Sat, December 18th, 2004 by Brandon Stone
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.
Here is what I propose...
- We all get accounts on del.icio.us and familiarize ourselves with how it works and what it does. (I'm sure many of us have already completed this step.)
- We all start bookmarking our favorite photoblog posts using del.icio.us.
- We all follow the same tagging method as we bookmark these posts. I suggest that we use the tag: "photoblog-posts". So... every time we add a bookmark to an interesting photoblog post, we make sure to tag it with photoblog-posts. This part is very important, because this is what puts all our bookmarks in the same RSS feed.
- We check the photoblog-posts feed to see what people are bookmarking: http://del.icio.us/tag/photoblog-posts
- Eventually, once this thing gains enough momentum we can check the popular version of the feed to see what's "hot" right now. http://del.icio.us/popular/photoblog-posts
- You can add any of these feeds to your favorite RSS reader.
- I will eventually integrate these feeds directly into Photoblogs.org, so that a larger audience can see what's being bookmarked.
- Also, you can add your own feed to your own photoblog (like Heather did) to show everyone what you're into at the moment.
I'm very excited about this idea, and I'm sure it can work if enough of us participate. The end result is that we will create a deeper view into the countless number of amazing photoblog posts that occur every day and are so often overlooked.
We'll eventually want to explain and document this idea a little better using the wiki. In the meantime, though, let me know what you think.
I'll be checking the photoblog-posts feed for updates!
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on Saturday, December 18th, 2004 at 12:02 pm
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December 18th, 2004 at 12:13 pm
Now THIS is cool! Too bad I haven't heard about this yesterday as I just finished the big year-end cleanup of my favorites page.
December 18th, 2004 at 12:24 pm
Although I would NOT recommend that anyone post their own work. If it's that good, it will find its way there.
December 18th, 2004 at 12:40 pm
brandon, i think this is a wonderful idea. i heart del.icio.us big time. i'll definitely start adding the tag you recommended to my favourites. bravo!
and i second nantel for NOT posting our own work.
December 18th, 2004 at 12:44 pm
oh, and if anyone would like help or blah blah about my experience with integrating del.icio.us into mt templates, please feel free to drop me a line hchamp {at} gmail {dot} com.
December 18th, 2004 at 12:44 pm
Since I'm using del.icio.us for a few weeks and I've added my feed to my pages, I'll surely participate to this great idea..
December 18th, 2004 at 1:38 pm
i'll start using the tag too. great idea!:)
December 18th, 2004 at 2:09 pm
It is incredible to me that about six months ago I had never seen or heard of del.ico.us, and now it is truely a web phenomena. This is an awesome idea and the implentation is great. I hope this really catches on.
December 18th, 2004 at 2:26 pm
Fantastic idea, Brandon. I love it!!! I was just introduced to del.ico.us recently, and this is a GREAT use for it. I'm signed up!
December 18th, 2004 at 2:28 pm
What a good idea! I'm in!
~ So (excuse me for my vaugeness, it's 06:30 and I have NOT had enough coffee yet) is the proposal that we also have a link to the photoblogs-delicious-type feed on our photoblogs somewhere?
December 18th, 2004 at 2:35 pm
Cameron, I wasn't really trying to suggest that people need to alter their own sites. That option is completely up to you.
December 18th, 2004 at 4:11 pm
OK Brandon, thanks, I'm at work now, had another coffee...I *think* I am with the program now...
:-)>
December 18th, 2004 at 4:58 pm
This is great, I love the idea of being able to point to individual images.
December 18th, 2004 at 10:51 pm
This is great. I for one did not know about del.icio.us (I guess I'm still a rank amateur photoblogger). Thanks Brandon.
December 19th, 2004 at 1:07 am
Excellent idea -- I'm game!
December 19th, 2004 at 7:29 am
Brandon, great idea. I'd been thinking that photoblogs.org needed something like that, but I hadn't thought of using del.icio.us, though.
December 19th, 2004 at 1:05 pm
Interesting idea. Now, I just need to learn how to use Del.ico.us (I'm borderline defective when it comes to computers).
December 19th, 2004 at 1:31 pm
Bravo Brandon....
I've known about Del.ico.us for awhile now (through my referals), but since i don't text blog anymore i didn't think it would be useful to me. But this is a great way to use it for photoblogging.
I may just re-evaluate my stance on del.ico.us
December 19th, 2004 at 2:14 pm
On Using Del.icio.us for Noteworthy Photos and Typepad's Degrading Quality of Service
I just tried to use the Typepad
December 19th, 2004 at 6:07 pm
This is really intriguing. I'm completely Del.ico.us ignorant, but the way all of you discuss it here, I'm going to go dig into it and see what's going on. Brandon, great explanation to get things started.
December 19th, 2004 at 8:22 pm
I'm planning on adding groups to del.icio.us soon. Please drop me a line and we can work together. My email is on the del.icio.us about page (http://del.icio.us/doc/about)
December 19th, 2004 at 9:00 pm
Rocking!
December 20th, 2004 at 10:45 am
another reason to love the internet. i love the collaboration. yay brandon! yay joshua!
December 20th, 2004 at 11:23 am
this is an excellent idea! i've always enjoyed browsing other people's "found favorites" or whatnot, and wanted to add such a feature to my site, but i'm much to lazy to update it with any frequency. however, this is so easy that even i can make it work:) yippee! gotta go register now . . .
December 20th, 2004 at 11:28 am
Thanks, Joshua. I'll get in touch.
December 20th, 2004 at 2:54 pm
I'm in love with this idea. I've been looking for an excuse to pick up del.icio.us... thanks!
December 20th, 2004 at 2:54 pm
this is working really well its great, one thing though it might be usful if people searched the feed before posting as we're getting double posts already?
December 20th, 2004 at 3:16 pm
I wonder how people feel (in general) about thumbnails in feed entries. I have them in the feed from my site, but some people don't. The del.icio.us entries do not have them, as it would difficult to make a standard way to put them in. Some people put large-sized images in their feeds (bad idea, methinks).
Any feedback on this??? (My vote - I like the thumbnails).
December 20th, 2004 at 3:50 pm
Luke, double posts are a good thing. In fact, if you see a great link that someone else posted in the list, you should feel free to copy it and post it again yourself.
As more people bookmark the same link, it becomes more popular and will eventually show up in the popular list. You see, there are two main lists here...
One is the normal list that just shows what everyone is bookmarking:
http://del.icio.us/tag/photoblog-posts
And the other is a "popular" version of that list. It sort of filters out the other list by only showing the links that have been repeatedly bookmarked by several people:
http://del.icio.us/popular/photoblog-posts
Once enough people start bookmarking the same things, then the popular list will start working and we'll really be able to see what's hot right now.
I hope that helps to explain things a little better.
December 20th, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Also, here's an example of what I'm talking about... If you're interested in what's popular under the tag "design", you can view this list:
http://del.icio.us/popular/design
Each link is sorted by how many people have recently bookmarked it. It looks like it takes 6 people to link to the same page in order to be added to the popular list.
December 20th, 2004 at 9:11 pm
really nice, as i've always been useless with bookmarking (favourites folder is a total mess!) this makes it much easier, and somewhat fun. i've been playing with it a little, and find it very useful. it's nice to remember the posts i like this way. would be interesting to compare what i like and what others like.
also, would be nice addition if a user could somehow use their own css file for their account
December 21st, 2004 at 12:56 am
sounds great!
December 21st, 2004 at 9:22 am
I noticed I had a few hits coming from del.icio.us and I didn't know what it was. Now I do and I've already added the rss feed for the photoblog-posts tag as a live bookmark! (I'm looking forward to the popular list to be going.)
It's a wonderful idea if you want to get a quick look at some great photographs without the hassle of digging and randomly picking photoblogs.
Quite nice. Thank you!
December 21st, 2004 at 12:41 pm
Sorry, I'm a bit confused. I signed up for an account, went to a blog I like, added the bookmark with the tag "photoblog-posts" and then went to http://del.icio.us/tag/photoblog-posts to see if it appeared and it didn't (even when I searched for it). Then when I go to the popular list at http://del.icio.us/popular/photoblog-posts there is nothing listed there. Is there a source for a comprehensive step-by-step outline for this whole thing for buffoons such as me? I have no experience with rss.
December 21st, 2004 at 3:23 pm
Brandon: excellent idea, I'm in.
Josh: del.icio.us is an even excellenter idea. I love it. Thanks for your hard work.
Matt: thumbnails in RSS feeds are a must. I mean, what the hell's the use of having an RSS feed for a PHOTOblog if it doesn't give you any idea of what the new photos look like? I only subscribe to photoblog feeds which have at least thumbnails, if not full-size images.
December 21st, 2004 at 4:27 pm
so, heather, anyone else want to post their php for getting the feed into their templates?
December 21st, 2004 at 5:13 pm
Ian,
You may want to look at a solution such as Feed To Javascript ( http://jade.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/feed/ ), to integrate it into your template. There are others like it, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
December 22nd, 2004 at 4:07 am
>Luke, double posts are a good thing. In fact, if you see a great link that someone else posted in the list, you should feel free to copy it and post it again yourself.
is this really true? it looks like if someone bookmarks a post seperately they don't always get added to the same file/feed. so you can get seperate posts for the same link. i mean why else would we see posts for the same links that don't list other people bookmarking that link? or am i wrong on this?
a problem i've noticed is that some people are bookmarking a site, not a specific entry which sort of defeats the purpose of all this.
matt, did you solve your problems? did you remember to hit save when you bookmarked something? maybe you need to hit refresh to see that it's added? i'm an idiot when it comes to feeds(and i don't read blogs using a feed, though i have feeds from my blogs), but i seem to be able to see things fine using just the links brandon posted.
December 22nd, 2004 at 4:35 am
another thing i just noticed is that you can bookmark the same url more than once. so on my bookmarks (http://del.icio.us/formica/1?setcount=25) you can see the bookmark for pomophoto twice.
and to further illustrate something i mentioned in my post before. on the photoblogs-post feed(http://del.icio.us/tag/photoblog-posts/1) you can see this picture linked to three times. the first time was on 12-19 when i bookmarked it. the second time was on 12-21 and the third time was on 12-22. i was able to bookmark it a second time so that one of these went up to two people bookmarking it. so there appears to definately be some sort of problem. what i'm thinking is that if you look through the feed, then go to the page and book mark it(or copy it i suppose) from there it will be added to that feed, however, if you are just randomly searching the web, find a picture you like and bookmark it(and someone else has already bookmarked it) - it will show up as an independant bookmark and not count towards the total number of bookmarks for that page.
so how can we solve that problem? i mean once we get into a seriously large number of bookmarks it won't be so feasible to look through the feed to see if that has been bookmarked previously. any ideas on how to fix this?
December 22nd, 2004 at 8:05 am
William, it looks like you're a little confused with how del.icio.us is supposed to work... I think, once you start using it enough, you'll realize that these are all non-issues.
~ Can one person make more than one bookmark to the same URL? ~
No, del.icio.us won't let you. If you try to bookmark the same URL, you will be brought to the edit screen for the existing bookmark.
~ Can you give two different bookmarked URLs the same title? ~
Yes. This may be where some of your confusion is.
~ Are you supposed to look through the feed to see if something has been bookmarked previously? ~
No. (You can choose to do this, but it's CERTAINLY not required.) Del.icio.us is designed so that everyone can just basically have a bookmarking free-for-all. Eventually, the main "photoblog-posts" feed ( http://del.icio.us/tag/photoblog-posts ) will get so much traffic in it that we won't be able to keep up. This is DESIRED behavior, since we'll have the popular "photoblog-posts" feed ( http://del.icio.us/popular/photoblog-posts ) that will kick in and start filtering out the other feed for us.
It's probably best if you just play around with del.icio.us for a couple weeks or so to figure out why it's designed the way it is. It may appear that there is some sort of problem, but chances are there really isn't.
December 22nd, 2004 at 9:36 am
William, thanks...it seems to be working for me now.
December 22nd, 2004 at 9:49 am
thanks brandon,
i took a closer look, and realized the example i gave earlier, is actually three different urls for the same picture, which seems odd, but it explains my confusion.
December 22nd, 2004 at 12:24 pm
> a problem i've noticed is that some people are bookmarking a site, not a specific entry which sort of defeats the purpose of all this.
i mistakenly did that just now and edited the url - i guess this tends to happen when you're just clking through your favourites list, and want to bookmark the latest post. have to make sure i get the permanent link next time.
December 22nd, 2004 at 12:59 pm
Good point, Q. It's best that people try to find the permalink to an entry rather than just linking to a site's homepage.
December 22nd, 2004 at 10:58 pm
something else i noticed recently is that some people have been tagging posts as photoblogs-posts, when it should be photoblog-posts no s on photoblog. i mistakenly had done this for quite a few(and noticed other people had done it as well).
December 23rd, 2004 at 2:42 pm
Still nothing in the del.icio.us / popular / photoblog-posts section...
I guess the problem with posting individual pictures, rather an overall photo-blog itself, is things move along so quickly.
Do 5 more people want to add http://www.overshadowed.com/mt/archives/000371.html and we can see if we can get at least one entry into the popular list? (That's not my photo, by the way, just the most recent entry I've made to del.icio.us and one we should all be able to agree is good enough to be posted.)
Help out people, in the name of science!
December 23rd, 2004 at 3:22 pm
You can also create a link to create a post to del.icio.us with the current page, and the tags already entered as "photoblog-posts".
Hmmm... I tried to post the syntax, but I guess HTML is not allowed - I guess just view source at http://pomophoto.com
jsn
December 23rd, 2004 at 3:28 pm
Oops. The link has the username hardcoded into it, and I'm not sure how to make it a generic username. Sorry folks. My bad. And I was so excited about it too
December 6th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Handy