 |
 |
For over a year I've been hacking at a little tool called "unalog". You can see it and try it at: http://unalog.com/ I'm writing to invite you all to take it for a spin. unalog is an easy way to share information about what you're reading with other folks. If you've seen del.icio.us or furl, it's kind of like those, plus some features, minus several others. As I understand it (based on discussions with the folks who started those other two services) all three developed independently, at first. Furl and delicious were both better and cooler first, so many folks gravitated toward them, which is itself cool because now we don't need big iron to run unalog.com. :) That said, there are a few reasons you might like unalog. First, it's free-as-in-speech, with an OSI-copasetic license, so you can have it and run it where you are or send patches or just poke at the source and laugh at all my silly variable_naming_conventions or whatever. Second, it does some nifty things with groups and privacy... you can have a bunch of stuff that's public, and everybody can see it, and other stuff that's private, so only you can see it. And, you can set up groups that are public or private, so stuff in the private groups can only be seen by other people in the group. i.e., your boss can use it too. Third, it's being run by Shushy Librarians (sm), and we have Nefarious Plans (tm) to add wonky metadata trickery like authority control for keyword tagging in the near future. So that'll be cool. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there aren't many users yet, but the regulars already there are just the kind of people who would be hanging out on a list like this. So, it makes for a fascinating daily read, kind of like that librarian in your old local public library branch who knew that you always wanted to know when there was a new mahavishnu orchestra record or whatever, except that in this case, it's, um, well, librarians, who, like you, also want to know whenever there are cool new java-xml binding tools or whatever. And, we even have an rssbot that feeds entries tagged to the group "code4lib" into the #code4lib irc channel, which is kinda fun. Its content is in no way limited to code4libby things, though... you can put just about whatever you want into it. Brief tech specs: written in python, zodb (object database) backend, quixote/ptl web frontend, pylucene-based search interface. So if you're interested in any of that, well, there you go. So, do consider giving it a try. If you like it, tell your friends. If you have complaints/suggestions, use the feedback form, or even better, join the unalog-general mail list and speak up. If you want to install it where you are, send email or jump into #code4lib and let me know. Thanks, -Dan