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What started as a CIS project for creating technical documents has – over a span of two years – become PLink. Several months ago a corporeal voice said to me – it might have been my own – “Ben, why don’t you apply some of the research you’ve been doing, and make a search engine?” The idea (essentially) was to make a search engine that relied on voting to rank search results.
To make a long story short, during the process of making this search engine, I realized that PLink would be a good venue to dust off some old code I had been working on for creating online technical documents – this became somewhat of an obsession. I began outlining the sorts of features that I would enjoy in blogging software, with an emphasis on the ability to create technical documents online.
The result? The PLink document software, I feel, does a good job of serving both the casual Blogger/Social-Networker, while also allowing for the creation of fairly robust online documents. Perhaps, an example would help illustrate this:
My friend Jeff, on the other hand – an individual who is distinctly un-techy – has been using PLink as a personal blog.
PLink suits both extremes.
As stated, PLink’s document management software grew out of a 3rd year Software Engineering project – I think that this original motivation is still reflected well in the current product. Making it suitable for technically savvy bloggers, like myself. I’m a full-time student, and PLink is being developed as a hobby. This having been said, I think it’s got a lot to offer. I’ll continue to add new features – based on input, and my own observations. Go ahead and try it out! What follows is a break down of some of the features I’ve implemented so far.
A Plink document (blog) is made up of sections. You can export either your entire page (all the sections), or an individual section as a PDF. This allows you to house a nice mix of technical documents and personal/fun stuff on the same page.
A Plink document is made up of one of several kinds of elements:
When you click on the ‘share’ option on one of the elements in a PLink document, you are presented with the HTML markup for a button. This can be pasted externally (or in your PLink page, using an HTML element). Another user of PLink who clicks on this button will be able to paste a copy of the original element into their own PLink page. This can be used, for instance, to allow for the efficient sharing of bibliographical information – or videos, images, etc.
You can publish any section of your PLink document to the RSS feed on the main page of PLink – if you happen to feel that it’s news worthy.
The PLink search engine let’s you share some of your favorite links with other users – the indexer runs primarily based on the sites you suggest. When searching for sites, click the ‘bookmark’ option to place a link directly into a section of your PLink document. You can also give a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ to the quality of the search results returned.
© DeepWater Technology 2007