AOL Journals: Magic Smoke

Tuesday, April 18, 2006
7:46:00 PM EDT
Hearing Komeda, Snurrig Bossanova So, here's a follow-up to my earlier entry about the tag test beta; a bunch of you have tried it out, which is great. It would have been greater if we had been able to make it work for people using Microsoft Internet Explorer as their Web browser (this includes the browser that comes with the AOL software), which is most of you.

The good news is that the tech folks tell me that the problems that prevented the tag test from working in IE were mostly fixed, just not in time to get installed along with the R5 release. So, hopefully, we will be able to get it into beta an upcoming release so you can play with it.

Next, by way of explaining just what the heck tagging is, I'm going to steal one of the comments I posted in that entry, which applies a metaphor to help explain why tagging is useful:

Honestly, all this tagging stuff is just fancy talk that describes a way to label your blog posts so that they show up in blog searches with other blog posts (both yours and other peoples') that share the same label.

It's just labelling, though we can a lot more with it online than in the physical world.

For example, say every Deadhead in the US has a Grateful Dead bumper sticker on their car. You can't scoop up every car owner with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker and gather them together in a big field for a party -- but you can kind of do that with blog entries that are tagged.

All metaphors break down eventually, of course, so suffice it to say that tagging is just a way to get similiar blog entries together.

Looking around the rest of the team, here's what some of the other Journals folks have to say about the tag test:

* Tech Manager John also uses a bumper sticker metaphor, and also includes a snazzy animated gif demonstrating the tagging interface we're testing.

* UI Designer Holly has some questions about how intuitive you find the whole tagging thing in her entry. She also mentioned the polls test, which I still haven't talked about since it involves slightly more advanced HTML, though if you've played with it, let her know.

Thanks -- Joe




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This entry has 5 comments: (Add your own)

• #5 Comment from journalseditorEntry Author 
  4/20/06 4:07 PM | Permalink

  Er, wrong in what way? About the Deadheads or the tagging? -- Joe
• #4 Comment from teeisme57 
  4/20/06 3:57 PM | Permalink

  
  "For example, say every Deadhead in the US has a Grateful Dead bumper sticker on their car. You can't scoop up every car owner with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker and gather them together in a big field for a party -- but you can kind of do that with blog entries that are tagged."
  Joe, you are SO wrong!
  
• #3 Comment from journalseditorEntry Author 
  4/19/06 9:24 AM | Permalink

  Hi -- the current tag test is using Technorati tags, yes; if you click on the tag links, it will take you to a Technorati search results page.
  
  Re: having to use and know some HTML in order to get the tags to work -- that's pretty much why we're working on the tag test on the beta Journals site -- it's so that you'll just have to type the names of the tags you want to use, without having to worry about the HTML that makes them work.
  
  Thanks -- Joe (posted & mailed)
• #2 Comment from onestrangecat 
  4/19/06 8:54 AM | Permalink

  i like the idea of tags.  but is there a simpler way to do them?
  I copy/pasted yours for Pamela, but looking at the code you used it seems complicated for those of us that are html impaired.
  
  Kathy
• #1 Comment from csandhollow 
  4/19/06 5:14 AM | Permalink

  One question. Will this work on Technorati? What I mean is are these technorati tags?