Yay, me.dium loves me....
Look what I've got :o) Yep, that's IE8 Beta 1 with Me.dium running.....
Here's the official blurb re me.dium. I don't have time to check it out tonight... but will soon....
"Me.dium was selected as one of a small handful of partners to get access to IE8 in pre-beta form. At Mix08 Me.dium demonstrated how it has leveraged new features in IE8 to empower people to find information together in radical new ways.
- WebSlices allow IE8 users to subscribe to portions of a page. Users can receive updates from that page whenever any content changes. Me.dium has implemented WebSlices on its user-profile pages (e.g http://me.dium.com/user/tobiaspeggs). User profiles – across many social sites – typically show news-like information about a friend’s activity. In Me.dium, users can now subscribe to a WebSlice from their favorite friends’ profile and be alerted instantly of any updates. The WebSlice helps Me.dium form a deeper connection with its users, and gives users a simple but powerful way to stay in touch with their friends.
- WebSlice adoption will be assisted by ease of discovery. In other words, users need to know that WebSlices exist on a page if they are going to use them. The Me.dium IE8-sidebar-extension helps massively with the WebSlice discovery process. Me.dium alerts users to the presence of WebSlices on any page – and even allows users to read the content of that WebSlice and (it will soon allow users to) subscribe to that WebSlice, right within the Sidebar. Even better, utilizing the Me.dium Matching Engine, Me.dium also makes real-time recommendations for other WebSlices on other relevant webpages – and gives users a simple means to surf to them. No user need ever miss an available WebSlice again.
- Activities in IE8 allow users to quickly access a contextual service from any webpage. For example, with one click, users can map directions found on a webpage, or search on keywords they have highlighted. Me.dium offers IE8 users a powerful “Social Discovery” Activity from any webpage. You can get it at http://me.dium.com/ie8/ The “Discover with Me.dium” Activity delivers content recommendations, related to the page or selected key words,that are influenced by the real-time surfing activity of Me.dium users. Along with the social discovery recommendations, the “Discover with Me.dium” Activity also displays a “map” of real-time user surfing patterns, meaning users can easily visualize how popular related web pages are with other users right now – based on where people are hanging out online at any point in time. It’s like a real time view of “what’s hot” around the topic you are surfing."
Now, as the article says, Tobias has added a Webslice to his page - here's a screenshot:
You can see the purple WebSlice icon, yes? If you click on it you will see this:
Select ok, and a WebSlice will be added to the Favorites Bar in IE8. Unfortunately, I can't capture a screenshot of the WebSlice content itself - it closes as soon as it loses focus.
I'm so pleased to get my favorite add-on back. Now it is time to start experimenting with activities...
