BrainStream

Tuesday, January 17th, 2006

ClaimID - another social personality / online information manager?

Came across ClaimID via some chatter in the microformats irc channel on Freenode. Did some searching and found out it's a new venture involving Fred Stutzman of iBiblio. Here's what he says:

claimID is a service that lets people track, classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about them online. We've all met someone who is annoyed, uncomfortable, or even generally nonplussed with the way their identity is represented in search. Search engines are good at finding exactly what people search for; the only problem is our identity is anything but exact. What if a person searches for you and doesn't use the name you publish under, or they don't know your maiden name? And what if there is actually really great stuff about you on the web that doesn't have your name attached to it (like a news story about a project you worked on)?

Sounds intriguing - they're now taking emails for requesting beta access. I wonder if they can distinguish themselves from the grand fields of personal information management and social networks.

(Leave a comment)

Looking forward to OutputThis.org service

I think I'm looking forward to the OutputThis.org service though I know very little about what it is or will do. I'm hoping it will replace my LJ-Crosspost plugin that posts whatever I enter on my main, MovableType-powered site onto my LiveJournal account. I'm also hoping it will allow me to crosspost to my Yahoo! 360 account, MySpace, and other social networks and services I am a member of.

Unlike crazy, over-techie folk like me, I cannot guarantee people I know will have an account on every social network I am on so it only makes sense such crossposting should be possible. But the key is going to be smart publishing - so if I say "this blog" then I want it replaced on all the other sites with BrainStream.com so people on other services know what I am referring to. If I reference a previous post, then on each service, I want it to link to the previous post from that service and not back to BrainStream.com. This seamlessness is going to be important. Or if I reference a person and link to them, I want a link to appear to their account on the appropriate service, (i.e. linking to a LiveJournal.com URL or, on LiveJournal, using their <lj user=""> tag).

But I also see an even better use for OutputThis.org and I hope it's being considered - though I didn't read anything about it. I'd be willing to pay for such a service. Basically, I want a tool that stores all the personal information that can be shared across all social networks: Ryze, LinkedIn, Planzo, Orkut, Friendster, Tribe.Net, MySpace, LiveJournal, Yahoo! 360 etc. This includes mostly personal profile type information - name, contact information, interests, favorite music, movies, television shows, books, insert-yours-here, as well as relationship status and information and resume details.

It should would make it a heck of a lot easier to keep information on the Web more updated. I'm continually thinking about metadata, (data about data), so it bums me out that some of these services don't semantically contextualize every bit of information I enter. I would love for all these services to start using microformats. One service, for instance, lets you enter what schools you attended however if it's not a unique school name then it will list all those schools around the country with that name. Each school should be a unique "item" with it's city, state, and any other information making it unique to itself.

I'd also want to syncronize my friends/buddies/contacts. If I list a person on one service, then check all the services for the same person and match by email address or other unique information. Something like this may need human interaction to approve or reject potential matches but it sure beats manually searching all these services.

Anyone know much more about OutputThis.org?

(Leave a comment)