The other day I received an email from “Chubbs”, the creator of Bumpbox.com and the Bumpbox widget. I replied back and asked if he would like to do an interview. I’m pretty green at this interviewing thing, so forgive me if I didn’t ask the questions that I should have. If you do have a question…leave a comment and I’m sure Chubbs will try and answer it. This is in a typical interview format, minus quotes and that type of crap.
Derek:
What was your inspiration for Bumpbox?
Chubbs:
I felt that while current voting systems like Digg and Reddit
really do a good job of aggregating technology news, based on
popularity, the same was not true for bloggers. In the blogosphere,
nothing of this sort exists. Bumpbox is a widget that allows posts to
be “voted” very simply and then aggregated on a “popular” page.
Hopefully we can one day get past the “links are everything” methods
that Technorati and Google uses.
Derek:
What sites are currently using Bumpbox?
Chubbs:
There are a handful of sites that use BumpBox, the most active are
bloggeratto.blogspot.com, 3spots.blogspot.com,
penfield.psych.uiuc.edu/omnibrain, toca-do-lobo.blogspot.com, and
www.richgentlemenhide.com. All the sites mentioned are blogs, with the
exception to the last one, which is also a webcomic.
Derek:
Is there information collected and displayed about items that are “Bumped”?
Chubbs:
Yes, the info collected is displayed Digg-style on our Voting
section, which can be found at http://www.bumpbox.com/voting.php.
Derek:
What future plans do you have for Bumpbox?
Chubbs:
Future plans for Bumpbox, eh? Well, I’ve had a lot of great
feedback from folks such as Avatar of Bloggeratto, and one of the
plans is to implement a slightly more sophisticated vote system, such
as with a 1 through 5 rating system. I have also been trying to figure
out a way to get a blog a localized version of BumpBox, so they can
mash the data up anyway they want. Maybe an API.
Derek:
What other interests are you currently entertaining? (what are you into?)
Chubbs:
Well, the other part of Bumpbox is the technology and business
blog, which is actually very enjoyable for me. I do read a lot, and
experiment with Web 2.0 technology type things (oh the magic of the
intarweb). My day job is in IT, so I get to play with Linux, Windows
2003 servers, and the mind-numbing technical support side of things.
That about sums up the interview.
I think I will try out the BumpBox widget and see what response I get from the readers.
Bumpbox is a javascript based widget.
Set-up is simple, with eight colors (more coming soon) to choose from for your bumpbutton.
There are blog platform specific choices as well.
You can also edit the CSS file for your own custom look.
Related posts:
thats cool BTW, the bottom bump this (view poular) link is not working
Thanks Derek! Wow, I guess I’m famous now!
Howard, try it again, it works on my end.
hehehe great interview with Chubby, i got into Bumpbox because i saw that it had great potential, even if this was not in a short term since it was evident that it was done by one man. so am glad it is finally “bumping up” (pun intended)