If you have the time, the popular articles from the site.   Lots of good information for managing life.

Here is the official announcement.

What this does is:

Include a FEED from Google Blogsearch, giving you information about ANY site you go to, and immediate access to what blogs have to say about the site.

Why is this scary? 

This has made it THAT much easier to immediately see "what do other people think about this site/person/product?"

Here's an example from my site - NOTE:  I expanded the listing of comments, normally it's a very small little icon in the bottom of the browser.

Why is this scary?  Well, two reasons -

a. Take a scenario - you want to bash on someone? Simply publish a lot, and perhaps your criticism of a site/person/product will IMMEDIATELY be accessible to anyone with this extension.

It's like reviews on mega-steroids, backed up by Google speed, backed up by the "relevance" engine of Google.

Goodbye to any other review site - why are they needed?

2. If someone develops a way to RATE blogposts,- quickly and easily - and this is added to Google's relevancy engine - then you will get the most recommended reviews/thoughts/ruminations/rants of a site/person/product, immediately.

I have referenced this before - here for Yahoo Local Reviews, and here for The Long Tail.

But this particular Google implentation means that this immediate impact from PEOPLE, and their silly/good/bad/rantish voices, are now embedded in the browser - and Oh So Easy - to get to.

While my focus is practices, and learning functionality, the immediate impact may be on product and product pages - but the impact on people will be felt immediately after.

One thing that will need to be fixed is to EXCLUDE blogposts FROM that site that you are on/looking at, or same person, as this clogs up the "what do others think?" functionality.

How does this get onto Internet Explorer?  Simple - by updating the Google Toolbar.

Okay, I need to slow down on this somehow - it is simply SO easy to add feeds to google reader, when I come across something interesting - I don't access my feeds for three days, suddenly I have 773 items that are "unread".

Whoo. 

And this isn't because I, all at once, added 100 feeds.  This is one month of finding interesting feeds, adding them (So Simple!), and then going about my business...

It's a problem if it takes me over an hour to even SCAN all the items from feeds that I deem interesting...

I figured that Yahoo would buy del.icio.us, actually.  With flickr, and Yahoo's commitment to tagging, seemed the perfect match.

This is a good article about Web 2.0. 

A couple of things -

a. I would add to this, that the web 2.0 applications, are, for the most part hosted, and therefore always improving in real-time.  Google Reader is an example - while it's first iteration was blase, it quickly added the necessary features, and continues to get better, as do all the other hosted applications.  Especially given the "lightness" of most of the applications in question, it's not such a big deal to add feature sets.

Also, as discussed here, there is a challenge using Web 2.0 for "softer" applications.  Either those in HR/CRM/ERP, where complicated software is required, or, in those systems where a history and profile has to be maintained over a significant amount of time.

From Lifehacker, a link to a list of free music sites.

If anyone has an opinion on any of these sites, let me know.

Thanks!

Saw this article about Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales thinking of establishing a reputation system, and again, made me think about using some of the established  reputation and review systems to rate various practices.

Here's a couple of examples -

1. Question:  What is the mechanism, right NOW, to rate the I-WET weekend, or any of the Integral Universities weekly seminars?

2. David Deida - I've read his books, and met the man, having picked him up at the airport once (many years ago), and he was a great guy.  But, where would you go to find ratings of David Deida's seminars, and their experiences?

A friend of mine went to a three day workship of Deida's a few years ago, and in his opinion, he pretty much covered what he covered in the books, and not much more. 

And that makes some sense, actually.  Various PARTICULAR psychosexual and partner situations, are just that - particular and invididualized.  It would seem to me the most help one could get from Deida-type work, is working with a counselor trained in some of the Deida "techniques", for lack of a better word.

I don't mean this to detract from Deida, as he was a great guy in my experience.  But again, what is the best way to apply his insights to individuals and groups - and is the way he is applying those insights the best?  Open reviews by those with good reputations (to prevent gaming of the system) would help quite a lot, wouldn't you agree?