I’ve been improving Watchification and Speechification tonight.
Part of the enjoyment of both sites is the idea that we’re not just curating our favourite stuff, we’re weaving links between it, with those links becoming increasingly fun to explore. Tonight’s hack was a small improvement in order to pull in a few things that the web knows about every tag, but also every presenter, director, editor, and in fact any search term. Here’s what happens when you search Speechification for shows in which Stephen Fry is the presenter.
It works for normal tags too, and they’re handled in the same way. Ever wondered what Speechification has on Malcolm X? or Chris Watson?
I took exactly the same approach at Watchification, though had a bit more room to play with in the layout.
Other examples: ‘politics’, ‘music’, and shows in which Simon Amstell is the presenter.
As well as the obvious embed of (Creative Commons licensed) photos from Flickr, I used Monitter for the realtime Twitter monitoring, and a delicious.com feed of relevant bookmarks.
I have lots more ideas for other things to usefully enhance the page too. Watch this spaces. Um. These spaces.
Update: at the suggestion of Dan Hil, I’ve moved the widgety stuff to the bottom of the page.
Some ideas before I fall asleep: