Annotated Reading Lists

Pito Salas, Project Leader of BlogBridge, and I just had a very productive lunch. One of the things we discussed was the Technorati-Memeorandum mashup I built into an OPML file. We decided that this process should be called annotating a reading list. If the River of Feeds built on a source like Tech Memeorandum is a useful way of sampling new feeds, then an annotated version is even better, since it provides more context for each blog. Pito explained that BlogBridge is already calling the Technorati API to gather background data on each feed it displays, so I suggested that he add automatic annotation as well.

Here's how this would work. When you open a reading list in BlogBridge, or any other aggregator that wants to use this technqiue, it would allow you to select a set of possible annotations, such as Technorati tags, Delicious tags, Flickr photos, etc. These annotations would be used to create a new OPML file, such as I just created with this new mashup. You could then host the annotated reading list on BlogBridge or post it on your own site. The file could be viewed with Optimal, or any of the other OPML browsers that will show up shortly.

Annotation would enhance the process of finding new, interesting feeds to read, and could also become the basis for automated blog recommendation systems. Imagine submitting a blog URL to a site, and having it return a list of blogs with a similar tag profile.