Trust But Verify

Automated Tech News Site Goes Live

A nifty new web service went live tonight -- Gabe Rivera's tech.memeorandum.com. I've been testing Gabe's handiwork since late June when he sent me a note suggesting "you might be interested in monitoring my still-in-development Tech news site.  By "interested", I mean it actually might assist you in your work!"

He was right. I quickly became addicted to checking the site, often multiple times a day, to see what kind of buzz it was picking up in the tech world. The pages are built automatically, pulling from mentions across the tech blogosphere and news universe. Just posting may not be enough to make the page, as I quickly found out, but posts bubble up as links multiply. One link from a site weighted heavily in Gabe's equation can push a post into view.

Gabe explains his goals here so I won't go into detail. The highlights: Recognize the web as an editor;  rapidly uncover new sources; relate the conversation. I like watching the conversation evolve as a story moves around the web, often in ways I would not have imagined.

He started the process with a politics/current events page that crosses political boundaries and cuts through some of the partisan kludge. I've given him a couple of ideas for future memeorandums -- personally, I'd like one on journalism ethics -- but these aren't easy to build. I'm looking forward to whatever he puts his energy to next. Thanks for the head start on this one, Gabe.

Update: Just saw Robert Scoble's rave review. He goes into enough detail for both of us.

Coda: That's Gabe on the left -- a picture he thought he wound up in by accident but I took very deliberately at the end of BlogNashville.

Hurricane Katrina: Tagging Continued

For anyone who doesn't know how to tag or is still uncomfortable with it, Alexandra Samuel has written a tutorial for Katrina tags. She offers examples that can be used as templates and explains how you can use a service like del.icio.us to tag other people's posts. Please make use of it and share it. Alex also has set it up as a wiki because she hopes "others will edit and improve."

Many thanks to Nancy White for suggesting Alex as a resource -- and to her and everyone else who continued the conversation on Katrina tagging.

Hurricane Katrina: Yahoo Missing Person Search Across Sites

Yahoo now has a Katrina missing-person search engine that draws results from multiple sites including its own message boards,  ICRC, Craigslist, Gulf Coast News, NOLA.com, Public People Locator, MSNBC, Refugee Connect, Hurricane Help, Castpost Missing Persons, Operation Get-InTouch and CNN.

I knew this was in the works but wasn't sure when it actually would be usable. A big thank you to the people at Yahoo who gave up their holiday to make it work. 

Yahoo: Search Katrina lists from across the Web

Hurricane Katrina: Tagging

Efforts are underway to harness the vast amount of information being generated about Hurricane Katrina. If you are hosting sites providing critical information, please tag according to your purpose so your site and posts can be identified -- katrina and missing, safe, searching,  housing, survivor, food, jobs, volunteer, donate, collect, links, photos, reference, etc. If you see sites that aren't using tags, please encourage it -- not everyone knows what tags are or how to use them -- and/or link to them with the appropiate tags via sites like del.icio.us , furl , MyWeb2.0 Some blogging software converts categories to tags.