the blog

I've been thinking about Barack Obama. America's got a new President — and some new history. And for the last few months, we've been hearing stories about the new administration.

But what do Xerpi's users think?

I like to think of it as a chance for a fresh perspective. Like everything else, Xerpi users have their own personal set of favorites — and Xerpi's tags gives you a chance to peek in on 'em! (Or at least, the ones that they've made public.) It's been said that a newspaper is a first draft of history. But the favorites on Xerpi let you experience events in an entirely new way. It's unpredictible — and sometimes very special.

I typed "Obama" into Xerpi's search engine, and discovered someone had also created tags specifically for his inauguration. Want to watch the ceremony again? MSNBC's got it covered! And one Xerpi user has discovered "Change You Can Wear" — a web page offering some very hip t-shirts that are riffing on the president's new image. Of course, Xerpi's users found Barack Obama's web site — but they also found his Facebook page. And one blogger had even compared news footage of both John McCain and Barack Obama...dancing. Of course, this web page quickly became somebody's Xerpi favorite too!

And then I got an idea — what would happen if you typed "McCain" into Xerpi's search engine? I expected many things, but none of them prepared me for the "John McCain Green Screen Challenge." Video maestros re-edited a McCain campaign speech, splicing the candidate into footage from Star Trek, Pulp Fiction, and The Big Lebowski. A blog called "Caffeine-fueled" (promising "Slightly Jittery Entertainment") had selected the best videos from a contest suggested by Stephen Colbert. And that became somebody's Xerpi favorite too.

In fact, it looks like that blog's been linked to quite a bit. They've also got a funny post called "Words that I Can No Longer Use Thanks to the Current Election." ("Maverick.") I found that when I searched Xerpi for the word "Palin." Ironically, John McCain's running mate came up seven times more often than our current Vice President, Joe Biden.

Some of the links were negative and some were positive, but I guess that's all part of the fun. (They're somebody's else's favorites — not mine!) And they're all part of this moment in time. When the history happened, what were other Xerpi users thinking about?

Now you know! :)

Oh yeah, btw -- finally got the Firefox extension updated to work with FF 3. In fact, the new Firefox "post to" button has been enhanced to match our new "post to" bookmarklet. What is a bookmarklet you say? Or, did I hear you say, yeah, bookmarklet -- where is it? Well, until it makes it into our new help, just copy this link onto your favorites toolbar (in FF and Safari this is just dragging the link up to your browser's favorite toolbar, in IE this is right-clicking and doing the add to favorites thing). Ok, here is the bookmarklet:

Post to Xerpi

We have a lot going on at Xerpi today, preparing for our U.S. launch tomorrow. It's the hectic days like today that make me truly appreciate Xerpi's organizational features.

I used to think of Xerpi as kind of an 'link filing cabinet.' I thought -- what a great place to drop all of the links I want to keep around 'just in case.' Kind of like that paperwork you keep around 'just in case' until you leave the company and then it goes into the big dumpster sized recycling bin.

But then I realized that there are some internet places that I need to visit, or monitor on a daily basis. For work this can be blogs that are relevant to Xerpi's space, or video contest pages that we need to monitor for submission, even internal links such as our bug tracking site, which I need to check in on daily.

For personal use, I check some of my friend's blogs daily, to see what they are up to, and if I am watching an item for purchase on eBay -- or selling one -- I like to keep an eye on that page regularly too.

It's this concept of 'frequently accessed links' that I didn't get before. Now that I get it, I've created a Xerpi block on my 'Work' view called "Daily monitoring" -- there I put all of the blogs, news sites, contest pages, and other work related things I need to track daily. On my "Main" view, I created a 'Check out daily' block, and put all of my ebay watchlist items, friend blogs, casting sites, and any other dynamic sites I need to check regularly. If things get crazy like today, I just make sure that I take at least a few minutes to drill down each of these 'daily' blocks and make sure I haven't missed anything too important. If you are pressed for time, having what you need in one place can really make all the difference.