Outbrain and Google Chatback

Two new widgets have been added to the blog.
The first is the “Google Talk chatback badge” which sits under my pixilated picture and lets readers and random wanderers chat with me if I happen to be online.

The second is just awesome. It’s the Outbrain widget, which I discovered today, and allows readers to rate each of my posts -- Netflix style.

I love this second widget for a number of reasons. Sometimes it’s just cumbersome to write a full comment. Rating something from one to five simplifies the whole process so much. One click and you are done with it. Furthermore, rating is fun! No? I can also see this being helpful to me as I can gauge what users are more interested in, etc. I’m not necessarily saying I would change what I write about; after all, this is a blog about me. Still, its constructive criticism and I’m interested in getting it.

The next step – and we are probably not far from it – is for the data that Outbrain generates to be streamed into one of those “user content aggregators,” like Friendfeed, to begin parsing individual posts instead of whole blogs. Like Google Reader’s Shared Items taken to the next level.