How to Automagically Publish and Share Your Attention with BlueOrganizer and SmartLink Feeds

It is very cool when bits and pieces of technologies can be combined together to do something that was not quite possible before.

In this post we will mix BlueOrganizer with viral SmartLink Feeds and throw in a bit of RSS blending to show you how you can automagically share your favorite books, music, movies, wine, stocks, restaurants, etc. with your friends.

(A side note, in geek speak, what you will be sharing is called structured attention. Unlike clickstream, which is everything you visit, the structured attention is only things like books, music, movies, wine, stocks, restaurants, etc. So do not worry about bank accounts or some sites you are not too proud off - none of it will be shared).

Step 1. Setup the feed

Click the Create SmartLink Feed from the SmartMenu and the select the style - a list or a badge. Then pick what you want to share, say books, and get the script:

Put this on your blog sidebar and you will get something like this:

Step 2. Turn the Auto BlueMark on

So now any time when you save new book, it will automatically appear in that feed. This is cool, but it gets way better. If you are busy or lazy (or both) you will love this next move. The thing is that you do not need to explicitly bookmark anything, you can just use Auto BlueMark feature to get BlueOrganizer to do this for you.

(A side note, in geek speak, this is called implicit attention, so if anyone asks, you can drop this term on them and they will quickly go away).

Click BlueOrganizer Options and select the Auto BlueMark tab. The top checkbox is what you need to turn on. The second settings controls when the Auto BlueMark would be created. If you set it to 5 (my choice), then if you visit a book (a movie, a music album, a wine, a stock, etc.) five times BlueOrganizer would store it for you. Automatically. Without you even needing to do a thing. And, of course, it would appear in your feed. Finally change the Save Auto BlueMark as to be public instead of private.

Note also, that you can actually publish a feed that consists purely of your Auto BlueMarks, to do that, in step 1 you need to also select the Auto BlueMarked filter in addition to selecting the category. I figured I’d mention this just in case if people paying attention to this sort of details.

So you got yourself a nice attention widget that you set up once and then it just works as you browse the web. It is sitting on your blog and your friends can look at it. And if they decide to look at all the things that got stored they can do it simply by hitting All button on the SmartLink Feed.

Step 3. Have your friends Grab it

Now we will kick this up a notch. What if your friends want to see what you are paying attention too? They can use the Grab button to copy this feed and put it on their blog or start page. Now as your pay attention to something they will see it right away. And this is different from just RSS feeds (although SmartLink feeds run on top of regular RSS feeds). It is different because the SmartLinks give your friends instant access to the shortcuts for each book.

Step 4. Blend your friends attention!

You new that this was coming. The next step is to take feeds from all your book friends and blend these feeds into a single feed. You can use several services to do it. Below is a picture of Feedblendr - a cool service that does just that.

No matter how many feeds you blend you get back a single feed. Now awaken the hacker inside you. Look at the script that is generated when you click the Grab button. There is a feedUrl parameter there. Okay, this is not exactly the rocket science, but the thrill in the end is guaranteed! Take the blended feed and put it in.

And what you now got is the widget that shows you what your friends are paying attention. So now, you can enjoy the power of SmartLinks and discover the books that your friends are paying attention to. With a bit of hacking. Automagically.