I finally get it.

So I looked at Allconsuming a few times, didn’t sign in, didn’t really get it.

Went back this morning, futzed with it, was confused by the interface for a little while, and then my head exploded. I’m in love. This is the site I was looking for when I wrote the entry on book metadata, and its author was kind enough to respond to my entry and too self-effacing to point out the obvious to me.

Its an amazing site, a beautiful web app (in a functional way), capitalizes on the new social, semantic distributed blogo network better then anything I’ve encountered, and is whip smart.

Favorite flourish

I clicked on the “edit friends list”, with a certain trepidation, as I never know the protocols for declaring someone “a friend” in these online communities. Allcomsuming short circuited this problem by asking Google who my friends are:
rabble, dru, micah, pseudopunk, and a few names I didn’t recognize. Wild. Also community driven meta-data! ### Next Step

You are supposed to integrate Allconsuming with your site using one of those cool javascript include thingys (which protest.net v2 is going to have in abundance), and while I think they are cool, I’m going to spend a little bit this morning working up a script to talk to AC’s SOAP interface instead. Sorry to burrble so early in the morning, but I’m excited.

By the way, I went back and gave Allconsuming a second look, after reading about DJ Adams’ (of Jabber fame) booktalk which in turn tracks its heritage to Jon Udell’s LibraryLookup service, which allows you to browse your local library from Amazon (no support for Providence Public yet), and his column on said service.(via snowdeal)