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Firefox 3 bookmark management

With the introduction of the lasted release of Firefox 3, a new approach to managing bookmarks has been introduced. In order to test this feature I imported my 3000 some bookmarks from WebNoteHappy. This did not make Firefox very happy, I had a crash, but in the end I could access these bookmarks. Unfortunately all this bookmarks were added to my Bookmarks Menu. This really brought Firefox to a temporary halt when I accessed the bookmarks menu item.  I missed the cross-application exchange of folders and tags from WebNoteHappy (a lack of standards?).

The Items-pane shows the bookmarks of a selected list in table format. The user can determine which fields must be shown. In addition to the bookmark fields, the user can also show the visit date, the visit count, the added date or the last visited date.

The most interesting part is the Lists-pane, as this is not totally compatible with other MicroContent Clients. The History-list is a folder with the recent browsing behaviour, so not really a bookmark thing. The Tags-List is really a group that contains preprogrammed smart folders for each tag. Each tag-folder contains the bookmarks that have been tagged as such. The All Bookmarks group is really the entire library of bookmarks. This group contains three other lists/groups: the Bookmarks Toolbar group, the Bookmarks Menu group and the Unsorted Bookmarks group. These three groups are fixed and one can not add other groups on this level.

When adding a bookmark one can chose on of these groups or any folder in these groups. One can also drag&drop bookmarks from one group to another. The Bookmarks Menu group has two predefined Smart Lists: Recently Bookmarked and Recent Tags. I assume that ‘recent’ means the last 10. These Lists can be d&d’d to other groups.

The Bookmarks Toolbar group has smart lists for Most Visited and Latest Headlines. It is again unclear what Most Visited means. Latest Headlines refer to Items in a RSS-feed. This seems to be part of the Live Bookmarks feature of Firefox.

All in all a pretty reasonable implementation of a MicroContent Client, but it is not match for WebNoteHappy. The tag-feature is nice, but the approach will break down with hundred of tags. I miss XBEL-support. And I can not create my own smart lists. And it is just to slow for many bookmarks.

On the other hand the integration with the browsers allows to create smart folders such as ‘most visited’. I do not like the split between Toolbar, Menu and the rest. In this way there is no entire library. I understand why it was done in this way, it seems simpler. The integration of the URI-bar with the bookmarks library is very nice. This allows to make very clever URL-suggestions and can indicate whether the URL has been bookmarked yet.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • type • bookmark ,

firefox

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Times application

The user can create multiple ‘newspaper pages’, add feeds and assign a feed to a pane. The location of the panes and the format for each pane is set and can not be changed.

At this stage of the application I have mixed feelings. I appreciate the possibility to see multiple headline in one glance, so I can quickly scan news. Depending on how interesting a feed is I can increase of decrease the amount I see. So it should be much quicker scanning and reading. If there is something interesting I can drag it to a shelf for later reading.

I however miss some control. How can I see whether I read an article or not? Why can I not edit my RSS-URLS? My RSS-feed did not show anything, I was not able to figure out what went wrong. The import feeds from NetNewsWire is nice, but with hundreds of feeds imported shows that tthe current feed management solution is not the right one.

However the application shows an interesting new visual apporach to MicroContent. And one that I do not yet have fully my head around.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • type • blog
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YouTube numbers

TechCrunch republishes some interesting numbers on YouTube. YouTube us the dominant player in the online video publishing and viewing world. It really shows that brands are ever important in the online world. And that means not only aggregators and search services, such as Google, but also hosters (video in this case) such as YouTube. If you want to be found, you just have to go through YouTube. Unfortunately this also means that the distributed world, the mesh, is still not here.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • video , youtube
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Understanding mystrands

I created an account for the MyStrands service. They have an associated application that goes with it.

The service works around music. The application allows you start and stop music from the iTunes library. If the track is recognised the app shows recommended tracks. When the application starts it upload the iTunes library. I guess this is for the recommendations, however these only come after one has played something.

On the site a list of recently played tracks are shown. Also a list of recommended artists and tracks are shown. strangely it asks me whether I know artists that are already in my iTunes library. It should have known that. You can indicate whether you know tracks and artists.

As an aggregating service you can also view top tracks, artists, etc. And there are the standard community features. And finally there are Parties, which I have not chequed out.

Drawbacks are that I can not listen to recommended music, just teasers. And why RealMedia?

I am afraid that I stick with Last.fm, I do not see any advantages and see more drawbacks.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • audio
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Quotably can be interesting

Quotably creates threads from Twitter-posts. The idea is that by detecting and displaying the relation between tweets, one can follow conversations. And this is a very good idea as that is not yet possible at the moment.

This idea of uncovering threads has also been tried with blog-posts. With breaking comment-systems another solutions are required. One solution could be that instead of putting a comment in the comments part of a blog, one puts the comments in one’s own blog with a reference to the blog-item one comments to. So just add the link. There was a party that did this (don’t remember who). Problem is that there should be an unambiguous way to encode these referral permalinks.

Quotable tries to do something similar. There solution is a bit more easier, as they only have to worry about Twitter. I am not sure how one create good threads. By adding ‘@username’ one refers to another Twitter-user, which is a good begin. However it seems that one can not refer to a specific post of that user. It seems that one can only refer to the latest post. When I add the tinyURL of the post, it does not help.

So for the moment Quotably is a limited solution.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • blog
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TimeLine application

The TimeLine application by Bee Docs is an interesting application. It reminded me of the role of time in MicroContent, but hat should be a future post.

In TimeLine one can either import MicroContent Items or create one’s own. A TimeLine Item consists of a title, a date (or a date range), notes (optional), an image (optional) and a link (optional).

On creating a new TimeLine it is possible to import Items from the AddressBook (birthdays), iCal (a selected calendar), iPhoto (creation dates), iTunes (recently playes songs/albums), RSS/Atom feeds, System Profiler (recent Apple updates), Skitch and NetNewsWire (publish dates). And when Images are available they are shown on the timeline.

The timeline is one of the presentation modes for MicroContent. The other are the table, the grid and location.

All in all very interestying. Unfortunately I did not have a need yet for such visualisation. The application si a bit rough at times. I had a few stalls that required me to force quit the app. I would like to see the possibility to import events at a later stage and on the secondary timeline. And I guess there other Items that could be imported as well, a Framework to do this would be in place, although the generic RSS/Atom helps a lot. And I woulk like to see a zoom possibility, so that I can see the entire timeline in a single screen.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • type • event
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A look at Pownce

Thanks to some other services, I happened upon Pownce again. I already signed up, but I never had a deeper look at it.

At first it just looks like another micro-blog. The structure of an Item consist of just one field: the title. And I use Pownce in this way, as I post to 4 micro-blog services simultaneously. An Item (called a note) has a corresponding permalink, where one can also see the comment thread.

However Pownce is not limited to a micro-blog structure, it is possible to add more fields to a pst/item. The ‘link’ structure adds a field for a URL.

The ‘file’ structure allows you to add any file. If I add an image it will be shown in the note. A file can only be posted to friends.

And finally one can create an event. This structure consists of a title, a place, date/time and a real note. There is a corresponding ics-file for easy importing. Interestingly you can reply to such a post to indicate you will attend.

I get the impression that I can not edit a note. I already needed that feature a few times. I am also annoyed that I can not edit the recipients. I already made several errors due to that. I miss a RSS-feed, at least I do not see it.

Pownce is a bit more a communication service, as one can send a note to just a single friend, all friends or the public. I like the approach of Pownce to struture.: if you want more, just add a field. It is much more like wild MicroContent.

I do not think that I will use Pownce though. I only view MicroContent through feeds in NetNewsWire. Although I will continue publishing to Pownce. My usage will depend on the feeds and integration with my desktop;

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • type • blog • bookmark ,

pownce

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Application management and MicroContent

For a while I have been pondering the relation between user application management, the application Appfresh and the service iusethis.com. It is all about the applications one is using. For a while now there was a habit of publishing the things one is using. I did as well and created a blog dedicated to this. This blog lists the apps I am using, put on my dock and have been testing. (I really should work on this blog a bit more, though)

The iusethis service does something similar. Here is my profile. This service is somewhat similar to my own blog in that it lists the apps that I am using and have docked. The interesting thing about this service is that it also shows relations between applications, so that one can discover interesting new ones.

And then there is the desktop app AppFresh. This applications scans the hard-drive for existing applications, thus creating an application list. Subsequently this list is checked against a public list in order to check application updates. If there is an update, it can be downloaded and installed. This installation process is pretty transparent. If one takes a snapshot of an app, one can always rollback to that version. This is very useful, I already got bummed on an app. The problem is that the app is a bit to transparent and one does not always know the consequences of an update.

In addition AppFresh is integrated with iusethis. This means the apps found by AppFresh can be uploaded to iusethis, and if wanted flagged.

So where is the MicroContent in all of this. I see three parts: the application, the product information and the user input. The application can not be seen as MicroContent. The product information, i.e. the information on the application, can be seen as business MicroContent. Normally this information should be provided by the maker of the product, but in this case it is gathered by users.

And finally the user information. This information can be seen as a very simple review. Already the fact that an application appears on the list in the first place, can be seen as a review. At least the user took a look at the application. The user can only add a simple 3-level rating to this information: favorite, iusethis and is_installed (appears on the list).

I have not yet decided whether I find all of this useful for myself. Att the moment it is just fun to play with. And for applications that I really use, I will detect whether there are any updates available or not.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • application • service • type • review , appfresh, apple, macosx, apps, iusethis
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Listphile

I started playing with the Listphile service. This service allows a user to create and manage Lists of Items. One can create either some standard lists, such as text, people lists, video lists, images lists and an atlas. Or one can add fields at will to create one's own list. In order to experiment a bit, I create a list with sundials. I added some fields to the standard atlas list to suit my need.

This service offers many features of desktop MicroContent Clients, so I will discuss the service using that checklist.

The first check is whether the Items in Listphile are MicroContent. Indeed these Items support structure, are flexible (one can extend them) and offer some MicroWeb possibilities through links. There are standard fields, such as titles, descriptions and tags. And each Item has a permalink.

The interface consists of only 2 web-pages: a View-pane and a Items-pane. The View-pane shows a single Item, the location is shown on a map. The Items-pane can be set to maps, lists or thumbnails mode. There are limited sorting possibilities. A separate page is available for a tag cloud.

The service has standard Item functions for viewing, adding, editing and deleting Items. There are only limiting functions for a List itself (editing title, address, etc.).

There are only limited functions for importing an exporting, i.e. no importing and exporting only as RSS and embedded Lists.

The fact that this service is on Internet allows to add some news features. A List can be a social List. This means that multiple authors can work on a single List (still have to check this out). And to help here one has the possibility to see authors and what has been edited. There is some moderation and access control. It is also possible to comment on an Item or author.

I miss the import and export possibilities. I would like to exporting as KML and OPML. I am now locked in. The service is still in beta and I did see some minor errors, but overall it works great.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • client • service • widget • field • location • tag • mashing • type , listphile
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US online video market

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • video , market, us
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Ringtone questions?

John Gruber blogs about ringtones and is amazed that it is such a big business and ripoff as well. I always thought as ringtones as just short audio pieces. However I do not really have experience with it, although I did see the ridiculous high prices.

Now I wonder how open this all is. Can I create a ringtone myself? Can I download it then to a phone? Which phones are then supported? What does this eco-system look like? And if it is open, why do people pay so much?

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • audio , ringtone
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Tagging, a disruption?

A nice discussion on the question whether tagging is a disruptive innovation. If I look at myself, I do not find it disruptive, yet? I am still struggling in using it. I like to use it, but have not yet find the right workflow. I am investigating whether I can extend tagging to the files in my filesystem.

The question of disruption is interesting. Are there other themes in the MicroContent world worthy of disruption. If I think about audio, video and images, I do see a disruption. For digital images it is all clear, the old camera passed away already. Sharing, printing and taking images is now done in a totally different way. And I guess the same is now how happening for audio. And we are just waiting for it to happen in the video market.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • field • tag • type • audio • video
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File library vs. file system

Tagamac makes a nice comparison between file libraries and file system from the point of view of tags. One extend the arguments to any MicroContent Type. We are slowly moving towards libraries. These libraries hide the file system details from the user. These libraries allow users to organise their files in any way they want, i.e. through the idea of (virtual) Lists (hand-picked and smart). The use of the structure of MicroContent (internal and meta) helps the user find and organise his files even better. The File System is really passé.

[Inspiration Tagamac]

Categories/tags: MicroContent • field • tag • type
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My microblogging flow

I have been playing with Applescript in order to tie together various applications and services: write once and publish everywhere. This is geared to my Mac environment, but might offer some ideas for other environments as well.

I use Quicksilver to create my microblog item, my tweet. Launching this app by clicking opens a window, by pressing '.', I can create my tweet, then press to go to the command part. Now I type either N, 'T' or O and in order to start the publishing process. All in all this is very quickly.

Whether I press N, T or O depends on what I have been doing. T is for a context-less tweet. N will add the URL of the RSS-item I am reading in NetNewsWire and O does the same for my browser OmniWeb. These are context-rich tweets and allows me to create intertwingled micro-threads. So this process will get my tweet, get an URL, get the music I listening to from iTunes and my current location from Plazes.

Then this information is uploaded to Twitter, Jaiku and my own microBlog. And I can add more publishing locations if I want.

Categories/tags: type • blog
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Microblogging flow

I am still thinking about my MicroBlog-flow. I got a few steps further.

What I want to say in my microblog is something like "I am thinking (or doing) X in response to Y while hearing Z and being at L". In this sentence X is the classic tweet in Twitter or Jaiku. The Y is to express a thread of communication. In Twitter this can be another Twitter user and is encoded in a tweet as '@username'. In Twitter this can also be an URI, usually encoded as tinyURL. This URI might point to another tweet, a wev-page, a blog-item, etc. Z is a piece of music and can be the artist plus track name. This can be taken from a local audio application or a service such as Last.fm. And finally L is a location and can be a place-name plus country name. This can be taken from a service such as Plazes.

I think the above combines what we see appearing in various services. We need an extremely easy way to publish this MicroContent. It must be as easy as click-click, write and publish. The write-part in here is the classic tweet (X) and the other parts must be automatically extracted from other applications and services of the user is using.

The publication part is another matter as not all services support all four MicroContent fields. In principle it is possible to encode the four fields into a single tweet. We see this happen within Twitter. A service like Plazes only supports location and tweet. And Jaiku supports location and tweets. And within Skype one can use the tweet as mood text and also for MSN Messenger.

The publication of threading information is another matter. If one published to a specific service, one should follow the threading rules of that service. So in Twitter one should use the implicit threading. In Jaiku one should use the explicit threading of the service.

And in addition to the publishing of this MicroBlog information one could specific features of a service, such as the icons of Jaiku or publishing to specific channels or user accounts.

So not only blogging has gotten complex, microblogging is becoming complex as well. For me this implies that I should take control back by publishing this microblog content integrally in an environment that I can fully manage.

Categories/tags: MicroContent • type • blog
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