(SOURCE:Sifry's Alerts: One Million Weblogs Tracked)- Wow!  Whole lot of blogging going on!

QUOTE

One Million Weblogs Tracked Today is an auspicious day, Technorati is now tracking over one million weblogs. We hit 100,000 back on March 5, and 200,000 on April 6nbsp; We hit the 400,000 mark on June 21. Technorati is currently tracking about 7,000 new weblogs per day, which means that a new weblog is being created approximately every 12 seconds. And I know we're not catching them all.

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CSS and XHTML are still dominating my mind's attention.xml file. As you can see in my menu, they're numbers 1 and 2 in my Weekly Topic Top 10. btw the Topic Top 10 is going to be a weekly record (pardon the pun) of the most popular topics on my mind. I've actually created some XML files to store each week's top 10, so I can track what topics are occupying my mind over time. I'll see if I can implement this into my Radio blog, so the menu automatically extracts the data from the XML files. In fact this feature could be extended across the blogosphere too (but by a better programmer than me!).

Wouldn't it be fun to have a Rick Dees-like weekly countdown of the Top 40 topics in the blogosphere. Popdex has something similar - a popularity index of weblog posts and stories. Technorati comes very close by sorting posts from different weblogs into topics (nice work again Dave Sifry!). But ideally I want something attuned to my interests.

To make the Weekly Top 40 relevant for different groups of people, you'd need to categorize topics...like they do with the Billboard charts - there's a pop chart, an R&B; chart, a country chart, etc. Likewise in the blogosphere you could have a Tech Blogs chart, a Political Blogs chart, a Personal Journal chart, etc.

In the meantime, you can tune into my Weekly Top 10 topics chart. CSS is number 1 this week, but there are many topics vying for my attention currently. What will be number 1 next week?

Congrats to Dave Sifry!  Every :15 or less, 1M blogs are searched.

One Million Weblogs Tracked. Today is an auspicious day, Technorati is now tracking over one million weblogs. We hit 100,000 back on March 5, and 200,000 on April 6nbsp; We hit the 400,000 mark on June 21. Technorati is currently tracking about 7,000 new weblogs per day, which means that a new weblog is being created approximately every 12 seconds. And I know we're not catching them all.  [Sifry's Alerts]

Now it's time to do something with these blogs!  By provding access to the Technorati database via open APIs Dave Sifry has enabled a whole category of web services!  We plan on accessing and using this database in more ways than one!  And the fact that every Technorati member automatically gets a FOAF file, makes it even better!

(SOURCE:Joi Ito)- I've claimed my blog more than once and uploaded my photo more than once to my Technorati profile but it hasn't worked for me.  Time to try it again!

QUOTE

I've been working three new Technorati API calls.  The first is called getinfo.  It tells you things that Technorati knows about a user.  In the simplest case you can use  getinfo to find out information that a blogger wants to make known about himself, along with some information that Technorati has calculated and verified about that person.

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Chris Lydon Interview. Christopher Lydon's interview of me is up on his site.  Amazing what he can do with such a tight budget and in such a short amount of time.  I've been a big fan of his work, so I jumped at the chance when he called me up and asked for an interview.  We did it amazingly quickly - he called me up, we talked for 30 minutes, and 2 hours later, the interview was posted to the web.  Chris is onto something...... [Sifry's Alerts]

Everyone should all tuen in on thsi interview.  Dave Sifry is turning into a god.

Friendly Marc. Marc Canter's having an FOAF-focussed day today. Some familiar stuff, but what I hadn't seen was something Dave Sifry's put together for Technorati.

Take a look at Marc's profile.

Great work![Raw Blog]

I sent off a bunch of requests and issues to the rdfweb list today.  I hope/wonder what it'll do..... there sure are some real things to deal with.

I love watching and participating in spreading memes.  Here's the payoff.

Not only has Technorati supported FOAF - but Dave Sifry has also put these digital IDs into CONTEXT. In the case of Technorati - it's all about searching and data mining the blogosphere.  So here's a screen grab of what happens when a few Technorati profiles have been filled out.  Here are some Cosmos results - with Micah Alpern, Seb Paquet, Joi and Me in them. 

And to make it fun and self-learning - Dave has even put in a  link to "What do these pictures mean?"

Joi Ito: Technorati talks FOAF, as does Paolo. [Scripting News]

Paolo asks in his post "What next?" (after he's gotten his FOAF embedded into his main blog page....)

Well what I suggest is going and getting Morten Fredericksen's FOAF explorer.  He has a bookmarklet which (when opened on someone's FOAF enabled blog page) will display your FOAF file (with all it's related links, friends and info.)  I got Morten to add in an ADD button - so YES - you can add friends.  Start with my file or Danny Ayers or Aaron Swartz or Mark Pilgrim's or go to the main FOAF project page and look around.

But once you've got that friend added (which BTW can just be an acquiantance or relative or enemy) - you'll have to MANUALLY update your FOAF file.

So that leads us to the issue of: "How do you automatically update FOAF files - if they're under the control of the end-user?"

HHHhhhhmmmm - sounds like a job for FOAFster!

So the first context of FOAF we've seen is in TypePad - where your blogroll is your FOAF file.  Then came Technorati - where Cosmos search results are peppered with FOAF faces.  Now comes the big magilla cutty - mating.  Friendster and the rest have been lusting (literally) over the $100M dating scene.  But they're all closed worlds.

What if there was a social network environment based upon an open standard, like FOAF?  I know dana boyd would be interested.  And maybe (god forbid) we went beyond the world of 22-25 year olds thirsting after each other's bodies? Where's the social software for families?

This bug report just in from Scott Mace!

I tried to upload my picture to Technorati in several formats. All attempts failed, although one seemed to upload a perfectly-nice, completely black box. Has anyone else been getting error messages from the Technorati "upload picture" function? [Scott Mace's Radio Weblog]

This is EXACTLY what happened to me when I tried to upload my photo to Technorati.  I too - have a black box as a photo (see my blogroll <--- to the left.)   

While playing with it - I was able to get an error message saying something about 'line 159' - but that's about it.  But remember - Technorati is Dave's hobbie, which he gets to AFTER he comes home from work at Sputnik.  And then there's little Noah - too.

So Technorati is coming in third on Dave's priorities :-)

(SOURCE:Marc's Voice)-Another data point proving that digital identity is hot and vital to the future of blogs and the web in general!
<QUOTE>Something interesting is happening in the world of online identities. The end goal is clear - a distributed, decentralized identity system where people have control over their own identity online - a people's 'Passport' or what Marc Canter envisages as a people's DNS. The problem is how to get there. Perhaps it will happen, in part, from the ground up through small steps such as personal data in systems such as Technorati or one line bio's as personal RSS headlines? In fact, in true Dave Sifry style, Technorati seems to already be moving along these lines: see Technorati Profiles and check out the picture. Over the longer term, this is perhaps as ground breaking as what weblogs have done for web publishing and ultimately will leverage the weblog model to its full potential by creating a parry to content through people's interests and requirements, creating a marketplace for RSS.</QUOTE>

Technorati Adds Profiles.

David Sifry doesn't want to overhype it, but Technorati.com has added a feature that can bring identity, reputation, and other smartmob-enabling features to the blogosphere: profiles.

Technorati Profiles

A new feature you may have noticed at Technorati is Member Profiles. They're an easy way to find out more information about the people behind the weblogs. Anyone can become a Technorati member simply by signing up.

Once you're a member, you can choose to give more information about yourself and the weblogs for which you are an author.

You can "claim" your weblogs by submitting the weblog URL and then adding a small HTML snippet to the front page of your weblog. Technorati verifies that you are indeed an author of the weblog by spidering your weblog, looking for the special code you placed on your weblog.

Once you've done this, your picture and profile will be associated with all links to your weblog in any Technorati Link Cosmos. We're also working on a bunch of new features that will make writing (and reading!) weblogs more fun. Watch this space. You can "claim" your weblogs by submitting the weblog URL and then adding a small HTML snippet to the front page of your weblog. One of the first benefits you get as a Technorati member is that your profile information is available whenever your weblog is mentioned in a Technorati Link Cosmos. We're also working on a bunch of new features that make writing (and reading!) weblogs more fun. Watch this space. [Smart Mobs]

This is Marc speaking now....... Now that Tecnorati has profiles and TypePad is supporting FOAF - we're getting to critical mass time!

This just in from David Galbraith.....

One small step for Technorati..

Something interesting is happening in the world of online identities. The end goal is clear - a distributed, decentralized identity system where people have control over their own identity online - a people's 'Passport' or what Marc Canter envisages as a people's DNS. The problem is how to get there. Perhaps it will happen, in part, from the ground up through small steps such as personal data in systems such as Technorati or one line bio's as personal RSS headlines? In fact, in true Dave Sifry style, Technorati seems to already be moving along these lines: see Technorati Profiles and check out the picture.

Over the longer term, this is perhaps as ground breaking as what weblogs have done for web publishing and ultimately will leverage the weblog model to its full potential by creating a parry to content through people's interests and requirements, creating a marketplace for RSS.

[David Galbraith]

It's all happening at the same time. Joi's Identity post, the OpenIdentity usage scenarios and now Technorati's profiles.  All within 24 hours of each other.

(SOURCE:Sifry's Alerts: Comments on the RSS Controversy)-My two cents: I'll be happy if both Dave Winer and MovableType people are happy but in my perfect world, we would have an RSS 2.1 that codified common practise with RSS 2.0 and renamed RSS 1 to something like XSS or MSS. <QUOTE> Now here's the really good news.  A number of folks who helped write the RSS 1.0 specification, like Aaron Swartz and Sam Ruby, have expressed willingness to drop RSS 1.0 future development, and to rename their future weblog standards development.  Sam's even put out a call for new names.  Here's my suggestion:  Call the new work "MSS 1.0".  MSS would stand for Metadata Site Summary. Make it clear that this is solving a different set of problems than RSS 2.0 solves - I think the wiki already goes a long way to describe the differences, both in scope and in philosophy.  Let's let the confusion end, and bring some healing to the weblog technology world.  </QUOTE>