Collaborative Thinking

OUseful Info: UC Berkeley Lectures on Youtube, via Grazr

Building on my earlier posts (below), an interesting application at OUseful Info.

• The era of grazing has begun
• UC Berkeley first to post full lectures to YouTube

Extending UC Berkeley's YouTube Site:

TechCrunch reported today that UC Berkeley have been putting a wide selection of their lectures up on YouTube: UC Berkeley Puts Courses On YouTube, though AJ isn't much impressed...

I was intrigued as to whether it's possible to search videos by user on YouTube and get the result via a feed using the YouTube/GData API, and it's easy... For example: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/videos?q=skeletal+biology&author=ucberkeley.

Using a simple bit of GrazrScript, it doesn't take much to build a little search widget around this feed, that you could then embed in your own page.

To make things a little more interesting, though, I also added a feed embellishment via a Yahoo Pipe that adds the movie as an enclosure to the feed so that it can be played directly within the Grazr widget (scroll down on the result in the widget... the embedded player may look a little broken at first, but it works fine if you click on it).

So here it is: UCB Video search via Grazr

OUseful Info: UC Berkeley Lectures on Youtube, via Grazr

The era of grazing has begun

Applications like Grazr and its use of OPML deserve more attention from IT strategists ... there are interesting application scenarios.

A few weeks ago we assembled all the pieces that would become Grazr 2.0, and I started doing demos in the Boston area and the Valley. What I soon discovered by watching people react to this product, and listening to their ideas on how they could use it, was that this was much more than just a cool way of managing feeds. I am now convinced that Grazr 2.0 introduces a new medium for online collaboration and publishing. What do I mean by a medium? The combination of HTML, servers and browsers defined the Web as a medium. Weblog software, RSS, and feed readers created the medium of blogging. By this definition a medium is a combination of content, technology, and human behaviors. In the same way, grazing is a medium that combines the data standards of OPML and feeds with our widget, drag and drop reading list editor, and new site design. Add in the type of behaviors these components make possible, and you have the medium of grazing.

This is a pretty bold claim. Watch this video of Grazr 2.0 in action, then try the Grazr 2.0 site and decide for yourself.

Feedonomics » Blog Archive » The era of grazing has begun

Another innovative example:

Ever since I started developing Grazr RSS applications, I've been wondering if it were possible to integrate other services into the Grazr widget. Today I'm presenting you with my most advanced project to date: Podcasting Professionals. This news radar demonstrates that Grazr RSS applications can be enhanced with the functionality of other, quite useful services. For this particular Grazr I picked ZapTXT, Particls and BlogRovR. In this post I'll discuss the value they each add to this particular news radar.

A full-page version of the Podcasting Professionals news radar is hosted on the PODHANDLE servers.

CleverClogs: Podcasting Professionals : Advanced News Radar using Grazr#more

CleverClogs: OnePipe : the Single-Button Generic Feed Filtering Bookmarklet

Innovative use of Yahoo! Pipes and Grazr. Give it a try. 

OnePipe : the Single-Button Generic Feed Filtering Bookmarklet

"As far as I know OnePipe is the first solution to offer generic, on-the-fly feed filtering based on URL parameterization."

OnePipe is a browser bookmarklet I created to filter any feed by topic. It's simple to use: install the bookmarklet, navigate to any website whose feed you'd like to filter and click the OnePipe button. You'll be prompted to enter any topic or word after which OnePipe will generate a custom feed that only contains those items that match your keywords. The exciting part about OnePipe is that it can be used over and over again.

Source: CleverClogs: OnePipe : the Single-Button Generic Feed Filtering Bookmarklet

January Activities

Just a partial snapshot of my current workload.

Events:

• Lotusphere later this month.

Primary research focus this month:

• Architectural decision criteria on when to use XML syndication to support a technical position document currently being written.
• Unified communications and Microsoft to support a report currently being written.

Secondary research focus areas:

• Presence: Investigating some of the pending RFC documents, strategies of major vendors, presence data models, usage and application scenarios, impact of location services and mobility, federation, and the technology infrastructure needed for presence management.
• Tagging/Social Bookmarks: Reading some academic papers on: structured vs. unstructured tagging, collaborative tagging, tagging and information architecture, tag clustering, and so on.
• Social Networking: Keeping current on news and trends (reviewing the recent Pew report on social networks), and pondering the inter-relationship between social networks and communities (organizational influences, group dynamics, formal and informal roles, etc.).
• XML syndication: Spending some cycles on OPML and innovative ways that RSS and Atom might be used beyond the basic use case scenarios of today.

Writing:

• Technical Position on XML Syndication
• Report on Microsoft Office Communications Server

OPML Icon Project

Nice to see this effort moving forward. 

In October 2005, Dave Winer put out a community request for a beautiful OPML icon. While several options were presented none have gained traction. During our quest for an icon during an OPML related project we realized we needed to develop our own.

You are free to take this icon and spread it around the community, use it for your own projects, or create derivatives. The only thing we request is that you release your creation under the same license to the community.

Source: OPML Icon Project

More information from Chris Pirllo's blog:

OPML is great - and for feed organization, it’s equally awesome. Just about every news aggregator supports importing and exporting OPML, but there hasn’t yet emerged an OPML icon design that is equally as appealing as the “standard” feed icon set forth by Firefox and subsequently adopted by the industry. In working with information architects on TagJag, we decided to dedicate some cycles to designing an OPML icon for use on the site:

Source: OPML Icon ~ Chris Pirillo