mydigimedia by Amy L. Webb

...starting with Sphere. I'd contacted Tony Conrad and Martin Remy about using the Sphere widget a little while back. MyDigimedia was the first partner site to deploy the Sphere widget through Feedburner, and I'm happy to say that it has so far produced exactly the results I'd hoped for.

What is Sphere? It's a neat little Web 2.0 search app that helps you discover related blog and other digital content related to what you're already looking at. So if you were to Sphere this story (look a few lines down at the Sphere tool and click), you'd find links to content outside of MyDigimedia that have to do with search and with Sphere users and community.

Why is this important to journalists? Because this is another example illustrating how and where people look for information. If I'm interested in a story about a local mayoral election, I'll likely want stories from multiple sources. Most newspapers will absolutely not link off-site, but publishers are kidding themselves if they think that a user won't quickly turn to another site to get more information. Sphere allows you, the provider, to turn your site into a mini-portal. Users can look for more external content without leaving your site, and the links they click on open in new windows.

Simple. And brilliant.