¶ With his new blog, Functioning Form, Luke Wroblewski has created a nifty bit of functionality he calls continuum links. Luke intends his blog to re-examine and expand upon earlier posts as he develops ideas and concepts. This organic approach is not catered for by the chronological (or even categorical) organisation of blogs, so Luke is adding automatic cross-referencing at the end of any post which is referred to by another.
Like many good ideas, this is simple and obvious, yet I’ve never seen it used elsewhere, although it is essentially a localised version of Trackback.
Comments
1
I’ve been using something similar since March on my own blog:
http://richardathome.no-ip.com/index.php?article_id=178
Original credit goes to Eric Meyers for bringing up the subject:
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/200403.html#d29t1415
2
Crap… beaten to the punch.
I wrote about this in May in a comment on Andy Budd’s site:
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2004/04/meta_data_what_do_you_use/index.php#comments
I abandoned the concept once I realised that implementing it in MovableType was a right pain in the ass. I should get it up and running when I finish my custom blogging scripts.
Luke Wroblewski raises the issue as a solution to a problem with categories: they are rigid and “contradict the ‘organic’ style of most blogs where entries are subject to the whims of individuals”. I don’t think this fully solves the category problem, as categories are damn useful for tracking down a post.
Organic categories anyone? :)
Add your comment
Comments are now closed on this post. If you have more to say please contact me directly.