Wading Through Weblogs, One Idea at a Time

candot writes "Remember the recent slashdot story on NASA cancelling the moon hoax book? Wonder what other weblogs are saying about the subject? Launched today (in beta), the Waypath Project is an attempt to network the weblog community, connecting weblogs that share common themes, ideas, and topics. The Waypath Project's Related Weblog Navigation engine analyzes weblog entries to determine their core conceptual makeups, compares them with one another to find out how related they are, and presents you with its best guess as to what's related to your original input. This is done all automatically. Look for the disclaimers about varying quality you'd expect from an automated classification system, such as at Google News. You're encouraged to embed WP results in your weblog pages. Be the first on your block to try it out, today -- unless it gets slashdotted, then tomorrow. Resources are limited, so pace yourselves."

Comments

Wondering?

[sczimme]

Wonder what other weblogs are saying about the subject?

Ummm... no. But thanks anyway.

Combining with E2?

[Psychic Burrito]

I always thought that combining the setup of Everything2 and a massive amout of blogs would create something great. This is a step in this direction. Is there anybody else agreeing that combining E2 with Waypath would make the best reference source ever?

Sounds like a grim idea

[melonman]

If an infinite number of bloggers write an infinite number of postings, and a search engine cross-references them all, does this give us anything more than Word Salad? If the site wasn't broken I'm curious enough to try it, but I'm sceptical. Most blogs are (possibly) interesting if you know the people: otherwise, they are about as thrilling as someone else's holiday snaps. And the most used category is going to be me me me...

Also, newsy weblogs such as /. end up being cross-referenced anyway, because sooner or later someone posts a 'hey have you seen what they are saying on...' message.

Re:'blogs'

[nomadic]

Not at all. There are plenty of weblogs run by non-teenage angsty, maladjusted primadonnas.

And does the name "blog" annoy the hell out of anyone else either? The only people I can picture using the term are annoying hipsters down at Starbucks trying to impress each other as they slam back frappucinos.

Link weblogs ,eh?

[Raul654]

So sally breaks up with don, whose weblog indicates he's now really hot for janet, could care less about Don but really like Barry, who donkey punched Jane, who is best friend with Sally. Hrm... makes it so much clearer now

But does it actually work?

[Flamesplash]

So just as a test I plopped the URL http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20021107. html from the /. story Could Eolas End Microsoft's Browser Dominance? into the search field on the Waypath Project page and well all it ended up giving me was a bunch of Microsoft related hits, nothing to really do with the specifics of the article itself. Maybe the word "Microsoft" is too prevalent and therefor overweighted?

I suppose

[mao che minh]

that this would generally be a good idea, except for the fact that there are already thriving weblog communities that: A. Are nice to look at (or in the least, have an efficient design and layout), B. Have a working search engine in operation, C. Are not built on dog slow, closed projects.

Slow news day, huh /. ?

The Weblog MetaData Initiative

[HealYourChurchWebSit]

I like sites like this ... but isn't their already an effort to define and tie blogging communities via the The Weblog MetaData Initiative?

I mean, Waypath is at one level convenient, but no more so than well established weblog communities such as
blo.gs, the Eaton WebPortal and blogs4God. Moreover, when it comes to gleaning headline news via a blog, I would suspect the real weapon of cohice would be our personal aggregators such as Amphetadesk and HotSheet?

Which is where the WMDI comes in. It helps me identify sites via xml-ish mechanisms such as the Dublin Core Initiative ... which is why I would think someone who's blogging their brains out for the hottest headlines might not be better served by the WMDI.

Then again, your mileage may vary.