Tangling webs

This week I've jumped in feet-first with various social networking tools. So far I've signed up for:

Last.FM - be your own Billboard charts.
http://www.last.fm/user/rjurban/

I started this the week after spending a weekend visitng family @ the beach. Who doesn't listen to Jimmy Buffet at the beach! I enjoyed the "suggestions" that Netflix provided about movies based on my viewing preferences and it will be interesting to see how this develops over time. Friends and partners have always been the route to new music, now it's just in a convenient usable form.

I'm trying to decide how much of my spare time I want to spend creating metadata for my audio collection. Having the iPod is pushing me in that direction because it could mean instant playlists once things are tagged. Sunday was gray and rainy, with the right tags (e.g. LCSH "Rain and rainfall") - bam instant playlsit. More likely I will be spending my time actually doing cataloging homework, rather than tagging my music.

I wonder if any catalogers are freelancing for people - hire me to tag your music/pictures because I'm too busy/lazy, whatever.... Folksonomy comes full circle.

Friendster
(haven't figured out how to link there yet...)
Also interesting, I can see the possibilities and advantages of meeting other people through friends. But I'm also wondering whether this would work for professional networks as well "Colleaguester." Thanks to becoming a student again, friends are on the rise, but a social network tool like this for professional colleagues would be fascinating.

I'm also interested in the visualization of these networks. I didn't think this was available in Friendster until I added someone new, who I was already connected to by 5-6 degrees. Friendster allows you to see the connection and draws a map of how you're connected. And here's an article from at Berkeley who's developing a visualization tool:

Vister: Visualizing Online Social Networks
by Jeffrey Heer
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jheer/vizster/early_design/