Library clips

I just read over on mashable about the various ways to filter tweets; by keywords, by groups, by links, etc…

Under the keyword section they list filttr, but I got to tell you filttr does it all, not as sophisticated as peoplebrowsr, but it has the essential features. It’s oAuth enabled, post select updates to Facebook, Twitpic, file attachments, shortcuts, threaded replies, and has a mobile version. Below I have focused on the filtering features.

Features

• Filters tweets based on your past reading behaviour
• Manually black list and white list keywords
• Slider to curb noisy tweeps

eg. if a tweep is conference tweeting too much you can slide to receive less noise

• Link only tweets from your stream
• Create many keyword streams
• Create many group streams

But can’t share these as Sameer Patel would like, and which some others can do

• Create a combination of a keyword stream within a group, and also, that shows only tweets with links in them

eg. show me tweets with just links in them with the hashtag #e2conf within my group of people I follow called “enterprise”

• Automatically creates a group of tweeps that aren’t in a group

I’ve been using Filttr for most of this year, and I tell ya it helps me deal with my Twitter stream firehose, plus these guys are really responsive with implementing suggested features, either via Twitter, email or Uservoice.

If you have time you can read the regular stream, or perhaps just read link only tweets in the regular stream, but let’s face it I never, ever, ever have time to do this…

I don’t really create keyword search streams unless I’m researching or there is an event, and I haven’t used the sliders or black/white listing features yet.

But what I do use is the grouping feature (alias), and link-only tweets feature.

Just like an RSS Reader I have folder type streams.

These folders are groups that I organise my tweeps in…you can do a keyword search across a group if you like.

eg. I have a group called “enterprise2.0″
- this displays tweets from about 100 people I follow
- if I wanted I could overlay this with a keyword search eg “wiki”
- then later on I can take off the keyword search if I like

For every group, I have a link only group as well.

For example, if I don’t have time to read all tweets in my “enterprise2.0″ group, I’ll read the “enterprise2.0-linkonly” stream instead…this way I can just read tweets that have links in them.

The main groups I have are:

Regular stream-linkonly
Enterprise2.0
Enterprise2.0-linkonly
Enterprise2.0Essentials
Enterprise2.0Essentials-linkonly
Networks
Networks-linkonly
Communities
Communities-linkonly
Learning
Learning-linkonly
KM
KM-linkonly
Local
Local-linkonly
LocalEsssentials
LocalEssentials-linkonly
Vendor
Vendor-linkonly

Today I may only have 20 minutes to catch up on Twitter on my mobile on the train, so I may read:

Communities-linkonly
KM-linkonly
Networks-linkonly
Enterprise2.0Essentials-linkonly

I really like that I’m empowered to be able to do this. With the regular Twitter interface, my 20 minutes would not get me far, or satisfy me…

I got a follow-up email the other day from our vendor to see if I have used a new reporting package, and for some feedback. I really don’t have time now as I’m facilitating at the moment, but I will get round to metrics at some stage.

To tell you the truth, this reporting thing is going to be a whole new component to our CoPs, which means I will have to dedicate some good time to learning about it, practicing, and then putting some stuff together to inform CoP facilitators, and then to support them.

I’m so busy at the moment that I keep putting it off. I would be prepared to spend 15 minutes a day on it, but I’m one of those people who once they start, really dive into something; the momentum, continuity and freshness helps me retain and not forget where I’m up to, or how things work again.

Then I thought, blog fragments.

I asked the vendor if she could possibly use her blog to do a weekly post on reporting. Maybe what’s already available, and what’s involved. And then start getting into the new package…perhaps posting once a week to showcase a report and what questions it answers

eg. If your boss is asking for numbers, but you don’t have the time for this stuff just try this quick and easy report on distinct logins, that will buy you time for now.

eg. The boss may ask for penetration metrics eg. The difference in number between members of CoPs and all employess

eg. If your boss wants a more explicit step up, try this report that tells him how many subscribers there are across all blogs and forums

eg. The boss may want some activity metrics eg. the number of blog and forum posts

eg. What about some engagement, try this report on the number of blog/forum posts a month compared to comments/replies. What about the difference between members and contributors, or compare the number of contributors to previous months.

This would really spoon feed me, and help workaround my attitude, and attention scarcity.

There’s no way I’m going to read a paper or dive into a whole new area right now as I’m too busy, but if someone feeds me little fragments where I can learn in bits and pieces, well then I will pay some attention.

Plus I can always comment on the blog posts to get some clarification and context.

Since we are talking about metrics, here’s what Agnes Kolkiewicz emailed me back, I thought it was interesting:

“As I’m sure you know, adoption and success go hand in hand…so I usually encourage the use of metrics not just to measure ROI, but also to measure progress along the way, as then you have data to fall back on at a later date to say this is how the system improved over time. Measuring things along also helps identify “peak times” in participation so that community facilitators can try and perhaps recreate the event that caused the peak at a later date.”

“I’ll post something tomorrow and will aim at a minimum of one post a week.. your email was a good motivation!”

I replied:

“thx Agnes…you are right…kind of like measuring the heartbeat, the rhythm”

Let’s finish off with a quote by Dave Snowden on the theme of this post:

“The basic idea is simple: Small things are more adaptable than big things, and they are frequently more interesting and more able to gain our attention. People will spend more time surfing the Web and using the fragmented material of an RSS feed than reading documents. It’s easier to write a blog than a book. Fine granularity material can combine in novel and different ways more easily than formal documents.”

FeedVis - Still in private beta, with also an offer of the source code to run it on your server, FeedVis is a a tag cloud generator based on a bunch of feeds that you import via an OPML. The cloud is based on frequency and popularity. This should just be a feature of Google Reader, and probably is in Feedly (also see mini). I remember good old Feeds2.0 had a tag cluster. [via RWW]

embedit.in - embed doc and image files or URLs into your blog posts as flash boxes - doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, pdf, wpd, odt, ods, odp, png, jpg, gif, tiff, bmp, eps, ai, txt, rtf, csv, html. Limit is 20 meg. If you already have a web page with links to lots of documents, use embedit.in sitewide to convert them in one go. See their tips. I’d rather not embed it in this post, but here’s a URL to an example of embedding a URL. [via nw]

Webinmail - if all you have is an email connection, yet you want to surf the web, then email this service with the URL you want in the subject field, and they will email you back the page…you can even email a search query. [via DI]

Innercircle.cc - create an email distribution list. Also see posterous group blog/email lists

Smub.it - ever read a webpage on your phone and want to bookmark it in delicious, share it on Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed, email it, etc… I do all the time, but my phone doesn’t have bookmarklets (do phones have these). Anyway, what you can do now is prepend the URL you want to bookmark/share with “smub.it/”. It’s kind of like ShareThis, but done manually by altering the URL.

eg.
- if you came across this URL on your phone
http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/surf-the-web-via-email/5624/

- you go to the address bar, and prepend it with “smub.it/”
smub.it/http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/surf-the-web-via-email/5624/

- then it takes you to a page of icons for delicious, facebook, twitter, friendfeed, email, etc…click on one of these and your away.

Problem with my phone is I can’t choose an icon to click, darn….

Anyway, you can also manage your bookmarks at smub.it, and use a smub bookmarklet or toolbar

It’s also a URL shortener, where you can customise your URL’s
ie enter your ID and a keyword. For example the link in the example above could be
smub.it/johntropea/surfemail

[via BrightHub]

Trackle - when a visitor clicks the Tracklet button on your blog they can enter keywords and choose to get latest content delivered by email, SMS, or login to their Trackle inbox.
The RSS feed Trackle is only one of many, there’s loads of them, and you can manage all of them in Trackle. See Notify.Me and others to DIY.

Liveflows - offers related posts from your blog, similar to Outbrain and Zementa, only this one is a distributed network, and lives in the footer of your blog (it actually feels like part of the browser). See related posts from your blog, popular posts in my network, blogs I follow, blogs that follow me. I get the feeling that it’s something MyBlogLog could have done, and something Google Friend Connect (GFC) is doing. Only in GFC you only need a profile to follow people, whereas in LiveFlows you need to be a blogger (which is essential so it can show popular posts from your network). GFC can be seen more of a fans type tool …I do like that the social bar gadget has commenting and site activity, and other features like ratings. Most of these relate to the homepage, unless you embed a gadget in a post.
I wrote about the blogosphere as a distributed social network a while back. [via LG]

Google News Timeline - When you visit the site delete the saved queries. Then from the drop down menu choose blogs, and enter the name of your blog. Voila, now you have a visual date based archive of your blog. Sort by day, week, month, year and drag to sift through the archives.
Here’s a link to my blog starting from Jan 2009.
Of course you can add lots of blogs and other news sources, or even keywords…perhaps a liteweight alternative to Google Reader.
It’s all based on Google Reader, so the archives only go back to its inception in 2005. Also see 30boxes blog timeline. [via DI]

Evernote - How did I miss this one. I’ve been using Webnote for so long, but I’m now testing to switch over to Evernote.
Basically via the web, mobile web, email, SMS/MMS, blog post footer button, Twitter, download version (even for mobiles) or bookmarklet I can add a note, clip a webpage, add an attachment (audio/video/etc) into any of my Evernote notebooks. Also tag all my notes, search (even text in images, limit to title field and tag, limited to one or multiple notebooks), synch files, make public notebooks, to-do list boxes, saved searches…and heaps more. Check out their blog, and tips.

Tinychat - create an on-the-fly chat room, even embed it in your blog

It’s sometimes such a drag being an early adopter because you are ready for features years ahead of when regular users will ask for them…you just have to be patient.

But the day has come, Google Reader has turned into a simple newsmastering service.

Over two years ago I was whining (point 5 in this post) that Google Reader lacked an OPML file for each tag/folder, which it still does, but it has gone one better anyway, well kind of…

I was also whining and still will that the OPML of my subscriptions is a file and not a dynamic URL. Use case is if I import my OPML into a Google CSE, and then add/delete a feed from Google Reader, my Google CSE will not know about it, which is a pity because it means I can’t use Google Reader as a master control for people to use a public search engine across my current Google Reader subscriptions.

OK, the new feature…a while back during the American elections you may remember that Google Reader was showcasing shared item lists based on a curated selection of feeds.

Well now we can do the same with the new bundles feature. That is, grab a selection of feeds and stream the latest posts on a page.

It’s just like our Shared Items page, but now we can select the feeds, and you can make as many of these newsmastering pages as you like, basically an auto-blog based on some source feeds.

Yeah! and each has an OPML file.

Here’s my auto-blog page on mobile culture, access the OPML file of the source feeds, or subscribe to the feed.

If you click the “subscribe” button you will batch subscribe to multiple feeds right into Google Reader, and they will be auto filed in the folder/tag with the name of the bundle page.

If you decide you don’t want the bundle anymore, unfortunately Google Reader doesn’t allow you to unsubscribe all feeds in a folder, so you have to manually unsubscribe from each feed…yikes!

What about subscribing to an OPML?

Now what would truly make this awesome and catch up with what Blogbridge did, in my own words is:

“When you import an OPML file into BlogBridge can you choose it to be a static list or a dynamic list…”

“Basically a reading list means you can subscribe to the URL of an OPML file, but instead of importing all the feeds in one batch, they kind of virtually exist in your RSS reader…if a feed is added or deleted to the OPML file, then this will reflect in your RSS reader…dynamic!”

What I’m saying here, is that in addition to batch subscribing to multiple feeds one go, I would also like the option to not subscribe to the feeds at all, but instead subscribe to the OPML URL.

Just say you subscribe to the actual OPML URL of my bundle above (you virtually/remote subscribe), and then I remove a few feeds and add some new ones. Then this will reflect in your remote subscription of my OPML bundle. I hold the master, and whatever I do in it, will reflect in whoever has subscribed to it.

As I said this would be good as an option, to import a static or dynamic OPML…here’s a post I made on this over 3 years ago, Dynamic newsmastering with OPML.

I guess if this was the case, then in your “manage subscriptions” page you could have a section for OPML’s you are remotely subscribed to.

So what’s next?

It needs:

• an OPML exchange - a place to swap bundles
• a newsmaster exchange - same as above, a place to find Shared Item blogs
• a search box
• tag cloud
• curating, like mysyndicaat

This last one is especially interesting, as it’s not only a topic auto-blog, but you could have the option to remove posts before they appear in your bundle (kind of like moderating), and also adding in posts that come from other sources (kind of like what we do with our public tag/folder shared pages).

And even do this by setting up keywords to filter in and out, the latest tool is MoreOver, and the most common is Dapper and Feed Informer…and of course MySyndicaat.

You know what’s coming next, and that’s to add a group feature where members could:

• comment on items
• write their own posts

Is this sounding like a Friendfeed Room!

Related features from Google Reader:

Google Reader is your new watercooler
Meeting friends of friends

[ADDED 24/05/09: Of course now I can put a bundle OPML into Google CSE, and when I update that OPML (add/remove feeds), my Google CSE will magically be updated]