Tagging Bookmarklet and How-To Screencast

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Update: Just talked to a Windows person who says that the new Explorer 7 blocks some javascript bookmarklets. Going into Preferences/Security and enabling javascript will save soom bookmarklets, but not neccesarily this one. I’m going to have to get to the bottom of this for many different reasons, but it looks like this is the worst of Microsoft’s new security philosophy: block users from changing almost anything, so they don’t leave anything open to hostile intrusion. But the toolbar? I’ll figure out something asap, but I’m on a Mac so we’ll see. But I want to enable lots of Windows users to use tools like this, so I’ll see what I can figure out. In the meantime, check out the awesome screencast Beth made.

See also this post about pinging to make sure your tagged blog posts will show up in Technorati.

Drumroll please…

BlogTags

Ok, that link right there should work for people using Macs and PCs (thanks to my brother Tom the PC user!). Beth Kanter created a terrific little screencast about how to use it! Here’s the screencast itself and here’s the write up on the bookmarklet. What a neat example of collaboration, huh? Beth’s work is really cool, she’s got a great blog to check out too.

Well, thanks for the patience everybody. Hopefully this will all work now for everyone.

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New Web Tidbits

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Here are some changes I’ve made to my site, followed by an interesting graph about the state of the blogosphere.

People subscribed to my RSS feed won’t notice changes made to my sidebar, but there have been several this morning. First, I got rid of the Google Adsense. It was supposed to be contextual advertising, but it was often not very specific in connection to the particular post it was near. I’ve had 1300 page impressions in the week since I put the ads on this site and not one person has clicked on a single ad. Ok, good learning experience. A friend pointed out that my readers are probably particularly sophisticated, and thus uninterested in the ads. Hey, that’s you, particularly sophisticated!

Second, I moved my little cluster map up to the top of my sidebar. I think it’s pretty interesting to see where people have been visiting this site from lately. Don’t you? Click on the map to zoom in for more detail. You can get your own map easily at Clustermap.com.

Furthermore, I removed the link I had on the top of the sidebar to LiveMarks. I think it’s great fun, but just didn’t want to link to it anymore.

Finally, check this out. Technorati just released their newest “State of the Blogosphere” report. I found this graph particularly interesting and thought I’d share it with you. (Click on it to enlarge)

Following Up on the Bookmarklet

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Ok, if you’ve seen the comments after my last post about the wonderful Technorati Tag bookmarklet, you’ll notice there’s some issues that need to be addressed. Your help would be much appreciated:

On not being able to make it work:

  1. I’m on a Mac, but 80% of my visitors yesterday were using Windows XP. I’m still not sure why folks are having trouble dragging and dropping the bookmarklet onto their toolbar, but if there are any Windows XP folks out there with suggestions, I think we’d love to see them.
  2. Second, four visitors yesterday had javascript disabled on your browsers. So if that’s you, you’ll need to change that before you can use this – and lots of other great javascript based tools.

Philosophically: there was some question on whether it’s good or even ok to tag your own blog posts. Here’s a couple thoughts.

  1. Technorati Tags in particular are something that bloggers themselves have to apply to their own blog posts. Tags in other systems (like del.icio.us or Simpy) can be applied by readers wanting to describe a particular article or web site, but Technorati Tags are applied by bloggers to their own posts.
  2. Tagging your own blog posts is a way to tell the world that the post exists and where it fits in the blogosphere, what it’s about. We’re trying to communicate here, so that’s a good thing. It’s similar to pinging search engines after each post (Feedburner does this automatically once you set it up, or ask me for more info on this if you need it.) Or, for a brick-and-mortar example – it’s like having a garage sale and puting up fliers around the neighborhood, or throwing a party and sending out invitations. It would be spammy if you put a flier under the doormat of every house in town, but on the utility poles or mailed to your friends is just fine. Technorati Tags are like community billboards organized by subject.
  3. Placing these links at the end of each post is a way to direct readers to what other people in the blogosphere are writing about the same subject. This may be mitigated by the fact that the tools are new enough that many readers don’t know that, but just so you know: when you see that someone has added a Technorati Tag for “Web2.0” or “environmental_justice” to the end of a post on their blog – you can click on that link to go to Technorati’s Tag page and see a whole lot of other blog posts (and other resources) that have been tagged with the same tag. It’s a great way to get a feel for the larger discussion on any topic.
  4. If you think it’s ugly to see the tags at the end of each post, you can delete the text that the link is tied to and just keep the link itself tied to a space or a dot or some other place holder. This bookmarklet makes that take another step, but I believe it’s possible.
  5. I go so far as to bookmark my own blog posts in my del.icio.us and Furl.net archives. It’s a collective database out there on the web, why wait for someone else to submit what you’ve written into that database? I get visitors every day because people are subscribed to the RSS feed for all items tagged “RSS” in del.icio.us for example. People are interested in these particular channels of content, so they subscribe, and for now the cost of entry is nearly nothing. So if you have something to submit to these channels that people are interested in, put your content in there, give it a good headline and see if people like it. If they do, they will subscribe to your own site’s RSS feed. Web2.0 is about everyone being able to publish and distribute content. Tagging is like our version of TV Guide, each tag is a channel that you can view, subscribe to or ignore. There’s not a solution to tag spam yet, but there’s not that much of it out there yet either.

So I can’t recommend Technorati Tags and the bookmarklet found in the previous post highly enough. I use them every single day. Let me know if anything I’ve posted here is unclear or if you still can’t get the bookmarklet to work. It really should be easy as can be.

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Check it out! There’s those tags again!

Bookmarklet: Technorati Tags in a Second

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Ok, so everybody loves bookmarklets – those little links you drag onto your favorites toolbar and click for instant results. There are lots of great ones out there, and I will write someday about my favorites, but I don’t want to get distracted. I want to post what I think is one of the single greatest bookmarklets out there right now – and one of the hardest to get. I don’t know why the original author of this bookmarklet took their entire website offline and used a robots.txt file to stop its contents from being saved almost anywhere, but here is…

The Technorati Tag Bookmarklet: BlogTags

Update: There has been some real confusion about how to use this bookmarklet. I’m sorry it wasn’t more clear. I’ve called it BlogTags, but you can call it what ever you want. Just hover your mouse over the words BlogTags in the previous sentence, press the mouse button and hold it down, then drag the link up to your toolbar. That’s the part of your browser just below the web adress of this page. If you can’t see a toolbar, go to View menu and select toolbar or favorites toolbar.

I love it. Drag that puppy up to your favorites toolbar and give it a click (or click on it here just to see what it does.) That code it spits out can by copied and pasted into the end of each blog post you write. I get people visiting my site through Technorati tag searches every day. You can put in the links to tag your blog posts manually, but this bookmarklet is a real time saver. I don’t know why Technorati doesn’t offer a bookmarklet like this themselves.

If you are unfamiliar with the space where the blogosphere and the tagosphere intersect, try clicking on some of the Technorati Tags at the ends of my posts here. You’ll find a whole world of other bloggers writing on the same subject.

See also: following up on the bookmarklet, my next post.

P.S. Curious how I was able to get this if the web site it came from is offline? The moment I first found it, I saved it in my Furl.net archive, which includes a cached copy automatically.

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Examining Power Dynamics and Web 2.0

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Conversation is ramping up about the dominance of white males in the emerging Web 2.0 world. Once place I’ve found the issues being discussed is over at the Mashable blog. What can be done? Here’s my two cents re steps that could help:

  1. Let’s prioritize bringing together the for-profit and non-profit worlds. There are so many proactive groups in the non-profit world working to shift power away from those with the most privilege. At the same time there are lots of people of color and women making careers both online and using the web as one of many tools. The folks over at are prioritizing bringing these two groups together. So if you’re in either sphere (biz or NPO) you might want to check them out.
  2. Let’s look to experts outside the “a-list” of bloggers to read, look to for advice, invite to speak and to provide assistance to. Mary Hodder’s great Speakers Wiki was created for just this purpose. It’s a directory of web folks from outside the white-male demographic.
  3. Search engines are notorious for reinforcing pre-existing privilege. While Google may have a huge index and powerful technology, check out social-recommendation enabled search engines like Wink. If we can find participants in ecosystems like that who have perspectives other than those of white men, then our searches will expose us to information that the dominant models might continue to marginalize. (I intend to write an in depth review of Wink later.)

Just thought I’d put in my two cents. I know I’m not interested in all these new web tools for their own sake, but for their usefulness in making the world a better place. I know that’s the case for a huge number of people online, including many readers of this site.

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Event: Web 2.0 at TechSoup.org

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Check out this announcement for an event I will be participating in later this month. I hope readers here will come and participate as well. Click on the names of the other moderators to see their blogs.

It’s happening in TechSoup, a five-day online event:

The Impact of Web 2.0 on the Nonprofit Community

Join CompuMentor’s community engagement program director John Lorance and a host of leading Web technology advocates as they demystify Web 2.0 technologies and illustrate how using new socially oriented technological innovations can help the nonprofit community. Web 2.0 technologies such as tagging, social bookmarking and online social networks, blogging, content sharing through Wikis and RSS, and new Web widgets need not only be in the hands of well-funded developers; but also can be used by organizations to further their missions.

Co-hosts include:

• Marnie Webb of CompuMentor

• Ruby Sinreich two-time winner of “Best Blog” from The Independent Weekly

• Chris Messina of Flock and SpreadFireFox fame

• Marshall Kirkpatrick, trainer and educator on Web 2.0 technologies

• Phil Klein, nonprofit technologist of Pen and Pixel

• Alexandra Samuel, online community consultant with Social Signal

• Michael Stein, nonprofit technology blogger

• Yann Toledano, nonprofit technology consultant and TechSoup forum co-host.

• Eddie Codel, social networking technology advocate and Webzine conference organizer.

These leading voices of Web 2.0 technology will help you bring the ever-changing field of the second wave of Web applications and tools into practical focus. Event hosts will share their real-world stories, demystify the buzzwords, and provide resources. Discussion will focus on exploring the latest trends in Web publishing for all, effective online communications, emerging research and discovery methods, and collaboration tools.

This event will eliminate the buzz and bring into focus how nonprofits can use these tools to learn from other organizations’ Web travels. You will come away with practical tips, models, resources, and tools for bringing collaborative technologies and processes to your own organization.

Save the dates: October 24-October 28

Join us the week of October 24, for a free, five-day online event, in the TechSoup Emerging Technology forum www.techsoup.org/web2event as we discuss issues such as:

§ What do we mean by Web 2.0?

§ How can you use an RSS feed to get pushed information as well as to push your content to others?

§ What on earth is a Wiki? How is it better than the old-fashioned Web site?

§ What is tagging and how is it relevant? How can you learn from others’ Web searches?

§ What are widgets and how can these new tools help you solve age-old problems?

§ How can an online social network help your organization find volunteers?

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Attention: Treasure Chest of Snake Pit?

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An important, developing part of the online world that you should know about is what’s being called “attention.” It’s related to what you’d probably intuitively associate with the word. Attention-minded folks discuss the future of our “attention data.” Examples include:

  • Your click-stream, or web browsing history
  • Your bookmarks
  • Your online purchases
  • Your content posted and consumed (which podcasts have you listened to, how long did you spend on this blog, the tags you’ve applied to your photos online)

There’s a great potential for evil here – I don’t want the government watching where I go online (already being done to some folks, I’m sure), and I don’t want this data of mine to be controlled by some company that won’t let me grab it, use it or move it over into another company’s database. There’s a great potential for good in this data too, though. I would really like to know how I discovered all the web pages in my archive (the referring URLs) and I’d like to know how readers use the articles I post here on this blog (have you emailed this to someone else? Do you click on the links in my sidebar?). Much of that is already available, but the attention folks are working to make it more solid, easily accessed and usable.

Towards these ends, a great group called The Attention Trust is working to make sure that our interests as end users are protected. One of their projects is The Attention Trust Wiki. On that wiki (a web site that anyone can edit, like Wikipedia) I’ve started pages for an attention wishlist and a list of places you can read more. Check out the attention trust and their wiki. This is going to be very important stuff that you’ll hear about a lot in the coming years.

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