Widget for collecting site ratings

Here's a new web widget--Mochimention. Mochimention allows any website to add user ratings to its website. There's apparently plans to add some form of e-commerce based on ratings. I'm not sure how good their product is since I'm not ready to try this, but the idea is a great one. Check it out at http://www.killerstartups.com/Blogging-Widgets/mochimention-com-what-others-think-does-matter.

Reviews, Ratings, and vettings of websites

I have been using a great bookmark synching service called FoxMarks. Whenever I add a bookmark at home, it automatically adds it to my computer at work--and vice versa. Now, FoxMarks has moved to supporting Internet Explorer instead of just FireFox, and will soon add Safari. They've changed their name to XMarks.

At the same time, they've added several services. They pool all the bookmarks from all their many users and establish a sort of vetting or rating based on how many of their users have the site bookmarked. The more people who have bookmarked a site, the higher rating it gets.

They've added the ability for their users to write reviews on any website they've bookmarked, and have the reviews available to any of their users. Finally, they work behind the scenes to grab your Google searches, and automatically annotate the Google Search Results with the sites in the search results which have been bookmarked by any XMarks users and further rank the Google search results according to their XMarks ranking.

Check it out

Social Networking for the Dead

As I was at lunch at the FamilySearch Developer’s conference (11 March 2009), one of the individuals at my table (Daniel) said “what we need is social networking for the dead.” As I thought about it, I became more and more enthusiastic about the concept.

Why not have pages for our ancestors, containing information about them and the people they came in contact with--their friends and associates? Why not let their descendants browse not only information and records about their ancestor, but also about their ancestors’ friends—those who lived in the same area at the same time, who participated in the same events, belonged to the same religious or ethnic groups, served in the same military regiment, immigrated in the same group or traveled on the same ship or wagon train?

We could have a social network for our ancestors, linking them to others in with things in common. If our ancestors didn't leave a journal about the voyage or the regiment, maybe once of their friends did. This would allow us to learn more about the history and background of our ancestors' lives. This idea has merit, and may be well worth pursuing.