Let me begin this by saying, "Wow."
After being introduced to Trailfire by fellow Performancing member, brettbum, I installed the gizmo and followed some trails he sent me in a comment to one of my posts.
And I can safely say that this, then, is the future of blogging.
I'm not saying it will completely supplant it -- particularly not for professional- and industry-based blogs -- but Trailfire and similar software products (imitators are only moments away -- probably coding their sites as I type, in fact!) are going to overtake social bookmarking in a windstorm (firestorm seemed too easy) and, about the same time, you're going to see more and more blog entries which are basically nothing more than a quick introduction to a trail.
Years and years ago, we used to do this in "hardcopy" form (for lack of a better term): we would choose a topic or whatever and collect the links as we went, then include them in e-mails and trade them with our friends or create entire pages of them. For instance, if I researched the Civil War, my bookmarks list would start at History.com, then include the link I hit after that, then any links off that page, and each time I came back to History.com, it would be re-entered with a new name (History2, History3, etc [to avoid the "You already have a bookmark by that name" error]).
And a long time back, there was another product which was basically the exact same thing, though I don't think it collected a trail. It was sticky-notes or something like that... footprints, something. It worked basically the same way, but IIRC, was a stand-alone program that ran as a TSR in the Taskbar while you surfed about. Each user had to have it running to see your messages and it not only didn't work every well, I think I was the only one who bothered to use it.
This, however, is a great thing. You can basically blog about the page, on the page, then guide readers to the next page of content and continue your commentary there. It's the logical extension of hyperlinking!
Since I can't save this as a draft and am still learning how to use it, I will post this and come back to edit it later, including a Trail to my last post, re: dirty hippies.
I tried it, seems far to
I tried it, seems far to much like hard work to me...
though it's a fun idea for sure.
It's Crippling My Poor Fox
Now when I open Firefox, it takes almost a full half-minute to load. I think this is Trailfire connecting. I am going to try and disable it and play around, but I did make a trail last night and that was really cool.
You may be right -- it may be too much trouble. But for bloggers like me, who deep-link a lot, as well as people who don't really blog, I think it has great potential.
Trailfire responsiveness
I mentioned that I had spoke n with a member of the trailfire tema. They like performancing, are very responsive to feedback. I hadn't experienced any install issues nor slowness with firefox (1.5.0.6)
As Manodogs points out, I think this could reduce the number of blogs pushed out by the extra casual blogger. That might help refine the blogosphere a bit as someone that just wants to write a sentence or paragraph or something creates a trail and shares or doesn't share. It does grow on you a bit.
Not to Mention
That once this gets a little bigger, people will start social bookmarking their trails, if they haven't started doing so already.
Yeah, I think that's inevitable too
I think once the trailfire team develops this a little more, that will be a big hit.
If they get screenshots to go through a feed, that might speed things along as well.
There's something about this trail thing (with the thumbnails) that looks a lot like the new Vista tool that lets you scroll through open documents. When you hover over a slightly transparent thumbnail of a doc it blows up so you can see it better. (I'm not a Mac guy-think this already exists there. :)
War and Peace
This is two views of human nature .I think no one is more progressive alone .We need to be informative in case if war exceds .Overall peace with progress gives the way .
Unfortunately Humans are Stubborn and Lazy
I agree unfortunately, human beings are often stubborn and lazy. They don't always like to change their minds and less confronted with something that breaks the status quo. War and violence is unfortunate status quo breaker.
Too many people have a hard time progressing during peace, the same status quo and other personal hangups often lead them down the wrong path, or don't lead them down a path at all.
I have hope that will build the transcend this fact of life someday, however, I am an idealist so, you have to take it with a grain of salt. . . . :)
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