Cullect.com Maintenance Jan 26th 8pm CT
I’ll be taking Cullect (Culld.us, etc) down tonight beginning at 8pm CT to for maintenance and improved performance 1. Feeds will also not be updated during that time.
I’ll be updating this post with major milestones in the process.
Update 11:10PM – I stated the process at 9:30. The two database are configured to replicate and the initial import of data is flowing into the secondary. Yet to come – testing and turning everything back on.
Update 12:50PM – The initial data import is flowing, looks like it’ll take most of the night. I’ll be back in the morning to Cullect back on. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Update 7:45AM – I just turned Cullect back on. Parsing will resume shortly.
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1. If you’re interested in the geeky specifics, I’m replicating the database.
Garrick Talks About Building Cullect – UPA-MN, Feb 12 ‘09 6-8pm @ Open Book
I’ll be talking about how and why I built Cullect.com at the Feburary 12th UPA-MN event.
The agenda:
- Developing a product you will use and the way you will use it.
Designing the API as the primary user interface. - A tour of some of the innovative UI concepts behind Cullect.
- An activity in which you will be able to play the role of an information curator.
If you’re a fan or customer of Cullect, I hope you’ll be join us. It’ll be more fun if I’m not the only one talking about it.
If you’re not sure what Cullect does, come by as well, as I’d like to get better at articulating it.
$10 members, $30 non-members (only cash and check are able to be accepted at the door)
RSVP: By 5:00 p.m. on Monday, February 9, 2009, to rsvp@upamn.org
Cullect Now Accepting Pings
Sometime just past New Year’s Day, Cullect surpassed 10,000 feeds. Even at averaging 1 second / feed, it’ll take nearly 3 hours to get through all of them. Often times, much longer.
I’m excited to announce Cullect is now accepting pings. This means – you can let Cullect know when your feed has updated, rather than waiting for it to get around to you.
Cullect’s Ping URL
If you’re running Wordpress – like I am – simply paste Cullect’s Ping URL into your Update Services list in
Settings > Writing.
Similar settings exist in TypePad and other platforms.
If you need a hand figuring out how your platform can ping Cullect, just drop me a line.
Update – yes, pinging is also baked-in to the feed stats widget.
Garrick on Cullect and Enterprise RSS
Long time podcast friend Kris Smith and I dig into RSS in the Enterprise over at BlogTalkRadio.
Yes, we cover Cullect, relevance vs. timeliness, and trusted curators.
Listen to Kris Smith and Garrick Van Buren on Enterprise RSS [60 min]
13 Jan 2009 – Down for Update
I’m taking Cullect.com and Culld.us down for a moment as I push an update live.
Update: Pushing the code live went more smoothly than I expected. There are a few hiccups I’m sorting out now – primarily with the feed stats widget and the caches within some of the larger Reading Lists.
Update 2: Still working on bringing back the feed stats widget and Reading Lists. I’ll keep the updates coming.
Update 3: Most everything is back to normal now. A few of the extremely large Reading Lists are still a little wonky, but everything else is now working as expected. Yeah. Bedtime.
Lee Odden Gives Culld.Us a +1 Mention
Thanks Lee.
Four differentiating features of Culld.us
- Available for your own domain (like http://minnpo.st & http://grv.me) in just 2 steps)
- Built-in Twitter client, supporting multiple Twitter accounts
- Uses 301 redirects
- Easily embed-able into your own blog/website (look for ’short link’ at the bottom of this post).
“There is Absolutely Nothing Good About the Page.”
As I mentioned, I asked Ed Kohler’s Mechanical Turk project – 3rdPartyFeedback.com (feedback from 10 people for $25) – about Cullect.
Here’s what they said.
- What Does This Website Do?
- This helps people find and share the relevant, important stories from our news and
blog feeds. - This website helps you find and share relevant and important stories from news and
blog feeds. Cullector is a supporter, share-er, writer, and aggregator. - Find and share important stories from news and blogs feeds.
- It appears that the website functions as a news aggregator for news websites and
blog sites. - Looks like a site to share your favorite sites, blogs and feeds. I image it’s like:
“Digg, De.lic.ious, or Cullect this link”. - It helps you find news and blogs on specific subject matter that is currently in the
news or being written about. It seems to be (due to the amount of times the state
is highlighted) primarily regarding Minnesota related news. - The website helps you find and share the relevant, important stories from your news
and blog feeds. - This appears to be an application called, “Cullect” which allows users to share
relevant news and stories from blog feeds. - The website helps you sort through blogs and feeds that you subscribe to, to find
those articles you would want to read. - Actually, not a clue. After going deeper into the site it seems to be a collection of
personal stories that individuals submit.
- Best Current Feature
- I don’t consider anything best current feature for this website.
- The best feature on this site is the simplicity of finding what you are looking for.
They are broken down by categories and even have a currently added location. - The Most Recommended is a good place to start. I would Suggest the reading of
Garrick Van Buren’s Econ Blogs. - The tag cloud with blue keywords for easy clicking.
- I like the fact that the website design is spare and not flash heavy.
- The tag cloud of terms. I can scan that big list and read other people’s links to
topics of interest to me. - That the most popular items are clearly highlighted in blue and therefore easy to
spot and click on. - As of now, there is absolutely nothing good about the page. It needs to be greatly
improved. - The ability to curate feeds with other people is a very exciting feature that is
practical and fun.The ability to customize reading lists into levels of importance is
interesting. - Site filters through clutter for you so you can get the info you want faster.
- 1-Thing to Improve
- This website would be better with a new design. The homepage is a little sloppy and
when I first clicked the link it doesn’t seem professional very much. Otherwise, it is
a great concept. - Need more coloring and images. Need a navigation for collecting the same topics.
- The site is actually too simple and too similar to a paper page. Making use of the
empty white space on the left of the screen for links would aid navigation. Also, you
need to break up the text somewhat following “Named Reading Lists.” The
hyperlinks stand out well, but they are embedded in a wall of text that is three
pages long. - Add some design. The all css texty stuff is very bland looking. Also I was confused
by a few headlines:
“You probably already have an account.” Huh? Why might I probably have an
account if this is the first time I’ve been here?
“Find a Cullect Reading List” I expected this to be a link that would take me to a list
of users with lists or even a list of lists. It doesn’t link or do anything. - It is plain and boring. It is a complete cluster of words and therefore hard to read.
Your mind just wants to skim over everything. Also the font at the beginning of the
page is huge and not needed. I am not saying that it needs to be splashy and have
moving graphics, but right now it looks like it was put together in 5 minutes with no
care. - Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!
- I am not sure about the ‘membership’ and not confident that passing along 30-35%
of a person’s membership to a blogger, podcaster of your choice. This is
interesting, but the way it is stated on the web page could be improved. The
presentation of this option needs further development. This seems to be a very
unique aspect of Cullect.com and the design of the site should better present this
concept. - Front page could look more professional. Perhaps a different font and one color per
subject photos may help. - Change the layout a bit so the description of Cullect is in a different font and size
from the “sign in” button”. Trying to grab new users attention. Make your
description pop. - Take out all the non-highlighted items. If you can’t access them at this point why
have them listed. Makes the site seem to go on and on.
Your comments?
Cullect on Twitter- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- Culld.us URLs Recently Shared at Twitter
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.