Pasta is a tool developed by Maciej Cegłowski to paste text in del.icio.us. It is extremely useful for keeping track of notes jotted down quickly or of stray links associated only through a random idea.
In case you do not know, del.ico.us is a web based social bookmarking application. (Similar to flickr). It is winning new converts every day.
Del.ico.us was developed by Joshua Schachter. (Joshua Schachter and Maciej Cegłowski had also co-developed LOAF)
I had been wasting an enormous amount of time on del.icio.us for the last couple of months. It is both an obvious and a blindingly brilliant idea! Very addictive …
This post from July 2004 by Clay Shirky (via Manageability) mentions a whole bunch of applications that started with the same basic idea. But looking at the Internet landscape now, it is obvious that del.ico.us won hands down.
Peter Merholz in this article called Metadata for the masses provides a terrific context for a conversation on this subject. Peter’s weblog is a good place for tracking conversations on this subject (or what he calls ‘ethnoclassification’).
I had been struggling with the idea of a personal schema for quite some time now. This, kind of ties into that.
Category Archives: Internet
User agreements, RSS readers and facet maps
Reply
I’m just bewildered that Dell corporate policy is that users need to lie to use their new laptops, and to agree to legal agreements that it’s completely impossible to have read.
If true, it is a scandalous story. I don’t usually read user agreements anymore. Most people I know don’t either. But the idea that those agreements may not even be available to you for reading is scary. I hope it gets some traction in the media. (Via Dan Gillmor).
Gillmor has lately become a big champion for the mainstreamization (my contribution to the English language) of RSS. He linked to a story by Steve Outing which suggested that RSS can be a good alternative to e-mail for getting newsletters to subscribers:
“Pirillo, also the proprietor of some of the largest e-mail newsletters on the Internet, Lockergnome’s technology publications, is now discouraging people from signing up for his e-mail deliveries, instead pointing them to RSS as an alternative. He’s even going further than that — actively encouraging e-mail subscribers to drop their accounts and teaching them how to get the same content via RSS.”
.
I strongly encourage all my readers to play around with RSS (ie those who are not already using an RSS reader). I am currently using the beta version of a product called FeedDemon. It is incredibly easy to set up and use. By far the best RSS solution that I have seen so far. The product is available for trial download and is expected to be priced ( I read at $29 at a review site) when it is launched. But there are plenty of other very good RSS readers available for free downloads. The problem is not so much of finding one, but that of choosing one from the many that are available. I had used one that I was not particularly happy with for a while and have been looking around for a better choice. There simply are too many choices.
If you are a serious news consumer and / or surf a lot, you are going to have to get used to RSS. A few good places to look for information on RSS are Syndic8 and lockergnome. Mark Pilgrim has been an RSS evangelist for the last few years and has an extensive archive on his weblog on the subject.
I would not have been able to keep up with all the weblogs and news outlets that I want to keep up with, if it were not for RSS.
Talking of weblogs. Tanya Rabourn recently posted two very useful stories on facet mapping. In the first post, she explained how she implemented facet maps for her site. In the second, she provided links to two new MT plugins that would achieve the same end. I am not exactly knowledgeable about the MT internals and am yet to digest the information on those pages. But the idea of facet mapping is intuitive and it ties into my troubles with categorization. I was also intrigued to read about the reference to Dr. Ranganathan:
Ranganathan is also famous for the Colon Classification system, a widely influential but rarely used classification system. This is his greatest achievement and where he developed most of his most famous ideas, including facets and facet analysis. The system is again based on Ranganathan looking for ?universal principles? inherent in all knowledge. His belief was that if he could identify these, organizing around them would be more intuitive for the user.
For Ranganathan, the problem with the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems is that they used indexing terms that had to be thought out before the object being described could fit into the system. With the explosion of new information early in the 20th Century, the enumerative, or pre-planned, systems could not keep up. Ranganathan’s solution was the development of facets. This idea came to him while watching someone use an erector set (Garfield, 1984)
Rather than creating a slot to insert the object into, one starts with the object and then collects and arranges all the relevant pieces on the fly. This allows for greater flexibility and a high degree of specificity
For Ranganathan, the problem with the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems is that they used indexing terms that had to be thought out before the object being described could fit into the system. With the explosion of new information early in the 20th Century, the enumerative, or pre-planned, systems could not keep up. Ranganathan’s solution was the development of facets. This idea came to him while watching someone use an erector set (Garfield, 1984)
Rather than creating a slot to insert the object into, one starts with the object and then collects and arranges all the relevant pieces on the fly. This allows for greater flexibility and a high degree of specificity
.
Anil Dash hinted (while linking to Tanya’s post) that MT is planning to roll out something similar to facetmapping on MovableType Pro.
Indian IT firms
An interesting summary in Financial Times about the changing IT industry landscape.
Netflix allocation system
This analysis of Netflix’s DVD Allocation System looks very interesting for all sorts of reasons.
I am kind of interested in inventory control, allocation strategies and their efficacies in addressing sudden peaks in demand. If you know of any links, I would appreciate hearing about them.
Best of mefi
Metafilter Remixed: I no longer have the bandwidth to follow mefi. This (assuming that it works) is a very welcome addition (via LinkMachinego)
Happy new year
Happy new year every body.
Also, happy twentieth anniversary to Internet!
Mark Fraudenfelder interview
Kiruba has posted an interview with Mark Frauenfelder in his weblog. Frauenfelder was one of the original Wired employees who went on to become the editor of Wired.com. And of course he is the founder of BointBoing.net.
Like most other guys who were working on the internet sector in the nineties, I was a huge fan of Wired. I used to buy three month old issues of Wired magazine in Fountainhead (one of my favourite bookstores in Bangalore) at obscene prices and read them cover to cover. I was obsessed enough to dig up and buy the first issue of Wired when I reached California. Wired caught the hopes and the aspirations of a generation that was dreaming of changing the technology landscape and people like Fraudenfelder, Steven Johnson, Carl Steadman et al were the standard bearers.
Kiruba also has interviews with Erik Bensen of Amazon and Paul Bausch in his site. I hope these interviews become a regular feature of his weblog.
Web typography
Understanding web typography is an excellent resource for gaining an understanding on the subject. (via Anil)
Resource for web navigation works
Robert Danielson has listed, what are in his opinion, the 27 most Important works in web navigation (via Pixelcharmer). Many of these are available online.
I think Steven Johnson’s Interface culture is in the same category.
10 decisions that saved the net
Dan Gillmor blogged bradner’s thoughts on the subject.