What is is?

Friendfeed is a mixture between a social network aggregator and a social network.  Its primary function is to collect all your various updates on the web into one place.  Your friends can then subscribe to your feed to gather all your updates, and vice versa.

How does it work?

After creating an account (nothing unusual here), you specify which of your social sites you'd like in your feed.   Friendfeed will track updates to a wide variety of social sites: Twitter, Amazon wishlists, LibraryThing, Goodreads, blog rss feeds, Last.fm, Flickr accounts, Picasa web albums, Google reader, del.icio.us, digg, Netflix, Netvibes, Youtube, Stumbleupon - you get the picture.  Notice, however, none of these sites include social networking profiles such as MySpace, Facebook, or Ning.  I guess the point of Friendfeed is to allow your friends to track your updates everywhere else.  Friendfeed tracks updates to these sites by  username, so you don't have to give Friendfeed your login information for every site, which is a relief.

Friendfeed has a corresponding Facebook widget, so that you can embed your feed into your profile.  There is also a generic embeddable widget for other websites and blogs.  MySpace, however, doesn't allow javascript so it is incompatible with Friendfeed.  Alas.

When setting up your feed, you can select privacy settings - either allowing everyone to see it by making it public, or limiting it to approved viewers.  You can also set up a private room that allows you to connect with very specific people and interact with their feed by leaving comments and such.

A nice feature of Friendfeed is you can add friends who don't use it by setting up an "Imaginary User".  So, if I have a friend in Flickr who only uses Flickr, I can add follow their updates by adding their user name to Friendfeed.

Each Friendfeed generates an RSS feed, so your friends can subscribe to it in a reader, and vice versa.  You can also view feeds through their webpage, much like twitter, with your updates intermingled with your friends'.

One last additional feature is that Friendfeed has a bookmarklet that allows you to bookmark sites outside of your networks that you might want to share with your friends - maybe a story from the Arizona Republic, etc.

Possible Library Uses

I actually think Friendfeed has great potential for libraries.  In our 2.0 frenzy, librarians have distributed themselves all over the web, tagging resources in del.icio.us, slapping up photos in Flickr, and creating book lists in Library Thing.  Having a library Friendfeed account which allows users to subscribe and embedding a widget on the library's website collects all that information into one package.  It's very easy to set up, has some nice privacy controls, and the rooms feature could be used for all sorts of library programming ideas - book clubs, teen groups, classes, etc.  Of course, it's also useful for librarian and library staff networking.

Reviews

• TechCrunch
• New York Times
• Library Clips
• Lifehacker

There were several vital factors that I ran into throughout this life cycle.

Content is King – still exists and it reflects in everything you do – from your traffic to your quality – if your content is good it will filter down to conversions, happy affiliate managers etc. If its bad – well the opposite.

Program level– As an affiliate I recognized that there were a wide array of prices for the same offers.  I’d go to one network and get one price – to another and get something way off from the first. Why?  It’s all about the level at which you were working.  If you found the source of the lead gen program – if you found the top – you got paid the most and had the best relationship.  If you ended up under a program of a sub-sub affiliate – you got paid less because you were earning money for 2 – 3 – or 6 people above you.  Also what was the program called?  Where you are lead generator?  Or where you just another affiliate in a large network?  Depending on where you were and what you were doing you were anywhere from a direct affiliate – to a sub affiliate lead generator 10 levels down. (really – you wouldn’t believe the levels involved in this game!)

Otherwise known as aggregators these folks come in all shapes and sizes….the bottom line is it pays to be at the top of the pyramid.  If you can find a direct relationship you are in good hands.

If you’re working to generate education leads you’ve come to the right place.

I manage the SchoolClick.com affiliate program.  Our program bypasses the multitude of lead aggregators offering to pay you less than the full payout available.

As the agency of record for the schools with whom we work we can pay you the highest possible payout.

When you log on to CJ, LinkShare etc. you are seeing education lead gen offers from other sites who are acting as aggregators.  They basically get paid x amount per lead and only send you the smallest possible portion of that payout.  Many of these aggregators are not generating a single lead on their own – they exist as middle men depending on your work.

I have seen offers in major affiliate networks from large aggregators offing a few bucks per lead when in fact they were receiving payments of much much more than those affiliate offers.

So what’s the problem with that?    Nothing really - other than the payouts are not the best.

If you’d like to work at the top – give us a try – sign up at www.schoolclick.com

We are currently offering Ashford, Kaplan, Walden and more  Each of these payouts are over $20 per lead – contact me for exact rates and other info.

We are working to add dozen of new schools within the next few months

Bestpersons.ru предлагает вам простой способ объединить все ссылки на ваши персональные страницы в социальных сетях на одном сайте вида ваш_ник.bestpersons.ru.

If you have e-mailed me requested that you be added and you are not on this list, please e-mail me.  I apologize to all for the long delay in some cases.  The problems with the database seem to be behind me and I hope to keep up better in the future.

Please refer to this post for options for displaying all or part of the blogroll.

Gnip is what I would call a Unified Messaging Platform, similar to the system (Quantum Shift - QS4) that my colleagues and I developed from 1999 until 2001. Sadly we were ahead of the curve, and smack in the middle of the dotcom bust. I'm glad to see that somebody has finally taking the idea and run with it.

There are some fundamental differences, there were very fewer public interfaces to other services so we developed it more as an in house product allowing different kinds of access to your own business-local data: Mail, News, External Website, Internal Websites, Document Stores, Chat and Databases that was fully indexable. It was also possible to track a user on the system, as logs were also included in the system. Gnip adds an external layer to the idea, it aggregates external data sources for you. Although I'm not sure whether it also gives you a long term historic perspective over the data you are collecting or whether it's only current view of the data coming in.

technorati tags: aggregator, gnip, folksonomy, social, blogging, quantum, shift

There are many ways to follow this blog. First you can save the blog as a bookmark in your browser. The more simple and time saving way is to follow the blog just via rss. That means everytime if there is new content on this blog it will automaticly show up in your rss reader.

A simple explanation what is rss and an rss reader and how you can profit on this new technology gives the youtube video above.

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• A Desktop Based RSS Reader For Your Google Reader Feeds

Have a look at Flock.

Sharing is here the key. And more platforms evolve in this direction and facilitate the connectivity of users.

It will be interesting to see if user tend to use such "aggregation" platforms based on browser functionality.

cheers

There is a huge amount of indian blog content available on the internet but the problem is it is spread all across and it's quite difficult to find it at one place. Linq is the answer to this problem.

We welcome your valuable feedback and inputs in shaping up this kid.

To be evaluated ...

You will have noticed (I hope), the posts about problems with the current feed. It has been leaving out a number of sites, including almost all blogspot blogs. The new feed seems to be including them properly, so it's time to start using it.

I will leave the old RSS feed active for a couple of weeks so this information can percolate, but you should change to the new feed, as many sites are not included in the old feed. Here are your options:

Display all sites in random order:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php (The default is to display site names and do so in random order.)

Display sites with most recently updated first:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent (order can also = alpha, but that is not particularly useful as there are more than 50 sites on the blogroll.)

Limit the number of posts (maximum and default are both 50):  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent&max=10

List posts rather than sites:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?type=posts.

Note that you can limit the number of posts in the same way.  If you are going to display it on your sidebar, most widgets are going to limit the number, and you'll probably want to do so anyhow.

All options that worked through ncs.hneufeld.com should no longer be used.

You can still use the blogrolling:

Javascript: <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=0705fa51be540e1725e02706416a59df"></script>

RSS:  http://rpc.blogrolling.com/rss.php?r=0705fa51be540e1725e02706416a59df

Remember that the requirements for inclusion in the blogroll are that you include at least 5 blogroll members on your blogroll, or use one of the methods above to display that many.  The links should be no more than one click from your homepage, thus it is acceptable to simply link to http://www.moderatechristian.com which displays the aggregator.  It is more helpful to your fellow bloggers, however, to include a few more links than that.

If you don't want to be included in the aggregator, which displays extracts, please e-mail me at pubs@energion.com.  I will be glad to exclude your site from the aggregator while leaving it in the blogroll.  You can also choose to be in the aggregator only.

Also, please report any errors to me.  This software is in testing, and is only implemented here.  I'm going to use it one other place which will also help, but I need error reports if I'm going to work out the remaining kinks.

Thanks!

 founded by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance, and Eric Boyd (2001) - San Francisco, CA

 StumbleUpon is a Web browser plugin and internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. Web pages are presented when the user clicks the "Stumble!" button on the browser's toolbar.

User ratings
StumbleUpon chooses which new Web page to display based on the user's ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests. It is a recommendation system which uses peer and social-networking principles.Users can rate, or choose not to rate, any Web page with a thumbs up or thumbs down, and clicking the Stumble button resembles "channel-surfing" the Web.

eBay acquired StumbleUpon in May of 2007 for $75,000,000

 The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.

News Sites as aggregators
Some websites such as Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon and Yahoo Buzz which allow users to rate and submit articles function as a news aggregator site because they contain much user submitted data.

Social Media Aggregators
Some web applications such a friendfeed function as a social media aggregator. It allows you to access all of your aocial media sites from on e place.

That's true, but I see its usefulness being totally different. Swurl has a timeline that grabs all of the content you have created, and I mean all, and displays it in a calendar-like format, in the Cloud. You can view entire posts and updates right on the Swurl website.

What this means to me is that I have a visual reference for how productive I have been. As you can see from my screen-grabs below, I was shooting a lot of photos early June - not so much lately, which means I will be definitely taking pictures this week.

From now on, Swurl will be one of the tools I use to gauge my productivity.

NOW

EARLY JUNE

I believe the new RSS feed options will be more useful than the ones they're replacing as well.

I have also found some more "4 Posts" ideas as I worked, so hopefully I will post one or two of those tomorrow, including 4 Posts Involving Photography and 4 Posts on N. T. Wright.

I will post again on this blog when all is finished, and the new feeds are available, along with instructions as to how to use them.

For those who many have missed earlier posts, the problem is that all blogspot feeds, and some feedburner feeds are being incorrectly parsed by the software I was using. I found that the aggregator software I wrote for moderatechristian.com is still picking them up correctly, and I will be providing a set of RSS feed options from there.

I expect to have something working yet today. Unfortunately the wordpress plugin I've been using to aggregate has not been updated for some time, so I can't really check that way. I'll probably either find another aggregator, or finish up the one I was already writing, but abandoned since there was such an easy option to use a wordpress plugin.

Now I've finally signed up for one. Here's mine: Lost and Found

I plan to use it for shorter, more frequent posts, pictures, songs and links which deserve a little more comment than you can give on del.icio.us. This blog will remain of course, but I'll try to post longer, more in-depth articles, reviews and comments.

Of course, if you've been reading this blog recently you'll know that I'm into web 2.0 services which aggregate all your content in one place, so you may never need to visit my Tumblr blog at all. But please feel free to catch up with me on Friendfeed and Swurl.

WHAT’S IN A NAME: WHY THE WORDS “ASSET BACKED SECURITIES” IN THE PLAINTIFF’S NAME OF A FORECLOSURE CASE SHOULD MAKE YOU DIG

In view of the fact that the bulk of mortgages, especially those created in connection with refinance and home equity lines which were initiated between 2002 and 2007, were only a small cog in a much larger machine, anyone even vaguely familiar with foreclosure litigation knows that the plaintiff in the foreclosure action is often styled as something along the lines of “So and so as Trustee for XYZ Asset-Backed Securities”. There is much more to this denomination than meets the eye, and whether or not such a plaintiff even has the right to institute a foreclosure case at all is a question which anyone defending such a foreclosure should be asking right up front.

There are numerous articles on this blog which explain the threshold concept of why the plaintiff in these types of cases winds up being a trustee for a group of otherwise unidentified holders of securities. The “Cliff Notes” version is presented here for the purpose of this article and to give the reader a place to begin their inquiry. However, it is strongly recommended that the reader delve into the wealth of information on the blog in order to have a more complete understanding of the entire transaction of which the mortgage was only literally “the pimple on the elephant” before taking the actual step of defending a foreclosure based on any of the matters herein.

In the case of the “asset-backed security” plaintiff, the sceanario went something like this:

(a) borrower seeks refi or HELOC (home equity line of credit) from mortgage broker, asking broker for best loan program available given borrower’s income, credit history, and ability to repay the loan;

(b) mortgage broker either initially tells borrower that they qualify for a fixed rate loan with an even payment throughout the loan and later changes this to “the only thing available to you is an adjustable rate loan”, or makes this representation at the outset if the borrower has sketchy credit, low income, etc.;

(c) mortgage broker presents borrower with loan application;

(d) loan is “approved” either on original appraisal or “revised” or “amended” appraisal if original was not sufficient to create the necessary loan-to-value to approve the loan;

(e) loan is also “approved” on basis of borrower’s qualifying for “teaser rate” only, not the adjustable rate later in the life of the loan which the originating lender knew the borrower could not qualify for, but did not care about as the loan was already either presold to aggregator or would be after closing;

(f) assignment of the mortgage to aggregator has either already been made at the time of the initial approval for the loan, at the time of the application, or is made shortly after closing;

(g) closing takes place. Original “lender” (which in certain cases was nothing more than a front for a securities brokerage) has already sold or assigned the mortgage or will do so shortly;

(h) mortgage is assigned to an aggregator, “bundler”, or other third-party for further resale;

(i) aggregator sells mortgage, with hundreds or thousands of others, in “bundles” to investment bankers;

(j) investment bankers create series of “mortgage-backed securities” to be sold to investors with false, unsupported, or outright fraudulent AAA ratings, as underlying stability of the borrowers (who oftentimes were not and could not have been approved for the life of the adjustable rate loan) is dubious at best, and probably nonexistent as borrowers did not qualify as having ability to repay loan after “teaser” rate expired and higher rate kicked in;

(k) borrowers default in droves, causing loss of value of security;

(l) trustee or other third party is appointed to represent the holders of the “mortgage-backed securities” to foreclose on the collateral (the property).

Thus, the name of the plaintiff in a foreclosure lawsuit can reveal a lot about where the underlying mortgage went and how it got there. With these types of actions, one knows, right away, that there had to have been multiple assignments of the mortgage from the time of initiation to the point where the mortgage became collateral for an “asset-backed security”. As such, the first series of questions to be asked are those surrounding the assignment process:

(a) for each assignment, was there a valid assignment given by one with full authority to transfer the interest in the mortgage?

(b) was the assignment recorded?

(c) was there any consideration for the assignment (e.g. were any monies paid to purchase the mortgage at a discount, thus creating a payment against the obligation on the mortgage note)?

The answers to these threshold questions will directly impact how the defense of the foreclosure will proceed. If all of the assignments in the chain were valid, then the ultimate assignee (here, the Trustee for the Certificate Holders of the Asset-Backed securities) took the mortgage subject to all defenses which the borrower could have raised against the originating “lender”. As such, on proof of a valid chain of assignments, defenses which the borrower may have had against the originating lender under the Federal TILA, HOEPA, and RESPA Statutes; state Consumer Protection statutes; and other laws (see blog glossaries for definitions of these terms) can be asserted against the “trustee” plaintiff. Obviously, if the assignments are nonexistent or problematic, the borrower can assert that the “trustee” plaintiff does not have the legal capacity to even institute the foreclosure action in the first instance (known as “lack of standing or capacity” in legal lingo).

The next level of inquiry in any multiple-assignment process involves a determination of whether any payments by any of the assignees to the assignor in connection with the assignment can be characterized as payments against the underlying obligation of the note to which the mortgage attaches. The originating “lender” is obviously not going to assign the mortgage to an aggregator for no money. As such, there is the possibility that the foreclosing plaintiff may have wrongfully claimed the borrower to be in default, which results not only in a fraud being perpetrated upon the borrower, but also on the court as well. Unrecorded or unapplied paydowns against the note result in the foreclosing plaintiff not only seeking monies which it is not owed, but also in effect causing the theft of property to which the plaintiff is not entitled.

These threshold issues should be addressed at the outset of any foreclosure proceeding where there is an “asset-backed security” plaintiff, as the results of the inquiry may open up numerous additional avenues of defense and potential affirmative claims as well. Obviously the more diligent one is with their inquiry, the better potential for an effective, multi-level defense against the foreclosure.

A word of caution, however, which we have echoed in other blog articles: although these concepts may appear deceptively simple, asserting them properly in a foreclosure action as a defense, affirmatively in a separate legal action, or inside of a Federal bankruptcy proceeding is both a science and an art best left to attorneys who are versed in the technical terminology and the proper procedural rules in order to render these defenses effective. We thus repeat the recurring caveat to all non-lawyers reading these articles:

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Jeff Barnes, Esq.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, Swurl!

It says it's in beta at the top of the page, so it's clear we're firmly in web 2.0 territory before we even start. Swurl claims to make your life easier by bringing together all your online stuff in one place, kind of like Friendfeed.

In fact, there's really not a lot of difference between the two that I can discern after a brief play-around with Swurl over the last half hour. Swurl does appear slicker, particularly when it comes to adding friends: it automagically finds all the friends from the services you add (e.g. twitter, youtube, del.icio.us) and sticks their updates in a separate tab. Whereas on Friendfeed you have to find and follow friends using that service.

Bizarrely, Swurl even accepts Friendfeed as a source for your consolidated online presence, which probably makes it some kind of meta-meta-mashup. My head's hurting...

Anyway, here's my Swurl profile if you want to check me out or whatever it is you kids do these days.

Alltop.com rocks. It uses a (claimed) sophisticated algorithm (what doesn't these days) to winnow thru thousands of news/blog feeds to post the best according to industry standards and value. Choose from one of a host of topics to drill down into a category that suits your fancy, like photography (for me) as seen below. It really is amazing...there's no way to read all this!

The problem is that all blogspot blogs and a number of feedburner feeds are not updating correctly, which removes most of the blogroll from both the main aggregator page and the RSS feed. I will update you on the progress here over the next couple of days. I apologize for any inconvenience.