Metabrowse Your Web Routine?

Well.. by RaboKrabekian · 2002-07-26 15:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

Having not heard about metabrowsing in two years is probably a good indication that the trend hasn't swept the internet community by storm.

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"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02

Observation by funkhauser · 2002-07-26 15:56 · Score: 2

Why does anyone need this? Even my grandmother, who is not very good with computers, can remember the sites that she likes to check every day. She can click the little "Bookmarks" menu, or even *gasp* type in a URL. So, if even the simplest computer user can get through their daily web routine without a "metabrowser", what's the point?

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Learn to Play Go

Re:Observation by TheDanish · 2002-07-26 16:01 · Score: 1

The point (to the best of my knowledge) is convenience, but that doesn't work either because for that to really work you'd need a great deal of cooperation between businesses, and that simply won't work. Or you just get businesses that cooperate with that particular metabrowser. But what happens when you want to buy something from a website that's not participating? You just ruined the entire purpose of it. Or, rather, it ruined itself. Or something. And yes, it wasn't necessary. If there's no necessity for something on the market, it dies. No necessity for paying people to watch ads? Well, guess where that goes?

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Danish != nationality
Re:Observation by AJ-perler · 2002-07-27 02:23 · Score: 1

You are right about the convenience, but I don't understand the comment about needing business cooperation for it to work.
DailyRoutine and Quickbrowse are tools that don't rely on site cooperation. They just let you connect your favorite sites, not the ones they want you to use. If you are talking about Yodlee then yes. If your institution isn't on their list, then your SOL.

Not necessary... by OneFix · 2002-07-26 16:10 · Score: 2

With things like the "Bookmark This Group of Tabs" option in Mozilla, this is not necessary.

And, yes... I find this feature useful, but it seems like the MetaBrowser sites are not worth it. Oh, I run scripts that pull information from sites to update a personal page, but this is because I like to view all of my content on the same page.

So, I have to wonder, when did this ever seem like a good idea to someone??? If I'm in front of my terminal, I can certainly click on a bookmark... And, most likely that link (that I use so often) will be on my Personal Toolbar or Sidebar.

I think this will just go down in the history of "bad ideas"...why should I trust a corporation to tell me what I'm interested in???

Re:Not necessary... by skotte · 2002-07-26 22:04 · Score: 2

actually, i would say this is a "good idea which would never really work right". sure, i could have a bunch of bookmarks (which i do). and i could have a set of pages i go to everyday (which i do). and my browser could open up to one of those fFor me right away (which it does). but the idea is fFor all my other browsing of the day to be nsted right into that fFirst startup page. a single page which gives daily headlines, stocks, sports, tech news, a basic quick up-to-date run down on everything really new in the world. nice idea, really. and most ISPs have a homepage which attempts to do this sort of idea. heck, this is really all CNN is.

but the thing is, you're right. if i'm at my computer, why wouldnt i just go to the original source - which will give much more space to dedicated topics - to get the original scoop?

the answer to the actual story's question here , then, is: yes, it's a nice idea. but not on this media. try reading the newspaper or watch the news if that's what you're after.
Re:Not necessary... by AJ-perler · 2002-07-27 02:42 · Score: 1

Hmm... I think that the all in one page approach has been tried over and over (happened to have tried onepage.com?) but they are too complex for the average user. Is a site going to live on the popularity of the geek community (no offense Slashdot)??
Yodlee trys to solve the problem, unlike Onepage, by only providing partnered web sites. It puts all (scraped) line item'ed info onto one HTML page. But the business of providing your account numbers and passwords is annoying and scarey.
DailyRoutine trys to solve the problem by working like a familiar bookmark manager with special folders. It shows your favorite pages in their full glory (in frame(s) or new window). But most people won't even set the time on their VCRs, so pursuing ease of use may be a red herring.
Quickbrose trys to solve the problem by emailing the pages to you so you don't even have to go browse the web at all. Stitches together slightly modified versions of entire web pages. With email accounts filling up with SPAM daily, many people don't want the extra stuff in their inbox.
Personally, I use DailyRoutine which doesn't send me emails and doesn't ask for my user ids or passwords. I'd use bookmarks exclusively except that I jump between NS and IE and between about 8 computers throughout the month. It's nice having one setup that follows me, and happens to let me browse my daily sites like a slide show.

Mozilla Grouped Bookmarks by Paul+Burney · 2002-07-26 16:22 · Score: 2, Informative

I suppose it isn't exactly metabrowsing, but in mozilla 1.0 you can file a group of tabs as one bookmark. Just choose "File Bookmark" from the "Bookmarks" menu, and click the "File as Group" checkbox.

I use it to browse slashdot, the register, macsurfer, etc., for my morning tech news, without having to go to each sit individually.

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<?php while ($self != "asleep") { $sheep_count++; } ?>

Re:Mozilla Grouped Bookmarks by kraf · 2002-07-27 23:12 · Score: 2

Of course in the much more advanced Opera, you can automatically save the windows settings and you just continue where you left off when starting the browser again.

Ironic, I use /. for this by Bald+Wookie · 2002-07-26 17:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

See those slashboxes over there? I've got K5, Ars Forums, Brunching Shuttlecocks, E2 and O'Reilly. These are sites that I browse when I've got some free time and something intersting comes up. I know the url's, but I don't have them bookmarked because I get them here on slashdot.

Even the front page hits sites that I occasionally look at. Ny Times, New Scientist, Salon, and a few others. If I played "six degrees of slashdot", most of my favorite sites would only be one or two degrees away from here. Granted, slashdot is a link whore. However I still spend most of my 'non task oriented' browsing on this side of the web.

Just had a thought. Maybe these web aggregators/metabrowsers are missing the boat. I come to slashdot for the content, not the boxes. If I didn't check slashdot daily for the content I wouldn't even look at them. A business model based on screen scraping the web makes me feel like it's 1999 again. You can hardly make money serving up your own content, what makes you think you'll make the bucks with secondhand RDF feeds?

right idea, wrong media. by skotte · 2002-07-26 22:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

this is essentially how the newspapers do it, you know. you have several companys (reuters, associated press, knight ridder, etc) each has a lot of people on staff to write a lot of things. then they sell the stories to newspapers all over the world. that paper you have in your hand is, if you will, a metabrowser.

but the net doesnt work like that.

Re:right idea, wrong media. by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-27 20:14 · Score: 0

Not quite. Newspapers have their own reporters and their editors chose a mix of stories from those reporters and the news services based on newsworthiness (a story about a snowstorm in Illinois might be important to Chicago-area papers, but most people in San Diego could care less).
Most U.S. newspapers are affiliated with the AP and Reuters, though a smaller number use the Agence France-Presse, which is more popular internationally. Then there's United Press International, which is practically dead, so few papers use it.
Knight Ridder and Gannett are different animals altogether. They are huge corporations which own dozens of tiny newspapers you've never heard of and a few larger papers (USA Today is Gannett's flagship paper, while the San Jose Mercury News is KR's, though KR's Miami Herald is a better paper). One of the "advantages" of these giant corporations is that they share stories with other papers in the corporation, which enables a paper in Fargo to cover an event in San Francisco without having to put up the money for a regional bureau.
Better papers (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, etc.) maintain their own bureaus outside their hometowns (for instance, the Washington Post has about 10 bureaus in U.S. cities outside DC [Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, etc.], and about 12 bureaus in international cities [London, Tokyo, Moscow, etc.]), so they use a far higher percentage of their own content, but they still use the AP, Reuters and AFP for stories they can't afford to cover themselves or don't have the time to reach. However, you won't see a Knight Ridder story in a paper like the New York Times.
The big difference here is that aggregators/metabrowsers are computers that display headlines without discretion. Newspapers employ editors who have been trained in the art/science of news judgment. For this reason, a metabrowser will quickly become exceptionally boring and irrelevant.

Patent Pending? by robson · 2002-07-27 00:54 · Score: 1

From the bottom of every DailyRoutine page:

"© 1999-2002 DailyRoutine.com, Inc.(TM); Patent Pending"

I wonder what element of this they feel comfortable patenting...?

What's the use? by martyb · 2002-07-27 02:39 · Score: 2

Why does anyone need this? Even my grandmother, who is not very good with computers, can remember the sites that she likes to check every day. She can click the little "Bookmarks" menu, or even *gasp* type in a URL. So, if even the simplest computer user can get through their daily web routine without a "metabrowser", what's the point?

I'll agree that for most users at home, this doesn't seem to make much sense at first. But, there are a couple of cases in which this could be helpful.

Better Signal/Noise Ratio There's ever more data available to us. How do I find the stuff I want among all the stuff there is? Sure, there's google for looking up archived data. But, what I'd like is something that would scan the web and present only current news in my areas of interest. As elsewhere posted in this thread, to a large extent I've found that /. accomplishes this for me with respect to science and technology. I've not found something comparable for other areas in which I'm interested, especially in my town and surrounding area. Sure, there's the local newspaper, but there's that S/N ratio again! There's value in having a single site which does the sifting for me and presents only the news in which I'm interested.
The devil is in the details, though. Just how well does such a service work? They need to make a good first impression. Don't keep showing me stuff I'm not interested in, but also don't keep missing out on things I AM interested in! If there were a simple way to do it with technology, then there'd be no need for the editors on /. to sift through article submissions.
Accessibility It's one thing to bring up my browser's bookmarks at home. But what if I am away from home? When I go to my local public library or an internet cafe, they don't have my bookmarks available. Sure, I could just create my own homepage which contains my favorite bookmarks, but I know how to write HTML; and I'd wager the majority of people who browse the web do not.
It could be argued that I should just get a lap top or a PDA with a wireless connection. Yes, that would be nice, but that's not a viable option for me at the moment, economically. Maybe in a few years when the upfront and ongoing costs of a wireless PDA has come down some more. My ISP provides unlimited dial-up access for my home PC at $20 per month. We're nowhere near that for mobile access and it's just out of most people's price range.
Business executives. They have the financial means and the need for information. But, at the moment, they've got secretaries and underlings who do the sifting for them already. Add on the resistance to change from what "works" and it will take a while for it to catch on.

So, though I see some value to the concept, I don't see much of a market for it, now. But, over time as the costs go down and the capabilities improve, I can see this becoming increasingly useful.

Re:What's the use? by costas · 2002-07-27 21:27 · Score: 2

The site I run (here) tries to do exactly this for meta-browsing. Give it a shot.

Pendings all 'round by AJ-perler · 2002-07-27 02:56 · Score: 1

From the bottom of Quickbrowse.com:

Everyone seems to be pursuing something. Quickbrowse and Dailyroutine have been patent pending for years.

Freshnews by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-27 03:11 · Score: 0

www.freshnews.org

I use it every day.

Only one homepage by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-27 03:40 · Score: 0

Metabrowser sites address the problem that every site wants to be your homepage. Web browsers only have room for one homepage setting (and I don't want more than one homepage).

If I use bookmarks for all the other interesting pages, do I set the bookmarks on every browser and every computer I encounter at home, at work, on the road? Or do I put my bookmarks on the web, and get the same universal access that web based email provides?

If I'm going to store my bookmarks on the web, why not use a site that has additional features? www.dailyroutine.com and www.quickbrowse.com let you add any site you want, and provide interesting additional functionality. DailyRoutine can preload web pages in my browser while I'm reading the first one. Quickbrowse can email web pages to me.

Site/page checking by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-27 03:48 · Score: 0

I'm a webmaster and reseller of hosting services. I use a metabrowser to check and make sure all my sites/pages are up and running in on click. This may not be what they intended it for, but it makes things very easy

Dailyroutine.com has made my life so much easier by bushda · 2002-07-27 04:07 · Score: 1

I've got to say that I've been using Dailyroutine.com for a few years now, and it has really made my life much, much easier.

I've got certain web pages I like to read every morning (ESPN's NHL section, the Ottawa Sun's sport section, Dilbert, Userfriendly.org, etc.) so to be able to have a single routine that just goes and grabs them all & sticks them into one easy to read web page is great.

When I was on dial up I started it before I got into the shower every morning and it was ready by the time I got out of the shower.

Now I start it at work before I go get my morning coffee and by the time I get back it's done.

I was skeptical that I'd use Dailyroutine.com when I first heard about it. Now I can't imagine my morning web surfing without it.

Trust me - try it for a few weeks and you'll get addicted.

--
There are two seasons in my world - Hockey and Construction

Use Opera's "Save window setup..." by OnTheEdge · 2002-07-27 04:08 · Score: 2, Informative

I have 4 sites I visit each day. Initially, I opened each in its own Opera window, ordered them as I wished, and saved the set up. Now I just open Opera each morning, and it loads all the sites in the order I wish to view them. As I finish viewing a site, I close its window. Once I see a blank screen, it's time to return to real life.

Galeon's Tab features by theefer · 2002-07-27 07:46 · Score: 0

Another possibility is to place all your favorite websites in one bookmark folder, and then, just right-click and "Open this folder in tabs".

So you'll have all the news websites in one window, just browse the tabs to view them all !

Galeon's definitely my favourite browser :)

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theefer

HP prints your favorite web sites by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-27 08:39 · Score: 0

HP PrintSmart was a product that allowed you to create a list of web sites you wanted it to print (like a newspaper) every day. Like onepage.com, you could even specify the region of the page you wanted to print. I'm sure HP wanted to create software that compelled you to buy their printers.

HP has since discontinued the product and support for it, either due to cost or lack of interest. It was neat, but I don't care for printouts, I prefer to browse my favorite sites live. Maybe the old CEO's that have their secretaries print out their email for them would have liked HP PrintSmart.

Yodlee info by Anonymous Coward · 2002-07-27 08:49 · Score: 0

Yodlee's primary goal is to get you to disclose your confidential financial info so it can make money off it (the news metabrowsing is just thrown in as a lure... it's not nearly comprehensive enough to be useful). It looks like you're getting the service for free, but the cost is that you have no way of knowing what they're doing with your info -- their policy statement is not a contract. Most of Yodlee's money comes from partners like Citibank, Bank of America, American Express, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, Yahoo and others who have an interest in knowing exactly what your finances look like so they can most effectively milk your wallet. These partners pay Yodlee to build Yodlee-like sites for them (see MyCiti) because you're more likely to trust Citibank than a company called Yodlee. After all, Citibank would never do anything surreptitious with your information... but they don't have to if Yodlee does it for them. Steer clear of these aggregation sites if you value your privacy.

Re:Yodlee info by MRnAAs · 2002-07-27 09:06 · Score: 1

I completely agree. Their site mentions the security and handprint scans to get to the databases, but it would still scare the hell out of me to provide my credit cards, bank account, brokerage account, etc...
The aggregation they provide is anything they can line item. So news, weather, etc... are all boring even thought he sites they get it from (like ESPN) have put so much time into "building the experience" of browsing their own sites... reducing it to a few text lines is an injustice.
Re:Yodlee info by udecker · 2002-07-30 22:32 · Score: 1

This is untrue. As a former employee of an aggregation company, I can tell you the real motivation.

Each of these partners sites do not in any way have access to confidential information. Sites like Yodlee host everything themselves. The reason the other organizations pay Yodlee money is that the service of aggregating all of your financial data in one place is a service that these institutions cannot do alone. If you're a bank, the only service you can offer is your own banking services. However, when you partner with a service like Yodlee, your website gets many advantages and services that it otherwise would not have.

How often do you go to your bank account online? Banks (and other places like Yahoo, etc.) are only trying to increase the traffic to their own company's sites and services, in the hope that while you're there, you'll get a new mortgage or be a couple of eyeballs for some advertising.

Author DailyRoutine.com by MRnAAs · 2002-07-27 09:10 · Score: 1

Glad to see a mention of DailyRoutine on Slashdot.

I built DailyRoutine back in 1999 after seeing the stats in the back of Business 2.0 that the average Internet user browses about 30 pages (5 unique sites) 5 times a week. I noticed my own browsing habits were similar (but magnified :-), and built a tool to help out.

Since then I've rewritten it a few times and added interesting features.

Hope you enjoy it,
-AAron

Mozilla has something similar by yerricde · 2002-07-27 14:17 · Score: 1

Another possibility is to place all your favorite websites in one bookmark folder, and then, just right-click and "Open this folder in tabs".

If you're not running GNOME, you can do nearly the same thing with recent Mozilla. Open several pages, then tell Mozilla to "Bookmark This Group of Tabs..." giving you a nice little button on your Personal Toolbar.

--
Will I retire or break 10K?

News != Metabrowsing by AJ-perler · 2002-07-29 01:40 · Score: 1

News scraping sites have their place, but they are not considered metabrowsers by today's standards. They are only news aggregation sites, which are usually only part of a person's daily visits.

"Scraped news sites" don't satisfy my frequent browsing routine. Besides 3 global news sites I also view local news/weather, Yahoo Mail, 3 forums, trillian.cc, SecuriTeam.com, colo site stats, comics, etc...

If your web browsing habits are not limited to the news available on popular portals, you should try something like QuickBrowse or DailyRoutine. Those sites let you add Slashdot, eBay, Hotmail, ESPN, Weather.com, ... everything you want.

Saying that a news site is the only metabrowser you need is like saying "Oh I couldn't use a butler because I already read the newspaper every day." A butler could bring you the paper, make your coffee, drive you to the bank, walk the dog, screen your mail...

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