The idea of the real time web has taking on serious momentum, and is seen as a fundamental characteristic of the web’s next evolution. Here are a few real time applications that are worth keeping an eye on.
1.YourVersion. Winner of the People’s Choice Award at this years TechCrunch50, this application should certainly be of interest to librarians.
YourVersion is a personalized, real-time discovery engine that finds new, relevant content tailored to one’s interests and makes it easy to bookmark and share that content.
2.Aardvark. Aardvark is a way to get quick answers to questions using your extended social network. You can ask questions via IM or email, and the question is then passed to your friends, and friends of friends, based on what their profiles say their interests are.
3. PostRank. Based on social engagement, PostRank allows you to find the most relevant content on the web in real time that matches your specific interests.
PostRank measures engagement by analyzing the types and frequency of an audience’s interaction with online content. An item’s PostRank score represents how interesting and relevant people have found it to be. The more interesting or relevant an item is, the more work they will do to share or respond to that item so interactions that require more effort are weighted higher. PostRank scoring is based on analysis of the “5 Cs” of engagement: creating, critiquing, chatting, collecting, and clicking. By collecting interaction engagement metrics in these categories the overall engagement score is calculated and the PostRank value is determined.
Wildcard.Google Wave. Tomorrow, Google will issue 100,000 invitations to preview the new application, or “personal communication and collaboration tool.”. People already believe that it will overtake Twitter in the real time game, but Google has failed in the past so we have to wait and see.
After all the Twitter articles, reports, and sociology last week I thought it might be a good idea to focus on something a little lighter. Here are three Twitter visualizations that are fun and, maybe, useful.
1.Trendsmap. This visualization tracks Twitter trends by geographical location and displays the information as a tag cloud on a Google Map, which can be sorted by a specific city or general region in real time. Clicking on a tag opens a small information box that aggregates the latest tweets, the trend history, and offers related news links and images.
2.Visible Tweets. Visible Tweets displays a stream of tweets on any trend you choose. They are displayed one at a time on a colourful background, with beautiful transitions between tweets. Designed to display tweets in a public place, a perfect addition to any twittered conference.
3.Trend Tracker. While the others focus on place or aesthetics, Trend Tracker allows you to see trending topics by geography and time of day. It is also possible to see a trend topic by location on a world map over 24 hours, which means you can follow trends as they travel around the globe.
Wildcard.TwittEarth. Displays a geo-located tweet, accompanied by a very bizarre icon, at ten second intervals. Useless but strangely seductive.
Imagine if your catalogue looked like Amazon Windowshop. Would this make you happy? Would it make browsing easier for your users?
We’ve taken out the text and created an immersive experience to help you lose yourself in exploration. Trailers for bestselling movies. Insight into the hottest TV shows and video games. Track samples from Tuesday’s new music releases. Audio reviews of books you should read. Amazon Windowshop lets you get a taste of many titles. They’re here – in one place – and all you have to do is move a few keys to zoom in on whatever flips your switch.
I have been talking to other librarians about Twitter a lot lately and looking for worthwhile material to point them towards, especially articles or reports that move beyond the basics, engage with the application and help explain the sociology that makes it interesting. Here are three of the most recent that I found useful.
One.The influentials: new approaches for analyzing influence on Twitter. Examines the nuances of interaction on Twitter in an attempt to define influence and distinguish between different types of behaviour. They categorize users as conversationalists, spammers, or materialists in relation to the number of followers vs. followees.
Wildcard.Tweeting Kegerator. Certainly not library related (at least I hope not!) but so bizarre I had to include it; a network connected keg that sends a Twitter post to tell you when it’s about to run out. Yes, bizarre…
The latest version of Did You Know? has been released, titled Did you know? 4.0, this time created by The Economist Magazine for their annual Media Convergence Forum in partnership with the original creators of Did you know?/Shift happens. Read more about the process on The Fischbowl and enjoy the video.
