I am pleased to show you the beta version of the help files of the next generation of Talk Digger.
For those who do not know, Talk Digger is a new way to find, follow and join discussions evolving on the Web. So you have three elements: (1) finding discussions, (2) following discussions and (3) joining discussions.
With the current version of Talk Digger, users get stuck at step one. These new improvements to Talk Digger will let its users to go ahead with the step two and three.
With these new features, Talk Digger will become a social platform that helps people to connect with other people that follow the same stories (the premise here is that people that follow the same discussions will also have some personal and professional interests in common). It will also become a search engine of its own, and not only a meta-one.
These help files are created like a slide show: you have a screenshot of what is going on the Talk Digger web site at the left and a description of the behavior at the right.
The reason I publish this first version of the help files is to show people what will be the next generation of Talk Digger, what they will be able to do with it. What I would also like is to get feedbacks from them: I would like to have your first impressions.
It is sure that they are just screenshot and that you can’t really have the feeling of its usability, however, I would suggest you to subscribe to the private alpha version that will be online by the end of the month or so.
There are the help sections I publish for now:
- The Talk Digger home page.
- A Talk Digger conversation page. This is the core section of the system.
- A user profile page.
- A user page.
- A user tracking page.
- The Talk Digger search engine.
I hope you will like what you will see!
Technorati: web2.0 | search | engine | talkdigger | track | tracking | conversation | web | communities | beta | demo | screenshots |
sull
July 11, 2006 — 9:57 am
sweet!
you have covered so many bases.
look forward to testing.
Fred
July 11, 2006 — 6:11 pm
Hi Sull,
Thanks!
Now the only thing I hope is that people like you will like and use it!
Salutations,
Fred
John Tropea
July 25, 2006 — 6:30 am
Let me get this right…you do a link search for a URL eg. a blog post…it will list a bunch of blog posts linking to the blog post in question…this is considered a conversation.
This is currently what Technorati and BlogPulse and many others do including TalkDigger (only in a meta-way)…I like BlogPulse conversation Tracker as it has a visual tree view.
Anyway, instead of having a tree view Talk digger will also feature some of the conversation links in a box. That is, if any of the conversation links have a conversation of their own, they will show up in a box, clicking on it here will replace the screen with a new section of the bigger conversation.
Why not, as well, in the original conversation, just have the option to expand one of the conversation links to see if it has any of its own conversation links.
Although, I do like the conversation box…
Then you allow a user to bookmark and tag a conversation…this is like bookmarking a technorati link search in del.icio.us…but now you can do both the link search and the tagging in TalkDigger.
Now the user can have a whole bunch of tags in their account, each bookmark in a tag will show a conversation…if you look at bookmarks in a tag across all users, then you can discover conversations.
So in del.icio.us you can discover bookmarks, but it won’t show you other URL’s that point to the bookmark ie. the conversation.
On top of bookmarking you can also leave a comment (just like in del.icio.us), but the comment will seem to feel like you are taking part in the conversation without having to make a blog post.
Kind of similar (but not really) is Webride, where people can discuss your blog post in a forum and not in your blog comments box.
Anyway, so that means I could bookmark all my blog posts (and probably assign the same tags as I use in my actual blog post), this would let me see who links to my blog (eg. Technorati link search), but it also lets me see if others have commmented (joined the conversation).
Then I can see others who have also tagged my blog post, and check out their user account…or even check out the other blog posts in Talkdigger that have the same tag…the beauty is that when I find another blog post within the same tag, I can see all blogosphere posts that link to it as well.
Before hand I could get an RSS feed for any new links that point to a URL (new posts in the conversation).
Now I will be able to get an RSS for a tag or a user tag…eg. keep me updated on any new conversations about “opml”.
So now I can keep updated to not only new posts in individual conversations, but I can keep updated to any new conversations about a topic or collected by a user or a topic collected by a user.
It’s basically del.icio.us for link search results…the bookmark is the title of the conversation – in essence the search query – and the results are the posts that link to it.
Fred
July 27, 2006 — 4:34 pm
Hi John!
Wow, great comment ๐
Let me answer it bit by bit.
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Let me get this right…you do a link search for a URL eg. a blog post…it will list a bunch of blog posts linking to the blog post in question…this is considered a conversation.
—–
Exactly, see that as a sort of vertical search engine, something that will enhance the results from traditional search engines, play with them.
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This is currently what Technorati and BlogPulse and many others do including TalkDigger (only in a meta-way)…I like BlogPulse conversation Tracker as it has a visual tree view.
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Exactly, many, many people do research in that way, and that, for years (so it is another way I am exploring).
—–
Anyway, instead of having a tree view Talk digger will also feature some of the conversation links in a box. That is, if any of the conversation links have a conversation of their own, they will show up in a box, clicking on it here will replace the screen with a new section of the bigger conversation.
—–
You will have a tree, sometime, in the right side-bar of Talk Digger to related conversations tracked by Talk Digger.
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Why not, as well, in the original conversation, just have the option to expand one of the conversation links to see if it has any of its own conversation links.
—–
It is what it does (if I understand your question well enough). You will be able to experiment this in the alpha version (I think you subscribed right?). It is a question of days.
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Although, I do like the conversation box…
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Thanks, but I’ll have to rethink all the visualization over time, with users comments and behavior to upgrade it, because it is far from perfection.
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Then you allow a user to bookmark and tag a conversation…this is like bookmarking a technorati link search in del.icio.us…but now you can do both the link search and the tagging in TalkDigger.
—–
Exactly ๐ When I was developing it (some months ago) I found out that it could be use as a YASBS (Yet Another Social Bookmarking System), or digg, or… etc.
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Now the user can have a whole bunch of tags in their account, each bookmark in a tag will show a conversation…if you look at bookmarks in a tag across all users, then you can discover conversations.
—–
Exactly, however what you call “bookmarks” I call them “tracks”. It is the same things, but it refers to a different concept. I can use tracks as bookmarks. However, the primary goal of a track is to “track” a conversation: so to be noticed when a new comment or sources is added to the conversation.
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So in del.icio.us you can discover bookmarks, but it won’t show you other URL’s that point to the bookmark ie. the conversation.
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Exactly, and it is what Talk Digger do, as far as the information have been crawled and archived by Talk Digger.
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On top of bookmarking you can also leave a comment (just like in del.icio.us), but the comment will seem to feel like you are taking part in the conversation without having to make a blog post.
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Exactly, specially because each comment has its own permalink (URI, unique URL, call it as you wish).
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Kind of similar (but not really) is Webride, where people can discuss your blog post in a forum and not in your blog comments box.
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Yeah, same idea if we talk about the comments.
—–
Anyway, so that means I could bookmark all my blog posts (and probably assign the same tags as I use in my actual blog post), this would let me see who links to my blog (eg. Technorati link search), but it also lets me see if others have commmented (joined the conversation).
—–
Exactly, but you could also use the RSS feed of the conversation to be noticed in your Web Feed Reader.
—–
Then I can see others who have also tagged my blog post, and check out their user account…or even check out the other blog posts in Talkdigger that have the same tag…the beauty is that when I find another blog post within the same tag, I can see all blogosphere posts that link to it as well.
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Yeah exactly. I would just add that: all blogosphere posts yet tracked by Talk Digger ๐
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Before hand I could get an RSS feed for any new links that point to a URL (new posts in the conversation).
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It is always available. The only difference is that the performance will be drastically better (since all the information will come from Talk Digger Archives and not dynamically created from other search engine resulsts).
So they will be much more stable, realiable and quick.
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Now I will be able to get an RSS for a tag or a user tag…eg. keep me updated on any new conversations about “opml”.
—–
exactly.
—–
So now I can keep updated to not only new posts in individual conversations, but I can keep updated to any new conversations about a topic or collected by a user or a topic collected by a user.
—–
Exactly, an much more ways that I don’t think of but that users will ๐
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It’s basically del.icio.us for link search results…the bookmark is the title of the conversation – in essence the search query – and the results are the posts that link to it.
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exactly, and I would add that it is a good way to get in touch with interesting people that follow the same conversations as you are.
Thanks for this great comment John!
Take care,
Salutations,
Fred