SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
www.Faves.com is a social bookmarking site much like Diigo(www.diigo.com) and del.icio.us(www.del.icio.us). It contains many of the elements that would exist in most social bookmarking sites. It contains thousands of bookmarks with many more tags notated by popularity (in votes) and stars beside individual articles. Each tag and article leads to the author of the tag so that interested individuals can look further into topics that tagger is interested in and in which you too, as a reader of their tags, might be interested. I have found many interesting articles through this mechanism. It also establishes a link between the article and the author of the article’s other articles of interest in that particular field. Furthermore, it incorporates as a sidebar “Related Topics”,“Related Faves” and “Related Content from Around Faves”(www.faves.com) which link you to tangential fields of interest both tags and articles alike. This helps to formulate a community of individuals interested in similar topics and makes it more readily available to a visitor of this site to navigate to their particular search topic. A tagger summarizes an article so that one, much like an abstract, can discern whether or not they want to read the entire article or move on. Beside the abstract, as I said earlier, the tagger’s main tags are noted so that, in the event of great interest in one of their tagged articles, one can search the rest of the articles highlighted by that tagger.
It is unique, however, for my research in several ways. First, one of the most prominent (that is, most widely read) is the physics tag in which many fascinating articles pertaining to the field of physics are highlighted. These articles are of an academic and scholarly nature and highlight articles in peer-reviewed, highly reputed journals and magazines such as New Scientist. Mike (http://faves.com/users/mike/dot/153591241887), one of my favorite taggers on this site, gives a solid account of an article in New Scientist entitled “Memristor minds: The future of artificial intelligence” (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327151.600-memristor-minds-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence.html?full=true). His decision to tag this article tells me several things about him as a tagger: one, his is of an academic nature in his choice of article but, more importantly, in his choice of magazine. Second, it tells me that his has an interest in cutting-edge technology which relates to my blog and third, it tells me he has some substantial knowledge in the fields of physics and technology. He is clearly a good reference in my blog. Second with regards to the tags on Faves.com, it is relatively easy to link from one science related tag (physics,http://faves.com/users/mike/tag/physics ), such as Mike’s Physics I Classical Mechanics: A MIT Video Course (http://academicearth.org/courses/physics-i-classical-mechanics), to another science related tag of Gr8rrrry's, Large Hadron Collider, in which I find a multitude of fascinating articles including this one, (http://www.motherboard.tv/2009/12/1/the-large-hadron-collider-also-the-largest-fastest-emptiest-hottest-most-complex-machine),on high energy particle collisions and future scientific endeavors in the fields of particle physics and quantum mechanics. This indicates to me that the connection between taggers is one of a solid academic and intellectual nature and can be trusted as a relevant source(s).
It appears to me as though Faves.com does, in fact, live up to its subtitle: “Sites you’ll love, from people like you.” There are a number of taggers who tag worthwhile material for the academic reader and there are a number of articles readily available through a simple search of keywords (which, I might add, encompass a broad spectrum so as to give the searcher the widest amount of potential material) which are published in, for the most part, reputable, scholarly journals and magazines. It was, for instance, quite easy, for me to search the “ethics of stem cell research” and the results would begin with the Harvard Law Review (http://www.harvardlawreview.org/index.php). That certainly indicates to me an intellectual tagger and a site interested in promoting such an individual.
I will definitely utilize this site! And, friends, you should too!