Announcing the launch of Information Aggregator for EOS

We are Tokenika, a group of entrepreneurs based in Poland. In this post we would like to take the opportunity to introduce the first of our contributions to the emerging EOS ecosystem: Information Aggregator for EOS.

The concept

The goal is to create a single place where all relevant information about EOS can be accessed, indexed and made searchable. The whole idea originated from our own needs: we've noticed that keeping up with various pieces of information from various internet sources is quite a challenge for us, even at this early stage, when EOS has not even been launched yet.

Steemit and other Steem interfaces work fine for authoring and curation, yet none of them is really functional when you need searchable and properly tagged content.

Is it going to be useful?

As EOS gains traction, there will be more and more information related to it: tutorials, documentation, reviews, videos, official announcements, witnesses' updates, information about various tools in the ecosystem, etc. Unless you have plenty of time, it will be impossible to keep up with the constantly increasing amount of information and sort out on your own the important stuff from the noise.

That's why we believe that an internet hub aggregating searchable & tagged content, enhanced with executive summaries, might be handy. Maybe Steem could one day do this job, but actually we need more than Steem could offer in the foreseeable future: we need to deal with the content from the entire Internet, not only the posts published on Steem.

Professional documentation tool

The main point now is to demonstrate that the design we have chosen offers a lot of capabilities. It is a fully professional documentation tool, powered by Jenkyll and closely integrated with GitHub. Actually, one could say it's a GitHub repository on steroids. Kudos to Tom Johnson who has created an excellent Jekyll theme which we've managed to extend and adapt to our needs.

To see the full potential of this documentation tool you can play with this demo module on our website. You'll notice that apart from the basic elements available in mark-down, it supports advanced features like workflow maps, tool-tips, tables of content and generally everything that can be done with HTML. It also contains Google Analytics tools.

What's inside?

In most cases we just collect content already produced by others. We believe quality content is already out there, but the main problem is making it easily accessible, so that you can quickly find what you are looking for.

Unless a given publication is critically important, we do not copy the entire content of an article. We just store its title, a couple of sentences as a teaser, and one or two citations to make it easier for the reader to decide if it's worth their attention. And of course, we supply the basic metadata: the original author, the URL of the source, and the publication date.

Additionally we tag the content with one of our tags to make it more manageable & searchable, and to reflect the interconnections between different pieces of information.

Pages vs. posts

The content inside our repository is divided into two categories: pages and posts. The difference is that pages are meant for information that is more static, while posts are generally more temporary in nature. Also, pages are anchored in the main menu, while posts are time-stamped and accessible via different tags.

Different modules

When you access our home page, you'll notice that actually there can be several different modules, each dedicated to a different topic and each with its own custom menu on the left-hand side (or on the top, if you are on a mobile device). Currently we are working on two modules: EOS Info, which aggregates general, non-technical information, and EOS Dev, which will be targeted to developers and more technical audience.

Community contributions

As the underlying mechanism is a standard GitHub repository, collaboration with other people from the community is a straight-forward matter. If we've missed something or something is wrong or untrue - just create a GitHub pull request. The website can even offer a direct link to edit a given page or post. Here is an example:

Long-term vision

Please note that what we've done is still work in progress. Occasionally you might encounter some lorem ipsum fill-ins. In the coming weeks we will be improving it heavily and making it more user-friendly.

Ideally, in the long run the whole thing might turn into an EOS community project. Or even better, maybe one day we will migrate it to EOS as a dapp.

We aim to be unbiased

We believe there is no point in telling just one part of the story. Therefore we'll be aiming to accommodate everything that matters, including opinions and publications critical about EOS. We believe that this is the only way to run such an enterprise: always tell the whole story.

Feedback appreciated

Without feedback we cannot improve, so your opinion does matter, especially if it's critical. Please note that we are not native English speakers, so be forgiving if some of our thoughts are not perfectly expressed. We are just warming up - in the future we will make sure our texts are properly vetted in this respect.

Who are we?

We have quite extensive experience in the cryptospace, starting with Bitcoin in 2012, then moving on as early adopters to BitShares, Ethereum and Steem. One if us is a long-term Steem user, by the name of @innuendo. Also, we are proud to take advice and have the support of one of the top Steem witnesses, @gtg.

Currently our focus is on EOS. This time we would like to act both as investors and contributors to the emerging ecosystem. For us EOS is a long-time commitment. To find out more about us, our intentions and plans, please take a look at our website: tokenika.io.