Repliqa and web discovery

I’ve spent a good chunk of the weekend getting caught up on Mark Seremet’s Repliqa blog. There’s a lot of cool stuff there, and I can’t wait to get in on the Repliqa alpha (assuming it’s not vapor, and I don’t think it is).

One thing that keeps coming up in his blog (usually between the lines), and something with which I am becoming fascinated, is the serendipity of the internet. I’m not sure that’s really the right word, but it captures some of the sense I have of building a network as I traverse (or not) the links that come into range of my mouse as I browse the web. Some of the links are indeed serendipitous, taking me to something in which I have an interest without me necessarily intending to go there. Others take me someplace completely unexpected (like the Repliqa blog), sometimes piquing my interest other times not.

Part of what Repliqa is is a discovery engine, helping do well on a broader scale what the recommendations feature on Amazon (for example) does not so well today (yes, I'm SURE i'm oversimplifying). What’s great about this is that it will get to know what I am interested in and help me ‘discover’ more things that might fit that profile – news, books, music, blogs, etc. What’s missing is the stuff that it DOESN’T know about me. I’m a fan of the random and of things that strike me (like Mark’s blog) when I’m in the right mood for them. Sometimes what I want is something that I can’t define or that I don’t even know I want.

Hey Mark, can Repliqa do that for me?

One other thing I'd love to have, and maybe it's out there and I don't know it, is a way to backtrack those links I discussed above. I can't remember now how I found the Repliqa blog, or many other cool things that I've run into, but it would be great if del.icio.us or other such sites could pull the hyperlink trail that took me to the site I just added. Sometimes I need more than the destination to remind me where I've been.