After my two posts yesterday, I continue to think about tagging and software for tagging. Here is a recap of both what is on my mind and what a tiny bit more research has revealed for me:
- Freebase is in a different league than Fuzzzy relative to at least venture capital backing versus student project. From Fuzzzy’s About page…first, the cause for pause:
The system is a research project and some parts of the system may be very experimental. We are continuously developing this system. If the project is terminated we will inform you some time before the service is shut down. In that case, export mechanisms will be developed so that you can move your data somewhere else.
Next the cause for excitement:
Fuzzzy is not only social but also semantic which means that the Tags used have more meaning. When bookmarks are assigned a meaning using a standard like the ISO 13250 Topic Map then people as well as other computer systems can make use of the embedded knowledge in a more meaningful way. This way of categorising content is a middle way between the top-down monolithic taxonomy approach like the Yahoo directory and the more recent social tagging (folksonomy) approaches.
- I need to dig more into Topic Maps. I was only first introduced a few weeks back via this wild Alexander Johannesen – Sexier Smarter IA through Topic Maps podcast.
- Indeed, I want portability for my tagging data. I know I can export my de.icio.us to bookmarks. But, can I change to a different tagging software (for example Furl, Ma.gnolia, Fuzzzy, etc.) and take my data with me from del.icio.us? Harold Jarche wrote in December about his experience from going from Furl to del.icio.us.
Prompted by this start of a deeper-dive, today I finally got around to creating accounts on Furl and Ma.gnolia and started to experiment to get a more hands-on comparison.- Add to the list FaceTag that I discovered today thanks to washtublibrarian. I am certainly drawn to their tagline, which echoes what the Fuzzzy About page said: “Integrating bottom-up and top-down classification in a social tagging system” as this is exactly what I am reaching for when I first was pointed to that made-up C-word I ranted on yesterday.
- For some unknown reason in my adoption of del.icio.us for the last two months, I’ve been resisting tagging lower level pages such as individual blog posts — reserving this only for pages/posts that I really really wanted to be certain to find myself back to; for example, a ‘how to’ on a very narrow topic. I can’t explain my resistance rationally. I don’t know where I came up with the notion that I should do most my tagging for home pages. My thinking is now shifting and I am much more likely to tag a deep-link and I believe that is where the most potential value is. Okay, sometimes I’m just slow to get it.
- Either connected to the previous, or alternative to? I want my general tagging software to be integrated with my feedreader. I am annoyed that I am managing my feedreader content through folder structure (yuck) and search only. Here I am reminded of what John Tropea described on his own wishlist over at Library clips.
- de.icio.us does admit to performance issues in overdue new year’s resolutions.
- Still to dig into, but looks very informative for this dive is Steve Eisner’s five post series on “Enterprise del.icio.us.” I also still need to get up to speed with My Yahoo!
- Lastly, I’m feeling a bit foolish about yesterday being so quick to point to David Weinberger’s post versus doing my own research first. Alas, at the end of what felt like a very long work week, I fell into the lazy blogger behavior of pointing to somebody who is pointing to somebody who is pointing to somebody. Hopefully I have received at least some redemption with the above evidence of starting to do my real homework.
Photo Credit: Sean Bellew