01.26.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 8.46 am by daniel
Folksonomy tagging is almost a buzz-word, an ‘integral’ part of Web 2.0, but it’s something that can only be found on a few of the hottest and most discussed sites of the moment. While Technorati features it, and Flickr depends on it, tagging is yet to become main stream. But don’t let that fool you, tagging is hot and Rogue Connect has recently become one of the few social networking sites to tout it as a main feature.
Over the past few weeks we’ve steadily snuck tagging into Rogue Connect, first implementing it into the fashion blog and later applying it to member profiles. In developing our tagging system we were mindful that they had to be useful. There was no point in putting in tags because we could or because they’re a hot concept right now, we had to implement tags because they would be useful to our members; they had to mean something.
We tried to achieve this is a pretty simple way; categorising the tags. Now I know that part of the appeal of tags is that they’re fluid, but that doesn’t always serve to make them useful. As we’re applying the tags to different content, and intend to allow members to apply them to more areas of the site in future, the separation had to be there. So if you visit the tagging page you’ll notice that for any given tag, sexy for instance, you can choose to view members tagged sexy and fashion entries tagged sexy. These two things are totally different and we’re hoping that the categorisation of the two bring our members something useful, as opposed to just a horde of information that they have to get their heads around. On a side note the ‘just membrs’ and ‘just fashion’ buttons used to display the different tags are our first implementation/experimentation with the AJAX mindset.
About a week ago I made a mention of Rogue Connect’s tagging system and mentioned our members reaction to it; “our logs have showed that the average time on the site has raised considerably in the areas that feature tagging. For instance, members are no longer just reading style entries, they’re now tagging them as well. What was initially a brief perusal of (and sometimes a comment on) a fashion entry has become a quest to tag it.” This is still true. In fact, I’d like to further it by saying that more members are using the tagging feature than the search of browse tools, admittedly though, both of these need a rework to keep up to speed with our changing community.
There has been another great advantage to us; it takes us well away from the online dating space, somewhere we don’t want to be. Sure, people are going to use Rogue Connect to try and find dates (interestingly a lot of the guys who apply for account and state this as their aim don’t end up approved by our members), but that’s not what the site is about. Replacing the search on the main page with ‘fashionising tags’ has really taken us away from the look that’s common to online dating sites such as Match.com and Lavalife.
It also makes us one of the first into the space of a pure social networking with tagging. The only other that springs to mind is Consumating, and they differ as they’re pure online dating and have implemented their tagging system differently.
Like all things on Rogue Connect, the tagging tool is a work in progress. Not because we’re not happy with it, but because there are always things that can be tweaked and improved. But so far, so good!
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01.20.06
Posted in Site News at 10.49 pm by daniel
Over the course of the past fortnight we’ve actually snuck it into the site, but without any annoucement (ironically I’ll be blogging about that after this post) Rogue Connect has launched a folksonomy tagging tool for use by our members.
It’s been less than a fortnight of testing it by tagging fashion blog entries and, more recently, member profiles. But already there are some trends developing on the site. I hadn’t really given them much thought until reading a social analysis of tagging today.
The thing that stuck me the most was that some of the ideas and concepts that Rashmi (the author) touched upon after analysis of services such as Flickr and del.icio.us are already appearing at Rogue Connect.
For instance (and only quoting from the introduction in both of these instances);
A behaviorist would say that the I get reinforcement the moment after I tag. The social experience is pleasurable. It gets me hooked, it keeps me coming back.
Getting hooked (along with the simple benefits of having the tagging tool) is one of the reasons we introduced it into Rogue Connect. And it’s paid off, after two weeks our logs have showed that the average time on the site has raised considerably in the areas that feature tagging. For instance, members are no longer just reading style entries, they’re now tagging them as well. What was initially a brief perusal of (and sometimes a comment on) a fashion entry has become a quest to tag it. It could be sexy for instance.
Alternatively, on tagging the article, I might learn that I am the only one interested in that item, the one person who cared to tag that resource. Perhaps I am simply the first one. Perhaps I will become a trendsetter - my act of tagging will enable others to follow behind, discovering my footsteps. I can always imagine…
Okay, this one I’m going to use out of context but I’ve already noted trends appearing on the site. Not in the sense that we’re influencing the next season of fashion to the extent that Sienna Miller and Kate Moss are, but in the way that the tagging tool is being used. At first members were tagging style entries and profiles with single words (the sexy example for instance), but I tried to extend that by using condensed ‘terms’. For instance, I would tag the often blogged “I’m in my PJ’s” or “I’m only wearing a towel” with ‘nakedunderneath‘. Within a few days others had picked up on this tag and begun using it themselves. Hardly trendsetting, but at least trend-encouraging.
I’ll have more on tagging on Rogue Connect’s tagging tool and its implications in the near future, after all, it’s included in the site but we haven’t even announced it to our members.
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Posted in Site News at 8.02 pm by daniel
Natasha Stott Despoja isn’t the smartest of lasses, afterall, Canada is a republic she tells us. I think she ought to at least inform the Canadians of that fact.
So in an opinion piece in the Adelaide Advertiser Natasha has spoken fondly about the latest republican campaign. Of course it proposes little, backs nothing, and only tries to convince us that we need to dump Australia’s working constitution by suggesting Australia’s future really depends on it. Woe is me, shall we turn into pumpkins if we don’t dump our constitution Natasha?
Anyway, as fun as it is to poke fun at her, one points of interest caught my eye;
We need to engage young people, not just because of votes and percentages but as a matter of identity, to ensure they feel engaged in the future of their country.
That’s right, the republic non-issue is all to engage the young people. We young people need it. It’ll be good for us. Yes, I’m a sarcastic sod.
If young people need a republican to engage them then our country is already pretty lost. Not only because people really don’t care about it (bar those who fancy themselves as a president), but because it simply isn’t going to happen.
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01.19.06
Posted in Patriotism at 1.13 pm by daniel
Do we care what he says? Unlikely. I’d always thought the 3AW presenter was there to help people in nursing homes snooze in the afternoon, not discuss serious issues. Well today Ernie got serious. He also got ignorant.
The Australian flag should change he told his listeners. The Union Flag should be removed because he can’t understand what it’s doing there (how long has he lived in Australia?). What’s more it’s not unique. It should be replaced with a map of Australia. And something to do with Aboriginal colours should be thrown in as well. Of course, we could keep the southern cross. This is wholly unique according to Ernie - you can’t see the southern cross from anywhere else in the world. Not even New Zealand. He’s an avid astronomer you know!
So, disgusted with him for being so blatantly un-Australian, I shot off this e-mail;
Ernie,
I’m writing after hearing part of your discussion and call for a change to the Australian flag.
Before I turned off the radio in disgust I caught two major points;
The diggers fought for our country not the flag, and they fought at the request of England.
The Australian flag has been just that since 1901. And yes, they fought under that flag. Whether they fought for it was a matter for them to decide, but the flag represents this country so one could easily argue they fought for it. To prove they fought under it you only need to look at the Battle of Polygon Wood (Belgium) where the 18th Battalion AIF hoisted the Australian flag hoisted in 1917, and no one else’s.
And no, our diggers didn’t fight at the request of England. For a start in the First World War we fought with Britain. Not because we had to, we’d been an independent country since 1901, but because we viewed it (Australia’s politicians viewed it) as the right thing to do. We didn’t fight FOR Britain, we fought for the Empire, an Empire we were proudly a part of.
Changing the flag is nothing but being disrespectful to the memory of our diggers and it’s nothing but contemptuous for you to suggest otherwise.
Your other argument was that you think it’s hard to explain it to the kids. How exactly? I’m 22. I know what it’s doing there. They explain Captain Cook to you when you’re 5. You know Australia’s history, the significance of Britain in the development of Australia and the fact that our values (democracy, freedom, rule of law and so on) are all British values imparted to us by way of our Constitution in 1901. Frankly, if any kid (or anyone for that matter) can’t understand why the Union Flag is on our flag and doesn’t realise that it not only represents our British origins but the unity of the Australian states and our continuing values, then they’re just plain thick.
Hardly the best thing I’ve ever written, but the odds are he’ll never even read it anyway.
Tags: australia, australian+flag, australianflag
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Posted in Patriotism at 9.57 am by daniel
In a hilarious sign of desperation the Australian Republican Movement (or what’s left of it) have launched a new grand slogan – A Mate For Head of State.
I kid you not, that’s what they’re calling it.
Since 1999, when they lost their republican referendum in what can only be described as a landslide, they’ve ummed and ahhed, come up with a horde of convoluted plans, lost a massive portion of their subscriber base and now, in 2006, it all boils down to a slogan; and a bad one at that.
A mate for head of state? How about;
Their Mate For Head Of State;
Yet Another Politician In Canberra
With politicians backing it that’s all it reads as. Do they really think the promise of another politician or another one of their mates (Steve Vizard or Richard Butler perhaps?) is going to cause a groundswell of support for their cause?
Already it hasn’t if Technorati is anything to go by. After as much publicity as their likely to get, including a nice big column in the Herald Sun, the amount of discussion around the concept amounts to four single entries. One is by Professor David Flint from Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, another from Pharoz (which included a link to the ARM’s Microsoft Paint created poster – a classy job to be sure), a New Zealand Republican site, and another at Obiter Dicta by Steve discussing the language used in a debate on the topic and not than the topic itself.
The great new republican slogan has seen them feature in four blogs to date (I’ll make that five!!). There’s grass root support if I ever I saw it.
While I’m on the topic; the aforementioned column in the Herald Sun was written by Peter van Vliet, head of the Australian Republican Movement in Victoria. It’s a fairly yawnable piece on the etymology of the word ‘mate’ in Australia. And while he tried to use as many evocative terms as he could, such as British Monarchy (the Queen of Australia is a position separate from the British Monarchy Peter), and lied about the fact that becoming a republic wouldn’t mean leaving the Commonwealth (we’d have to get voted back in by the other members Peter), his argument seemingly boiled down to this;
One can hardly imagine walking up to the next in line for the crown, Prince Charles, and saying “G’day mate, howya going?'’
Well I saw a lady do just that when Prince Charles visited Melbourne. But Peter is right, ‘one could hardly imagine walking up to’ Prince Charles and saying “G’day mate�. I couldn’t even imagine an American doing that to their President, or a Briton doing that to Tony Blair. Not because none of these people can be our ‘mates’, our friends – but simply because I was brought up, like 99% of Australians, with manners. It’s out of respect and knowing better that we don’t approach Prince Charles and say “G’day mate�.
Tags: australia, australian+republic , mate+for+head+of+state, monarchy
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01.18.06
Posted in Site News at 9.38 am by daniel
A bit of brief news about a site I worked on recently - Australians Against RU486.
This was easily the quickest website I’ve ever put together as I was only given a window of five days to do it. Tania Braukämper helped with the design and I implemeneted and heavily customised a Joomla backend.
At the end of the day the site has turned our quite alright given the short window in which to ‘get it happening’. It should also attract a fair bit of attention given that the abortion pill issue is looking like being such a hot issue in the Australian media.
Tags: ru486, australia
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01.17.06
Posted in Entrepreneurship at 2.27 pm by daniel
Having launched quite a few new features over the past month, I’ve decided to put more effort into marketing Rogue Connect. One of the things I’ve been working on today is search engine rankings, undeniably important, and search engine optimization/optimisation (SEO). In doing so I came across something that is going to have to be a major consideration for the development of the site; Queen’s English VS the American kind.
The keyword that I’m currently paying the most attention is ’socialising’, after all, Rogue Connect is a social network. Something that I hadn’t considered before is that people simply spell it differently; socialising and socializing.
When it comes to spelling it the proper way, socialising, Rogue Connect does excellently. We’re in ninth spot with Google US, fourth with Google Australia and have recently made it to the eleventh spot with Google UK. On MSN Search we’re in second spot, while on Yahoo we make seventh spot.
Of course, when it comes to searching for the term socializing we’re nowhere to be seen. We’ve simply not taken into consideration other peoples spelling of the word.
Of course, we’ll now be working to fix that oversight, but weighing up the two forms of English will certainly be a consideration from here on in.
Tags: socialising, socializing, seo, social+networking, dating+industry
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Posted in Entrepreneurship at 9.39 am by daniel
It’s been in development for months, but we’ve finally got the new Dataworks Australia site online.
The site has been an internal development (that will be ongoing) and has been implemented using a combination of Joomla and a custom built script to handle the educational software catalogue.
While the site isn’t aimed at the end user, we’re hoping that the new site will significanlty inccrease sales through our retailers and resellers.
Tags: dataworks, software, education
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01.16.06
Posted in Site News at 1.51 pm by daniel
It’s been a long time between updates, but I’m finally reworking DanielDykes.com.
I’ve moved from the Mambo open source CMS and am now using a straight blogging engine. I’ve decided that a lighter script will better serve what I want to get done with the site.
I’ll slowly be putting up the older updates, but in the meantime newer ones should become much more frequent.
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