One thing I did this weekend was to reorganize the feed syndication categories for my Feed Reader, RSSowl. I decided to go with the majority vote, and used Technorati Tags as a source for my new obsessive-compulsive hierarchy. However, o-c behaviour wasn't the only reason to do this. I also want to garner feedback for two realms.
- The first, we're considering adding a new service to the TeleInterActive Networks - integrating an online aggregator with a desktop reader for RSS, RDF and Atom syndication feeds; this will allow us to provide a true blogroll for our blogs, as well as allow one to access their feeds from any computer by synchronizing the subscriptions in the desktop reader with the server.
- The second, I would like to propose that more "topics" be available for the blogs on Bayosphere. I'm hoping that by cross-posting this article to Bayosphere and TeleInterActive Lifestyle, we'll be able to fine tune the folksonomy to use in both cases.
Technorati Tags are essentially categories as used by the millions of RSS/R[DF]SS/Atom syndicated sites that ping Technorati to let the world know that they have something new posted. The Tags are listed by Technorati in alphabetical order, with relative font size showing the most popular categories. The larger the font, the more posts have been made with that tag. This makes it easy to scan the Tags page, and see the topics about which people are writing. But some of them seem similar, and there are no definitions associated with these terms from the wiki(Folksonomy). So, in trying to decide if a site's syndicated feed should be in Blog, Blogging, Diary or Personal, Science, Technology, or Computers and Internet, or one of the many other tags, I came up with my own definitions, all starting with "a site primarily dedicated to, about or provides...".
- Blog
- events, happenings, news, and subjects of public and personal interest
- Blogging
- the art or technology of building, writing or using a web log
- Books
- reading, writing or publishing books or a site by the author or publisher in support of a book
- Business
- providing advice for starting, running or growing a business
- Computers and Internet
- general information about buying and using any type of computer from servers to handhelds as well as information related to the Internet; oddly enough there are separate tags in the folksonomy for computer, computers, computing and Internet, but they are smaller than the joint usage - I've added subcategories for the individual tags
- Current Affairs
- news that grabs the public interest and will be the stuff of history tomorrow; it is almost as big as the News tag - I wished I had paid more attention in Current Affairs class
- Diary
- relating the day-to-day events of the writer's life
- Education
- tools for, issues concerning, funding for, politics around and art of teaching
- Entertainment
- music, theatre, movies, television, dance, story telling and other things that divert our minds from all the other tags
- Food and Drink
- cooking, eating and imbibing, recipes, restaurants, etiquette
- Health and Wellness
- medicine, exercise, diet, nutrition, lifestyle
- Life
- joie de vivre
- Mobile
- technoliges and techniques for accessing information and communicating on-the-go, synchronously or asynchronously
- MoBlog
- sometimes text, but more often photos, posted to a blog while on-the-go, especially to record events as they happen
- Music
- enjoying, expaining, making or reviewing those noises the reader accepts as Music rather than any other type of noise
see wiki(Music, wikipedia on Music)
- News
- global, national or local events that impact, however briefly or tentatively, everyone
- Open Source
- about creating, using and licensing software, and maybe even other intellectual property, such that the source [code] is freely available, and to quote "free as in 'free speech', not as in 'free beer'"
- Personal
- one's personal interests, but not necessarily about one's day-to-day activities
- Photography
- equipment, art, creating, processing and presenting film or digital pictures
- Photos
- being an online photo gallery
- Podcast
- an audio blog - see blog - generally provided as an enclosure to a blog and generally recorded as an MP3 file with associated meta data and RSS/RDF/Atom feed syndication information
- Podcasting
- creating, producing, distributing and receiving audio blogs
- Politics
- difficult to make a polite definition of this one
- Reviews
- impressions about entertainment, computers, Internet sites, gadgets, gizmos and toys
- RSS
- the bugeoning phoenemnon of using really simple syndication to grab content from the Internet
- Science
- researching, ezpanding and defining the body of knowledge that leads us to understand and comprehend reality through objective, repeatable and predictive studies, such things as Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Astronomy but not Medicine, Psychology or Astrology - see wiki(Science, wikipedia on science)
- Software
- that which runs the computer you're using to read this - not hardware, not wetware
- Sports
paid physical activity that should be an hobby but folk wind up being millionaires by arousing the passions of the masses er, ah, global, national, local, college, school or community physical activites played by individuals or teams - I'm not a fan
- Syndication
- Not actually from the folksonomy, so see RSS, but more general to include RDF, Atom and any new means that come about to more easily publish and subscribe to content on the Internet
- Technology
- science turned into products by engineers with hype from marketing, or gadgets, gizmos, tools and toys
- VoIP
- Voice over Internet Protocol and the growth of an industry that Jeff Pulver has been advocating for over a decade, think Skype, Net2Phone, Yahoo! Messneger Voice, etc
- Wireless
- See Mobile, but focused more on synchronous H2H, H2M and M2M exchange of information
Did I miss your favorite Technorati Tag? Let me know what you think.
HonorTagAdvocate