I'd like to see a set of software tools which would allow me to use the Web more efficiently. In particular, when I browse Web, sometimes I end up feeling that I have spent time well and learned interesting new things. On other occasions, I feel that I've read a lot of boring things and got myself tired without anything to show for that.
It would be nice to have tools which would take a user's feedback on the quality of Web pages, and would help the user to predict the quality of new pages. We were working on such a set of tools for the last few months, and I think we reached the stage when this toolset can be useful to other people.
So, this is, in some sense, a micro-launch of the alpha release of this toolset called WebPredict. One can use the following URL to create an account which allows to give feedback on the quality of Web pages one reads, and to get predictions of the quality of new pages based on that feedback:
http://www.webpredict.net/wp/PreSignup.do?userConfigId=original-flavor For the time being, this only makes sense if one is using a Firefox browser, and one needs to install our Link Rater Firefox add-on for the resulting workflow to make sense.
The WebPredict Web site has more functionality than I've just described. The "original-flavor" user configuration focuses on the original goals we had when we started this project and simplifies the use of the toolset. One can also explore the rest of the currently available functionality by creating an account in a general fashion via
http://www.webpredict.net/ Feedback is appreciated greatly. Feel free to comment here, e-mail me, talk to me, etc.