Retaggr…
You’ve probably noticed as you’ve browsed around my blog that I have an electronic business card embedded in a couple of places. That business card is supplied courtesy of Retaggr, a fairly new company that aggregates all the places you have a net presence and embeds that information onto a card that you can display on your website. The end result is available to display in a number of different ways, one of which follows:
As you can see, it’s a pretty interesting way to display information about everything that you do or are involved in. You can also mouse over the ‘retaggr’ badge under my photo on the right hand side of this page for another version of the information.
So, just what exactly is retaggr and why should I use it? When I first saw an article on retaggr I was intrigued by it but a little sceptical that it would actually be of value to me. I signed up for an account however and went about setting it up to display links to all my important ‘web presences’. The configuration process is really straightforward and it seems that no matter what networking sites you are connected to (eg Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), retaggr has an icon and association for it. In very little time I had a retaggr card completed and all I needed to do was find somewhere to display it! Of course I chose my blog and personal websites! Nothing like a little of home grown advertising!
One of the little things about retaggr that I like is the ability to display your own icons from sites you own. Just drop in the favicon and you’re good to go. Then there’s the ability to add an abbreviated version of the card to your email signature. It’s not supposed to work in Yahoo! Mail - but I managed to get it working without any problems. Now if only Gmail would allow html in signatures!
There are a few things I still don’t get about retaggr. For instance the site talks about ‘tagging’ images on other sites. I’ve looked at the scant documentation and I have to admit I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Maybe one day I’ll have the spare time to re-read it all very slowly and try and figure it out.
Apart from that however, it’s a great little service and one that I’ve found particularly useful as I don’t have to worry about pointing friends to all sorts of sites depending on what’s new. Retaggr takes care of helping people find all the relevant news about me. I wish all my friends and colleagues used it!
