I just tried to use the Typepad "Quickpost" bookmarklet feature to put up
a quick blurb about Brandon Stone's suggestion on the photoblogs.org blog regarding the use of Del.icio.us (hereinafter "Delicious") for the creating of a
master list regarding "hot" photoblog posts. Unfortunately, Quickpost, like most of the
new "improvements" made to Typepad by Movable Type, sucks. The post I had written was mysteriously deleted; I spent five minutes
sending frustrated help ticket messages to Movable Type; cursed, gave up, and decided to
start all over again using MS Word as a text editor rather than Typepad's
internal text editor. I am pretty sure
that I am not going to stick with Typepad for very long. I am getting more and more unhappy with this
service the more I use it. And, well, if
Movable Type doesn't like that I post messages like this on the service it operates,
it should consider ways in which it can keep its early adopters happy.
Okay. Deep
breath. Let go of the anger.
Brandon Stone, the mastermind (sorry; I'm keen on masterminds,
having finally seen The Incredibles
last night) behind the Photoblogs.org
group of websites, made the following suggestion regarding the use of Delicious for the purposes of creating a
RSS feed-adaptable, collaborative list of those photoblog posts that the
photoblogging community considers "hot."
The recent post
from Joe Cunningham about the Ten Links section on his
site really got me thinking. Mainly, it got me thinking about how a person
could use del.icio.us to create such a list.
In fact, it looks like Heather Champ is
doing just that for the "Fabulous Elsewhere" section on her homepage.
Now, this really got me to
thinking... If we all did something similar using
del.icio.us, we could create our own collaborative feed of noteworthy photoblog
posts.
Brandon Stone, An
Interesting Way for Us to Use Del.icio.us, blog.photoblogs.org (Dec. 18, 2004).
I'm not necessarily technology-oriented. I've learned enough of HTML and the like to
maintain my blog on the Typepad site (for now, Movable Type, for now…), and
I've basically ignored all of the other technological advancements other than Bloglines. Delicious
included. Still, I think this is a good
idea. However, I don't think that the
Delicious method proposed by Stone can be a final solution for the posting of
noteworthy images for me. To some extent,
it's useful because it shows the collective's view on what is noteworthy, but
it doesn't provide the sort of in depth reaction to an image that I would want to
use my Picture Envy posts for (or
Heather Champ's Fabulous Elsewhere
link list); in other words, don't expect that feature of Unbillable Hours to go anywhere. Even if Unbillable Hours goes
somewhere beyond Typepad. (Can you tell
how ticked off I am with Movable Type today?)
Here's the methodology suggested by Stone for using Delicious to effect this collaborative
noteworthy image collection:
- Create a Delicious feed. (My Delicious feed is located here. Here's the RSS feed for it.)
- Bookmark noteworthy images using an identical tagging system within Delicious (Stone suggests, and I use, "photoblog-posts").
- Consider using the photoblog-posts feed that Delicious automatically creates to see what everyone has linked to in that category.
Of course, the downside to this is that there may be such a
mass jumble of posts that the photoblog-posts
feed becomes useless, an overwhelming list of links that no one will go through
in its entirety. However, I still think
it's worth giving this idea a shot. I'll continue to create my formal Picture Envy posts, because I like the idea of actively pointing people to posts I like, rather than merely creating a link list. Still, the link list acts as a working notebook, which is valuable as well.
Update: Formatting fixed after cutting and pasting from MS Word. Typepad misunderstood the spaces between words as Tabs.
Update 2: (12/20/04) Okay, I am officially addicted to using Delicious. It's probably precisely the sort of thing I should not use, being a compulsive link aggregator. Once again, here's the link to my Delicious page.
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