Tracking Reactions on the Web

I must admit that each time we post a new video, we go into buzz mode - What are people saying/linking/doing?  Where are they doing it? How many said something?  What do we need to say in response? 

Watching the reaction is something I anticipate and love about the process.  At the same time, I wonder if I'm doing it right.  I'm always looking for new ways to scan the web.  Here are some tools we use - please suggest ideas/sites/tools that you think would help.

Your Neighborhood Needs Instant Journalists

Even though the Web makes us all feel like citizens of the world, what matters is often local.  Our neighborhoods and neighbors have a huge impact.  There is a brand-new platform, created by Instivate, a company run by one of our long-time friends and neighbors, that aims to give every neighborhood a site for sharing local news. It's called Instant Journalist.

Wiki Video in Multiple Languages via DotSub

Just after posting our first video on RSS , I learned a few valuable lessons:

1. Video is inaccessible for the hearing impaired

2. Video is not easy to translate into other languages

3. There is a new site that addresses both of these issues called DotSub .

DotSub makes it easy for me to transcribe the spoken words into text subtitles. Then, once the subtitles exist, it enables DotSub members to voluntarily translate the text into other languages and post the video to their blogs. This makes videos international and more accessible - for free.

Spanking New: 43 Places from the Robot Co-op

I'll be talking a lot more about this soon, but I wanted to post a quick link to 43 Places, the latest from my homies here in Seattle, the Robot Coop, of 43 Things fame.

Update: At the time of this writing (6/26/05), 43 Places is not yet public, but should be soon.

It's all about where you've been and where you want to go. I'm digging the cool mapping features and the other 43 things-style goodness. Like 43 Things, it's a blog for people who aren't necessarily "bloggers".

Video Conferencing Reviews

I’ve never used video conferencing other than a messing around with a camera on my PC. This being said, I think multiparty video conferencing has a bright future.

An example of “multiparty” video conferencing is a group meeting online and everyone’s live-action face appears on the screen. Robin Good, someone I consider to be very informed in such things, put together a great review of the video conferencing market right now. Robin's reviews are focused on classroom applications and were posted in response to a discussion on Nancy's White's Online Facilitation list.

Why Did These Tools Make The Cut?

For the past few weeks, I’ve been involved in creating prototypes for Intranet-based learning/communication tools (I know that is ambiguous). Anyway, we’ve put the prototypes in front of about 30 folks to gather feedback. This experience has given me a deeper perspective on the challenge before us. Here are some examples of what we hear:

“If I’m going to use it, it has to fit into the way I’m working. It can’t ADD something else for me to do- I have too much to do. It has to make what I’m trying to do now better or faster. If it doesn’t, I won’t use it and your work will be for nothing”

Clay Shirky on Public Links- and me on Furl

Many-to-Many: Social link management

Clay provides a short rundown of some of the sites out there offering link management services. I recently tried one of these services "Furl" and I'm intrigued, but the jury is still out in terms of long-term adoption.

Here's why I like these services:

I often find myself reading a site and thinking- "I really want to come back to this, but I don't want to blog it, or add it to my bookmarks (which I never use anyway)." These services give you something to do with that link.

I Really Want to Trust Technorati

For those of you who may not know, Technorati is a web site that tracks links between web sites (among other things). Webloggers use it to find out who is linking to their blog by putting a URL into the box on this page. The site just passed the 3 million "weblogs watched" number.

Now, I admit that I'm a habitual Technorati user- multiple times a day sometimes. It's a feedback and discovery system for me- and I really dig it. And, I admit to having some selfish pride in the number of sites linking to my weblog.

Comment Spam Fighting Strategy

As you know, I've been been pretty fed up with the comment spammers. I have now chosen not to be a pawn in their silly game any longer.

I have now closed the comments on all but the most recent posts on this site. As it is now, any post that is over 15 days old has the comments "closed". So far, I haven't seen comment spam at all since closing these comments.

I'm betting that the lecherous spam-bots focus on archived posts more than current ones. Perhaps their system looks for posts that are over 30 days old. I'm hoping to find the sweet-spot where I can keep posts open for a maximum amount of time without attracting spam.

Using NewsGator and MT Bookmarklet to Post Faster

This may be old news, but I just realized a way to use Movable Type's Bookmarklet feature and NewsGator in Outlook to post weblog entries more quickly.

First, you need to know about bookmarklets. From the MT tool: "Setting up a bookmarklet to post to Movable Type allows you to perform one-click posting and publishing without ever entering through the main Movable Type interface."

Once you create a bookmarklet (from the main MT menu), you can go to any web site and click on your bookmarklet and an MT page will be generated that automatically contains an html reference to the site you're on. I use the Bookmarklet in the "Links" section of my browser for quick posting.