Comments for Trailfire: Experimenting With Trails

Trailfire: Experimenting With Trails

2006-10-23T11:31:15Z

Disclaimer: I am testing out Trailfire as part of a consulting agreement. Full details below.

At the beginning of September I posted about Trailfire, a unique social bookmarking service that reminded me at the time of Vannevar Bush's 1945 pre-hypertext concept The Memex. Essentially what Trailfire does is enable you to place annotations on any web page and link related web pages to form a trail, or navigation path.

About a month after my initial post, the Trailfire team contacted me with a consulting proposal to try out a custom trail mark on my blog - one designed specifically for Read/WriteWeb. The idea was that this would enable me to provide branded navigation trails on my blog. I thought this sounded like a nice 'value add' feature, that readers might find interesting. Also trails / hypertextual navigation is a concept that I am very interested in experimenting with - so I agreed. But to be perfectly clear and transparent, I am being paid my regular consulting fee to try out Trailfire and report back to them.

As part of the experiment I will be using Trailfire on this blog, to provide related information via trails. Basically this is a totally optional feature for you, the reader. If you don't download the Trailfire product, then you will notice absolutely no difference to Read/WriteWeb. Of course if you do download Trailfire to follow my "trails", then I hope you will discover more relevant content - and what's more, contribute your own trails if you feel so inclined. Look for the little red pin (see screenshot below) - every time you see it roll your mouse over it to view the note.

]]> So here's how this will work: over the next month I will be adding "trails" to around 4-6 blog posts per week. These trails will provide extra or related information about the post - including not just text, but possibly pictures, video and audio files. You will only see these trails if you download Trailfire. I've started by adding a trail to my Weekly Wrapup post from earlier today - I did a chronological trail of my Web Office coverage across R/WW and (mostly) ZDNet.

If you don't have Trailfire downloaded, you can also view the trail at this address: http://trailfire.com/readwriteweb/marks/20121

So, I'm not sure how this will pan out. But it certainly seems to me like an interesting experiment, with appropriate 'old school' pre-Web influences (Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson). Let me know your thoughts...

Comment from Josh on 2006-10-23

2006-10-23T12:53:07Z

It seems like sort of a clunky interface. I'd be much more apt to follow the trail if I could see what was coming next and skip around--rather than having to follow the predetermined trail set by the uh, trailblazer (no idea what they call it, so I made up my own term) without knowing what's coming next.

That said, I noticed you said that you create this trail in chronological order on purpose, so perhaps what I am describing is just a characteristic of this particular trail and not the service in general.

Comment from managed dedicated server on 2006-10-23

2006-10-23T15:15:14Z

Certainly I do agree with Josh to some extent. I need to get a clear idea about what is going to happen right from the start till the end. What will be the outcome of this? Why do we require a trial for?

Comment from Richard MacManus on 2006-10-23

2006-10-24T05:17:47Z

The idea is really to explore a new way of hyperlinking. For the Web Office example, the trail allows you to tell a kind of story (using annotations) about how the Web Office meme has developed over the past year - at least the way I covered it.

Comment from Mark S on 2006-10-24

2006-10-24T14:43:16Z

I am *very* interested in discovery engines and trailfire, as it sounds, is kinda, sorta, maybe one. In all though, at face value, I would say it sounds like a lot of work and might have limited usefulness.

I installed it but everytime I loaded Firefox I was greeted with numerous errors which were clearly caused by TF. I had to uninstall it so I can play :-(

If anyone gets a clear indication of what the heck is up with it, its usefulness, etc. please email me at mark.seremet[[@]]gmail.com.

For more on discovery engines check out my blog at www.markseremet.com

Comment from Emre Sokullu on 2006-10-24

2006-10-24T21:03:46Z

Download and install? I don't like this idea anymore...

Comment from Pat Ferrel on 2006-10-25

2006-10-25T20:35:36Z

One point Richard is making takes Trailfire (yes I work there) beyond normal discovery engines and that is the fact that you can use it to create your own mini-webs. This isn't a comment and submit engine. You can actually go out, repurpose pages, add markup, and rewire the way the pages connect. For the ambitious it is like reauthoring part of the web to your own purpose; for the casual user it is as simple as leaving a comment in situ on a page-one button click and type. What you discover on Trailfire-the-site are these mini-webs.

Josh, check out the sidebar. Once you start on a trail it shows every stop along the way so you can skip forward or backward as you wish. Next rev we'll add that to the mark UI.

Emre, you don't have to download to discover or follow trails. As Richard said you can just follow the link.

Comment from Mark S on 2006-10-25

2006-10-25T21:16:06Z

I have to say that John, the ceo of trailfire, is on top of things. He emailed me today about the technical difficulties I was/am having. That's cool - so I reinstalled it. The problem seems to be that it is interfering with 1clickweather - an extension for firefox. I have to click through 4 error messages frequently. That said, I am hell bent now to give trailfire another shot so I'll get rid of the weather and see what happens.