Re: Stick a FoRK in it: Bitzi

From: Gordon Mohr (gojomo@bitzi.com)
Date: Sat Apr 21 2001 - 14:29:30 PDT


Thanks for checking it out!

Karl Anderson writes:
> > I'd like to invite interested FoRKers to visit the developer
> > preview of my company's Bitzi service, at:
> >
> > http://bitzi.com/preview
>
> This could be great for anal and lazy people like myself who get all
> steamed by filesharers who don't bother to keep the proper metadata
> about their resources.

That's a key win of our system. Only one person needs to go
through the trouble of describing a file well; everyone else can
then benefit via a Bitzi lookup. It's what Dan Bricklin has
termed "the Cornucopia of the Commons":

    http://www.bricklin.com/cornucopia.htm

> Would be nice to see some actual useful tags, though. I didn't see
> any useful info in the top rated tags other than an ID.

There are already two tag types which allow arbitrary, free-form
comment about a file: "Objective Description" and "Subjective
Comment"; you add these from the website after reporting (or
browsing-to) a "bitprint detail" of interest.

> > In a nutshell, Bitzi aims to be a community-generated and
> > -maintained catalog about arbitrary kinds of files. Think equal
> > parts DMOZ, Epinions, and CDDB -- except the objects being
> > described are files, tracked by their cryptographic hashes.
>
> Are you going to add more metadata options for this, or what? The
> current options are pretty limited.

We will continue expanding the tag-types for new file formats
and expressed user needs -- but initially, we don't want to
overwhelm people with too many options.

We'll also be tweaking the rating system as necessary to promote
participation, deter gaming, and highlight the most-popular,
most-prevalent, and highest-quality bits.

> How could this enable something like pointers to Crit or What's
> Related for arbitrary files?

With the existing "comment" and "related URL" tags, you can
already do these in a rudimentary way. We aim to continually
improve these facilities.

- Gojomo

______________________________
Gordon Mohr - gojomo@bitzi.com
 CTO, Bitzi - http://bitzi.com
   Personal - http://xavvy.com



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