context

At work this week we let another website escape from the zoo. Ruby Baboon is another take on the user-driven context engine concept: a metasite that pulls together lots of interesting stuff around a topic, all nominated and graded and ranked by users. It uses individual item nominations and RSS feed nominations from users, and pulls in related images and videos from Flickr and YouTube.

At Morris DigitalWorks, where I do have a day job, we have another project in the hopper that we'll unveil next week.

Publishers create websites. But there's another approach, one that grasps the basic truth that the Web is already full of great content. That approach leads to metasites, and there are some great examples: Slashdot, Newsvine, About.com, Topix.net, Digg, and Beta.netscape.com.