Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Clipmarks - skim the best from blogs

You might not think we need an easier way to access information these days -- what with cool RSS feed readers like Pageflakes -- but how often do you really "read the feeds?" If it's not as often as you'd like, join the club (and congratulations on "having a life!").

ClipmarksWelcome to Clipmarks. Besides having a slick Web 2.0 interface, Clipmarks is like a combination of Deli.cio.us and Digg. In less Web 2 teminology, Clipmarks allows users to grab snippets clipped from the news or blogs and catalog them like a social bookmarking site. Like Digg, you can "Pop" others' clipmarks to raise them to reach more peoples' attention.

If you want to quickly explore the tool, here are two suggestions
  1. Clip on Today's Top Clips to see what's popping to the top. Because this is a "real" Web site, there's no guarantee that the clips will be appropriate.
  2. Use the Search field to access quick takes on subjects like "Climate Change," nanotech," or "outsourcing." You could go one step farther and ask students to skim results like these and formulate an opinion (or blog post) on the subject. Because a range of opinions and sources appear, synthesis is required over copy and paste.
If you want to get started adding your own clipped sections of the Web to Clipmarks, download the Firefox (or Explorer) extension.

Please let us know what you think.
Thanks,
Tom