Not that I don't love lists like this, but we've all long wanted more ways to sort through and view the river of comments on the front page. So I just added a page listing the most active threads of the past 24 hours, as dreamed up by Prolagus a few weeks ago.

They're listed in order of the number of comments on the item (words, lists, and profiles), and show excerpts of the three most recent comments.

This needs some work--I'd like to add different ways to sort, make it look nicer, and include comments on tags, which I forgot. But better half baked than nothing, and this way you guys can tell me where it should go.

Though before I revisit this, I'll add a most commented on list to the front page, which is a fantastic idea (thanks pterodactyl!).

I just added this same post on comments, in case people would rather discuss refinements to this in situ.

Labels: comments, features, prolagus, pterodactyl

Per the request of Skipvia and others, you can now tag all words in a list in one fell swoop. Click on the 'add tags' link on any list page, on the left below the list name.

This tags every word in the list, not the list itself.

If you want to tag every word in a list except for a few, you can bulk-tag the list, then go in to the individual words and remove the tag where not appropriate. So you can tag 498 of the words in a 500 word list in 3 steps, rather than 498.

This is the heart of Wordie: helping you waste time more efficiently.

Labels: features, Tags

There is now an 'image search' link under each word, which when clicked performs a Yahoo! image search and displays the results inline. On your profile you can set Wordie to do this automatically, obviating the need for the click.

Or if you prefer to kick it old school, you can turn it off entirely. Click on 'you', then 'edit personal preferences', and you'll see radio buttons that let you set image search to automatic, on demand, or not there at all.

One of Wordie's charms, I'm told, is the emphasis on text über alles, so I made this optional and tried to keep it subtle. But it's worth playing with, even if you are a textist. Yahoo! image search can be almost WeirdNetian in what it comes up with for more abstract terms, and for quotidian words it's an excellent image browser. Especially, if I may say, when married to Wordie.

Labels: features, images, search, weirdnet, Yahoo

A small update: lists and comments on words now have more and better sorting options. Comments, previously unsortable, can now be viewed oldest to most recent, or vice versa. Lists had previously been sortable alphabetically, or chronologically by order added. That's still the case, but now both those sorts can also be reversed.

For both lists and word comments, your last choice is remembered on subsequent words and lists.

Labels: features, sorting

If you'd like random words to float around your screen when you're not using your computer, it's easy to set up Wordie's recent words feed as a screensaver.

If you're using a Mac, open System Preferences and in the "Desktop & Screen Saver" section select "Screen Saver," then choose "RSS Visualizer" (this is the effect Apple stores usually have going at their "Genius" bars). Under "options" enter http://feeds.feedburner.com/WordieLatestWords. When the screen saver fires up, you'll see the latest nonsense from Wordie floating dreamily across the screen.

If you're using Windows, NewsGator offers a screensaver add-on for their feed reader, and Lifehacker has a post outlining a similar download.

Labels: Apple, features, feeds, lifehacker, newsgator

Wordie has displayed a definition for most words for the past few months, but it had been displaying only the most common one, in order to keep the focus on the fun stuff: citations and comments added by members.

You can now see all the definitions available for a word, in case you want to save a trip to a proper dictionary or just want to see what other strange tricks WeirdNet has up its sleeve. I tried to keep it subtle, so you still see only the top-ranked one, but now with a "more" link just below it. Click and the rest appear.

I decided to leave out example sentences, thinking it might get in the way of people providing their own, but I'm happy to revisit that if people would like. Let me know.

Labels: features, weirdnet, wordnet

Wordie now has a Facebook-style mini-feed of your recent activity, like adding words or lists, making comments, moving words, and adding tags. If you go to a profile, you'll see a link to this in the upper-right, available as either a web page or a feed.

By default this is turned on and visible to everyone. You can turn yours off by clicking the 'edit personal preferences' link on your profile. Activity is tracked (if you keep it turned on) from tonight forward; previous activity won't be available.

This is a first step towards enabling some sort of watchlist feature, so you can more easily keep track of what friends and people whose words you like are up to--think Flickr contacts. Since it's available as a feed, I'm hoping people will find their own good uses for it, as they've done with other Wordie feeds.

While I was mucking about on the server I also upgraded a bunch of other stuff (for the curious, I moved the whole shooting match to Rails 2.0), and probably broke something, or many things. As always, please let me know if I did, or if you have suggestions.

Labels: facebook, features, feeds, mini-feeds

Wordie now lets you create collaborative lists. Families, create a shared list for the Airing of Grievances! Friends, list your private slang. Classes, build vocabulary lists, or list and discuss words from a book you're reading. Create a collaborative dictionary for your profession or a project. Lots of uses here.

To start, create or edit a list. You'll see two new fields: a radio button which lets you choose whether it's an individual or group list, and a field where you can invite others, by Wordie name or email. People you list will be sent an invitation to contribute (and join, if they weren't already a member). Contributors see the same 'add word' box as the owner of the list, and the list shows who contributed what.

While I was messing with lists I took the opportunity to clean things up a bit. Everybody's list of lists now has its own page, instead of appearing as a heap of illegible text, as had been the case.

As per usual, I'm sure I broke tons of shit when launching this, so let me know if anything is amiss, or if you have any suggestions.

Labels: features, festivus, lists

The search box now automatically fetches the first 10 words that match what you've entered, and updates the list as you type.

I'm finding this more useful than I expected it to be, personally. I've been using it as a sort of spell-checker. A whoopee-cushion, hand-buzzer sort of spell checker: it shows you how people have spelled things in Wordie, not how they're actually spelled--and misspellings in Wordie are legion. But it's interesting to see even the mistakes.

This suggests a slew of possible future features: actual spellcheck, improved search (comments search, in particular), integration with a proper dictionary. Things to looks forward to, someday.

Labels: ajax, autocomplete, features

Wordie was originally conceived as a joke: all tags, no content*. Well, the punchline has finally arrived. This weekend I added tagging**.

Tagging is a way to categorize things by adding descriptive metadata to them in the form of, well... words. On Wordie this may seem like gilding the lily, but tagging has been repeatedly requested since the site launched, and for good reason. Among other things, tags allow:

• Glossaries and topical dictionaries. Want to create a glossary of beer-related terms? Use tags: http://wordie.org/tags/beer
  
  
• Collaborative lists. Want to get a bunch of your pirate friends together and create the ultimate list of pirate words? Have everyone add a 'pirate' tag to their piratish words, and bob's your uncle: http://wordie.org/tags/pirate
  
  
• Lists for an event or organization. Create lists specific to a class or conference by having participants use a custom tag like MIT6001 or DefCon15.
  
  
• Related Words. Want to show all synonyms and antonyms of a word? Use tags.
  

Tagging is useful right off the bat. And once a critical mass of tags has been entered it gets more useful still, as it becomes possible to extract interesting information based on site-wide tagging patterns. For starters, at the bottom of each page there's a link to a site-wide tag cloud, showing the last 500 tags entered. Like the comments page, it's a good view into what's current and another way to watch Wordie happen.

It's also a good opportunity for me to pimp another site of mine, TagsAhoy.com, which lets you search your personal tags across variety of services. It now supports Wordie. Yes, I'm mildly obsessed with tagging.

Since this launched quietly a few days ago, over 1,000 tags have been added, and as the pace picks up and more viewing and sorting options become available it'll only get more interesting***. Thanks to everyone who gave feedback as this was developed, and to everyone who has added or plans to add tags to their words. Fun for you, fun for the whole family.

* It's a joke no longer; it's now the best site on the Internet, ever.
** If you've been on del.icio.us since 2004, if you think tagging is passé, well, it's as useful as ever, so shut up! I have yet to see a better ad-hoc organizational technique, and I still believe. Back to the future!
*** Check out Tim's great blog post on when tags work and when they don't. Since many of the benefits of tagging on Wordie accrue to the person doing it, I'm hoping we fall into the "when they do" column.

Labels: features, Tags

You can now be notified by email, if you choose, when someone comments on your profile or one of your word lists. If you go to your profile and click on the 'edit contact options' link, you can turn this feature on or off.

This is the default behavior for new wordies, but if you joined before this Saturday you'll have to go in and turn notifications on, if you want 'em--it seemed kind of spamish to turn them on retroactively.

Suggestions for ways to improve this, for other kinds of notifications, or other ways to make it easier to follow Wordie are appreciated.

Labels: email, features

I just added Facebook as an "also on" service, so you can connect your Facebook profile to your Wordie profile. I registered for Facebook a while ago and ignored it until it exploded recently, but I quickly got addicted once I realized that practically everyone I've met in the last five years is on there. I was late to this party, but it's amazing to see that it actually sort of lives up to the hype. Unlike, say, MySpace, which I loathe, or LinkedIn, the suburban corporate office park of social networks. Or even Twitter, which is rad, but even more pointless than Wordie. Which is part of the appeal of both, I suppose.

It brings up a question, though. I plan on building a Wordie Facebook app in the coming weeks. I could just port over the existing blog widgets, and may, as a sort of warmup. But an app that takes better advantage of the platform might be more fun. I have some ideas percolating, but would love to hear suggestions. I'm thinking of something that would tie into both the friend connections on Facebook, and the word connections on Wordie, and that was simple and fun to boot, is the direction we should look in. If anyone has any brilliant ideas, please post them in the comments.

Labels: facebook, features, social networks

As promised, added a new widget tonight: Random Wordie Words. This joins the existing widget, which shows the most recent words you added to Wordie. The new one is pretty self-explanatory: it displays random words from Wordie on your blog or web site. You can configure how many.

Labels: features, widgets

Just added two new feeds: one displaying five random words, and one showing the last 20 comments made on Wordie. The feeds are available in the new "feeds & widgets" section (linked at the bottom of each page), to which I'll soon be adding a "random words" widget, as well.

I'm planning on devoting more time to Wordie in the next few weeks, so please let me know if you'd like any changes to the feeds and widgets, or if there are any other features you'd like to see.

Labels: features, feeds

I just added a bespoke caching mechanism to the front page, which makes it a good deal faster, and lets us gimp along on low-end hosting a bit longer. For those who care, it uses Ruby's marshalling capabilities to store objects in the database, so the page is rendered each time, but the mongo db queries that were gumming up the page aren't.

One small downside is, the cache is refreshed every two minutes, so if you add a word or a comment, you might have to pause a moment before you see it show up on the front page.

Labels: caching, features