My previous post was recently clipped to a new service called ClipClip. As Darren wrote last December in regard to Clipmarks, I'm curious to know when a clip is more than a bookmark, especially since ClipClip reproduces the post template n' all, includes existing Freshblog comments, and offers the opportunity for users to add comments that will sit on the complete reproduced post, not on the original.

So... Clipping. What's up with that? Here's some ideas for discussion pro & con:

• What if all clips sat in a private user's account, & were not publicly visible?
• What if the ClipClip default "whole page is bookmarked when no text is selected" was actually "nothing is bookmarked when no text is selected?
  
• How about an intro phrase for the link at the top of the page. "This content clipped from...." or similar.
• What about clip technology that doesn't reproduce the template? Is that more acceptable? Clipmarks appears (at least based on my quick refresher visit) to work that way.
  
• Is there a Search-Engine penalty here, since this is 100% duplicate content at a different URL?
• Where's the benefit of a "clip" over a web-based bookmark w/ limited notes, such as those at Del.icio.us?
• What if there was a way (either on the source page or the clipping service) to limit the amount of a post that could be clipped, so that it was truly an extract, & not the whole thing?

Clipmarks looks a bit like Google Reader now, with a nav-pane of multiple posts on the left and a window that displays the whole text on the right. This seems to me to be a bit more feed-reader-like than ClipClip, although of course the "river of news" that is being fed is a composite of multiple users' selected content, rather than the account-holder's selected feeds.

I'm still making up my mind (insert Whitman quote here.... the one about Multitudes...) but I think my ultimate issue here is the risk / possibility of a "rival focal point" developing for the conversation. If there's action around one of my posts / ideas, I'd like it to either be on the post, or link directly back to the post, rather than coalescing at the clip. See section 3 "Parallel Microspheres" of my Community Participation post for an earlier and broader statement of the same psychosis. Ok, so I have issues....

Hit the comments / trackbacks (or the comments on the clip?) to set me straight!

Filed in: blogging blogosphere microspheres clipmarks feeds readers bookmarking clipclip

There's an interesting innovation in the search field that is an effort to leverage social participation for search result relevance. URL.com is a search engine with a difference. The goal of the service is to harness the social power of the search community in order to increase the relevance and usefulness of results.

To see it in action, let's try my default comedy test search for chickens. You'll notice that URL.com returns a consolidated set of results derived from the top 10 results on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Interesting so far, esp. w/ the ranking for each engine displayed there on the left, and the small icons at the top of the ranking columns that let you jump direct to those results, but nothing that blows your socks off....

So what's new? Well, let's sign up and see. If you sign in before you search, then click a result, the result loads in a frame, which gives you the chance to rank your result.


The frame makes sure that you visit the page that you're evaluating, rather than expressing an opinion on the list of results page. In a sense, this relies on the same sort of social contract as a wiki. "First do no harm, respect the common good" etc. Of course, search engines aren't always the premier forum for this kind of ethical web-citizenship, & I'd be interested to see what sort of tools are employed to prevent an American-Idol style "Chickens Rock" campaign from taking over the universe. (Bwahahahahahah!) I'm growing my Bo Bice hair as we speak....

Anyhow... (sanity returns...) there's a Techie About page at URL.com that explains the weights and rankings that are assigned to results. There's also an FAQ, containing the nugget that votes are superceded... If there are multiple votes from a single account, then only the most recent will count. Thus, the universe would have to be conquered by committee!

Privacy is also addressed at the FAQ. URL.com state that they only publicise the links that you vote or comment on... so I guess your personal search history is no more or less problematic than with any other search engine. The long & short of it, I think, is that searches shouldn't be regarded as private, whichever engine you use.

Here's my thought / wish for the future. The evaluation of the page doesn't seem to get at accuracy or "aboutness" as clearly as you might wish for. Your vote for "good" & "not so good" results affects the way that results from that engine are interfiled with results from the other two. It does not unequivocally state "This page was / was not about Chickens..."

Now I realise that we'd be talking 8,000,000 servers to do it this way, and that other engines approximate an "aboutness" voting system by boosting the juice of pages that are frequently clicked results for a given search, (the implication being that regular traffic = aboutness) but if you're asking for my vote, I'd like to be able to say "This page wasn't about Chickens" and have it affect the page in relation to the search, rather than the bulk of engine results in relation to the other engines.

I'd eventually like the judgement to be about the page and not about the engine.

Some challenging new issues, then, but an interesting combination of two different models / technologies, and one worth keeping an eye on.

Filed in: webtech search url.com

A whole bunch of new hack requests were posted to the wiki in the last couple of days. If you've got some time to spare this weekend, and you're wearing your hacker hat (the one with the blue flashing light & space for a can of soda), take a look & see what you make of the requests:

1. Merge Blogs: Basically, I have 6 personal blogs on my Blogger dashboard. That's because I wanted categorization before Blogger Beta introduced labels. For a number of reasons, I want to merge my blogs into one. If there is a way to import all the posts from one blog into another, that would be an ideal solution. Please advise or create a hack to do this, thanks in advance. My blog is here at www.Shan.ca.tf
2. Blogsend: No Linkback to Main Blog: I have a Blogger Blog that I've been updating since the Dawn of time, but my friends are all on LiveJournal. Using the Blogsend function, I'm able to update the LiveJournal without actually ever stepping foot on LJ, BUT the issue becomes that BlogSend automatically adds a footer with a linkback to the main Blog. I need to figure out a way to circumvent that, for privacy reasons on my main blog and to protect my guestbloggers. Any ideas? Thanks!!
3. Pick up labels in adding to delicious (beta): I know there is a known hack to add capability to link to delicious from beta blogger posts. But right now it does not pick up labels of the post and create automatic tags for delicious bookmark. I know it should be not so difficult to include the tags for the delicious link. I am quite used to the current Greasemonkey method to tag my non-beta blog posts and am itching to move to the new beta, but this is one big roadblock for me. Any takers? http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com
4. My feeds for Autodetection (beta): Is it possible to add my feedburner feed in the beta blog so that autodetection is done on the feedburner feed rather than the default Atom feed or even the beta blogger RSS feed? http://usctrojan98.blogspot.com
5. Tag Hack for Qumana: I want to use Qumana for my post editing for Blogger. It works much better with Blogger than Performancing. But I want to change the tagging option from Technocratii to RawSugar (as exists with the great BlogThis/Tag hack.) My guess it's a simple business of changing the url somewhere in the Qunama script. Where? How?

To date, the convention for replying has been to edit the relevant section of the Request Hacks page, and add your advice / recommendation under a bolded "solution" heading. Thanks for your input. Check out the Wiki & have fun supporting your fellow bloggers!

Filed in: blogging blogger-hacks blogtech webtech wiki

A whole raft of new hacks for Blogger Beta since the last time we cataloged your available options. Most of these are courtesy of your usual suspects: Hoctro, Ramani, Hans, Vivek, Singpolyma, but there's some other folks working on this good stuff too.... Here's the latest:

• First, Hoctro notes the new Beta feature that allows the mass-application of a single label to a number of posts by selecting the checkbox on a list (just like when you delete your e-mail!) Good call, Blogger! Update: See screenshots etc at Phydeaux3.
  

• Since we're talking labels, check out Ramani's mighty-fine multi-mode choose-your-own-format label menu widget for your beta sidebar. Would you like your labels in a list? A drop-down? A cloud? (Mmmmm... Clouds!) How about all three, with the option for the reader to switch between them? 'Tis done....

• As I noted earlier in the week, Trackback for Blogger Beta is now available, using custom Haloscan code courtesy of Logical Philosopher, modified by Pete from Utter Muttering. If you have Haloscan comments, you'll need 2 sets of the code... 1 for the comments and a second (Pete-style) for the Trackbacks.
  

• Singpolyma has developed peek-a-boo comment code for beta, so that you can have inline comments that pop out beneath the body of your post. Apparently he's now investigating the possibilities of an inline comment form that will peek-a-boo too!

• Another goodie from Singpolyma... A feed-links widget for your sidebar, to get feed links up and away from your page footer, where they may not be having a lot of fun!

• Mohammed at Daily Routines explains how to add a third column to your Blogger Beta template, and suggests a strategy for adding HTML / Javascript elements to your template that are true page footers.
  

• Vivek Sanghi presents a workaround that will display "subscribe to comments" links on each post without displaying the default post-feed options.... Useful if you're on Feedburner or similar.
  

• Since Feedburner Feedflare is now post-footer legal, Loup d'Argent points to Feedburner's new Beta-friendly Feedflare insert code on the Feedburner forums. Flare your Beta Blog's Footer forthwith!
  

• More good stuff from Ramani. He's upgraded a couple of pre-beta hacks for the new system. You can now highlight your comments on your own blog, as well as setting up your comments section with e-mail icons so that you can e-mail a previous commenter to notify them of your comment / response. Very cool, & an additional tool to use alongside the beta comment feeds.
  

• Hans at Beautiful Beta has the scoop on creating a horizontal navigation menu between your header and your content on Blogger Beta. A useful & welcome addition.
  

• Hans also points to Gabriel Lau's Random Rotating Banner Hack for Beta. Change out your Beta header images automagically and in a random-type way! Grand.
  

• In a comment on Amit's Digital Inspiration, Vin from Blog Widgetry explains how to add a second element field to the main body section of your beta blog (where the posts go) so that (for instance) your adsense stays where you put it instead of scrolling down with the posts.

• While we're talking Adsense, Improbulus points out that the addition of Adsense to Beta blogs is now an officially sanctioned / supported activity, with official Blogger help etc, & that there might be an overload in the circuits due to the additional demand for accounts.
  

• Finally (for now)... If you still want to lose the Navbar from your beta blog, in spite of the new cool functions and the interface to your blogger acct when you're signed in, Epirater has edited the Blogger Templates nav-bar hack to make it work in Beta.

Lots of great stuff, and more to come, I'm sure. Update: Phydeaux3 looks at the promise of more to come by evaluating beta code that hints at more features than are currently offered.

For more, see our first Blogger Beta Hacks Round-Up, & watch for volume 3 in the series...

Filed in: blogger blogger-hacks blogtech beta

Philipp at Google Blogoscoped points out a nifty Greasemonkey script that will integrate Google Reader capabilities into GMail, which comes to us courtesy of Mihai Parprita of Persistent.info.

The script will add star, share, e-mail, mark as read, & tag management tabs to feed-sourced entries that appear in the message list in G-Mail, & make it that much easier to view your e-mail feed subs in a full-fledged RSS reader, as we've recently discussed in relation to R-Mail. A great way to consolidate two major streams of incoming information, & perhaps to save a bit of time? Philipp and Garett at ZD.Net's Googling Google speculate as to the eventual integration of the two products. Sounds good to me!

Filed in: feeds readers blogtech google gmail

Randy notes that R-Mail has passed 27,000 users and 68,000 subscriptions. Many congrats, Randy! A great service, which (among other, more significant milestones) is clearly impacting the distribution of Freshblog's content. Warning: Stats Ahead.

As you may recall, I was surprised last August to see that 37% of our 929 subscribers accessed Freshblog via R-Mail. Well, the trend continues. 519 of Freshblog's 1180 subscribers, or 44% now use R-Mail. We're 8th on the R-Mail top-blogs list. This is our biggest single subscriber chunk, and we've piled on 172 new R-Mail readers since Aug. More than twice as many readers see Freshblog posts through R-Mail than through Bloglines, & we're 46% R-Mail - 54% All other Readers at this point, which is much heavier on the e-mail end of things than I would, off the top of my head, have thought.
So let's revisit my questions from Aug, & provide an opportunity for some delurking on the part of our e-mail subscribers. We want to hear from you! If you access Freshblog through R-Mail....

• How many other blogs do you read that way?
• What prompted your choice to read blogs through e-mail?
• What e-mail program do you use, & have you crafted filters and such to help to sort the incoming content?
• Was the prominence of the R-Mail widget here a factor in your decision?
• Are you "new" to RSS?
• Do you have a Feedreader account as well as some e-mail subscriptions?

If you use R-Mail to read Freshblog (& we know there's 500+ of you) we want to know what you think! Please delurk forthwith.... Oh, & if you subscribe through a reader, feel free to chip in too!

Filed in: feeds readers blogtech

Pete from Utter Muttering has taken the beta code for Haloscan comments provided by Logical Philosopher, made a minor but significant edit, & voila, Haloscan Trackbacks now work in Blogger Beta. See Pete's comment on LP's original post for the details of the edit. You'll need the code from the original post too....

If you're asking "What is a Trackback?", check out the Freshblog what, why, how?

Another example of collaboration, sharing, & an individual response to the beta upgrade being put out there for the benefit of all. Gotta love this stuff! Now go make your beta blog all trackback-y!

Filed in: haloscan trackback blogtech webtech beta

Here's usability guru Jakob Nielsen on participation inequality in online systems, providing much-needed grist for our blog-participation mill. As usual, Dr Nielsen is succinct and insightful. The thrust is that "In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.".

This disparity follows Zipf Law, whereby 90% of users are lurkers (yes, you know who you are), 9% contribute occasionally while only 1% account for most activity. This pattern seems to hold up to a wide range of online activities, like wikis, discussion forums, review sites and the like. But, interestingly, not blogs. Blogs suffer from this phenomenon to a higher degree, with a 95-5-0.1 split!

If the Freshblog subscription figures (currently around 1100) proxied for readers, then this would indicate we have 1045 passive lurkers, 55 occasional contributors and a measly 1.1 readers doing most of the heavy-lifting. While I'd be the first to congratulate John on his prolificity, I think the real split's probably closer to 95-4-1, or in whole numbers, 1045 lurkers, 44 occasional contributors and 10 regulars. So we might be doing better than the average blog, but there's more to be done. Fortunately, the good doctor also has a prescription. Most obviously, encouraging lurkers to "decloak" (yes, "delurk" is the approrpriate Usenet-era term) will get the participation rates up. Here's some blog-relevant tips from Jakob Nielsen:

• Make it easier to contribute. C'mon people, hit that comment button! Honestly, how much easier could it be? Thumbs up / thumbs down buttons on each post footer?


• Make participation a side-effect. A great suggestion, but it requires users' passive actions (looking at, bookmarking, forwarding a page) to somehow "count". Displaying the popularity of outgoing links ("24th most followed link") might fall under this category. As does "today's top searches" and "today's top pages".


• Edit, don't create. Sure, give people templates. Works great in wikis. But blogs? Would people want "comment templates"? Or even a "clone this comment" button? Would that increase or decrease the signal-to-noise ratio?


• Reward participants. Sounds good in theory, but you invariably end up with some sort of unwieldy, readily-gamed, karma-based system, like Slashdot's mod points. (In fairness, imagine how much worse that site would be without karma.)


• Promote quality contributors. Dr Nielsen suggests giving greater prominence to quality contributions. This smacks of the "highlight own comments" hacks by Adi and Singpolyma - the presumption being that a blog's owner is likely to be of high quality. In a similar vein, sometimes blog owners invite their more-profligate commentors to join officially (effectively graduating from long, unreadable comments to long, undreadable posts :-) Is there a middle ground, whereby high-quality commentors can have their "associate" status recognised in the form of prominence?

Perhaps an alternative view is to say "well, if you want to get the participation rate up, why not just work hard to repel lurkers?" At which point, maybe it becomes apparent that the participation rate is the wrong metric ... after all, lurkers are pretty easy to tend, mostly feeding and watering themselves. Besides, they may make contributions behind the scenes, forwarding and discussing post via email or suggesting blogs of note to friends. Should bloggers be focused on the quality and quantity of contributions, not the proportion of seemingly-passive readership?

With a nod to that mischievous logician Lewis Carroll, can I ask: any lurkers feel like commenting on this?

With these discussion points in mind, perhaps this is the perfect post on which to decloak yourself and add your first Freshblog comment ...

Filed in: blogging, blogosphere, blogtech

In a recent post, Brian at Technorati dissects the statistics that t'rati displays for each blog:

• Rank 1,375:the number of blogs, plus one, that have more than 1,005 blogs linking to them
  
• 1,919 links: the number of links pointing at this URL in the last 180 days
  
• 1,005 blogs: the number of distinct blogs pointing at this URL in the last 180 days
  
• 3,149 links: the total number of links we found pointing at this blog, ever

There's some explanation and discussion too, esp. of the ranking number, & the notion that several blogs w/ the same number of inbounds within the last 90 days can (& do) share a ranking.

Brian's post is now accessible from the green-circle questionmark next to the rank on your search results page...

Filed in: technorati blogtech webtech

You can now express your need for (full) feeds by adding your signature, URL & comments to the petition at FullFeeds.com, where you're invited to "use RSS properly."

No indication of what will happen to the petition when it reaches critical mass, & not all of the signatures are commented, so they don't all move the ball forward in the debate, but still worth a look.

For my part, I'm onboard with the full feeds, because I'm interested in sharing my ideas, & don't have any ads that I need you to come here & click. For more on the debate, and a challenge to see whether full or partial feeds are more effective, see Punny Money

via the RSS Blog.

Filed in: feeds, readers, rss

Blogger Tips & Tricks walks through the process of migrating a blog to a different account (so that you can have a different profile on one of your blogs...) Simply put, create a new account, add the new account as a member on the existing blog that you want to "move", make the new user an admin, then delete the old user as a contributor. Interesting, esp. if you have multiple blogs & the one that has taken off is not the one that your profile is optimised for.

For the detailed walkthrough, see Blogger Tips & Tricks

Filed in: blogger blogtech

Amit reminds us that you can run scripts in your posts, by clicking the "stop showing errors" checkbox and allowing the post to publish. Does stop showing errors mean that the errors go away, though? One to test, I think....

Filed in: blogger blogtech

Matt Cutts has answered some of his frequently-asked pagerank questions in response to the buzz around this week's PR update. There's some good stuff there, exploring and explaining the mysterious mystery that is page-rank.... I especially like the "why should we care?" question, to which Matt's answer (I'm paraphrasing) is "if you don't, you shouldn't!"

Filed in: google pagerank seo

Netflix is looking for a new recommendation engine, & they're putting $1 million behind the effort. They're opening the effort up to users, and apparently (longitude prize stylee) they're willing to pay 50k/yr for anything over a 1% improvement 'til the grand-prize winner comes along. Check out the press release for the details.

The threshold required to win the Netflix Prize is a 10 percent improvement in accuracy over the current Netflix recommendation system. If no one wins the grand prize this year, the company said it will award a $50,000 progress prize to whoever makes the most significant advancement toward the goal and will award a progress prize annually until someone wins the grand prize.

Who will be the John Harrison of the online movie world? See Slashdot, or check out the audio on NPR.

Oh, & if you win because of this referral, I'll be looking for 10%....

Filed in: netflix business webtech movies