22|Blog-o-Mania SmackDown
March 2nd, 2006 by Marcel Ursprung
The quest for the Ultimate Personal Information Manager continues.
The next few days will be intense, the competition will be tough and it just might get ugly.
32 Blog applications and services will duel it out for the top spot. The title at stake is “Web Champion of Blogs“. Here’s the list of contestants:
- 20Six
- b2evolution
- bBlog
- BLOG:CMS
- Blogger
- Blojsom
- Blosxom
- Blur6ex
- boastMachine
- Dotclear
- FireBlog
- Greymatter
- LifeType
- LiveJournal
- Loudblog
- MindSay
- MovableType
- Multiply
- MySpace
- Nucleus CMS
- Pixelpost
- Pivot
- sBlog
- Serendipity
- Simplog
- SPIP
- TextPattern
- TruBlog
- TypePad
- Wheatblog
- WordPress
- Xanga
Let the Rumble Begin.
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21|Social Bookmark Managers Conclusion
March 1st, 2006 by Marcel Ursprung
Over the last several days we have examined 8 different Social Bookmark Managers. Some popular, others just starting out, but each is a leader in one or more of the criteria listed below.
A winner has been selected through careful consideration of the following.
- Usability - Is the application easy to use, and the navigation intuitive?
- Design - Is the GUI simple and attractive, does it encourage usage?
- User Participation - Is the user base active and growing, are they contributing to the project?
- Features - Does it have all the features we want and need? Such as importing, exporting, private bookmarks etc.
- Developer Activity - Are the developers actively developing the application for the future?
- Unique Value - Does it stand out from the crowd, does it offer a feature that is unique?
Drum roll please…
drum…
drum…
drum…
drum…
And the winner is…
Why we selected it, score out of 5:
- Usability - (4.5), Of all the bookmark managers this was the easiest to use, every link was where I expected it to be.
- Design - (4), The design is clean and not cluttered
- User Participation - (4.5), The user community is very active, easily demonstrated by adding a link and refreshing the page, chances are someone else has already posted.
- Features - (4), It had all the features I was looking for, but I gave it a 4 because it did not have the most features, so someone might find something lacking.
- Developer Activity - (4), Development seems to be ongoing. The fact that it has an API in PHP is a clear bonus.
- Unique Value - (4.5), It has the wayback machine feature, integration with del.icio.us and it’s own search engine for results.
Overall Mark: A (85%)
The runners up were: del.icio.us and Furl
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20|Social Bookmark Managers Part 3
February 28th, 2006 by Marcel Ursprung
Del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/
The most popular social bookmark tool is most definitely del.icio.us. It now has over 50,000 users, and it all started as a personal project for Joshua Schachter. Before he put it online to share with friends it was just a simple link list with annotated notes. Due to its large user base del.icio.us is a great example of Folksonomy at work. All bookmarks are considered public, no private feature, although you can disguise who posted it by using this hack. It’s popularity has spawned loads of plugins and services that connect to and interface with del.icio.us, even a firefox extension. The interface is clean and easy to use. It has the standard export and import features, RSS feed of any page and multiple tag view settings. But ultimately it’s the community and link tags that make del.icio.us so sweet.
Spurl
http://www.spurl.net
Spurl (SPecial URL) was developed by Hjalmar Gislason. It was first released to the public in Feb. 2004 by Spurl ehf., an Icelandic based company. It currently has several thousands of active members. Just like Furl, Spurl saves a local copy of the url and allows full text searching. It also supports multi-level categories and tags, which can be searched by Zniff, a full featured search engine, using human information for ranking and indexing. Spurl supports both private and public bookmarks and has support for RSS 2.0, Atom and a Javascript syndicator. When a url is bookmarked by a Spurl user a screen shot thumbnail of the site is saved, which is used for it’s wayback machine like url cache viewer. The interface is clean and very intuitive, finding links form other users is easy when you use the built in discovery module. Some bonus features are the unique bookmark toolbar for your browser, option for automatically posting to del.icio.us, and it has a developer API in PHP. Based on it’s active user community the future looks great for Spurl users.
Simpy
http://www.simpy.com/
Simpy was authored by Otis Gospodnetić with it’s first release in May 2004. The service was first created for organizing links, the social aspect grew out of that. With Simpy you can track other users’ bookmarks by creating topics based on users, these topics can then be made available as RSS feeds. Simpy also allows users to create private notes, which can be tagged just like bookmarks. Simpy is still in it’s infancy with a relatively small user base, although it has many great features, the user interface feels cluttered and not very friendly, this might be the dominant factor for it’s slow growth. It supports access groups so you can share links with a select group of users. For developers there is a REST-based API, and a discussion list.
Connotea
http://www.connotea.org/
Connotea by the Nature Publishing Group, with Ben Lund as project lead, was released few days before Christmas 2004. It’s user base is still rather small but growing steadily. It’s positioned as a scientific del.icio.us, equipped to function as a citation manager. It currently supports extraction of metadata from a number of sites including PubMed, HubMed, Amazon.com, Nature.com, and D-Lib Magazine. I found the interface to be simple looking but much more confusing to use. It support a broad range of features from export, RSS syndication and private bookmarks. This will be a service to keep tabs on, add a bookmark to it.
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19|Social Bookmark Managers Part 2
February 26th, 2006 by Marcel Ursprung
Intelligent Bookmark Tool
http://www.intelligentlist.com/bookmarks/
Although not a social bookmark manager the Intelligent Bookmark Tool has many great features that make it noteworthy. Designed and developed by Zoltan Wagner. The application is still early in development, first released Feb 19, but already shows great promise. It has a 6 languages multilingual interface, user bookmark ranking system, full description and title search and categorized bookmark groups ideal for a homepage interface. I have been using it as my homepage for about a week now. The design is simple and intuitive even understated. All bookmarks are private, Web sites you deem important will show up on top, with the ability to highlight frequently visited links.
“We can’t pay you to use our bookmark tool but you don’t have to pay us either:) It’s free. Your bookmarks are kept confidential at all times. No one else can see them. Add a website to your favorites at work. Then log in to your account at home, at internet cafes, at a friends computer or on your laptop and it will show up on your favourites list. Nice.”
Digg
http://www.digg.com/
Digg is a technology news web site that combines social bookmarking, blogging and RSS. With digg, users submit stories for review. When a fellow digg user “diggs” (votes for) the story, it rises in rank. The highest voted articles get a place on the homepage. After “digging” an article it get added to your profile to read later or share with a friend. The best feature of this service is that users can leave comments about the stories they read. It is nice to see what others think of the article before you read it. Most of the articles are about technology news, but anything can get posted. It’s a fun way to spend a couple of hours reading things that interest you.
Furl
http://www.furl.net/
Furl (File URL), by Mike Giles, had its official public launch in January 2004. It now has several hundred thousand users. Since its launch, Furl has been acquired by Looksmart. What makes Furl unique among other social bookmark tools is that it saves web pages as well as links. Each member has 5GB of storage available, in essence you get your own personal wayback machine. It’s great that you can do a full text search on an article that has changed URLs or is no longer online. Tagging is not as high as a priority as in some other social bookmarking tools as most members just use the full text search feature. I does however allow you to set both tags (keywords) and categories for your pages. Furl supports many different export features, including RSS support so you can display your URLs on a blog. It also has an article rating system and the ability to browse articles of interest based on other users lists. Unlike most bookmark managers Furl comes with a browser plugin (not just a bookmarklet). This allows some extra functionality when adding pages directly from the browser bar.
Listmixer
http://www.listmixer.com/
This is another new entry into the world of bookmarks. According to the listmixer blog it was build Feb 17, designed and developed by Sid Steward. Think of ListMixer as a waiting room for bookmarks before they enter your permanent collection. If you ultimately decide it’s a bookmark you want to keep you can then easily add it to your favorite social bookmarking services. No username or password is required, making it super easy to signup. All links will be publically accessible, not an issue for people used to using del.icio.us. After you add a link using the bookmarklet the link will stay in your list for 30 days before it expires if not used. Listmixer offers an RSS feed of all the links, and the ability to add your linkroll to your blog through an iframe. You can even get your friends to all publish to the same account in effect making a community pool of temporary links.
“Friday night I was hit by this idea. I wanted a tool for managing blog and news pages that are noteworthy, yet don’t quite deserve a place in my permanent bookmarks. This murky notion took shape in my mind as I puzzled over the best design for such a thing. As it came into focus, I grew more excited. What lit my fire, however, was when I figured out I could build it in one weekend.”
Social Bookmark Mangers continued tomorrow
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18|Bookmark Managers Part 1
February 25th, 2006 by Marcel Ursprung
The Bookmark has been an Internet favorite (no pun intended), since the introduction of Mosaic’s Hotlists feature in 1993.
Skip forward 10 years and a bit. The basics really haven’t changed much. For most people bookmarks are still simple lists of links stuck in a browser menu called “favorites” or “bookmarks.”
At first this handy list of all my favorites was a great idea. That is until I had to reinstall windows, and lost them all. I’m not the only one, I bet you haven’t been able to hang on to your favorite links longer than a few year either. Most us have experienced problems with our bookmarks, either through loss, multiple computer use, or just plain bookmark overflow.
This last week I have been searching for the Ultimate Personal Information Management System. As part of this system we will examine some new bookmark solutions. (I plan on never loosing another bookmark.)
If you do a search for “bookmark manager” in download.com you will find 74 desktop applications. The same search in Goggle will return 595,000 results. Needless to say there are loads of bookmarking tools with huge variety and flavors to choose from.
There are tools that interface with your web browser and extend the browser’s own bookmarking functionality. These tools are usually browser plugins or desktop applications. Some of these tools have taken it a step farther. Making sure that no matter what computer you are on, the browsers bookmarks are always up-to-date.
In search of a better search/categorizing interface some bookmark managers have abandoned the browser all together. Opting to use a custom desktop application with database support instead. Although easier to manage, accessing the bookmarks becomes a greater issue.
Since 2004 the emergence of Web 2.0 applications has made a huge impact to bookmarking technology. The simple link is getting a social makeover. No longer confined to the browser, bookmarks are now freely traded and shared among fellow netizens. Things are about to change and for many it already has. Social bookmarking is here.
Most of the attention is focused on the popular service del.icio.us. I will take a look at it and 7 other services to see which will form the backbone of our personal information management system.
Continues tomorrow
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