Installing the script

xFolk-veg-o-matic requires firefox 1.07 with greasemonkey 0.5.3 installed. The script has been tested with various firefox 1.5 and greasemonkey 0.6.x betas and sometimes works with them. The script will work with firefox 1.5 final and greasemonkey 0.6.x final when those are released.

A version of xFolk veg-o-matic that works on my reblog test install at http://thecommunityengine.com/veg-o-matic may be obtained as follows:

• Load the script in your browser by going to this link.
• Once the script is loaded, add it to greasemonkey by going to Install this User Script ... under the Tools menu and then clicking OK at all of the prompts.

You can repurpose the script to publish to your own Reblog 2.0 instance (once that is available) by modifying the final line in the following snippet of code:

// You must set the following variable to your instance of reblog
// The format is http://your-domain/reblog-path/
// The variable currently defaults to Bud Gibson's example installation.
var reblogHome = 'http://thecommunityengine.com/veg-o-matic/';

Using the script

With the script installed, you can go to any site that uses xFolk and republish the tagged links to your information stream. The following use case illustrates how the script works and the potential value proposition.

The BIT320 Remix site remixes student blog posts in a class at University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. The links to each blog post are formatted in xFolk, meaning that the link, the post title, an excerpt of the post, and the tags the author applied to the post are available for republishing using xFolk-veg-o-matic. In essence, this makes quoting and commenting on the article much easier. Here's how the process might work.

With the greasemonkey script installed, the reader goes to the BIT320 Remix site, and the browser displays the following:

By clicking on the little “chiclet” next to the title, the user can republish the tagged link in their reblog instance. If the user answers OK to the alert asking if she wants to view the entry, she will see this screen:

In addition to viewing the entry from this screen, the user may edit the information the original author specified for the entry as illustrated here:

Finally, the user may add his or her own tags as a sort of meta-comment using this screen:

So, what's the value proposition? Can't all of this be achieved by simply remixing RSS feeds? The simple answer is that the vast majority of people are surfing the web using HTML, not RSS, even the advanced ones. For these users to remix content, they need a solution that can work using HTML as a data structure. xFolk Veg-o-matic is one such solution.

Next Steps

It should be apparent that the current solution is really for advanced users. You have to have firefox, you have to install greasemonkey, you then have to install and possibly modify a script for greasemonkey. Everything has to be compatible versions. As such, we're really testing an idea and a use case for those in the know.

We'd like feedback.

We are also brainstorming more mainstream implementations, and you'll hear about those here.