Day: June 30, 2009

I started a practice in 2004 of writing a post based on my exploration of the NECC trade show. I called this practice “wandering the outside aisle” because the idea was to locate a new product/service advanced by a small company. These companies tend to purchase small floor areas around the outside of the trade show pavilion.

I decided that my selection this year would be yolink.  Yolink provides a browser plugin that offers some improvements on the traditional search process. There are probably many different ways to use the product (actually a plugin and a space reserved for you on the company server), but the basic idea works something like this.

1) Do a traditional search or load a web page with many links.

2) Do a re-search by using yolink within these findings (using the original search term or new terms)

Yolink will locate the links, find the search terms within the content these links access, and display this content.

2) You can move to the sites by clicking a paragraph of interest (or)

3) Select a resource to save and share

Select from the paragraphs containing the search terms those that you wish to save

4)

The selected paragraphs and a thumbnail of the site will be saved to your acount (or sent to your email address or another of several other options for sharing).

This all strikes me as pretty cool and potentially useful in the process of collecting online information. I sometimes wonder how processes such as these are legal – you do seem to be moving the paragraphs from a site into your possession (if I understand what is happening). I also cannot explain the business model allowing this service to be offered. I assume the copyright issue is somehow not an issue. I will leave it to the company to worry about their bottom line.