A collaborative layer over every website

April 11, 2007 1:38 AM

Shiftspace creates a collaborative layer over any website. (Tools like this have been tried before, but this is the first one with an overt Wikipedia-style public service philosophy.)
posted by Tlogmer (12 comments total)

/I posted my comments to Shiftspace
posted by umop-apisdn at 1:55 AM on April 11, 2007

Interesting idea, but that name is terrible and desitined for ridicule. Also, it can not become a verb (like 'to google' or 'to skype') so it can never become mainstream.
posted by beno at 2:24 AM on April 11, 2007

beno it's called shifting, aside from if this will catch on or not I just shifted your post.
Shift happens.

Actually I think the endless amount of shift-connotations are quite fun, so I think your comment is up shift-creek.
Shifts ahoy!
posted by umop-apisdn at 2:41 AM on April 11, 2007

I'm confused. Is this shifting or shipping?
posted by wendell at 2:52 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]

No shift, sherlock.

umop, it looks like you don't know shift about branding, but a generic term like 'shifting' will never make lots of people think of superimposing collaborative layers over websites.

Also, you can not dismiss a comment about a name not catching on and then ignore that aspect entirely. It makes no sense.
posted by beno at 4:14 AM on April 11, 2007

beno
> you don't know shift about branding

oh I see what you mean, like slashdotting a server also sounds so awkward... (shift on my face?)

hmm, one has to literally press <shift><space> to put comments into the shiftspace; this in itself is quite nifty. there's a plethora of shift-connotations: shifts can be upshifting or downshifting, negative comments or smears equal being shifted, many shifts on a site would equate a shiftload, inconvenient shifts are shift hitting the fan. There are shiftstorms. You have apeshift, chickenshift, batshift. Shifticious. Shiftoleth. Shifty. Shiftmonk. Trollshift. Shiftwrecked. Hardshift. Kinshift. Censorshift. Judgeshift. Transshift. ... ad shiftinitum

I think the potential richness of name-derivatives is quite huge actually, so judging just that alone gives Shiftspace a plus. (But I only repeat what I said before...)

Maybe you took my initial comment too personally, I was shifting around.

btw there are a few shifts to this page, this page has been shiftspaced.
posted by umop-apisdn at 5:38 AM on April 11, 2007

Also, it can not become a verb (like 'to google' or 'to skype') so it can never become mainstream.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Who ever said this was supposed to be mainstream? Who said this was about "creating a brand"? Tlogmer just posted this because people might think it's cool, I assume, not because he things it's Twitter 2.0 or anything. Man, there's been way too much kool-aid sloshing around the net lately.

Personally, since I'm on my father's PC, and the installation process seemed to require Greasemonkey, I haven't bothered with this yet. But I'll try it later when I'm home. And I'll judge it on it's merit and execution and usefulness, not whether the kool kidz are going to like the name of it.
posted by Jimbob at 5:52 AM on April 11, 2007

I just drank a whole bottle of tequila and I'm completely shiftspaced!

I'll be here all week.
posted by kcds at 6:10 AM on April 11, 2007

Jimbob, yeah the installation requires Greasemonkey, posted shifts aren't visible unless you reload and Shiftspace itself it is a bit slow, but it's worth it.

One guy shifted his comment to the top of the list here. (I shifted beno's first comment a little bit, added a <blink>-tag hehe)

The tool is a bit like the old Gooey (if anybody remembers that). There are a whole bunch of similar annotative web tools: Trailfire, Fleck, Stickis, MyStickies, NoteFish ... but so far Shiftspace does the public annotation thing the best.

(I have no affiliation with Shiftspace, just like it a lot so far.)
posted by umop-apisdn at 6:27 AM on April 11, 2007

From the website:

Having wandered for years in an owner-centric Cyberspace, where do we turn for online public spaces? ShiftSpace (.org) seeks to provide a new town-square built above the existing privatized hyper-mall of information that is the World Wide Web. We are building an open-source meta-layer above the web and we would enjoy your company.

Translation: we devised a way to hijack the traffic of popular sites.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:56 AM on April 11, 2007

That site killed the shit out of Camino. Christ.
posted by interrobang at 8:49 AM on April 11, 2007

The name sounds too much like "shitface."
posted by yesno at 9:17 AM on April 11, 2007 [1 favorite]