Confusion over 'Clip' and 'Klip'
on
Gmail Gets RSS
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I wonder if anyone is confused between 'Clip' and 'Klip'.
One is for the web, the other is a way to clip content to the desktop. Looking at this in a positive way, maybe we did pick the right name for our product four years ago.
I was at Showcase 2001, a demo-like conference, which felt like the last internet conference before the bubble burst.
Does anyone remember bitlocker that tried to do an on-line database?
They went out of business, not enough revenues. But then, Google is looking to compliment their product offerings, not base their company around on-line database.
I expect there will be a resurgence of on-line databases now that Google has announced their offering in this space. I'll bet that one year from now, Yahoo, AOL, and Amazon, will buy one of those companies for $$$ to keep up with Google.
Regards,... Fred
KlipFolio and Yahoo use a JavaScript runtime to let developers quickly build Klips/Widgets. Google and Saumrize use a C++/DLL system for building modules.
Anyone have experience will some of the above consumer dashboards and would like to share their thoughts?
I agree with Strider44 on the problems of HTML embedded in RSS.
Google has provided a feed, but the next step is to provide b>all the data in a structured format (either using RSS 2.0 extensions or more tags in Atom). The current feed is good, but only goes half-way.
Want to see what is possible with more structured data? Check out Serence's Google Kilp, which parses the HTML to give you the ability to choose language, topic, and pop-up alerts.
Google news Klip
(This is a Klip that in the KlipFolio RSS Dashboard.)
Obviously, it would be easier to parse XML than HTML. We predict that many feeds (like Google) will soon move to offering more contnet in their feed that newer RSS readers can leverage.
The web is great, but it has two faults: it requires manual effort to monitor updates to content you care about, and when web browser is closed, a web site (such as Yahoo) can't alert you to updates other than by flooding your inbox with more e-mail.
RSS is helping this, but it's only providing the content. I think people are missing an important point on these Web-based desktop applications: it lets a web site (such as Yahoo) provide content-specific logic with their data to increase traffic.
RSS: "Here is our feed; we hope you find it valuable and come back."
Web-based desktop applications: "Here is our feed PLUS a script-based program that increases its value by letting you personalize your awareness to our content."
Such applications let you offer content + content-specific logic to users. Not only can you offload some of the processing on your server, but more importantly give users a way to personalize their awareness, which leads to more traffic.
I think Konfabulator provides great eye candy, but is a bit too unstructured for corporate deployment. Corporations (and users) like consistency in an interface. If you want to see an example of a consistent interface for monitoring and alerting to changes in XML or HTML-based content, check out Serence KlipFolio. It has a JavaScript run-time engine and built-in APIs that make putting the business logic on the desktop easy.
I work at a company (http://www.serence.com/) that builds Dashboards that monitor, among other things, RSS feeds, so we think a lot about the future of RSS, how corporations will adopt it, and how advertising might shape it.
A lot of people are commenting on the growing amount of advertising in feeds and trying to guess "What's next for RSS?"
We think RSS will follow a trend that is very similar to e-mail, and I think the parallels reveal some insight into the future of RSS for users.
Look closely at e-mail. It started grass roots (ignoring the few proprietary e-mail systems that large companies spent millions to develop and deploy). It was person-to-person. It was inherently insecure. People used it because it was easy, personal and saved them time and effort. Over time, corporations sanctioned it to increase efficiency. And people take personal interest in their inbox. This is my e-mail inbox and, as such, attempts at advertising (spam) are met with resistance. Same goes with advertising in your IM client - it is considered an invasion.
RSS is on a similar path. It started outside the firewall. It was person-to-person via blogs. It is inherently insecure (though there is interest in Secure RSS). People use it because it is easy, personal and saves them time and effort. We're now also seeing corporations integrating it to increase efficiency. And, I believe, people relate to their feeds the same personal way as their inbox. These are my feeds and any advertising will be met with resistance.
The key point is that E-mail/RSS is a user-driven technology. The adoption will be driven by quality of feeds (which is what FeedForAll is focused on) ease of use, and increased capabilities for users to further personalize their awareness (which is what we focus on).
Regards,... Fred
--
Life is NP-Complete
What is next after RSS?
on
BBC Launches APIs
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
While BBC's announcement is still about offering RSS and RDF feeds, and their APIs are not yet available, their effort is in the right direction.
Do you ever get the feeling that when a site finally puts up an RSS feed, they are saying 'Look, we now have a feed. Have at it folks. That's it on our end. No need to innovate further." In contrast, the BBC is not just giving out more feeds for RSS readers: they are giving components for creating applications.
I work at Serence, a company that for the last three years has been building a platform for deploying personal dashboards written in XML and JavaScript (http://www.serence.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=751).
We've been thinking a lot about this question: what is next after RSS?
We think the next step beyond RSS is to create more intelligent clients, and we are trying to make it easier for people to do just that. Users want to have more control over their content. The BBC is realizing something that is counter-intuitive to many companies: give users more control over your content and it will increase adoption because each user can customize their awareness to their needs.
The company I work for wrote a HotMail Inbox Watcher Klip that lets anyone monitor their HotMail Inbox for new messages from their desktop - and see a preview! - without having to manually login to check for new messages.
In creating the HotMail Inbox Watcher, we got the strong sense that the only other companies using HotMail/WebDav were spammers exploiting Microsoft HotMail.
Personally, I would like to see Microsoft support an API for HotMail so other sanctioned applications could integrate with HotMail and continue to increase its value for end-users.
We are trying to work with Microsoft to promote this as an option for third-party companies. The HotMail Inbox Watcher Klip runs in KlipFolio, an open platform for intelligent awareness of changes to remote data. Klips are programed in JavaScript. KlipFolio is free for personal, non-commercial use. You can download it at http://www.serence.com/
Web-based e-mail is great,b ut all web-based e-mail systems -- HotMail, GMail, Yahoo Mail, etc -- suffer from one big problem: you have to manually login to check for new messages. GMail came out with a beta GMail watcher. But what's the choice for HotMail?
MSN Messenger tells you when you have new HotMail messages waiting, but it only gives the number of unread messages -- you still have to login to read them.
Check out the HotMail Watcher Klip from Serence (http://www.serence.com) if you want to monitor your HotMail account for new messages.
The HotMail Klip is an intelligent agent that runs in KlipFolio. KlipFolio an open platform for developing task-specific agents that can monitor remote data source for changes. Klips are scriptable with JavaScript. Anyone can write a Klip and share it with others.
The result is you don't have to manually login any more just to check for new HotMail messages. The Klip does all the authentication with Microsoft Passport, logs in on your behalf every half-our, uses WebDav to check your account, and tells you your new messages -- with a preview of the message.
Best of all, KlipFolio (and the HotMail Klip) are free for personal, non-commercial use.
If anyone has feedback on how we can make the Klip better, please e-mail me (fdixon at serence dot com) or post to our forums.
Regards,... Fred
[Full discloser: I work at Serence on the sales side, selling KlipFolio to corporate customers to make money to ensure our developer's can keep enhancing KlipFolio for everyone.]
Storage isn't everything. After 1G, its really a case of diminishing returns. Ask any user, and what they really care about is usability.
I also know a bit about e-mail checkers and what GMail is doing. I work at Serence, a company that makes KlipFolio, a windows tool that watches multiple remote sites for changes to save you effort.
We just released a Hotmail Klip that monitors your Hotmail inbox for new messages, shows you the messages in concise list, and gives you a preview on mouse over. Screen shots are here.
Our plan is to do a GMail Klip next. It took us quite a while to figure out Hotmail's use of WebDav and how to authenticate against Microsoft Passport. Hopefully, GMail offers an easier API than HotMail.
It's really in the interest of these companies to make their product easy for users (again: usability), and very easy for third-party vendors to add value to it.
I've worked for many years in the reporting, designing reporting and analysis solutions, and I agree 100% with the amount of effort and pain it requires to generate custom reports. Some users will require more information than the existing reports can provide, but few have the skills to write their own reports, leaving it up to IT to design Yet More Reports (tm).
There are really three problems that you encounter with web-based reports:
Problem #1: Proper design - In a well designed reporting system, the reports specifically answer user's questions. In other words, the report designers have first considered what questions users have about the data, then designed one or more reports to answer these questions. Most of the time this analysis is not done, which leads to problem #2...
Problem #2: Data overload - some reports are poorly designed or simply take 50 pages to view over the web, and whenever the data starts to run over a few pages, it quickly becomes indigestible for the user. Regardless of how well the reports are designed, once the user answers their questions, there is a third problem...
Problem #3: Data analysis - Even in a well designed, when a report provides answers to one (or more) user's questions about a particular set of data, these answers usually trigger more questions that require a second report. For example, when the user receives the second report (from the overworked IT staff), the answers it provides trigger yet more questions that require a third report, and so on, and so on...
It was my experience that user's almost always need some other way to analyze the data - either because they have additional questions, because the reports are poorly designed, or because the reports spans multiple pages.
For my $0.02, I would suggest you look at Actuate's e.Reporting as offering a very good web-based reporting system, and I would suggest you look at InterNetivity's databeacon as offering a very good web-based analysis system - it also integrates nicely with Actuate's software.
Both of these products generate PDF files for high-quality output. InterNetivity's product, databeacon, offers you to graphically analyze - at a high level - the detailed data contained within the Actuate report, or data returned from any web-based reporting system (even home grown ones written in Perl).
See:
www.actuate.com
www.internetivity.com
Hope this helps,... Fred
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if anyone is confused between 'Clip' and 'Klip'.
One is for the web, the other is a way to clip content to the desktop. Looking at this in a positive way, maybe we did pick the right name for our product four years ago.
See http://www.serence.com/ and our use of Klips for the desktop.
Cheers,... Fred
Does anyone remember bitlocker that tried to do an on-line database?
They went out of business, not enough revenues. But then, Google is looking to compliment their product offerings, not base their company around on-line database.
I expect there will be a resurgence of on-line databases now that Google has announced their offering in this space. I'll bet that one year from now, Yahoo, AOL, and Amazon, will buy one of those companies for $$$ to keep up with Google. Regards,... Fred
Other players are KlipFolio, Yahoo Widgets (Konfabulator), and Samurize.
KlipFolio and Yahoo use a JavaScript runtime to let developers quickly build Klips/Widgets. Google and Saumrize use a C++/DLL system for building modules.
Anyone have experience will some of the above consumer dashboards and would like to share their thoughts?
Regards,... Fred
Google has provided a feed, but the next step is to provide b>all the data in a structured format (either using RSS 2.0 extensions or more tags in Atom). The current feed is good, but only goes half-way.
Want to see what is possible with more structured data? Check out Serence's Google Kilp, which parses the HTML to give you the ability to choose language, topic, and pop-up alerts.
Google news Klip (This is a Klip that in the KlipFolio RSS Dashboard.) Obviously, it would be easier to parse XML than HTML. We predict that many feeds (like Google) will soon move to offering more contnet in their feed that newer RSS readers can leverage.
RSS is helping this, but it's only providing the content. I think people are missing an important point on these Web-based desktop applications: it lets a web site (such as Yahoo) provide content-specific logic with their data to increase traffic.
RSS: "Here is our feed; we hope you find it valuable and come back."
Web-based desktop applications: "Here is our feed PLUS a script-based program that increases its value by letting you personalize your awareness to our content."
Such applications let you offer content + content-specific logic to users. Not only can you offload some of the processing on your server, but more importantly give users a way to personalize their awareness, which leads to more traffic.
I think Konfabulator provides great eye candy, but is a bit too unstructured for corporate deployment. Corporations (and users) like consistency in an interface. If you want to see an example of a consistent interface for monitoring and alerting to changes in XML or HTML-based content, check out Serence KlipFolio. It has a JavaScript run-time engine and built-in APIs that make putting the business logic on the desktop easy.
Regards,... Fred
--
Life is NP-Complete
A lot of people are commenting on the growing amount of advertising in feeds and trying to guess "What's next for RSS?"
We think RSS will follow a trend that is very similar to e-mail, and I think the parallels reveal some insight into the future of RSS for users.
Look closely at e-mail. It started grass roots (ignoring the few proprietary e-mail systems that large companies spent millions to develop and deploy). It was person-to-person. It was inherently insecure. People used it because it was easy, personal and saved them time and effort. Over time, corporations sanctioned it to increase efficiency. And people take personal interest in their inbox. This is my e-mail inbox and, as such, attempts at advertising (spam) are met with resistance. Same goes with advertising in your IM client - it is considered an invasion.
RSS is on a similar path. It started outside the firewall. It was person-to-person via blogs. It is inherently insecure (though there is interest in Secure RSS). People use it because it is easy, personal and saves them time and effort. We're now also seeing corporations integrating it to increase efficiency. And, I believe, people relate to their feeds the same personal way as their inbox. These are my feeds and any advertising will be met with resistance.
The key point is that E-mail/RSS is a user-driven technology. The adoption will be driven by quality of feeds (which is what FeedForAll is focused on) ease of use, and increased capabilities for users to further personalize their awareness (which is what we focus on).
Regards,... Fred
--
Life is NP-Complete
While BBC's announcement is still about offering RSS and RDF feeds, and their APIs are not yet available, their effort is in the right direction.
) .
Do you ever get the feeling that when a site finally puts up an RSS feed, they are saying 'Look, we now have a feed. Have at it folks. That's it on our end. No need to innovate further." In contrast, the BBC is not just giving out more feeds for RSS readers: they are giving components for creating applications.
I work at Serence, a company that for the last three years has been building a platform for deploying personal dashboards written in XML and JavaScript (http://www.serence.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=751
We've been thinking a lot about this question: what is next after RSS?
We think the next step beyond RSS is to create more intelligent clients, and we are trying to make it easier for people to do just that. Users want to have more control over their content. The BBC is realizing something that is counter-intuitive to many companies: give users more control over your content and it will increase adoption because each user can customize their awareness to their needs.
Wow, this may even make the BBC cool again.
Regards,... Fred
The company I work for wrote a HotMail Inbox Watcher Klip that lets anyone monitor their HotMail Inbox for new messages from their desktop - and see a preview! - without having to manually login to check for new messages.
In creating the HotMail Inbox Watcher, we got the strong sense that the only other companies using HotMail/WebDav were spammers exploiting Microsoft HotMail.
Personally, I would like to see Microsoft support an API for HotMail so other sanctioned applications could integrate with HotMail and continue to increase its value for end-users.
We are trying to work with Microsoft to promote this as an option for third-party companies. The HotMail Inbox Watcher Klip runs in KlipFolio, an open platform for intelligent awareness of changes to remote data. Klips are programed in JavaScript. KlipFolio is free for personal, non-commercial use.
You can download it at http://www.serence.com/
Regards,... Fred
Serence, Inc.
MSN Messenger tells you when you have new HotMail messages waiting, but it only gives the number of unread messages -- you still have to login to read them.
Check out the HotMail Watcher Klip from Serence (http://www.serence.com) if you want to monitor your HotMail account for new messages.
The HotMail Klip is an intelligent agent that runs in KlipFolio. KlipFolio an open platform for developing task-specific agents that can monitor remote data source for changes. Klips are scriptable with JavaScript. Anyone can write a Klip and share it with others.
The result is you don't have to manually login any more just to check for new HotMail messages. The Klip does all the authentication with Microsoft Passport, logs in on your behalf every half-our, uses WebDav to check your account, and tells you your new messages -- with a preview of the message.
For a screen shot, check out this post in our developer's forum. http://www.serence.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=391
Best of all, KlipFolio (and the HotMail Klip) are free for personal, non-commercial use. If anyone has feedback on how we can make the Klip better, please e-mail me (fdixon at serence dot com) or post to our forums.
Regards,... Fred
[Full discloser: I work at Serence on the sales side, selling KlipFolio to corporate customers to make money to ensure our developer's can keep enhancing KlipFolio for everyone.]
Storage isn't everything. After 1G, its really a case of diminishing returns. Ask any user, and what they really care about is usability.
I also know a bit about e-mail checkers and what GMail is doing. I work at Serence, a company that makes KlipFolio, a windows tool that watches multiple remote sites for changes to save you effort.
We just released a Hotmail Klip that monitors your Hotmail inbox for new messages, shows you the messages in concise list, and gives you a preview on mouse over. Screen shots are here.
Our plan is to do a GMail Klip next. It took us quite a while to figure out Hotmail's use of WebDav and how to authenticate against Microsoft Passport. Hopefully, GMail offers an easier API than HotMail.
It's really in the interest of these companies to make their product easy for users (again: usability), and very easy for third-party vendors to add value to it.
Cheers,... Fred
I've worked for many years in the reporting, designing reporting and analysis solutions, and I agree 100% with the amount of effort and pain it requires to generate custom reports. Some users will require more information than the existing reports can provide, but few have the skills to write their own reports, leaving it up to IT to design Yet More Reports (tm). There are really three problems that you encounter with web-based reports: Problem #1: Proper design - In a well designed reporting system, the reports specifically answer user's questions. In other words, the report designers have first considered what questions users have about the data, then designed one or more reports to answer these questions. Most of the time this analysis is not done, which leads to problem #2... Problem #2: Data overload - some reports are poorly designed or simply take 50 pages to view over the web, and whenever the data starts to run over a few pages, it quickly becomes indigestible for the user. Regardless of how well the reports are designed, once the user answers their questions, there is a third problem ...
Problem #3: Data analysis - Even in a well designed, when a report provides answers to one (or more) user's questions about a particular set of data, these answers usually trigger more questions that require a second report. For example, when the user receives the second report (from the overworked IT staff), the answers it provides trigger yet more questions that require a third report, and so on, and so on...
It was my experience that user's almost always need some other way to analyze the data - either because they have additional questions, because the reports are poorly designed, or because the reports spans multiple pages.
For my $0.02, I would suggest you look at Actuate's e.Reporting as offering a very good web-based reporting system, and I would suggest you look at InterNetivity's databeacon as offering a very good web-based analysis system - it also integrates nicely with Actuate's software.
Both of these products generate PDF files for high-quality output. InterNetivity's product, databeacon, offers you to graphically analyze - at a high level - the detailed data contained within the Actuate report, or data returned from any web-based reporting system (even home grown ones written in Perl).
See:
www.actuate.com
www.internetivity.com
Hope this helps,... Fred