SixApart Offers MT Activity Plugin: This Is Good
Duncan Riley
27 comments »
SixApart have launched a plugin for MovableType that offers a similar activity stream service to Facebook and Plaxo, but you get to host it.
The Action Streams plugin, like Facebook and Plaxo, pulls your data from other services and lists it on the page, for example blog posts, Flickr photos, Tweets and more. The plugin does rely on having MovableType installed, but is self hosted, meaning that you control the list, including privacy settings and data ownership.
The plugin can also be used to aggregate activity from a group as well as an individual, providing a portal or front page to groups of all sizes.
This is a good move from SixApart at a time where open standards and open access are quickly building momentum from being niche desires to mainstream wants. SixApart open sourced MovableType in December and it still has a long way to go to recapture its once dominant position as the blogging platform provider of choice, but plugins like this will certainly help them along the way.
Interesting addition
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Everybody has an activity stream these days
Now everybody is aggregating them.
From my perspective running a site where there is significant cross over with other social networks, etc, we have exactly zero people clamoring for these meta tools. Of course, we don’t have a tech forward, straight geek crowd like on TC. Our members tend to be in the middle of the technology adoption curve.
However if a site with 1.4 million uniques doesn’t see people clamoring for meta aggregation tools to synergize their activity streams…doesn’t that mean the business models & plans are starting to come straight out of the dack bullshit generator of 1999?
When is this feature supposed to be added to typepad?
It’s a really good thing. Movable Type went back in the game with MT4 and now is taking the leadership of innovation. I love this way! Btw, it’s Six Apart, not SixApart (note the space between the two words ;).
Jeremy, there are however plenty of people with blogs who already are embedding widgets from Twitter, Dopplr, Plaxo, Facebook, etc to share their activities around the web with their readers. We’re hoping to make this a much simpler process where the blogger ultimately has more control over the information they’re sharing.
While my site might not be the best example of combining Action Streams with a blog itself, both Phil Windley (http://www.windley.com/) and Byrne Reese (http://www.majordojo.com/) have taking different yet interesting approaches with the Action Streams plugin.
Need this for Wordpress, too!
I think anyone reading about MovableType should read this article: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/12/13/mtos
Is there any similar plugin for wordpress ?
Great News!
I’m near completion of a fully customized MT back-end. this is more than just icing on the cake for me.
:D 
:D
There is a standalone thing like this that you can install on your own server, or register at a hosted version of it. It’s very cool for many reasons, one of which is that it can communicate across servers. So you can run your own, and can add friends from the hosted version, or from other servers. It also supports OpenID, but it’s quite early in the development, so it got some quirks. Oh, and it’s open source!
The name is NoseRub: http://www.noserub.com/
Jaiku does exactly this, and spits it out as a widget or RSS feed.
Google needs to get off their behinds and do something with Jaiku before it becomes irrelevant.
I see Action Streams as being more serendipitous than Jaiku or Tumblr. While they both do a great job aggregating content you create, they’re focused mainly on content you create within their services. Action Streams are much more about bringing more meaning, expression, and emotion to blogging via your actions from many different places on the web.
Yes, there is a Wordpress plugin that does this called SimpleStream. I customized it a bit for my own needs letting you filter the view using JavaScript. I hope to expand it’s capability further.
Plugin - http://kierandelaney.net/blog/projects/simplelife/
My version in action - http://kingkool68.com/
On a further note, anyone who can muster a bit of PHP can do something like this using Simple Pie -> http://simplepie.org/
What makes Moveable Type so special again?
Good addition. Does Wordpress or will Wordpress come out with something similar?
#5, #7, #13: judging from past history with OpenID and Atom support, WordPress users will probably have to wait a year to have a version of this that isn’t just a third-party hack.
@David: hence my comment that Google needs to do something with Jaiku. It’s 90% there, and just needs a nudge to make it into a perfect little tool.
I believe this WP plugin does the exact same thing. And has been around since Nov. 2006.
http://chrisjdavis.org/lifestream-ala-wordpress
This is pretty cool. Jake - thanks for the lifestream link. I use WordPress.
David has a pretty interesting life.
Hey sexy mama… wanna aggregate our activity streams? *nudge*
If that example is how most of these things will go, why would anyone ever want to read one of these on someone else. I guess it might appeal to stalkers, as you could stalk without leaving the house, but other than that….
Anyone seen an extension like this for Joomla?
Very interesting
http://telephoneconferencecall.net/However if a site with 1.4 million uniques doesn’t see people clamoring for meta aggregation tools to synergize their activity streams…doesn’t that mean the business
For those inquiring about plugins for Wordpress. There are at least 4 out there, as scripts and plugins for other platforms. You can find these along with many services that provide this functionality at the Lifestream Blog at http://lifestreamblog.com