Guten Tag World

Guten Tag is slow again

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 17:16:14 -0000

Guten Tag is again very slow.

I'm not a MySQL expert, but I suspect that having a table with 30 000 tags x 100 entries is not the way to go, if I want to keep it on a single server.

I have some insights on how to optimize things, but that would mean changing many things, and I don't have the time now to dig into it. I have another prioritary project.

I'm really sorry for those of you who like Guten Tag, but are frustated by the response time. Maybe you can tell me how you use GT and which part is most important for you (onsite / RSS ?), so I can try to focus on it.

Thanks again for your support and patience.

What is a Tag ? Part III

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 12:35:55 -0000

Let's sum up what we've seen before :
a tag is an qualifier that can be used as a filter to find relative content
a tag is a link to an aggregation space

There is yet a question that needs to be answered : who does it belong to ?

What is a Tag ? Part II

Wed, 05 Oct 2005 10:24:32 -0000

Before I move on, let's try to sum up what we found before :

Tags are freely chosen keywords that qualify content (in the context of a subject of interest), and they can be used as filters to discover this content.

Now let's look closer at a given tag. The following word is a tag and it's value is : blue. See how this word is different from the rest of the text ? First, it is a hyperlink. Second, there is this strange little orange hexagon alongside. What does that mean ?

What is a Tag ? Part I

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 17:49:46 -0000

Aaaarggh...that's the tough question ! I know I have to go through it, so I'll try my best.

Let's begin to say what it is not :
it's not some weird typography on a wall
it's not some html syntax to enclose content
it's not directives you put in a http header

So what is it here ?
Well, in my last post, I gave some first hint : tags were described as both qualifiers and filters. Tags are stamped on content to qualify it; and then you use them to filter content.

What is Guten Tag ?

Tue, 27 Sep 2005 17:26:01 -0000

When I started coding the site, I thought it will be a place to have both Technorati and Delicious on the same screen, and on the same RSS feed. Early adopters saw that, it was even the first site to offer a public feed for Technorati tags.

Did I lose you already ? If you don't know what a tag is, clutch on, we'll come back to that in a minute. Meanwhile, replace "tags" by "qualifiers".

Why was it important to me ? Because Technorati and Delicious were the two sides of the same mountain. Technorati let you see the tags that the editor stamp on his post (producer's tag), and Delicious let you see the tags that the visitors stamp on the editor's post (consumer's tag). I thought it might be interesting to have both in the same place ! (Might be even more interesting to correlate them, but that's another story).