---
title: "Trailfire: Experimenting With Trails"
date: 2006-10-23
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2006"
    url: "/tag/2006.md"
---

# Trailfire: Experimenting With Trails

***Disclaimer:** I am testing out Trailfire as part of a consulting agreement. Full details below.*

![trailfire](https://web.archive.org/web/20090627063234im_/http://static.flickr.com/100/277195348_b8ac1a8994_m.jpg)At the beginning of September [I posted](https://web.archive.org/web/20090627063234/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/trailfire_building_memex.php) about [Trailfire](https://web.archive.org/web/20090627063234/http://www.trailfire.com/), a unique social bookmarking service that reminded me at the time of [Vannevar Bush](https://web.archive.org/web/20090627063234/http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/bush.html)‘s 1945 pre-hypertext concept The Memex. Essentially what Trailfire does is enable you to place annotations on any web page and link related web pages to form a trail, or navigation path.

About a month after my initial post, the Trailfire team contacted me with a consulting proposal to try out a custom trail mark on my blog – one designed specifically for Read/WriteWeb. The idea was that this would enable me to provide *branded* navigation trails on my blog. I thought this sounded like a nice ‘value add’ feature, that readers might find interesting. Also trails / hypertextual navigation is a concept that I am very interested in experimenting with – so I agreed. But to be perfectly clear and transparent, I am being paid my regular consulting fee to try out Trailfire and report back to them.

As part of the experiment I will be using Trailfire on this blog, to provide related information via trails. Basically this is a totally optional feature for you, the reader. If you don’t download the Trailfire product, then you will notice absolutely no difference to Read/WriteWeb. Of course if you do download Trailfire to follow my “trails”, then I hope you will discover more relevant content – and what’s more, contribute your own trails if you feel so inclined. Look for the little red pin (see screenshot below) – every time you see it roll your mouse over it to view the note.

So here’s how this will work: over the next month I will be adding “trails” to around 4-6 blog posts per week. These trails will provide extra or related information about the post – including not just text, but possibly pictures, video and audio files. You will only see these trails if you [download Trailfire](https://web.archive.org/web/20090627063234/http://www.trailfire.com/pages/download.php). I’ve started by adding a trail to my [Weekly Wrapup post](https://web.archive.org/web/20090627063234/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/weekly_wrapup_16-20oct06.php) from earlier today – I did a chronological trail of my Web Office coverage across R/WW and (mostly) ZDNet.

If you don’t have Trailfire downloaded, you can also view the trail at this address: [http://trailfire.com/readwriteweb/marks/20121](https://web.archive.org/web/20090627063234/http://trailfire.com/readwriteweb/marks/20121)

So, I’m not sure how this will pan out. But it certainly seems to me like an interesting experiment, with appropriate ‘old school’ pre-Web influences (Vannevar Bush, Douglas Engelbart, Ted Nelson). Let me know your thoughts…

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/trailfire_experiment.php))*