Automatic Media Enclosures at del.icio.us
The social bookmarking site of del.icio.us announced on their blog earlier this week that they are now automatically detecting media files and adding invisible "system:filetype:" tags to the post.
Bookmarked items in del.icio.us that end in one of a number of filetypes will now automatically get some system tags added. You can use these just like normal tags. RSS feeds that have one of those system tags added will automatically become a rss-with-enclosures file.
What the does this mean in English?
Let's start from the beginning to show how this latest development is going to further democratize the media by giving people more and more choices for how they consume their information and media diet...
Let's say I find an interesting PDF file on the Internet that incorporates Integral Philosophy and Spiral Dynamics into mainstream communications theories.
The URL of this file happens to be on my site at: http://www.echochamberproject.com/files/IntegralCommunicationThesis.pdf
I read it and find the PDF file to be fascinating --
I'd like to share it with people who'd really like it.
How do help other people discover it by using del.icio.us?
Well, I go into my del.icio.us/kentbye account and post a link to the the URL with the tags "SpiralDynamics Wilber Communications Worldview Evolution Integral."
This serves a personal and global purpose.
It helps me find the URL for this file again a month from now when I accidently delete it or I want to link to the original PDF link in a blog post and I forget where I found it.
This action puts a link to the URL of this file on all of my personal del.icio.us pages:
http://del.icio.us/kentbye/spiraldynamics
http://del.icio.us/kentbye/Wilber
http://del.icio.us/kentbye/Communications
http://del.icio.us/kentbye/Worldview
http://del.icio.us/kentbye/Evolution
http://del.icio.us/kentbye/Integral
You'll notice that the communications tag is the only one I've used previously.
This action also puts a link to the file on del.icio.us' global tag pages -- the latest websites that all del.icio.us users have tagged with the same keyword tags:
http://del.icio.us/tag/spiraldynamics
http://del.icio.us/tag/Wilber
http://del.icio.us/tag/Communications
http://del.icio.us/tag/Worldview
http://del.icio.us/tag/Evolution
http://del.icio.us/tag/Integral
You can also do combinations of tags:
http://del.icio.us/tag/communications+integral
A better example that use more popular tags is here.
http://del.icio.us/tag/RSS+newmedia
All of these del.icio.us pages have RSS feeds where you can track all of the sites that ever tagged with those keywords -- you can also get RSS feeds of combinations.
Okay -- so none of this is new to experienced del.icio.us users.
What's new?
Well, del.icio.us has added an invisible system tag to the post that doesn't clutter my personal del.icio.us site -- but it is another global way to share information.
The pdf file briefly shows up on the http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:pdf page which lists all of the PDF files that have been recently tagged in del.icio.us -- The Integral Communications link will probably be gone by the time you check this link -- but you can find it if you sift through the archives -- or better yet, it will have been in the RSS feeds of anyone who has subscribed to the PDF RSS feed because they want to track what PDF files people are finding interesting.
Most people would refine their interest to something more specific though by adding an additional tag keyword to the RSS feed. For example, the PDF file I tagged shows up at the following link -- http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:pdf+spiraldynamics -- and there happens to be two other PDF files that have been tagged with the "spiraldynamics" tag.
This action has allowed me to find two other PDF files about spiral dynamics that I may have not been able to so easily discover with Google or known to even look for.
And with del.icio.us I can even subscribe to an RSS feed at
http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:filetype:pdf+spiraldynamics that will deliver any other PDF file tagged with spiraldynamics in the future.
The PDF file that I tagged also pops up temporarily on the PDF pages with the more popular tags like "communications" & "evolution":
http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:pdf+communications
http://del.icio.us/tag/system:filetype:pdf+evolution
This del.icio.us blog post lists all of the following media files that they are now automatically encoding with these invisible system tags:
All Video Files
*.MPG
*.MPEG
*.AVI
*.WMV
*.MOV
All Image Files
*.JPG
*.JPEG
*.GIF
*.PNG
All Document Files
*.PDF
*.DOC
Wow -- There's a new program that allows you to subscribe to Video RSS feeds called FireANT -- This means that people can subscribe to RSS feeds like this one http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/system:media:video+iraq and automatically download every single video that someone tags with an "iraq" tag. That's right -- FireANT allows you to subscribe to video RSS feeds which means that you could check to see if there are new videos posted to the del.icio.us irag video feed and automatically download all of these files to your harddrive while you sleep at night and watch them at your convenience without having to wait to download them.
Welcome to the personal media revolution that is just starting to really begin!
