What is Toluu?
Toluu is a free service for sharing the feeds you read and discovering new ones.		 Get Invite

scribkin

where code and culture converge


Be the First to Rate This…October 30

outbrain_logo_small Yesterday, I saw a breaking news blog entry relating to Outbrain and Disqus. It’s a very small update in the Outbrain widget that detects if Disqus is being used and asks if the person rating an article would like to leave a Disqus comment as well.

Although the integration isn’t huge, it did catch my attention and I decided to install Outbrain on my blog. Outbrain is a plug-in content rating system that also provides recommendations automatically at the end of each article where it is installed. There is no special logins needed to rate an article, just click on the number of stars you think the article deserves and your rating is recorded.

Tell Me About DiigoOctober 2

diigo-logo How many of you made the switch from Windows 3.11 (or WFW 3.1) to Windows 95? Come on.. I know there’s more of a couple of you that have. What was one of the biggest difference between the two OSs? Better network drivers?  Improved memory management?  Unified driver model?

I would hazard to say that one of the biggest differences was the ability to do most operations in the OS in more than one way.  Sure, now we take it for granted; but back then it was huge.  There were a lot more right-click context menus.  The control panel was completely overhauled.  For the first time in Windows, you were able to tasks such as changing your background image either from the control panel or directly from a right-click on the desktop.

Keep this in mind as we explore Diigo, the web bookmarking research tool and community.  As I researched it for this review, I got the same feeling of having multiple paths to a goal.  The developers tried very hard to let you use the service the way that best fits your workflow.  And that isn’t a bad thing!

Overview

100th Post!September 25

100posts I’d like to make a small announcement that this is Scribkin’s 100th post.  It’s been a long time coming, especially the last 20, but I finally made it.  I am definitely looking forward to writing 100 more!

I’d like to thank Colin Walker (FF), Sarah Perez (FF), Corvida (FF & Twitter), Steven Hodson (FF),  Louis Gray (FF),

Diigo Tests Group ThumbsSeptember 22

I haven’t seen anyone in my immediate circle of social media followers reporting on this, so here is a small update on Diigo, a relatively new social bookmarking site with a lot of features.

Diigo tries enable a lot of ways of using its service and related features.  You can use it exactly like del.icio.us to bookmark and tag web sites you may want to search for later.  But you can also use it to share interesting bookmarks with your friends, discuss content with like-minded folks, and also leave comments on sites that Diigo users can read later!

The feature they are testing out applies to their groups feature.  Now, if you are a member of a particular group in Diigo, you can give certain URLs a thumbs-up if you think it is especially helpful.  They are holding off on deploying this feature site-wide until they can make a determination how game-able the feature is.

Diigo Group Thumbs

Groups are similar to a web forum, but centered more around site bookmarks that are collected

The Social Media BurdenSeptember 20

Porter in Dunbar Square

I love to explore new software.  New social media web applications are no different – I like to learn about them, try them out, and be inspired by them.  Some, like FriendFeed, become a tool that I use every day.

Especially in a field named ‘social media,’ most of you are the same as me in what you want to get out of it, but perhaps for different reasons.  I am guessing that most of you are more interested in the social side.. you are on FriendFeed because there are interesting people there.  And that’s cool.  But that’s only half of the interest for me.  I also love to explore and understand what makes software tick.

I’m not saying I don’t like people; far from it.  I’m not a misanthrope!  I’m just saying that my outlook on going to a party, mixer, networking seminar or other social event usually registers somewhere between uneasiness and dread.

The point with all this is to say that I know myself fairly well: I’ve always been a loner.  It takes work for me to ma