Monday, January 31, 2005

New Feature: Tag-o-Rama

Hi everyone... I've just added a new feature to the site called Tag-o-rama, and you can find it in the navigation column on the right side of the homepage, near the bottom of the column.

The idea behind the tag-o-rama is to promote the use of certain keywords, or "tags," related to the Christo Central Park project. Several popular Web tools, including Technorati (the blog search engine), del.icio.us (a public bookmarks organizer) and Flickr (a free photo blogging tool), incorporate tags into their design so that users of these tools can tag their blog entries, favorite websites and photos with relevant keywords.

The cool thing about tags is that you can use these online tools to see who else is employing the same tags. For example, if you look at the technorati tag for 'art' you'll see a list of all the blog entries from around the world that have been tagged with that word. Similarly, the del.icio.us tag for 'Christo' and the Flickr tag for 'central park' will display everyone's favorite URLs related to Christo and photos related to Central Park, respectively.

Why am I linking to these tags? Well, it's for two reasons. First, while I hope there will be lots of contributors to this blog, there will probably lots of people who don't contribute, but still end up using these online tools to tag their Gates-related content. This way, I can point site visitors to those tags and give them the opportunity to see how other people are covering The Gates in different ways. Second, I'm hoping that users of this blog who also happen to be users of Technorati, del.icio.us and Flickr will begin to use these same tags when they post content related to the event. That way, we'll be able to develop a meta-catalog of blogs, websites and photos from The Gates.

So when you get a chance, take a look at the Tag-o-rama and check out some of tags. And if you happen to be a user of Technorati, del.icio.us or Flickr, please tag your Gates-related content. Thanks! -andy