Thoughts from Blogging meetup

Here are some thoughts we discussed at the meetup (from what I can remember)

1. Have a website showing the geographic based blogger distribution - so that you could see which cities are the most active.
1. You could also filter topics over the geography to see which interests are the most popular in a given area.
1. This has a number of benefits: people deciding where to live, work, or go to school. Politicians trying to see which topics are popular among their governed geography.
2. Add a rating system to blogging posts. This has many advantages.
1. If you were reading multiple blogs, it would allow you to filter for 'better quality' posts.
2. If you have a very well developed blog, when a new person comes to visit, they typically only read your most recent posts. However, those may not be an accurate representation of your blog, or they may just be 'crappy' posts. A rating system would allow a new reader to read your Top 5 posts.
3. You could build semantic data around this rating system. Just because Vinnie rates a post a 5 (5 pt scale) doesn't mean Brian would find it interesting. However, if Brian could filter for ratings from individuals that are similar to him (from other posts) you would get a better moderation system.
1. For instance, if Vinnie is into new cell phones, then he would prob rate a lot of posts talking about new cell phones highly. If Doug rates those posts highly as well, then Vinnie's moderation system will weigh Doug's ratings stronger then other individuals.
   
3. Google maps should allow you to search by doing a freeform drawing over Google Maps. In a place like nyc, it would be very beneficial to search in something like a 4 block radius. Another thought on that is if you were to drive from one location to another, you may want to draw a 'rectangular tunnel' between the two areas to find all the beer stores on the way. (Or GMaps could be smart enough to realize that when you chart your route.)
4. RSS and ATOM feeds are not intuitive at all. In a web world we left click on a link or a button and are brought to a new page, or have a new application open up, why must we fiddle with RSS and ATOM feeds? It is completely unintuitive to have to right click on a RSS link, copy the link to the clipboard, and paste it into your reader. You should click it like a normal page and if you have a rich client, then the reader pops up, if you have a web based client, they should make a trigger that loads a new tab with the option to add the new feed. (Yes this is very basic, but we think it hinders a lot of layman from using newreaders, it's just not 'natural.')
   

Josh did a great job of writing up our meetup.