a tweet to display it in full
- post a tweet (publish to all)
- post a direct message via a drop down menu of your friends

Feedback
It doesn’t have an installer, I think this means it doesn’t live in your systems tray yet, so everytime you start your PC you will have to execute it from the web page.

It lacks a minimize button, the only way to minimise it, is to click on it in your task bar.

Commands like : “get elsua”, or “leave elsua” don’t work for me at the moment
…maybe this will be built into the interface so we don’t have to use the command, just like with direct messages.
Come to think of it commands are only for IM or SMS, desktop apps are a browser alternative so instead of commands there will be a GUI.

I’d like to limit my stream to one or a selection of friends (people I follow).

When I click on a profile I’d like to see their Twitter URL so I can launch to their Twitter webpage

Option button doesn’t work for me

See the Twitter Fan Wiki for more desktop apps.

Some other Twitter tools that are new to me…

AutoTwit enables you to schedule tweets (weekly, daily, hourly)…what about once off, I don’t want the same re-occuring tweet.

Also see Twitterfeed.com, but why not just use RSS2Twitter.

Vodpod is social bookmarks for video’s, grab them from any video site and bookmark them in your vodpod, show them in a widget. Not only do you have a user space, but you can also join group pods.

I bookmark audio files in Podchains (you can bookmark any media file), but it won’t play within Podchains, you also get a widget, and space to host your own media URL’s from the media files on your PC.

Other choices are DivShare and Box.net to host files, share files and play them in widgets…but not within a social network.

With Podchains you actually bookmark the file, with Vodpod you just bookmark the web page the video box is hosted on, so you are not actually saving the media file itself.

See my post, The Podcast Listener, where at the end I link to lots of ways to download video URL’s into video files…also check out similar video social networks.

Download

Here’s an example post from the The Chris Pirillo Show, notice that you can download a YouTube clip directly from the post, it seems to use Google Video somehow, not sure how this works.

It seems you can download YouTube clips by using Democracy, this is a RSS Reader, Podcatcher, Video Player in one.
You can even use VideoBomb to download YouTube clips.

Also check out The Channel Channel, as a way to view one minute previews of Internet Video Channels, before you may wish to subscribe…also see PodcastPromos.

huminity - primarily an IM chatosphere where you connect to people in a SNA kind of way, now they also have blogs…could this be ideal for a closed system like the enterprise…check out their blog for more.

IMified Twitter - post and receive updates

mail2twitter - post to Twitter by email…yeah, I can use my mobile phone email…see more.

rss2twitter - automatic posting of your feed content to Twitter…see similar ways.

xFruits - RSS to Voice, and Mail to RSS are two newbie bricks, the first converts an RSS feed into an audio file, same ground as Talkr, Odiogo and others.
The next brick enables you to read your unread email as a feed in your RSS Reader, they suggest using their other brick to turn this feed into a PDF, all your unread email as a PDF, snazzy…also see RSS2PDF.

Show Yourself - another identity widget, also see Wink and Pidy…most of the other meta-identity management services probably provide similar widgets, or a widget for streamed content from across all your identities.

Zudos - one search will search the social web, results are returned in sections - blogs, bookmarks, photo’s video’s, podcasts, memedigged, etc, similar to TagJag and lots of others…neat presentation, not bad at all.

TwitThis - a bookmarklet to twit about the web page you are on…gee, I hope this won’t induce Twits to start link blogging. Also some code to drop into the footer of your blog post.

Twitterbuzz - oh know, Twitter is turning into link blogging…check out the most popular weblinks according to what people are tweeting about.

Big Contacts - a contact manager, also includes tasks, notes, etc…it seems there are so many PIM tools these days, the primary focus may be on email or contacts or tasks or notes, but in the end they offer all these features.

Kayuda - another mindmapper, it has real-time collaborative editing [via WWD]

The other day I finally got round to loading a couple of mp3 files on my mp3 player, how awesome listening to web2.0 talk whilst hanging out the washing, on the train, waiting in lines…I’m not an official all sensory information addict till I start watching vodcasts on my device.

It’s taken me a while to become a podcast listener and I’m addicted, actually I’m frustrated as I only have dial-up, I can only download about 2 or 3 shows a night.

OK, so as a user the first thing I thought was where do I find web 2.0 related mp3 files or podcasts.

The next thing I thought was how do I manage these downloads.

Find
Many of the blogs I follow point to mp3 files all the time, so now I have to go through these blogs to find these files, but how, this search doesn’t work on Google Blog Search:

blogurl:http://www.masternewmedia.com filetype:mp3

Anyone know a way around this…maybe using Altavista audio search?

So my aim is to find audio files and to also find podcasts, here are some I found.

Search engine
Podzinger - searches in media content and also generates a podcast feed,
eg. any new audio/video that contains the word “wiki” will download those episodes/s in the podcast feed that you subscribe to in your Podcatcher or RSS Reader.
When you find episodes you like, you may feel that you could subscribe to the show itself.

So this searches in the audio content, amazing…I wonder if you can get a free transcript, I don’t think so…not for free, but best yet.

Now if this was a social network, you could then search by user tags for shows and episodes…topic searching always cuts through.

Podscope - search in full-text of video/audio, and subscribe to search podcast feed, similar to Podzinger.

Blinkx - like Podscope and Podzinger, search full-text of media, and generates a podcast feed, also play the media, even login to add to your playlist.

Podcast Alley - discover shows (not episodes or media files) by category, users can submit shows and comment and vote, not sure if you can login to save favourite shows, but you can listen to them.

PodcastReady - browse for shows and episodes and listen to them, login to manage items.

Yahoo! podcast search (refine to podcast) - keyword search, this searches in the text of the blog post pointing to the media file, it does not search in the actual audio itself.
eg. wiki

Google mp3 search - this isn’t searching in podcast feeds, this is searching HTML pages.

Also see Geek to Live: Find free music on the web.

There are lots of audio search engine’s and mp3 portals, but like some above it is cleaner to limit these to the podosphere or blogosphere, ie. searching within feeds, and even better when you can search in the audio itself.

del.icio.us filetype mp3 - this will allow you to find mp3 files people have bookmarked…also add a tag to this;
eg. http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3+wiki
http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:mp3+podcast+blog
See more from the del.icio.us blog.

Technorati examples - Tags, Blog Directory (sorted by authority)

Social Networks
Odeo - Search for shows and episodes, listen to them and heaps of user interaction. Add podcast shows (feeds), but can’t add episodes or media files. Manage your favourite shows and episodes.
Check out show and feeds by user tags check out other users, even create podcasts
Podomatic - similar idea to Odeo.
fireANT - social network for video podcasts
Evoca : Voice comments for your blog - this is an audio snippet social network, each user and tags have podcast feeds.
mefeedia - social network for audio and video podcasts
mobilcastnetwork - social network for audio and video podcasts
[ADDED 23/03/07: blipTV - social network for video podcasts]
[ADDED 23/03/07: iondb.com - social network for audio and video podcasts]
[ADDED 26/03/07: blubrry]
[ADDED 26/03/07: Scouta]
[ADDED 27/03/07: Videobomb, vodpod]

Networks
The Podcast Network
NPR, also OnTheMedia.
Revision3 (video)
PodShow (video)
Personal Life Media (topic based - personal growth)
PodTech (video)
[ADDED 23/03/07: TVTonic (video)]
[ADDED 27/03/07: gigavox, O’Reilly.net, GruntMedia]

Books
podiobooks
audible
Librivox

Live podcasts
BlogTalkRadio

Directory
Podnova (also a Podcatcher)
iPodder (also a Podcatcher)
Podcast.net (search the directory, also by tag)
AllPodcasts
The PodLounge
Podcast Pickle
Podfeed.net
Podcasting Station
Podcasting News (also a blog), also see more blogs about podcasting podcasting tools, podblaze
Idiotvox
Podcast Shuffle
SYO Top Podcasts
[ADDED 23/03/07: Democracy]
[ADDED 26/03/07: PodcasterNews]
[ADDED 27/03/07: Ziepod, Techpodcasts, Internet Archive, The Channel Channel]

See more from the lists below.

Directory List and Gateways
Where to Submit Your Podcasts: Best Podcast Search Engines and Directories - Mini-Guide, Part 1
Podcast Tools
Podcasting Tools, check out the directory.

Reviews
The New, New Podcast Review
podcast-review (outdated)

Delivery
I’ve decided to not subscribe to podcast feeds in a Podcatcher like Podnova (which also has a directory of feeds) or Doppler as I often don’t like every show, I know you don’t have to auto-download, you can pick and choose which episodes to download.

My method is to subscribe to podcast feeds in my RSS Reader, any shows I like I bookmark the actual mp3 files into either del.icio.us or Podchains, I choose Podchains as this is a service like del.icio.us but dedicated to media.

Then I subscribe to my Podchains feed in my Podcatcher (eg. Podnova), this way ideally when I get home all the files I have bookmarked are downloaded. But in reality, because my computer is slow a Podcatcher is just a tease, so I just manually download my latest bookmarks, these are labelled “Unplayed” in Podchains.

I suppose another place where you can save your media files are in a file host like DivShare, and like del.icio.us Playtagger, you can play the file from the service, also if you include the mp3 file in your blog post, a player will be displayed so people can listen to it from within your post.
DivShare has another feature where you can upload mp3 straight into your blog post.
See some other hosts here, including blipTV and OurMedia.

The real advantage of a a file host is that if you record your own media file you can upload it to a file host, which will create your very own web URL for your media file. You can put this URL of your media file into your blog post which will be included in your feed (if your feed is set up to with enclosures).

NOTE: in del.icio.us you bookmark an existing web file, in a file host you actually host the file from your PC, ie. give it a URL, which people could then bookmark in del.icio.us.

UPDATE: MediaMaster is a hosted online music library, once your files are uploaded they cannot be downloaded for copyright reasons, so this probably doesn’t qualify for this post…others are webjay, radioblogclub (download hack), imeem, last.fm, MyStrands, pandora, Slacker, MOG, etc…

Podchains Update
Podchains is now a cross between a file host and a bookmark service
- 400MB of storage (this means you can enable a web URL for media files you have on your PC)
- feed for your account, feed for Played or Unplayed bookmarks, feeds for each tag…I wish they had a section for audio and video, but that’s OK because I’m tagging my audio files with “audio”, which generates a feed.
- a widget
- you can’t play files unlike del.icio.us and many other services
- it’s not quite a social network, when you look at a tag page you are only recommended other files, but you don’t get to see other users or tags.

Here is my Podchains feed

Video
In the directory links you will find some video casts or video blogs (vlogs), but what if you want to download video clips from services that don’t offer downloadable files, eg. YouTube.
Here are some tips, most of them from Digital Inspiration:
The Easiest Way to Save Youtube Videos: Kiss The Address Bar
Extract Still Image Sequences from Video Clips with AVCutty
Download Youtube Videos As iTunes MOV or MP3 Files Directly
When Video Files Won’t Play on Your Computer, Call Video Inspector
Zen Mix Blends Internet Video With Any Picture
Directly Download Youtube Videos with YouRipper
How to Split a Large Video File into Smaller Clips
10 Interesting Things You Can Do with YouTube or Google Videos
How to Convert a Video Podcast to Audio Only
HeyWatch
ZamZar

More
This post is more focused on the listener, but if you are into creating podcasts Portals and KM has a post on some services, also check out the links in the Directory/Gateway section.

Podlinez, a podcast directory with phone numbers next to each entry, just ring a number to listen to the latest podcast from that website on your phone…or enter the podcast URL and it will churn out a phone number.

Fonpods - audio on demand for your mobile phone, more precisely, you join the website and have your own RSS Reader for audio posts or podcasts, but instead of downloading the audio files like a Podcatcher does, you instead ring up and listen to your podcasts (no downloading and you don’t need and mp3 player, all you need is a mobile phone).

Botcasting - automated text-to-voice services - listen to feeds by turning them into podcasts.

mobilize - subscribe to audio feeds on your phone

Download podcasts straight onto your device.
Podcatcher Matrix
MobaTalk : Multimedia blog comments
Textcasting : podcast for text
podcast text
Podcast comments

Podcast is a weird name, it has really got nothing to do with iPods, all you are doing is using an advanced download manager (Podcatcher) to manage your downloads. Then you can listen to them on your PC, or then perhaps drag them to your mobile device.
The great thing about enclosed RSS feeds (Podcasts?) is that you don’t have to keep going to the website to grab the audio file and put it into your download manager, you just subscribe to the feed so the latest media files come to you.
Basically an RSS Reader, but with the additional step of downloading (even automatically) the files in the feed enclosures.

[ADDED 23/03/07:
vlogmap
freevlog]