Culld.us Close to the Sun
Thanks to Brian Solis and Jess3 for including Culld.us in their Twitterverse diagram.
Cullect’s URL Shortening Mentioned in the PiPress
Hi Dare, My Name is Cullect.
Dare - you’re right. There’s lots of room for innovation in the feed reader space. For that innovation (and profit) to occur - previous assumptions and models need to be completely ignored. In fact, to build Cullect, I needed to stop using a feed reader all together.
Check out some of the things people have said about Cullect.
In Beta: Comment via Cullect
Last night, at Ignite Minneapolis, Tom Elko demo-ed a new feature of Cullect that we’ve dubbed ‘Comment via Cullect’.
‘Comment via Cullect’ is a re-working of the Item Stats widget that’s driving the URL shortener.
Here’s the recorded video from the event, Tom’s presentation is about 50 minutes in.
Thanks again Tom - I’m excited to have this out in the wild.
Send to…In Transit
The native ‘Send to…’ within the Cullect.com reading lists has been disabled while it’s completely re-worked.
If you want a sneak peak of where it’s going, check out Tom Elko’s presentation at Ignite Minneapolis on Wednesday April 22.
Down for Update 8pm CDT, March 18, 2009
I’ll be taking Cullect down for approximately 1 hour tonight while I push an update.
Shortened URL services - minnpo.st, grv.me, etc - will be impacted by this outage (more on this later).
The Insecurity of Short URLs
I just got an email from the awesome folks at Joyent alerting me that someone was using Culld.us to redirect to their phishing scam site.
I promptly blocked their IP, wiped the offending URLs from the system and reset the cache.
This experience brings to mind an after hours conversation I had with a couple U of MN network security guys about inherent security risks of short URL services.
Cullect currently recognizes 83 URL shortening services.
EIGHTY-THREE
I’m hard pressed to think of 83 providers of anything (outside of entertainment services). That’s a measure of demand if anything. Even more reason publishers should - as Dave Winer recommends - pull this capability under their own umbrella.
Read, Write, Repeat
- The principle of reader-is-also-publisher is the basis for Cullect.
- From what I’ve seen, it take 20 years to build a successful company. I think it’d be fantastic if Cullect could have 2 decades behind it.
Cullect is 3/4 Back
Under the assumption that databases are like kidneys - I’ve turned parts of Cullect back on.
URL shortening: ON
Short URL redirects: ON (as I mentioned, some urls from last week might be broken)
Reading Lists: ON
Feed Updating: OFF until the 2nd DB comes back online later today.
Back after the Massive Database Re-import
If you’ve been following along, my 2 databases got out of sync last week.
After looking for ways to re-sync them without doing a massive re-import, I’m biting the bullet - and re-importing everything into the most-out-of-sync database.
This means, in an effort to minimize missing anything else, I’ll be down for the night again.
(including url shortening/redirecting).
I’m expecting a day or two to confirm everything is as it should be, so once I’m back, please send in bug reports - either email or @cullect on Twitter - if something’s not as it should be (recommendations not showing up, short links not redirecting where they should, etc).
I know you will.
Cullect on Twitter- is removing Twitter feeds from Cullect.com/5 garrickvanburen (Garrick Van Buren)
- where have I been? working on the http://realtimeads.com network for @minnpost. Retweet plz. cullect (Cullect.com)
- @megfowler Actually, I use an RSS reader without an unread number, and it reinforces my superiority complex. @cullect mjkeliher (Mike Keliher)
- Culld.us URLs Recently Shared at Twitter
- @MegCanada I'll be playing the Vandals' song for the rest of the day http://culld.us/l25814803 garrickvanburen (Garrick Van Buren)
- Jason from the Village Pub just commented on the Pub's burgers & beer http://culld.us/l25813551 StAVillager (St Anthony Villager)
- "I'm no fool, but I'm no Einstein. I'm bothered by infinity" http://culld.us/l25775129 garrickvanburen (Garrick Van Buren)
- when I skateboarded, 'focussing' was fashionable http://culld.us/l25774075. I'm thiiiis close to doing the same with this MacBook Pro garrickvanburen (Garrick Van Buren)