Last week I joined zemanta, probably the first user-friendly semantic application.

Today, I semantified my blog with triplify.

With triplify your blog will have the possibility to create mashups, exploit semantic search engines and many more options not yet explored!

It all looks kind of new and I haven’t concentrated yet on how to use the triplify data, but here is my guide on triplifying your blog.

How to semantify your blog

• Download and unzip the triplify script.
• Make the cache directory writable: chmod a+w cache/
• Edit the config.inc.php file. If you are on wordpress, drupal, wackowiki, openConf or OpenJournalSystems there is a complete example to download at the documentation. I would suggest though, to read this documentation as well, since it explains all parameters very well.
• Upload the triplify folder to your root directory of your site and type at your web browser: http://YOURURI/triplify. This will register your new RDF data source.
• And you’re done!

Slight change in my Configuration

By default triplify uses this code to read your database:

$triplify['db']=new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=db','dbuser','dbpass');

This didn’t work for me, so I used:

$triplify['db']=mysql_connect('localhost','dbuser','dbpass');
mysql_select_db('db');

Upcoming and more information

I will return (hopefully) during the week with more information on triplify and its mashup possibilities with Yahoo!Pipes and other applications.

When I look at the Registry of triplify, I can see my blog but without any vocabulary or actual size. I suppose it just takes some time, until the data comes in.

I’m not sure though, so if anyone has any information on that one, it would be great.

One of the first steps every new blogger takes, is to submit her blog in Technorati. It is argued very often, that technorati can really boost the traffic of your blog.

Apart from the fact, that I have never seen any traffic coming from Technorati, I really don’t believe it is a service worth a blogger’s time.

I will not discuss its ugly design and slow interface but will concentrate on more actual reasons. Reasons, that deeply influence the user experience and also disregard fair blog ranking.

Usability issues

Anyone who has navigated in the Technorati page understands what I’m saying.

First of all the categories are not “synchronized”. As the image below shows, the entertainment roll-over category has subcategories such as “main”, “tv”, “Celebrity”, etc. while the entertainment category of the blogs has different subcategories.

Apart from that, administrating your account and blogs is a really hard issue. Lets say you want to ping your blog. The start page of technorati has a box of your blogs on the right giving the user the option to manage them and/or ping them.

But if the user is in his account, there is no ping or manage option - even when she clicks on the blog link itself. (see the above image and the two below) Shouldn’t these options be gathered in one place, or at least available in many?

I have my blog under a directory on my server. The main url (changemod.com) redirects to the directory of the blog (changemod.com/755). It’s something many bloggers do. Why can’t we just merge two domains?

Ranking issues

To be honest, I don’t find Technorati fair. It has a ranking system, based on authority (incoming links to a blog) and number of fans which does not take categories, topics or freshness into account. The authority ranking of Technorati:

• compares completely different blogs (e.g. gossip with technology). You cannot say, that icanhascheezburger is more popular than Smashing Magazine. They are completely different topics and it is like comparing apples with oranges.
• it promotes seniority and not freshness. Since authority and fans are the only ways to see popularity, it is logical that the most old blog will be the most popular. New blogs, do not get fairly promoted in Technorati, even if they increase in popularity faster than the major blogs.

Conclusion

I don’t say, that Technorati is absolutely worthless. It works great as a data source to monitor your reputation. But as a blog aggregator or a traffic-building tool is not our best bet.

This doesn’t mean, that Technorati collects bad information, it just doesn’t show them right. The relation between time investment required and information provided is not for the benefit of the user.

I really stay in awe, that this service remains so successful, without improving itself and I would really like to know why.

I’m really interested to know, what is your experience with Technorati. Do you get any traffic from it? Do you use it as an information aggregator among the other social networks?

I’m now officially a contributor at the pandemiclabs blog. The blog is concentrated on online and viral marketing strategies, but studies issues beyond these fields: social media, social networks, online video and blogging.

The pandemicBlog is hoping to bring together a team of specialists on the subject of online marketing and contribute in this highly misunderstood discipline.

A good start at PandemicBlog

I’ve already written a couple of posts there, which succeeded in getting popular both in Sphinn, StumbleUpon and started a very interesting discussion in the comments. My goal is to continue writing quality posts (both in changemod and PandemicBlog) and contribute my best to the social web.

Take a look at my posts in PandemicBlog:

• The importance of avatars

• Why you shouldn’t stumble yourself

I’ll be posting at pandemicBlog at least once a week, so wait to see more articles there. Subscribe to the PandemicFeed to get the latest posts.

Changemod

My participation in the PandemicBlog will certainly not influence my writing rate at changemod. For those of you who enjoy this blog, I will continue writing here as usual, discussing the latest issues of the web and social networks.

A few days ago, StumbleUpon introduced a new feature, where the user can customize the thumbnails of your own blog.
Before this new option, next to a submission was the avatar of the first submitter. Now, next to a submission, users can see a thumbnail of the submitted content.

While stumbling, I noticed that this feature has a much more important role than I first thought. In fact it seems, that the substitution of the avatar icons with a thumbnail of the site increases the diversity and objectivity of StumbleUpon submissions.

How we scan StumbleUpon

It is a well known fact, that when we visit a website we don’t really read it but mostly scan it.

I’m an active stumbler for quite some time and this minor change made me aware how I actually scan the StumbleUpon site.
My tendency when looking at my “What’s New” tab, was to check first the title of the submission and then the avatar of the submitter. Then I would unconsciously filter the submission according to those two parameters: if the title was intriguing, I would click on it. If the title wasn’t intriguing but I knew and really liked the submitter, I would still click on the link.
So what I was actually doing is putting each submission through a biased filter; sometimes it wasn’t the submission that drew my interest but the person who submitted it.

This is of course a very well observed tendency in social networks; our preferences and choices are highly influenced by the people we know, trust and follow.

The thumbnail feature of StumbleUpon

This thumbnail is exactly in the same position, where the avatar previously was. Since this has drawn my attention so intensively, it should mean that looking at the avatar was really a fundamental aspect of reading the StumbleUpon site.

I believe, that this simple size decrease of the avatar’s icon plays an important role in the way we judge, click and follow stumbles.

This is of course my personal observation on the subject. I really wonder, if you have also noticed the same behavior when stumbling. Did you also scan the stumbleUpon pages according to the submitter?

Some days ago a new service launched, called Zemanta, which integrates with the most popular blogging platforms (Wordpress, blogger, typepad) to suggest tags, links and images for your post.

After installing the firefox plugin, zemanta runs next to your content editor. When you have written a post of at least 300 characters, zemanta provides a list of resources.

Although, the service is still in an early version and there are some slight problems, it is nonetheless a very promising application.

Andy Beard’s review of zemanta is very thorough, if you want more information about it.

While reading about the service, it made me wonder how semantic is actually Zemanta?

The delay of the Semantic Web

What takes so long for the further development of the semantic web? In his interview on the semantic web, Tim Berners Lee explained that the technologies are already there; what is missing the implementation of these technologies in the current systems. The way I understand the complex term “semantic web”, what is required for complete semantic functionality is:

• semantic applications
• implementation of semantic technologies in the current systems

This implementation is actually a fundamental aspect of the semantic web, since it will certify the correct interaction between machines, databases and humans.

How semantic is Zemanta?

Zemanta comes in the blogosphere as one of the first semantic applications, open for the wider public (twine is still in ‘invite Beta’ version). Zemanta uses a semantic algorithm, which - according to the ReadWriteWeb - compares

the words in a blog post to their pre-indexed database of other content in order to suggest related items which will display next to your blog post.

This is of course great news for the further development of the web. We are witnessing and participating in the first semantic application. But although zemanta, works on a semantic algorithm, it cannot take full advantage of it. The reason is, that the current systems haven’t

Image from Wikipedia

yet implemented semantic technologies.

For the take off of the semantic web, linked data and killer applications are required. With Zemanta, we have a killer application, which cannot show its potential.

Until this point of writing the current post, zemanta suggests 9 images:

• 2 of Tim Berners Lee
• 2 of the wordpress administration interface
• 1 screenshot of OpenOffice
• 1 screenshot of Chatzilla
• 1 Data set in the linking Open Data Project (image on the right)
• 2 screenshots of two blogs.

It seems to me, that these suggestions do not take full advantage of semantics, but rather function “web 2.0-style”, based on keywords.

Conclusion

I really like Zemanta. It integrates in the new wordpess 2.5 very well and it makes blogging significantly easier.

Unfortunately, it is quite far from being a semantic application; not because it doesn’t have the correct background, but because the rest of the web is not ready yet.

But my hope is, that if we use the application more it will help the development team to expand the service and the whole web experience.

I wrote an article at the PandemicBlog about StumbleUpon and the negatives of self-submission. Most articles see self-promotion under a moral or “narcissistic” perspective. These aspects are of no interest for me in the article.

Instead, I explain why self-promotion in StumbleUpon will not necessarily promote your work with great success. The reasons are:

• the StumbleUpon algorithm
• Clustering
• being social

If you’re interested read at the PandemicBlog why you shouldn’t stumble yourself.

Now, that’s why I find the web great! Yesterday I suggested that we should share our RSS Feed and just today a social network called Toluu emerged doing exactly that!
I just read a review of Toluu at ReadWriteWeb and immediately joined in. It is still in private beta, so I’m waiting for my invitation. As the invitation mail says: “When you do get in, you will have 3 invites to use to invite your friends and buddies”.

So, who’s interested?