Improve your blog design: semantic web technologies III

Browser Add-Ons

Webmynd

WebMynd is a Firefox extension its developers hope solves a common Web problem: finding again that which you’ve already found. WebMynd adds two very useful functions to your browsing: site-by-site recording of where you’ve been (it’s like a DVR for the web), and integrating your history (plus Delicious bookmarks) into specific Google searches.

You can also embed into your Google searches different search tools, such as Twitter, Wikipedia and Flickr amongst many others. If you use Twitter, you can ask your Twitter network for help while searching, right from Google.

The site-by-site recording creates a time line view of your browsing and a photo browser-like display. Want the site you found Friday after lunch? Rewind using the Reel view. Looking for the site with the purple logo thing? The Grid view is good for your visual memory.

There’s a small performance hit using WebMynd–on the order of 100-200 milliseconds for complex site. WebMynd keeps your last 30 days worth of history.

While WebMynd’s visual recorder is nice, I like even more the way it merges a relevant list of sites you’ve visited into each search you do in Google (see above). You can also use WebMynd to view Delicious bookmarks.

When you are using WebMynd to record your history, a copy of the sites you visit is kept on your computer’s hard drive and the text is sent to WebMynd’s servers so they can index the information, making it easier for you to retrieve it later. You can turn WebMynd on and off with a single click and you can set it to never record particular sites or you can zap specific site records – according to their site, you have 100% control.

Glue

more about “ Glue Toolbar – Webmonkey“, posted with vodpod

The above portrayed Glue bar demonstrates what the program does: it shows friends and other people  having done what you just did – browsed books, music, movies, wines, restaurants, gadgets, stocks, actors, tv shows and other everyday things around the web. Currently Glue works with popular web sites like Amazon, Yahoo! Finance, Wine.com, IMDB, Wikipedia, Citysearch, Last.fm, and many others.

Your friends might not have visited the same site you’re on right now, but what’s omportant is that at one stage they looked at the same item somewhere. And how does Glue know your friends? In order to tap into your network, Glue uses APIs from popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed to import your friends. You can choose to import one or all of those friend lists into the plugin.

Glue is not a co-browsing plugin like Me.dium nor does it try to socialize the entire web surfing experience like Socialbrowse (also click here). Unlike Headup, another semantic browser plugin, Glue doesn’t bother you with pop-up messages as you surf (see Headup’s comment below). Glue simply provides a social element to web pages in context - there’s no destination site to join and your social graph doesn’t need to be re-created in order to use it.

To participate in the  Glue network, all you do is continue browsing the web. When you visit a supported site, the Glue friend bar appears. If you choose, you can view what your friends say about the item on the page, or you can ignore the bar and continue on your way. However, your visit is recorded and when one of your friends visits that same page, they can see that you’ve been there recently, though not the exact date or time your visit occurred. This information is only stored for the last 20 things you’ve visited on the web.

While surfing: if you want to share your thoughts about the item you’re viewing, you can optionally use the Glue “like” button and/or the “2 cents” button (which lets you add a quick thought about item). Furthermore, you can click on the bar to see the profiles of your friends and/or other recent Glue users, and you can explore their interests even further by clicking into their profiles (displayed in a pop-up box that appears when you click their avatar). Finally, you can also click on “Actions” to explore the item you’re viewing on other Glue-supported sites.

Zemanta

Zemanta’s add-on makes it easy for bloggers and other web publishers to add contextually relevant links, photos, and video to their posts. Zemanta works by applying its semantic engine to the body of the post and automatically recommending related content while you’re writing. Using Zemanta, bloggers are able to instantly add relevant content to their blog posts, in turn creating a richer web experience for their users. More specifically you can

• browse and link related online articles
• automatically create links to leading sites mentioned in your post
• choose from a list of suggested images (including your own if you link Zementa to your Flickr account)
• choose from suggested tags
• “reblog”: automatically insert copied sections from other blogs and add your comment
• automatically add your friend’s blogs and websites when writing about them (after connecting your Facebook, MyBlogLog and Twitter accounts to Zemanta)

As already mentioned above, Zementa analyses your post through their proprietary natural language processing and semantic algorithms, and statistically compares its contextual framework to their pre-indexed content database. It is using a combination of machine learning techniques and end-user input from its widget users, which enables the program to train the engine and constantly improve recommendations.

more about “Zemanta Brings a Semantic Layer to Yo…“, posted with vodpod

Zentact

Zentact is a great networking and reminder tool. In the process of being developed by the people who created another contextual phenomenon, MyBlogLog, Zentact helps you in a meaningful way to stay in touch with people who matter to you. First, you import your email contacts and second, you tag them in a way that reflects their interests. Then, as you browse a webpage, Zentact pops up an (at the moment still a bit clumsy looking)  reminder to contact those people whose tag relates to the content of the page you’re looking at. It is a simple yet powerful example of the contextual web.

I was quite amazed how much in terms of common interests I actually share with people I know. So far I communicated website info only to a minuscule percentage of my email contacts – that certainly will change from now on (not that I will become a spammer though ).

Zentact is currently still in private beta, but at the bottom of this page you can find an invite to join or go directly (here).

App Discover

When you visit a web site how do you know you’re getting the best experience for you? That’s the question the new Firefox add-on App Discover aims to solve. Once installed, the app could alert you if there were any enhancements (Greasemonkey, Firefox add-ons) or applications (Adobe AIR, Appcelerator Titanium, Fluid, Mozilla Prism) that work with the website you’re visiting.

Today, finding the latest and greatest apps involves a lot searching around, but with the App Discover add-on, you could potentially discover new apps just by visiting the web pages you use every day. The site would actually tell you if there is an enhancement application available through a notification that appears at the top of the page.

Right now though App Discover unfortunately is only a proof of concept (unless some developers have already added a link on their site). To find out how to install the Firefox extension if you want to experiment with App Discover, click here.

[The next and last part of this semantic web applications series will look at the contextual role browsers can play]