JapanSoc Widget

February 5th, 2008
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I whipped up an OS X widget to display the five most recent top stories AND allow me to submit new stories to JapanSoc directly from my Dashboard. I tried to keep the colors consistent with the actual site as well. If you are a JapanSoc member, or looking to be one, maybe you’ll find some use for it?

JapanSoc, for those who haven’t discovered it on their own yet, is a socially promoted link aggregation site similar to Digg or Reddit. Users submit links to blog posts, news stories, videos, you name it – as long as it is Japan-related. When an upcoming story gets the appropriate number of “Soc’s” it is placed on the front page as a Top Story. It’s a great way to share quality things*. Sign up! Get on the bandwagon. The site has a lot of promise – but it requires us to do the submission and weeding.

Here’s a quick video clip of the widget in action.

*If the quality is lousy – for instance, someone spams links to their blog a lot, or posts things uninteresting to a broad audience, do as I do and bury them then just don’t promote them! Let the lame stuff settle into the auto-delete queue never-to-be-published abyss. We want high the site to maintain a good reputation. (Edited according to Nick’s comment below.)

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Deas Apple, Customary Drivel

Hit JapanSoc.com today for the best social news about Japan!
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  • Noted and changed in the article. Thanks.
  • I need to correct myself: Upcoming posts don't auto-delete. They just can't be published after 14 days, i.e. even if they get enough socs, they won't be shown on the front page. I suppose that's fair enough as long as they aren't spam. More content for Google = more visitors to JapanSoc = more visitors to everyone's blogs.

    Nick Ramsay's last blog post: Earn Money with Japan-Hopper.com
  • Well, if you were aiming to sound like a lolcat, you'd be on the ball, I'd say. Ha ha. But I probably wouldn't soc many stories like that.
  • Deas,
    Neat site.
    What if I title every post "OMG! Don't bury me PLZ! KTHXBI!"?
    Not that I've been posting or anything like that. I just realized the other day that all of my posts in January were made on January 1st.

    lost in ube's last blog post: Six Things February 3, 2008
  • Yeah, I've been watching your burying antics on the "Live" page ;) I think we're getting close to upping the soc requirement to 3, but not just yet.

    Nick Ramsay's last blog post: Mami’s Pink Car - The Lapin
  • Hey Nick - ok, I can respect that. I'll stop burying things. If you look at my karma and my other stats on the users page, you might mathematically deduce that I've buried....a lot. I can't help it - if I wanted to see EVERY post on Member X's blog, I'd have subscribed to their blog... They don't all glow. You know? But I'll refrain from burying. :: sigh ::

    Also - still no Gravatar...
  • Hey Deas, I've been thinking about this "bury" business, and would rather not encourage people to bury everything they don't like. If JapanSoc were a huge site such as Digg, then fair enough, go ahead and hit the bury button. However, on JapanSoc, I don't think we should be discouraging people from submitting something, which is what burying articles does.

    The whole point of the "Upcoming" page is to keep below-par articles off the front page. Currently, 2 socs are enough to get to the front page, but if too much below-par stuff gets through, then I can raise the requirement to three or more votes (which I plan to do as we get more users). As it is, the bury button is really a "report spam" button. If there are three times more buries than socs on a submission it gets automatically deleted. This is handy for users to identify and remove spam when I'm not around. The other little known fact is that any submissions that don't make the front page get automatically deleted after 14 days, and I can reduce that number, too.

    So, in summary: 1) If it's spam, hit the bury button, 2) If it's crap - do nothing (auto delete after 14 days), 3) If it's good - soc it!

    Hmm... I really should update the FAQ with this stuff.

    Nick Ramsay's last blog post: Mami’s Pink Car - The Lapin
  • Chris - Um...thanks? :-P
  • Chris B
    Very Cool!!
    Boy get skillz!!!!!!!!!
  • Koichi - Hey! I love Tofugu, first off. In fact, I'm adding it to my blogroll. Now, to answer your question, I made it in Dashcode. It's not an add-on. It's based on the code found in Ken Y-N's Feedburner Flare and the RSS feed. That's really all you need. Throw it in a bowl, stir it together, add the colors, and you've got a widget, fresh from the oven.

    Nick - Don't do it, man! The Mac tax is notorious. You can get a better computer for less money... Which is not to say that I don't recommend Macs to all my friends in Japan. But they're not using future college fund money... Although, if you are a Vista guy, you'd have no problem running Vista alongside OS X...or instead of it. (Shhh! Don't repeat that. The internet has ears.) ;-)
  • Looks great! (Nick empties his son's college fund and rushes out to buy a Mac). ;)

    Nick Ramsay's last blog post: I’m Not Afraid of Chinese Dumplings!
  • Hey, that's awesome. I'll download it right now.

    Can I ask how you made the widget? Is it an addon with Pligg? Did you use some kind or program? Did you make it yourself? Any way, it's very spiffy, thanks for your hard work on continuing to bring the whole Japanese blogging community together.

    Koichi's last blog post: Using Twitter to Practice Japanese
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