Tag directory and aggregator

[al james]

This seems like an obvious idea, so if it exists thats good as its one
less idea I feel pressing me for a chance to live!

We all love tags. Ok, they did not change the world for the masses
like lots of tech commentators said they would at the height of the
web 2.0 craze, but they are bloody useful for joining content from
many sites by context.

One problem hit me at barcamp 4. I was pleased to see that there was a
bit of paper with the 'official' #bcb4 tag written on it, but then I
saw a few blog posts on barcamp which had several variations on this
tag. I saw various combinations of 'bcb4, barcampbrighton,
barcampbrighton4' etc...

I know tags are supposed to be a folksonomy, e.g. defined by the
users, but sometimes this is a problem.

So is there need for a 'directory' of official 'tag mappings' (e.g.
the mapping from a tag to a real object / event / thing). It almost
like namespacing the real world.

Also, it could aggregate the common alternatives. So the offical bcb4
tag could have 'alternative tags' set to 'barcampbrighton4' etc...
There could then be a RSS/ATOM feed that combines tag queries (using
some API service) for all those tag searches into one.

Just a thought!

[Alex Farran]

http://www.whatthetrend.com/ is a pretty good directory service for
tags and trending topics. It doesn't have the alternatives feature,
but the search box does use auto-completion so you can find similarly
named tags.

--
Alex Farran - Web Developer
http://www.alexfarran.com
01273 474065

[Tom Coady]

http://knowem.com/ is a partial list of social douche in case that helps.

[al james]

> http://www.whatthetrend.com/is a pretty good directory service for

> tags and trending topics. It doesn't have the alternatives feature,
> but the search box does use auto-completion so you can find similarly
> named tags.

Yes, thats very similar to what I am talking about. It even has the
small snippet of wiki text to describe the thing that the tag relates
to.

What would be cool is an API to get that wiki snippet for a tag. So if
I write a app that pulls in tagged content from several sites, I can
pull in the 'physical description' of that tag as well.

al

[Alex Farran]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:55 PM, al james <al.j...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What would be cool is an API to get that wiki snippet for a tag. So if
> I write a app that pulls in tagged content from several sites, I can
> pull in the 'physical description' of that tag as well.

You can http://www.whatthetrend.com/api

eg: http://www.whatthetrend.com/api/trend/getByName/brighton/xml

[Alastair James]

Well thats good. I declare this idea/problem solved!

Al

2009/9/25 Alex Farran <alexf...@gmail.com>

--
Dr Alastair James
CTO James Publishing Ltd.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/3/914/163

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