Tao Tough

I recently had a chance to hear Wayne McPhail from Rabble speak about Podcasting and Web 2.0. The Podcasting section did not really interest me nearly as much as the Web 2.0 section did (Podcasting and Ctrl-F). I realized that there was a lot of new applications showing up on the web and that they were known to fall into the Web 2.0 category but I had never herd of folksonomic tagging (which I’ll probably spell wrong throughout the rest of this blog entry).

The Wikipedia states that folksonomy refers to the collaborative but unsophisticated way in which information is being categorized on the web. Instead of using a centralized form of classification, users are encouraged to assign freely chosen keywords (called tags) to pieces of information or data, a process known as tagging.

Now this is a really neat idea especially when coupled with RSS. Wayne gave us a great example of a Web 2.0 application called del.icio.us where a user can sign up and save bookmarks to sites that they enjoy. They do not only save the bookmarks but they also apply folksonomic tags to them. Tagging their bookmarks allows them to easily find the bookmark they are looking for as well as make it easier for other people to identify which type of link it is. Another thing about del.icio.us is that you can create an RSS feed for a subset of your links based on tags you specify. This could be extremely useful if you wanted others to see what you are looking at and have them see the exact same information you did.

Since Wayne’s presentation I’ve joined del.icio.us and am in the middle of sifting through all my browser saved bookmarks and adding and tagging them on del.icio.us and will have a few nice RSS feeds up as soon as I have some time.

marshall.

// posted by Marshall MacGillivray @ 6:07 PM