Ma.gnolia Blog: Your Attention in Your Hands
Attention data is an emerging concept in web circles that focusses on making people the owners of the data about the websites they visit, or pay attention to. Currently, this kind of information builds up in the individual websites that we visit, but in most cases that information is never shared us. The Attention movement seeks to remedy that by making data about what we pay attention to available in a portable format.
That format is known as APML, or Attention Profile Markup Language. And, with some simple integration with APML providers, Engagd, we’ve now made it possible for Ma.gnolia members to build an attention profile from their bookmarks.
A new setting in your profile controls, found on the newly-renamed Bookmarks tab, allows you to turn on the generation of APML from your bookmarks feed. After the profile has had some time to build up, you can grab a copy of your profile data.
These are still early days for APML, and as such there aren’t a lot of service providers supporting it and even fewer applications that can make use of this data. So, the hope in providing it for Ma.gnolia is that it will help stimulate development of APML-powered services that can offer us new ways of looking at what we do as we travel the web.
To learn more about attention and APML, check out the website.
Posted by Todd on December 17, 2007 | Mark This Post
Member Comments
Paul on December 20, 2007
Thanks guys. Now could you do it the other way and start using APML data to suggest bookmarks? APML producers are popping up all over the place but very few are consuming APML and doing something useful with it.
Guillaume on December 20, 2007
Nice! I'd like to be able to access the APML XML produced by Ma.gnolia using either the API, or a secret URL. That way, I could consume this data in my RSS reader. Thanks.
Jackson on December 20, 2007
That is very cool. On a related note, how would you feel about getting attention information about my blog. I would love something like this for what pages on my blog people have bookmarked.
Larry on December 20, 2007
Paul: We're looking into providing some recommendation functionality, and using your APML profile is a natural fit, along with a combination of your contacts and groups. We're still playing with the data and we'll see what it brings us.
Guillaume: Great idea! I think that a secret url of your APML would be the way to go. We'll be sure to post here when we have something ready.
Jackson: We'd love to hear more about your idea, what sort of data would you be looking for?
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Lachlan on December 19, 2007
Sweet, thanks! I've turned mine on
I've yet to see a convincing use-case for APML, so hopefully this lead to something interesting