What a terrible weekend, crunch time on the uni front, but enough about that. Sometime last weekend, natsuneko attempted to use the melative XUL app, yay. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out, but his suggestion to make a TwitterFox like extension might be better. So I gave it a shot. It was a great suggestion.
With the awesome feedback received from natsuneko, Seinime, and FFVIIKnight, the extension is usable and in a development-update state. The current version is available here and will auto-update when newer versions are released. More information about the features can be found on the blog. Although the stream is media-context-centric, it can be used without any context just like a normal status update, some of the realized features of the stream include:
- HTML tags (tt, i, big, b, small, em, ins, del, sub, sup, code)
- Auto-shortening urls with is.gd
- Group indexing with the ! operator
- Tag indexing with the # operator
- Activity which occurs on the site appears in the stream (ie. recommendations, reflections)
The context-awareness of the stream means users can specify what they are talking about outside the message, and even announce specific experiences such as reading a chapter or watching an episode. The stream may also be unspoiled and hide messages inside announce updates, but still allowing the event to be seen.
One of the most beneficial aspects, imo, is the ability to see activity on a specific media, title, character, creator, tag, or group amongs friends. Hopefully, the implication of that feature makes sense, if not here’s an example:
Cruisin’ Sammy wishes to view all the stream updates his friends wrote about Sengoku Basara. There is no searching. He only needs to visit the URL, http://melative.com/stream/anime/Sengoku Basara, and all his friends’ updates will be available in pages.
So…
After extensively using melative these past few days, I gotta admit that it’s by far more useful and entertaining than twitter - and the FF extension is what might eventually give it the big boost in popularity, especially for the aniblogging community.
There are quite a few bumps here and there, of course it’s beta, but it’s constantly being improved. And once the web interface gains more accessibility, the combo will be unbeatable. Spread the word!
Whoosh! Thanks a bundle natsuneko
I have hopes for the extension (wouldn’t mind if another coder picked it up and hacked on it either), since basically the entire API is right there and available for all sorts of interaction… like Recommending and Reflecting. Possibilities are in the air, and the largest one being users ability to export their microblog and run a version on their own servers (that is one goal at this point).
Tough making agendas to organize the prios and stuff :/ Summertime GET!