We’re always looking for cool new (or not so new) technologies to play with. A few months ago I came across ibrii – a web application that allows you to copy anything you find online and add it to your ibrii stream. This idea isn’t really new or anything but I was intrigued by the application’s ease of use. I also felt that it could really enhance a one of our websites if it was implemented properly.
Our idea was simple – add the RSS of our ibrii stream to a new section on SirShanksAlot.com. The editors of the site installed the ibrii application on their browsers (I use the Chrome version and love it) and they can now add new content to the site in a matter of minutes. Let’s say I’m surfing the web and come across a cool article on a new set of clubs. The “old” way to share this info was to bookmark it and add it to a future post. ibrii lets me select some text and photos from the article, display it anyway I like and then share it to my stream. Within a matter of minutes, the information appears on The Buzz section of SirShanksAlot.com. Pretty simple.
So far so good… ibrii has worked well for us. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you want to work ibrii into your site…
- Develop some sort of style guide for your ibrii stream. We found that the formating in the stream got a bit messed up when putting text above and below pics. We use a title (which links to the ibrii stream), some teaser text, a link to the entire article and then an image.
- Feel free to add anything. I find ibrii shares almost any type of content so get creative with your posts. All text is boring.
- Give yourself space. If you want to work this into a site, make sure the page that displays the feed is wide enough to accommodate your stream. We first tried implementing the stream on a side bar (approx. 330 px wide) and it was a disaster. We spent more time trying to resize pics and videos than we did finding new content. The current area that displays our stream is about 600 px wide and it seems to work well.
Want to learn more about ibrii? Check it out…
