Imagine spending the time to put together the beginnings of a helpful resource, and then let people share and distribute it across the web by inserting it into their sites. Everyone still comes back to a central place to made adds and edits (Listphile), but suddenly your list is portable and has a very wide potential reach. This will encourage collaboration, and get your list/atlas/database under more peoples’ noses. Check out how the Open Surf Atlas looks when embedded on my personal site at stevedebrun.com:

It’s a pretty simple affair: in the right margin of the main page for every list on Listphile, you will see an area that contains the embed code. It’s just like YouTube. Grab the code snippet, and paste it into your blog or website.

One big caveat: this will not work on blogs that are hosted on someone else’s server (i.e. listphile.wordpress.com, blogname.blogger.com, blogname.blogspot.com, etc.) This blog, because it’s hosted on the WordPress.com server, does not support the embedded code because the hosted wordpress.com blogs sanitize this kind of code. If you control your server, however, or have your own website, this should not be an issue.

This first release is pretty cool, however we hope to add lots of helpful controls that will allow you to change height, width, colors, font sizes and colors, layout, etc. For now, the embedded list will display as map, list or thumbnails depending on the default setting for that list. And if you feel like peeking under the hood, you can actually control a lot more by tinkering with the parameters in the embed code (height, width, rows, border). Enjoy, and as always, please send us feedback.

If you are like most human beings, you probably like words, and use them quite a bit each day. Wordie.org, a website created by my friend and cohort John McGrath, is a site made for logophiles everywhere. The site is super fast and fun to use, and it has a growing, vibrant community of smart folks who create lists of words, and do all sorts of other interesting things. In the words of Wordie:

“Wordie is for talking about language. Start by making lists of words: practical lists, words you love, words you hate, whatever. See who else has listed the same words, add citations and comments, and discuss. Try checking out a random word.”

Wordie is a lot of fun, it’s easy to use, and making a list of words is a snap. Hats off to you John.

The best thing about all of this if, of course, the people these blog posts brought to the site, and the amazing variety of lists that were promptly thrown into the mix. Now we regroup, fix bugs and work on a few top priority features (read: embeddable lists in your site).

For now, I want to highlight a list that is quickly proving to be a helpful resource. It’s the wushu instruction: north america atlas created by xiongnu_lohon. Xiongnu has even taken the additional step of announcing this resource to the wushu community in a forum on the MartialTalk website. This is so cool, and just the kind of use for Listphile that we envisioned when we cooked this thing up. Thanks for taking the time and effort, xiongnu lohon. Our hats off to you.

“…was originally a French term in wine and coffee used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon them. It can be very loosely translated as “a sense of place” which is embodied in certain qualities, and the sum of the effects that the local environment has had on the manufacture of the product.”

The concept of terroir is used more often to discuss wines and coffee, but oysters have terroir, too. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of oysters eaten worldwide are one of three species. Their uniqueness comes from their terroir. Local salinity, nutrients, temperature and trace minerals all contribute to an oyster’s flavor, firmness, size and shape. Some terms that are employed to describe an individual oysters taste and texture include “tannic”, “buttery”, “sweet”, “salty”, “firm”, and “briny.” And all of these stem from terroir. And there you have it.

Oh, and if you’re interested in oysters, check out this list-in-progress: Oyster Varieties on Listphile. Time to finish blogging and – yes – track down a fresh oyster or twelve.

(Image credit: Wikipedia)

A little while ago, I started thinking about the world around me — the world of nature, of human accomplishments, history, people, places, products, philosophy, geology, biology — from the point of view of Lists. Kinda simple, now that I actually write it down this way. I find that making lists are a really useful way for me to learn. And I thought to myself, “Why not make a website that enables people to make lists together?” Of course, the specifics have changed and gotten more complex (as they always do), but my hope is that people see the big vision here: Listphile can be used to share and collaborate around knowledge. The Open Surf Atlas on Listphile is the first baby step at creating something on the Listphile platform that a) has lasting value to people who use it, and b) is built by a community of users in an open way.

I guess I should say at this point that my definition of a list is a pretty broad one. As a matter of fact, some people might accuse me of cloaking my wolf (a database) in a sheep’s clothing (a list). To be honest, it doesn’t really matter to me, as long as people see the potential of Listphile. I call these things “lists” because I think it’s a non-intimidating way to capture peoples’ interest. The fact that it’s a flexible tool with an open data model blah blah blah can be discovered later, by those who care to dig deeper, who want to customize, who are listing stuff that needs more organizational shaping, granularity. But I digress.

Anyways, I realized that there’s a lot to be garnered, and many fascinating connections to be made, when we use lists to help us organize and understand information. And if we take the power of the internet, mix in the coolness of open APIs and mashup culture, dip into the power of the participatory web, and marry it with this list concept, we can have something that’s pretty cool and useful. That’s how Listphile was born.

My guiding principle in creating this site, this tool, has been my curiosity. I really enjoy using Listphile, as evidenced by my list-interest in surf spots, oysters, Frank Gehry, Yoda (and lots more) and I really hope that other people will be struck by the same curiosity, and the same desire to contribute, to make their mark, to learn, and to look at their reality, at least for a short time, within the framework of a list. </run on sentence>

Without further ado, we humbly offer up to you as the first version of our beta product. Please send us feedback or get in touch with us if you have something to say or you’d like to get to know us. Oh, and by the way, “us” is three guys working out of our respective garages and cafes

One of the things I have tried to communicate in the video demo is the potential of this application if you approach it with some imagination and a vision to share knowledge widely and freely. Did I do this well in the video? Are there other examples or ways that I can stir the imagination and inspire people to embrace Listphile and use it to its fullest?

Thanks for any and all thoughts, either here in the comments, or directly via email.

Thanks,

Steve