Notes on Structured Content

Time for another session – Dickson and Megan have gone to a different one this time. Oh, and I notice Scoble’s tablet is actually a newer model than mine (I think…larger screen too). Here are some notes on Bryan Rieger’s session on structured content (this is essentially a Semantic Web concept):

Very interesting use of lego to represent how structured blogging produces blocks. Say a block for the title, one for the text, one for tags (which are already a microformat), etc.
Microformats: designed for humans first, machines second. Keep it as simple as possible. Solve a specific problem.
Developers: support both commas and spaces!
Typically a structured blog post looks the same as any other post, which is good for users.
Why bother? Some reasons: search, commerce, and many other things we haven’t begun to think of yet…
Current structured content types: licenses, tags, reviews, lists, calendars, events, media, people, organizations, etc.
Some places to check out are http://microformats.org and http://structuredblogging.com.
The tools have to support these formats, and for the user, entering these things has to be quick and easy!
We’re creating this content for humans, so why the effort in creating something for machines? Well, one person says it makes presentation much simpler, across various machines and interfaces.
Boris Mann suggests this is all about accessibility, and again, the tools have to support it.
Bryan says a larger problem than tools support, is why would people do this? We need to get people to want to do this!
Are we extending blogging or RSS? Bryan says neither.
Someone mentioned that there’s a project to create a structured version of Atom, so you wouldn’t need an RSS feed, as it would essentially be built in. I assume you just throw a stylsheet in front of the Atom document for browser rendering.
Interesting discussion about how HTML has already gotten us so far, perhaps the solution to structured content is simple…
Scoble thinks the “way in” for structured content is with maps, allowing a blogger to put a review on a map at a specific address.

More on social bookmarking

I have received quite a bit of feedback on my last post on social bookmarking. That tells me a couple things – first, that this blogging thing really works, and second that people are into
social bookmarking. If people didn’t care, my post would have gone
unnoticed. That bodes well for the future of social bookmarking!

One of the responses I received was from Djoeke van de Klomp, who is the User Community Manager for Blinklist, another social bookmarking site that I admit I have not tried. She passed along a link to The Great Social Bookmarking Survey,
which I of course filled out. You can fill it out too and in return
you’ll get a copy of the results (if you submit your email address).
Here’s what I had to say in response to the main question of the survey:

One of the features that I think would take social bookmarking to the
next level is greater awareness of content types (and context). Am I
bookmarking a web page? A flash presentation? An mp3 file? A video? An
image? I don’t think the interface, the metadata, and the other
supporting features are truly consistent for each of these content
types. The interface and metadata for an image should be different than
for a web page. Maybe this is like a mashup of Flickr and a social
bookmarking service, who knows! The way these services behave now
though isn’t THAT much different from the bookmarks we have in
browsers, except that they are available online. There needs to be
something more to take it to the next level. The value proposition has
to be more than just, “share your bookmarks online”!

Yes there are other things like tags, and services like Shadows
add discussions into the mix and while those features are great, I
don’t think they are enough to make the average user jump into social
bookmarking. They see it as more work! And it’s a tricky balancing act,
make no mistake about it.

How do we add enough interesting features that savvy users can run with
it and make it their own, while continuing to make it simple enough for
the average user to understand and use?

Tricky indeed. Another thing I’d like to see is an API that all
social bookmarking sites agree upon so that we can integrate them into
browsers and other applications! Or does this already exist? As far as
I know, Flock is the only project working towards integrating social bookmarking into the browser.

If you’re interested in taking a look at the various social bookmarking services, there is a pretty big list at Wikipedia. And roxomatic has a PDF which compares 19 different services (last updated on August 11th, 2005).

Read: Take the Survey!

Yahoo! Podcasts

I’ve been so busy lately that I missed the launch of Yahoo’s new podcast directory. I had read about it last week, but only got a chance to finally look today. What can I say? It is very much a directory and nothing else – but at least it’s a very good directory.

The directory has a section where Yahoo! editors pick the podcasts they like and display them. There is also a “what other people like” section that can be viewed by “Most Popular” or “Highly Rated”. Finally, you can browse around on your own if you’d like by category and tag. Once you find a podcast to look at, you can either listen to it or subscribe and download (using a third party application or Yahoo’s Music Engine). You can rate the podcast, add comments and reviews, and also tags.

Yahoo’s Podcasts directory is put together very nicely, I think. The layout and organization make intuitive sense, and the search functionality seems to work quite well also. They currently have an information section called “Publish a Podcast” which contains information on how to get started. Makes me wonder if they might one day add some sort of publication tool.

I’m not sure how many podcast directories we need, but I’d have to say that Yahoo’s is a welcome addition to the bunch.

Read: Yahoo! Podcasts

NowPublic Tags

As you can probably tell, I jumped on the tagging bandwagon very early on. I think tags are an excellent way to self-organize the vast amounts of information available to us. So I am really happy to see that NowPublic, a site I have written about before, has added proper tags!

I say proper tags, because while you could tag news at NowPublic in the past, you couldn’t really link to a tag. Now all you have to do is link to http://www.nowpublic.com/tags/edmonton, for example, to see all of the stories tagged with “edmonton”. Previously this required a search of the website.

Very cool! I’m happy to see the site continuously improving – can’t wait til it’s out of beta.

Read: NowPublic

New Flickr Features

I continually find myself getting lost in Flickr. Not lost as in, where am I, but lost as in, there are so many interesting photos to see! And the Flickr team has gone and added features that make getting lost even easier:

First up is clustering, a better way to explore photos through tags. You can still see the most recent photos with a given tag (say, summer) but now you can also root around the finer distinctions: summer beach vacations versus summer flowers and nature – and all the clusters are collected on one page. It’s neat!

At first I didn’t get what the big deal was with clusters, but now I understand, and it’s neat indeed. A good example is the tag turkey – the clusters show you the country, the food, and the holiday all in one page.

The other new feature is called interestingness and it’s huge! A long time in the making, interestingness is a ranking algorithm based on user behavior around the photos taking into account some obvious things like how many users add the photo to their favorites and some subtle things like the relationship between the person who uploaded the photo and the people who are commenting (plus a whole bunch of secret sauce).

That last new feature, interestingness, will be the end of me. Give it a try, and you’ll see why!

Read: Flickr Blog

Blog Updates

I added some new features to my site tonight, so I figured I should make a post to introduce them. Here’s a quick description of each:

New Tags!
If you look at the bottom of the last post, or any of the old ones really, you’ll generally find the little Technorati icon followed by a bunch of text links. Those are tags, which I linked to Technorati so you could see what other bloggers were saying about the topic. As you can see in this post, those links have now been replaced with my own tags (right after the little star icon). Clicking any one of the tags will take you to a page on my site that will in turn connect you with blog posts, images, podcasts, links, and other items about that topic.
Add Comment
The little discussion bubble icon next to the number of comments for each post has now been linked to the Post Comment page. That means you no longer have to click on a post title, then on the Post Comment link. You can just click the icon and post a comment right away!
Bookmark with Delicious
The first of three new icons next to the Add Comment icon, is the Bookmark Post icon. Clicking it will let you add the post to your delicious bookmarks. This icon appears on the main page, and on each entry page.
Email to a friend
The second new icon is the Email Post icon. Clicking it will let you send an email to someone telling them about the post. This icon appears on the main page, and on each entry page.
Monitor with TalkDigger
The last of the new icons is the Monitor Post icon. Clicking it will let you see who is linking to the post, using the search provided by TalkDigger. I love the functionality that TalkDigger provides, but I am not too keen on the look of the site, so I might change this to use a different service in the future. This icon appears on the main page, and on each entry page.

There’s probably small problems that I haven’t discovered yet, but everything should work pretty well. Enjoy!

Read: MasterMaq’s Blog

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