Of Trees and Branches…

There’s been almost nothing but bad news out there today, so I thought I’d share two of the bright spots I’ve found during my reasearch runs and daily blog consumption. Both of them just happen to have a tree metaphor in the heart of their techie goodness.

First: Tumble Tree, which acts as a visualizer for Tumblr reblogs. While this is isn’t an essential service, per se, it sure makes the plain Jane nature of Tumblr’s reblog system fun to interact with. This is the kind of browser/service extension I love: one that works as an overlay of an existing service and makes said service all the more grok-able. [Thanks to Spytap, aka Barrett Garese, for the inital link, on Tumblr of course!]

Second: Branch. Imagine a world where internet conversations were more like real-life ones than the steaming piles of hatred that they are now. Wouldn’t that be nice? That’s the goal of Branch, which is going into public beta today. I haven’t had a chance to play with it, but Kibo knows that I’m always game for a new take on commenting systems. [Via MG Siegler]