Library clips

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]

The other day I was whining on Twitter that my Twitter network was getting as big as the web, so I needed a way to filter it. eg. organises sources into groups, a re-tweet tab stream, keyword search tab streams (like monittor), etc…

This has been the same story with blogs, only it’s more full on with Twitter, as people tweet numerous times a day, whereas a blogger may only post once every couple of days.
There have been various solutions to deal with the load of blog content; Techmeme, RSSmeme, Digg, Friendfeed (best of day) to name a few.

Another memetracker is megite, and what I like about this one is that you can limit it to your OPML (My Megite). Basically you get a stream of the most popular stuff from your RSS Reader (or at least it’s ranked from most popular to least.)

I guess the latest player is PostRank where you can filter posts in Google Reader by popularity based on social activity.

Twitter has some noise filters, some are Twitlinks, TweetLists, Tweetburner, and the best TweetMeme as you see conversation clusters (tweets about that link)

Unlike what Megite does for blogs, TweetMeme isn’t limited to your network (Twitter friends).

In comes MicroPlaza (which comes out of beta later today), like the others it only deals with tweets that have links. The ranking is based on the frequency (how many times that link has been tweeted), and also ranked on re-tweets (how many times that tweet has been re-tweeted)

NOTE: you can sort the stream by date or score.

And like TechMeme it shows conversation around these links based on the public timeline.

So it’s kind of like TechMeme (popular links), Digg (re-tweet is like voting), and Friendfeed (conversations around a link)…all in the one package.

At last I can see popular links in my Twitter stream, and all the tweets conversations about that link.

You can also bookmark a tweet. But what’s different here from your Twitter favourites is that you are not bookmarking a tweet, rather you are bookmarking a webpage, and all the tweets that are talking about it…WOW!

This reminds of what TalkDigger attempted in the old days, in bookmarking links that had blog conversation around it…kind of like bookmarking the URL of a Technorati inlink search.

More features

• If you click discuss, it launches to Twitter for a reply…this would be good to do without having to go to Twitter

  Coming soon is a bookmarklet to simultaneously post links to Twitter and MicroPlaza from your browser

• Also coming soon is searching your Twitter network, something sorely needed in Twitter Search. Well it’s not exactly searching the tweets of your whole network, but just the popular tweets with links
• Another cool thing is “being someone”, which lets you pretend you are someone else ie. you get a view of another Twitter users perspective of Twitter.
• Another awesome feature is Tribes where you can make filtered versions of your network. eg make a stream from 5 people in your network.

Feedback

• One thing I want to be able to do is limit the conversation around a link to My friends, and click more to see what people outside my network are saying.

  The FAQ says, “When someone shares a link on Twitter we are able to show everyone else who shared the link as well. We think it’s more interesting to see everyone’s tweet in relation to a link rather than just your network.”

  “When you expand a tile you will see a black box around the picture of the people you follow.”

• What about non-link tweets?

  Tweets that don’t have links in them can be popular and generate a meme.

  I would like to see a stream for tweets that don’t have links, perhaps based on re-tweet and frequency.

Google Blog Search (GBS) is now memetracking, similar to services such as Megite and Techmeme.

You can filter by a number of categories such as Science, Technology, Entertainment, Business, Politics, etc..

The look and feel is no way close to Techmeme.

Clustering

GBS clusters stories similar to Google News.

Techmeme does something similar but, it does this 2 ways:

1. Stories that link to the main story are clustered as Discussion items (where you can expand to see, rather than GBS launching a new page which loses the context of where you are)

2. Stories that don’t link to the main story but are equally popular are clustered as Related Items (these Related Items also have their own Discussion Items)

In Context and Snapshots

Another thing I like is that when you search Techmeme, you can view an item “In context” which launches to the unique URL of the story with all its clustered items

- whereas when you search GBS, it’s just a standard results page, there’s no way to view that item in context

One thing though, on Techmeme how do I get a unique URL for an item without having to search for it, and click “In context”, how come these unique links aren’t hyperlinks under an item on the homepage?

What I like about Techmeme is that you can enter a date and time and view a snapshot of what was happening that day/time.

The Juice

Techmeme is just more usable and looks supreme, but the difference here is that Techmeme only tracks a set of blogs, whereas GBS tracks the whole blogosphere.

- I’m not sure on the differences in how these services rank popularity, authoritativeness, and influence.

- as Marshall Kirkpatrick says, another feature for breaking news bloggers is who’s actually faster at collating the news everyone wants to know

More

Now let’s see this as my Google Reader homepage.

As an alternative to Google Reader, how about a customised Google Blog Search page, just like Google News Customised.

What I’ve always liked about Megite is that you can make your own memetracker via your OPML, I guess this would be similar as a Google Reader homepage memetracker…Megite also throws in recommended items into the mix.

So what about a social OPML memetracker, that is, base the blogosphere on my OPML and my Google Reader friends OPML (just pretending that Google Reader is a social network).

What I’ve always wanted is a widget for an item on Techmeme…meme clip blogging.

eg. imagine if this screenshot was a live widget

Related

Moopz - Friendfeed memetracker…FriendFeed are now clustering duplicate items (not quite memetracking, but lessens the noise)

Tweetmeme - Twitter memetracker

UPDATE: I just noticed Twitter are doing Newmastering pages just like Google Reader

Moopz comes to the rescue for a concern I too have had about Friendfeed, and that is, fragmented conversations within Friendfeed itself.
The issue is that there may be conversations around multiples of the same item:

- just say my blog feed posts my latest item to Friendfeed (it’s a post about something I have on Slideshare)
- my latest Slideshare activity will post an item to Friendfeed as well
- and someone bookmarks that blog post or slidedeck URL on del.icio.us which then shows up on Friendfeed
- someone tweets about it, and that shows up on Friendfeed
- someone may even post directly into Friendfeed about the slidedeck

As you can see above there are 5 opportunities to initiate the same conversation about the same thing within Friendfeed, and the most thriving conversation may be around someone’s bookmarked item of your post, rather than around the feed item of your own post.

As Read Write Web point out, at the moment your re-syndicated blog post may not have any discussion in Friendfeed, but an A-lister who bookmarks your blog post will have lots of discussion around that item in Friendfeed.
This is a new dynamic as now people are becoming a hot spot, a community onto themselves, for not only their own content, but content of others.

Moopz plans to prevent this fragmentation from happening.

For starters it only displays content that has links, so you won’t see tweets saying “Good morning Twitter!”

If a new link that appears is already linked to in another Friendfeed item, then they will be merged (clustered together) preventing fragmented conversation from even happening.

Another good thing about this is that we don’t have to see duplicate items.

And each item is auto-tagged meaning you can browse conversations on a topic

I guess this is a memetracker of sorts based on clusterings, and what gets on the frontpage is decided as a result of people using the system. This makes it a more self organising version of Techmeme and Megite…and a more limited version as it’s only based on content that comes from the aggregate of user profiles.

Megite allows you to enter your OPML, and displays most popular and recommended posts from people you care about (rather than all items ranked), but it’s not a conversation platform. It also displays memes by topic.

At the moment Moopz only has a public timeline, hopefully soon it can be personalised to have a friends timeline.

Like Megite and Techmeme, Moopz will display popular memes based on links, but it doesn’t scour the web for these links and cluster them, instead it scours content people have re-syndicate into it’s own system…the former Memetrackers also use other methods like concept analysis (as two items may be about the same exact thing yet they both don’t point to a common link).
Moopz also has another aspect to popular memes, and that’s based on the amount of conversation that happens within Moopz (Friendfeed) itself.

More

Also checkout how Read Write Web and Louis Gray are incorporating Friendfeed comments back to their blog (the original source)…Read Write Web also allow posting to Friendfeed from within their blog.

Louis Gray has some great Friendfeed tips every Friday, the first one on the hide funtion is a great way to reduce the noise, and same with advanced search.

NoiseRiver (via LG)

Another way to filter the flow by a feature called “My Interests”, enabling you to use a drop down menu to filter in or out items containing a certain keyword, the filter choices are:
I love it so much!, I love it, I like it, This is nice, It’s OK, I don’t care, It stinks, This is bad, I don’t like it, I hate it, I hate it so much
There’s also a feature called “My Neighbourhood” to filter items from people on a similar filtering menu.
I also noticed:
- you can re-share an item (this posts it as a FF post)
- there is a reply icon next to each item and comment so your comment is pre-pended with that person name eg. @louis
- each item has auto-keywords (not sure why you can add/delete them, you can also filter rate these keywords as explained above)
- “hide all entries with this URL” is a manual way of doing what Moopz already does.

FeedMachine (via LG)

This brings an element of an RSS reader because you can mark read/unread

Friends view - contact list where you can choose a contact and click on a source icon and a box displays latest content from that source…it lacks latest content from all a person’s sources

Good Friends View - When you click on a profile it allows you to tick that person as a good friend, this will add them to your Good Friends section

Stream View - latest items from all friends
When you click on the info icon it loads the original item on the right and the FF comments on the left, where you can post a comment
- sort by: newsest, oldest, unread, user, service, item text, comments, most liked, least liked
- hide duplicates

Just like NoiseRiver and Moopz you filter out entries by keyword, as well as user, service, hide read items, and hide “@” items

Mio News (via LG)

This turns Friendfeed into an RSS Reader, kind of reminds me of Spokeo.

On your subscription pane you have an icon to see your FF stream (mark as read).
You also have an icon for each friend, clicking this will stream the latest from a friend (mark as read).
You can group friends into folders, click on a folder will show you the latest from just those friends in that folder (mark as read).

But, you can’t filter your whole stream, a folder stream, or one friend by service.

This has an MS Outlook feel, as when you click on an item you see the full-text on the 3rd pane, from here you can:
- mark as read, share on FF (also share to your blog, twitter, and email), comment, like, hate, goto native item

There also a bookmarklet and blog and Twitter integration.

Lastly there is a “Topics” feature where you list keywords (also organise in folders)
- clicking on a keyword will display all items from your friends about that keyword (not sure if it’s “about” or just the appearance of the keyword)

At the moment you can’t view rooms, or share an item to a room.

This could be a replacement for Google Reader, it would be good if you could manually adds feeds from non-FF people so I don’t need two RSS Readers.

Related:
FriendFeed Rooms : Interactive topic streams
Friendfeed : social filter conversations

OFFICE
SlideRocket - yet another online presentation service, see more here.
[via RWW]

RSS - MEME
RSSmeme - similar to ReaderBurner (now about to be resurrected), RSSmeme tracks shared items from various Google Reader users creating a hot news site.
[via mashable]

RSS - READER - NETWORK
Shyftr - a new social network RSS Reader like FeedEachOther mentioned above, and something Google Reader will eventually do…the ability to add friends, visit users, message friends, comment on items, send friends links, share links which can be aggregated into a hot meme pages like RSSmeme mentioned above.
A lot of use won’t move from Google Reader no matter how much more hip these new social readers are, so something like FriendFeed (FF) becoming a social network might gain more traction with my existing network…FF is not an RSS Reader, but in a similar realm.
[via RWW]

MEME-BOOKMARKS
Fraxi - now the makers Pligg who offer a non-hosted way for you to create your own social bookmarks/memedigger are also offering a hosted version called Fraxi, also see CoRank.
[via TC]

NETWORK
Flux - create your own social network, also see Ning.
[via TC]