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Firefox Tumble Log Plugin



My blog is becoming a bit more hybridized towards the TumbleLog format. Basically being organized around bits and chunks of information pulled from places. But doing it more in context and with the creation of more obvious running narratives than a typical TumbleLog format allows for. Tumblr is cool but too limited in its description spaces and not “bloggy” enough: it lacks that sticky social elements that make blogs such hilariously entertaining and annoying creative expressions of people. They are sloppy. Tumblr is not.

So what I want to do (one of several interlocking tech and cultural initiatives I am spearheading) is creat a FireFox plugin to, first of all, help me do what I do, but do it better. I’ve been working professionally with web technology for close to ten years so I have a pretty good idea of where it’s all going. And I think I can adapt my processes and workflows into other contexts to create opportunity and value for other people as well. Should be a pretty fun challenge to do so as well.

That is a major part of my thrust in reorganizing this website: to use it as kind of a visible public platform to start a company that nobody actually owns but that everybody benefits from. The first actual product would be to hook in more tightly elements from Firefox, Tumblr and WordPress (and eventually YouTube and Wikipedia) to create a more focused workflow and total user immersion within a dataspace according to their interest and goals.

In other words, it would really help me if somebody could make a FireFox plugin which allows me to Notate quickly sections of pages, print out ordered HTML lists of URLs and page titles from clustered panels, and then uses some of the sweet and simple elements of the Tumblr pop-up bookmarker and then allows me to slide them around like Widgets in WordPress, and add in commentary and narrative connecting elements between them.

In its more advanced form: Kind of like a Final Cut Pro for blogging and information sharing online (don’t forget the social network part! - Save that for later), and we could maybe finally put bullshit like PowerPoint out to pasture. Check out Jing, and not in the Chinese alchemical sense…

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8 Reader Responses

  1. WordPress Jumblr Plugin - Pop Occulture Says:
    September 15th, 2007 at 4:19 am

    […] …{seed}… >>AUDIENCE: tumblr tech developers, cloners […]

  2. Julia Says:
    September 15th, 2007 at 5:49 pm

    My brain hurts.

  3. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 15th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    I was up till 5am last night. My brain really hurt!

  4. shawn Says:
    September 15th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    Hey Tim,
    The Zotero plugin may be something moving in this direction:
    http://www.zotero.org/

    It’s one of the coolest things that I know about… but I haven’t been able to determine a use for it yet in my own world.

    It looks like they’ve done some work with Wordpress, but it’s pushing, rather than pulling.
    http://dev.zotero.org/wordpress

    Basically, what I think is that Zotero would provide a nice FOUNDATION for the Thing you’re describing.

    Man, I dig ADD + VALUEing. It sure beats commenting.

    I’m stealing it.

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 15th, 2007 at 8:31 pm

    Oh awesome, I will have to check this out.

    See this is one of the awesome things about language: once you’re able to describe what you’re after, you can work with other people using a common frame of reference to make it come about - whether that means creating it, or finding it together or refining it.

  6. Tim Boucher Says:
    September 15th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

    About to install this. Just watched the demo video. I wish it were pitched a little differently, but I can see why it’s organized the way it is to suit library/scholarly audiences. I wish it were a little more loosey-goosey in its organization scheme, but maybe I can find a use of it that meets my needs.

  7. shawn Says:
    September 16th, 2007 at 1:04 am

    Librarians have a lot of great ideas, but we’re too often stuck in a bibliocentric model of things… also, no one really understands it. :)

    For example, the Zotero/Wordpress thing allows for the use of COinS… (embedding Content Objects inside of s)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COinS

    Why is this cool?
    Using this with Wordpress, you can turn your blog entries into full-on MACHINE READABLE bibliographic entities, with appropriate bits of metadata attached.

    The implications of which are pretty wild…

    Something like Zotero–which is currently just envisioned as scholarly, bibliographic organizational tool, but could be so much more!–, will then parse that bibliographic entity into recognizable chunks (author, date, url, etc etc etc) and store it.

    But other things can be done as well. A good example of this kind of tool is:

    http://bookburro.org/

    which is just an incredibly simplified version of what i’m talking about. It looks for an ISBN (strings of numbers 10 digits long) every time a page loads and if it finds something that matches that criteria, it then does a search for copies of that book for sale or in libraries, etc.

    I could go on, but I think I should probably stop now. :)

  8. Technology Is An Extension of our Emotional Expression - Pop Occulture Says:
    September 17th, 2007 at 9:07 pm

    […] The other day Shawn pointed me towards some interesting data collection and organizational tools for the FireFox web browser. Zotero, is the name of this handy little beast. It lets you do a lot of library science nerd type of stuff to your information. Which is great if you’re a library science nerd (and I’d like to encourage a proliferation of them, myself). […]



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