Scoop: Touchstone does APML

admin — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 11:42:22 +0000

Tomorrow the creators of Touchstone will announce a new initiative to implement a “Attention Profiling Mark-up Language” or APML. This new standard should allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers. The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests. You might think this is a bit similar to the AttentionTrust service, but APML does not propose to compete or even cover the same area. It is designed to take attention.xml and all other forms of storing one’s attention and create an outline of ranked interests.

The possible uses for APML are endless, and very cool! Just imagine being able to export your Attention Profile from Amazon and plugging it into Digg to get an instantly customized view of the top Digg stories most relevant to your interests! Oh yeah baby…

Chris Saad (TouchStone/Faraday Media) anticipates that an ecosystem of technologies can begin to write and consume the format and they are taking the lead with Touchstone’s U-AR and I-AM engines.

They are looking forward to working with everyone in the community to ensure the format delivers on this promise and empowers users to take control of their Attention. APML is 100% open and they hope to make it an official standard when the community decides it’s ready. Find out more about APML at apml.org.

Post from: EveryJoe

Scoop: Touchstone does APML

Not Attention, but Gestures!

admin — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 22:09:36 +0000

Attention is so 5 minutes ago, what we need are ‘Gestures’! I’ve just read an interesting post on zdnet.com (from Steve Gillmor) about GestureBank (via fredscapes.nl). The article is dated a while back but to be sincere I never heard of it before. Steve writes about the fact that current information is created in a broadcast, an attention-seeking environment, but Gesture-triggered data is generated as a result of multiple proferred contracts with users. So the future is too predict what people would like to read based on Gestures:

Attention to something is valuable, but in a world of too much information divided by the time to consume a portion of it, signalling a lack of attention is more valuable. By that construct, gestures of inattention will fetch a greater price, and purveyors of gestures of indirection or redirection will gain inordinate value as compared to domain experts. Deriving GestureRank is therefore a function not only of who the gesturer is, but what is the nature (or type) of the gesture, and who or what group or domain it is directed toward.

Justplain.org writes that the whole idea is build arround the concept that there is too much information (good information), that we have too litle time to consume all this information but that we also don’t want to mis any relevant information. So what we want is relevant personalized data. The gesturebank could offer this ans aims to be a open, transparent and trusted pool of metadata. Only those who feed this pool (i.e. with the data from the Attention recorder) will be able to gain from it…

All very interesting stuff I must say and next to that Steve Gilmor announced that he resigned from the board of Attention Trust and he will be doing alot more with GestureBank. More info soon I think…

Post from: EveryJoe

Not Attention, but Gestures!

EveryJoe » attentiontrust

Scoop: Touchstone does APML

Not Attention, but Gestures!