PUBLIC MARKS from calang with tag utilitaires

OsmoseRSS is an RSS aggregator that leverages the power of social collaborative filtering through tagging. It is a project under development at the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning that allows people to import, store, share and manage RSS feeds in bulk or individually. These RSS feeds can come from blogs, bookmark sharing sites such as del.icio.us, photo sharing sites such as flickr, open educational resource sites, news sites, and any other RSS-producing source. In addition to its functionality as an aggregator, OsmoseRSS encourages social interaction to help users find others with similar interests. Users tag RSS feeds as they add them to OsmoseRSS. When the RSS feeds are pulled into OsmoseRSS, the system processes the incoming data for tags embedded in the data and includes those tags as part of the description of each entry. Just like del.icio.us and flickr, those tags are exposed to the entire community. Users can then find other resources that have been tagged with keywords that are of interest. In addition, the source of each feed is tracked so that users can find and connect with people with similar interests. This exposes users to content that is being added by other individuals and to the individuals who are producing data. This results in a relatively high likelihood of discovery of other data or people who are of interest. OsmoseRSS encourages the formation of groups where users with similar ideas or interests can gather to share open resources. Groups inside OsmoseRSS can share resources, collaboratively filter and rank resources, review one another's work, create a shared folksonomy, and discover new people and resources. Within a group a user may contribute RSS feeds filtered by tags or vote on resources provided by other users. In addition, if a resource is found that is critical for the group the group may create a static link that always remains. Examples, of this type of resource include a group FAQ or a link to a discussion forum. Any user of the system may create groups. Instead of discarding old data, OsmoseRSS retains the data provided by RSS feeds. The advantage of this strategy is that all data from all RSS feeds is available to make recommendations and for users to search. This approach ensures that once a resource is tagged users will have access to it in the future.