HubTag Closed

Hey Guys

HubTag's platform independent multi media sharing? It's so over.

Single platform multi-media sharing -it's so the future.

Yep, we're moving to Facebook.

Thanks for the ride, it was fun.

Laters

Tobs and Jonty

hubtagging on good friday

Happy Easter everyone - try the new hubtag nickoftufnellpark

HubTag's go walkabout..

Today we discovered how far reaching HubTag's are in the Web2.0 world. I decided to install ShoZu on my Nokia phone today (a basic 6230i), it's a fairly standard model that i've had for about a year now. To get the software intalled visit http://www.shozu.com and follow the instructions for your particular model.. It's a bit fiddly getting started, the key thing is the ability to connect to the net from your phone. But once you're set up the power is immense, I was able to tag a photo with "hubtag" and send it to my FlickR account in seconds, with a couple of clicks and all from my phone. I did the same with a short video that I filmed of Toby in the office, tagged it and uploaded it direct to YouTube from my phone, it was live on the internet within seconds and most importantly it was "HubTagged" and could therefore be detected by my "HubTag" RSS FEEDblendr report which I could track on the web from my PC or even on my mobile phone

We now have the tools to take HubTag's anywhere we go. Whether you're at work, at a concert or a friends birthday, with the combination of free Web2.0 available you can record your days with photos and videos, using your mobile and upload them for all to see anytime, anywhere. C'est pretty cool, n'est-ce pas?

all the best -

Jonty

Feed me my HubTag some more

Of course the most proven way to use RSS is by downloading an "RSS Reader" - a piece of software dedicated to reading these RSS feed things.

I recommend you check out Great News which is really cool as it makes your hubtagged items appear as if like a newspaper.

Otherwise here's More Feed Reader Software to choose from

If you've upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 then there is support for feeds built in - just click the link and you'll be able to read your hubtag feed.

Have fun

Tobs

Feed me my HubTag as a screensaver

HubTag now lets you create your own "rss feed" for your HubTag by combining your youtube videos, flickr photos and blog postings that have been tagged with that HubTag.

This means you can now do cool new things - like you can turn your hubtag into a screensaver.

Install an RSS based screensaver like:
RSS More - this is slightly early software but it does sort of work in its own way. I have tried it on my PC at least!

Though you might be better off waiting for Microsoft to get their version launched http://screensaver.msn.com/ - if any readers know of some good RSS reader screensaver creators please comment below.

Anyway, once you have the RSS screensaver installed you just tell it where to get your hubtag feed i.e. http://www.hubtag.com/feed-YourHubTag
(go to Use on the HubTag home page to get this as a link so you can just copy and paste it in)

So now anything that ever appears on the web anyway tagged with my HubTag will eventually find its way onto my screensaver - pictures, videos and blog entries.

Pretty cool, more to follow

Tobs

ps. for techie interest: I used yahoo pipes to do the merge, yeah - pipes is awesome.

Personomy speaking, i'd prefer a HubTag over a SKOS any tag of the week.

The W3C Mulitmedia Semantics Incubator Group have published a textbook definition of "collaborative tagging use cases" in their Wiki . They have quite rightly highlighted one of the limitations of tag-based annotation.

i.e.
"Personomy reuse is currently not easily possible as each platform uses ad-hoc solutions and only provides tag navigation within its own boundaries: there is no standardization that regulates how tags and relations between tags, users, and resources are represented. Due to that lack of standardization there are further technical issues that become visible through the application programming interfaces provided by some tagging platforms:"

What's a Personomy? - An aggregate of an individual's tag vocabulary.

What's a Folksonomy? - A collection of all personomies.

Ok, so essentially what these guys are saying is that it's going to be virtually impossible to police the tag vocab and stop folk stamping on each other's personomies, thus greying the margins of an individual's tag verbage.

This is where we feel HubTag plays an important role, giving individuals the opportunity to form unique tag words that will help keep their personomies as individual as they so wish.

HubTag's are very much for the masses, they are the equivalent of street words, quick to make, ready to use. The W3C are still pursuing their own solution to the current limitations, and are currently developing a standard vocab called SKOS Core (Simple Knowledge Organisation for the Web) that should eventually provide enterprise users with cross-platform tag standards.

In the meantime we hope you continue to enjoy creating original HubTags for your own personomies.

kind HubTags -

Jonty

The HuBTag Trio.... Make, Use & Search

Web2.0 is really putting the web in the hands of the consumer. In the past the vast majority (99%) of us sat back and watched the Web as it took shape. Now we (100% of us) can actually climb in and make our own individual presence on the web in a whole host of different Web2.0 ways.

In general Web2.0 terms, there are 3 distinctive user groups; the creators, the doers and the viewers. The creators come up with new ideas, the doers use these ideas to do something else with and the viewers just search & sit back and watch.

In HubTag terms we will have exactly the same user demographic;

Make - those who make (the creators) the HubTag for a particular purpose e.g. JohnandBettysWedding2007

Use - those who use (the doers) something with the HubTag, e.g. attach to a series of photo's or blogs.

Search - those who want to search (the viewers) see what's happening that darn HubTag.

Hence we've decided to re-jig our interface to make live as easy as possible for the Trio of HubTaggers. It's obviously still very much Beta but we hope it makes it easier to use. Feel free to post us your feedback.

all the best -

Jonty

HubTagTastic at the BGSLondonDinner2007

Last Friday evening I had the pleasure of attending my old school's annual London dinner in the Russell Hotel in central London.

This also seemed like a perfect opportunity to give a HubTag a run for it's money, so i put my plan into action and brought along some tickets advertising the "BGSLondonDinner2007" HubTag for the event. Just in case anyone out there is wondering where my photo's are. I have loaded them onto my FlickR account but unfortunately it's takes a minimum of 10 days for FlickR to approve new accounts so you need to be patient. Regardless of the wait, FlickR is still the best place to load your photos.

It was great to catch up with some old friends and meet some new folk from the old school. The after dinner speeches were excellent and gave me food for thought. I hope those of you who took photo's of the evening can get them HubTagged ok. If not, give us a shout at Jonty@hubtag.com.

all the best - Jonty

Adverts on site

We've now put adverts on the HubTag site. This means that if the site gets popular we have a chance of making some revenue from HubTag users. I will certainly report back to this blog if we make more than $100!

Please don't click on the ad links unless you are genuinely interested in them.

If you think the site has too many / too few adverts do let me know.

Cheers

Tobs

Example Pageflakes page using HubTags

Here I've set up my pageflakes page with three key elements:

• the Flickr Flake set to bring back any photos tagged with my hubtag (in this instance the hubtag is the word 'hubtag')
• the Youtube Videos Flake set to bring back any videos tagged with my hubtag (in this instance the hubtag is the word 'hubtag')
• the hubtag feed from Technorati which I originally added to my PageFlakes dashboard via hubtag.com
  
  I'm now ready to start creating on the web and tagging with my hubtag, confident that it will all re-emerge here.
  
  One advantage of PageFlakes is that I can share the page itself with friends. Combined with sharing the HubTag that can give a whole bunch of people a shared place to see things appear as they publish them wherever they like on the web.
  
  -tobs
  

Dashboard Wow factor..

Today we've discovered that you can easily create your brand new unique HubTag and plug it in to whichever 2.0 dashboard you want to use (thanks to Toby) e.g. your google home page, myyahoo, netvibes, pageflakes etc.. this list will almost certainly keep growing.

The beauty of these dashboards is that they allow you to very quickly set up your own little "my-WEB2.0-TV channel" to watch + read the things you are interested in.

As a demo;

i) I went to hubtag.com and created a new "HubTag" called "JimmyPartyTonight"
ii) I then clicked on the "+Add to Google button"
iii) Then clicked on the "Add to Google Home Page"
iv) + hey presto - there is now RSS feed link to technorati - watching the "JimmyPartyTonight" tag.
v) I went to Jimmy's Party - had some fun and updated my Blog, ensuring I tagged it with my new hubtag - "JimmyPartyTonight"
vi) these comments were then automatically piped through to my google dashboard to remind me of the fun i had... cool or what...

The potential for linking your Web 2.0 dashboard world together with HubTags is amazing, the web can literally become your oyster with HubTag.com. Try and explore for yourself.. these are exciting times indeed.

many thanks -

Jonty

Express yourself with a HubTag

Now we're live we're getting some great comments back and we've (Well Jonty did actually) realised we needed to change the marketing tack - HubTag is not just a tool for event organisers - it's for anyone who uses web 2.0 tools.

Let me explain, if I've posted my arty photos from my last holiday to flickr, my snaps to ringo, my videos to youtube and my diary musings to my blog I've now got no way of seeing them all back in one place. I can't express myself properly using these really cool tools - I still want to use different tools - flickr is better for showing off photos than trying to use myspace or something that purports to do everything.

So if I have a HubTag like (TobysLastHolidayIn2006) I can now just search Google and find all my stuff from whichever Web 2.0 tool I used.

Now HubTag really is for anyone who uses the Web2.0 tools out there.

Cool.

Click to watch us explain this in a video:

-Tobs

HubTag now supports microformats

HubTag now supports the rel-tag standard of microformats in all tag links. This includes links sent to users via the Mail Me button or displayed on the HubTag site. The format supported is for all relevant links to include ...rel="tag".. as detailed on the microformat wiki here: http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag.

I also added an entry on the micro-format wiki in the appropriate place to link back to HubTag.com.

Up the semantic web!

-tobs

One great HubTag SXSW2007

Sometimes the HubTag can create itself, as in the example of sxsw2007. Here the organisers of South by SouthWest festival, the name itself being a bit of a mouthful, have abbreviated to SXSW.

With this in mind, all the attendees easily worked out the HubTag for this year's event. SXSW2007.

Simple, for SXSW there was no need to use our tool, as they'd done the hard work already by getting everyone to use the SXSW tag.

If you search of SXSQW on technorati: sxsw2007: See what people are saying right now on Technorati you get a massiv 645 blog posts, over 17,000 photos, some audio tracks and videos.

Now that's what we call one great HubTag.

-Tobs

Tagging dilemmas - StPatricksDay or St PaddysDay

Hi Everyone - I hope you all had a good weekend and for those of you with Irish eyes, i trust you all enjoyed a vibrant StPatricksDay wherever you were.... or was it StPaddysDay or stpatricksdayparade2007 or StPatricksDay07 or StPatricksDay2007.

We've already found at least 5 different variations of tags used to mark St Patricks Day celebrations.

Another good reason why you should use a HubTag to make sure you have selected a unique tag name, don't let people guess your tag.. HubTag it and make sure your people know your HubTag.

all the best -

Jonty
www.hubtag.com
connecting people in a word

New web service HubTag.com makes tagging a whole lot easier

PRESS RELEASE

HubTag.com makes it easy for everyone to find photos, videos and blog posts after an event.

Hubtag.com goes live on the web today 19 March 2007.

This free web tool lets visitors create unique “HubTags” – words that are currently unknown across the whole internet – to use as tags when running an event like a concert, conference or wedding.

It works when all participants at the event upload their photos to a sharing site like Flickr, or videos to YouTube, or write about the event in their Blog. Each time they do so they “tag” (or label) each item with the unique HubTag. Then anyone who went to the event can then use Google to find any photos, videos or blog entries related to that event, simply by searching on the HubTag. For a bride after a wedding it would mean she can pick her best photos from those taken by all the guests not just those from the official photographer.

A great example of HubTags in action is the HubTag: “StPatricksDay2007” – which up until last fortnight was a new word that Google had never heard of. After the day, hundreds of revellers posted their photos to Flickr, “tagging” each snap with the “StPatricksDay2007” HubTag. Now searching Google or Flickr brings back all these photos and blog entries no matter what web site the participants used to upload them.

The HubTag.com online tool itself uses the Google Search AJAX API to do an instant check as-you-type to see whether the HubTag you want to use is unique or not or Google. Then once you have a unique HubTag it will make a nice poster for you to print out or will email it to you so you can forward it to your friends coming to your event. And that’s all it does – simple, effective and free.

For further details on the HubTag tool and team contact Tobs or Jonty on team@hubtag.com / +44 207 622 8969

Visit http://www.hubtag.com/ to try the tool.

Follow our story: http://hubtag.blogspot.com/

HubTag.com, 11 DRCA Business Centre, Battersea, London SW11 5HD

photo: courtesy istockphoto.com

ENDS

HubTag at Social Media Club London

Hubtag attended a cool evening on the power of sound branding at social media club london last night.

Presented by Rhonna and Michael from Sound Strategies (pictured on from right with Lloyd the organiser) who will clearly be the leaders in this field before too long.

There was a general hubbub calling for a social media approach to sound and after some desktop digging here it is:

www.splicemusic.com - mix open source samples and put your own tracks together. You can even listen to my own humble offering: Vital Alive by tobs!

The hubtag for the event was SMCLondonMarch07 (I think we got to this in the end!) So click it to search on technorati to find what other people are saying and posting.

I hope we have a podcast of the singing. Perhaps something to upload to splice music.....

Cheers

Tobs

www.Hubtag.com

Connecting people in a word

HubTag your event to connect people in a word

Our latest web site lets you create a unique HubTag so that everyone at an event can find each other’s photos, videos and blog posts afterwards.

Imagine a bride at a wedding who creates a HubTag called: “JohnAndMaryWeddingWimbledon07”. She gives out the HubTag to all the guests who tag their photos and videos from the day with it when they upload them to Flickr or YouTube. Then, while she is on honeymoon, she can use Google to find all the photos from the wedding by searching on that HubTag. She can pick her best photos from everyone’s, not just those that the professional photographer took.

Cool stuff and even better it’s completely free – it harnesses the power of web 2.0 tools that are already out there.

Visit the site: http://www.hubtag.com

Example HubTags

Here are some example HubTags we've found on the web today:

CalgaryFlickrMeetMarch07
UtataThursdayWalk47
LosAngelesMarathon
FOWALondon07
Project365Kids

Check any of the above by pasting into the jump box on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/

As we find more HubTags we'll post them here so you can get the idea - if you've got examples of multi-media HubTags that work on Technorati please let us know or add it as comment here.

Our first HubTag

Ok our first hubtag is TobsAndJontyHaveAMeeting. By publishing it in this post here first we claim this HubTag on the internet!

Cool.

Tobs and Jonty

Introducing Hubtags

Welcome to the world of HubTags. This will make sharing stuff via the web a little easier for everyone.

So what is it? Well it's pretty simple really - when people post blog entries, photos or videos online there is now a place to add a descriptive "tag" (also known as a label) . If everyone who goes to an event uses the same unique tag when publishing then everyone else can find each others stuff.

We first saw this in action at the fantastic Future of Web Apps Conference when everyone used FowaLondon07 to tag their blog and photo entries.

But we thought, wouldn't it be great if anyone, not just us techies, could have their own tag that they knew was unique across the web. Then when their friends post stuff anywhere in the world with that tag they could use Google to search for it.

So, to make things easier for everyone, we've given these types of tags a name, I hope everyone doesn't mind. We christened them "HubTags". Because, instead of a web page at the centre of an information hub with lots of links (spokes) out to the content on the edge, you use a HubTag instead. Each person simply creates the information in their own preferred web application as usual but tags it with the same HubTag name. The HubTag doesn't exist anywhere except as a tag in people's content. Weird but really cool.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7288580@N05/419091793/

So, if you are about to host a party, run a conference, get married then you need to use a HubTag....simply go to www.HubTag.com - create an easy to remember HubTag (our free web service uses Google Search to check that no-one else is currently using that same HubTag) - publicise it among your friends at the event - then two or three days after the event you can start searching for the HubTag on Google and anything they have uploaded will come back to you.

If you think this is a good idea then please give HubTag the thumbs up and explain it to your blog readers.

Cheers

Tobs and Jonty