Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com ]

27/02/08 Build On What You Have…

SINGAPORE - A publishing platform should enable a writer with tools that give them far more than the ability of producing their own plain text. I’d expect to see a site offer a large range of embeddable content for my text. If you’re asking a user to commentate on your niche on your property, give them the tools to do it properly - that’s why they’ll return.

Provide text mark-up inserts for all the different types of objects you allow them to create (and charts, URIs, maps, graphics and all other data they can share). Help them promote your niche for you.

Give them the tools to talk the walk.

You should identify objects discussed and enhance posts with related data to the authors own. Have the option to display data frozen at the time of posting or current live data for comparison. Link all mentions of data back into your community, this delivers content in the most personalised form to visitors. They may now navigate content by recommendation, discussion & debate.

I’ve started to experiment with this by identifying outdoor gear discussed on my blog and linking it back to the gear tracker (delicious for adventure equipment). At the top of this review post, you’ll see a list of who owns this item and who wishes for it. If you’re logged in you’ll be able to [Add it to 'My Gear'] or [Add it to 'My Wishlist']. Owners are then able to contact wishers with the potential of a sale.

I defined 3 new tags based on the format geotags in flickr use (John recommended the hListing microformat but I needed something really really simple for testing). So we now have:

item:brand=
item:model=
item:type=

I’d like to partner with an online shop here to offer new equipment. I’d also like to release this as a wordpress plug-in that anybody can install. I guess I could do this with an iframe widget - I must have a go. Anyone like to help/advise me on the best way to do this?

-Robin.

(Image Credit: Testing my new Olympus m790 waterproof camera on Sunday. I bought it for my PADI Open Water course in Thailand at Easter.)

Tags: gear, gear tracker, resources, talk the walk, teamgearedup, tgu

2 Comments

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27/02/08 Robert Synnott

Careful, or you’ll turn into Jakob Lodwick. (http://jakoblodwick.com/)

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28/02/08 Robin Blandford [ByteSurgery] » I Don’t Subscribe… - Digital Media Engineer

[...] A380 glides in like an albatross compared to the jet fighters at the Singapore Airshow 2008. P.S. I left myself out of this shot for you Rob!) TrackBack [...]

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