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December 12, 2005  9rules Content Direct to Your Website or Desktop

Mashups. Remix. How six months ago? The terms are not particularly new, but the underlying concepts don't seem to be faddish. The idea of aggregating content and providing filters (social, spatial, temporal) is something that embraces the promise of the Internet in ways that were hard to imagine 20 years ago.

RSS has had a significant influence as well, since people are opening up their vaults and making it easier to access content that was previously buried. The publisher gives up some control, but in return they get access to an audience they would have never met. Of course, it's never easy to let go.

I belong to the 9rules Network which attempts to "highlight the very best web content in the world and package it in a nice bow for you to unwrap." This works through an aggregation process--by having various blog website join the network, and by building the 9rules.com site to help people filter through the content.

To help provide a new visualization of the data, I set up a 9rules Network Slide Show using Slide, which aggregates the feeds of all (well, almost, I still need to add some of the new sites) of the sites in the Network. Any images in the posts are placed in to a ticker (we've been described as Flickr meets the marquee tag):

(Click on a photo to visit the site that posted the article)

If you like, you can get this 9rules Network Slide Show for your website or desktop at Slide.com. Instructions for choosing between horizontal or vertical, and modifying the size are on the site.

One of the beauties of the emerging trends in web publishing, syndication and community-based filtering is that there is no "solution" that needs to be found in a scientific sense. Rather, it's an opportunity for a wide variety of people and companies to help people visualize and give context to the vast amounts of data that fill the world's server racks.

It may start with a marquee tag, but there is no shame in that.

P.S. You may have caught Om Malik's post on Slide for the Mac. It's looking really nice, and integrates tightly with the Slide.com website. Email mac at slide dot com if you want to join the beta program.

Posted by johnnie at 11:43 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack