Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Interview, RSS feeds, Blogs

Hi All,

Yesterday I noticed a RSS news feed in Gmail on wire text of a recent interview of Google CEO's i missed to read that yesterday and when was looking for that today came across a nice blog of Jeremy Wagstaff

Below is the post on his blog that lead me there....

"Interview With The Guy Behind The Klips

In today's Asian Wall Street Journal and in WSJ.com (subscription only, I'm afraid) I talk about widgets — sometimes called dashboards — as an alternative, or addition, to RSS.

Here is the transcript of an email/IM interview I did with Allan Wille, president and CEO of Serence, the company behind Klips:

The new Folio looks good. what's the main new feature in this version?

Based on customer feedback, mostly from Content Providers, images and a richer content experience were very key. Much of that had to do with increased branding capabilities as well. So images are likely the BIG feature in KlipFolio 3.0. Enterprise to a lesser extent were also asking for images - charts, graphs that can tie into CRM or other enterprise applications

 

why would someone go for Klips over an RSS reader or similar device?

We are positioning KlipFolio as a dashboard - a personal dashboard for consumers or an digital/business dashboard for enterprise. We are not an RSS reader, and I see our paths moving appart, such that the two products --KlipFolio and an RSS reader-- can exist in parallel. Klips are intelligent agents, where the value lies in their ability to inform and alert users of complex data. Klips are very good at allowing personalization of content, and persenting users with alerts to critical data. Of-course Klips can do news feeds, but the differentiation there is less apparent, and in some cases, an RSS reader will do a better job.

 

You seem to have a lot of European users. is that right, and if so, any reason for that?

KlipFolio started to have sucess with a number of key German news outlets - Tagesschau, Heise, Spiegel Online etc ... this started back in 2002, when RSS was not quite as hyped as it is today. I believe this gave us significant visibility among other content providers in Germany and Europe, and has led to a very large European userbase, and subsequently a good source of leads and customers. North America was hesitant to try new technologies and as RSS was adopted by more and more content providers in NA, Klips were caught in a difficult differentiation battle. With the features present in 3.0, wer are looking to overcome these challenges in NA.

 

You've been doing Klip for a while, and while as you know I'm a fan, it doesn't seem to have caught on as I might have expected. I don't see that many Klip buttons on websites. any thoughts on that?

When you compare the visibilty of Klips to RSS, you are quite right - it seems to be taking a back seat. It is important for us to continue to get the Klip buttons out there, as this is a major marketing program for us. Again, it is a question of differentiation, of added value over RSS. 3.0 will be addressing much of this, and we need to aggressively make sure we educate key content providers of the value - a trend we are seeing though is that the major content providers are contacting us not for simple Klip publishing, but more so for the development of branded desktop clients ...

 

Related to the last one, where do you see the market for this? it seems to be different fields you're playing to, from the RSS on a stick audience, to the secure corporate feeds...

Interesting question - our markets are (a) Content Providers (ie: CNET, Kluwer, Penton, Spiegel) for branded versions of KlipFolio (branded KlipFolio, downloadable from their sites, with their Klips bundled), (b) Enterprise (Wells Fargo, Advanded Telcom, Curtiss-Wright, NDR) who license KlipFolio Enterprise as an internal dashboard, and, (c) Application Vendors (Connotate, BizActions) who wish to OEM distribute KlipFolio as their own product, sublicensed to their customers (in other words a channel play). End users are not a market for us - they are a source of leads.

 

Critics might say that because its proprietary software, Klips are a step backwards, locking users and providers into something that's Old Economy.. any thoughts on that?

It's not proprietary. Anyone can build and publish Klips. We publish our APIs, and a full SDK free of charge, and with no need to register. We use XML and Javascript. Konfabulator, Apple dashboard, and Macromedia Central (or Adobe now ...) are more like Flash (as a mini-application environment). I must say it's very cool, and I have tried it a number of times, but the inconistency of the interfaces have ultimately gotten in the way. I do think it will attract a number of Content Providers due to it's brandability.

 

Where do you see this space (Klips, but also RSS, Konfabulator etc) going? Do they at some point move off the desktop?

I see a clear short-term trend where RSS readers are going to be melded into browsers and email-clients. I see them as becoming more capable of rendering html (and soon video, and audio), where their value as an "alerting" tool become less apparent. I also would consider this a very dangerous time to be an RSS reader client company - even for the forerunners, I don't see competitive advantage, or amongst themselves, competitive differentiation. Longer term, I believe RSS will become an important background technololgy -- and enabler -- much the same way html is today to the web. RSS will not be a house-hold name among the early majority and on. There will be readers and alerting tools on various platforms and form-factors (and likely powered by xml/rss/whatever), but people won't be calling it rss.

 

What are the most exciting uses you've seen of Klips? How do you use them yourself?

On the consumer front, I find the email watchers (the hotmail, yahoo, gmail and pop3 mail) Klips to be very exciting - they are secure, access complex data and present users with dynamically generated setup options. One the enterprise front, two very interesting ones are a company that is using a Klip to alert their call-center agents of key data from their CRM system, and a bank who uses Klips as part of their work-flow system to increase productivity and review speed. Where the Bank's internal processes saw documents, policies, forms, and client applications being worked on by many employees and managers, the current work-flow system put the onus of moving forward on the employees and manager's shoulders and relied on email to notify them when a document was edited, or in need of approval. We improved on this process by working with their work-flow application where each individual user is now alerted to pending documents, policies and applications via KlipFolio - it's relevant to what the manager or employee is responsible for, and a popup alert ensures they take action, and of-course with a single click from the Klip, they can jump right into the familiar work-flow system.

 

So far there are only a few 3.0 feeds. what else is in the pipeline, feed-wise?

We will be updating all of the email Klips, the stock tracker, eBay monitor Klips and as with Betanews, we are working with a handful of key content providers globally to update their Klips. In general we will be focusing our efforts on more service oriented Klips, and encouraging our community of developers to do the same - part of our efforts to differentiate.

 

How do you make your money from this? And how would you characterise the journey so far? I first wrote about Klips more than 3 years ago, and a lot has happened on the internet since then. Are Klips struggling to keep up with these changes?

The hype of RSS has both helped and distracted our progress. On the one hand, RSS has educated the markets, and generated interest in desktop alerting. On the other, RSS has made our position more difficult to define - educating the market that we are not an RSS reader, but rather an alerting dashboard targeted for commercial purposes. The markets are more conductive - more educated, more financially willing, and more competitively driven. Also, I truly believe that in our space - alerting dashboards - we are positioned as one of the best players.

I'm not sure it's a matter of keeping up with RSS - we support RSS among other standards. One thing we have found is that real-customer deals are hard to find the closer you get to RSS - it's a very early adopter marketplace - lots of hype, not much real value or money yet. As we distance ourselves from RSS we find the client conversation is more focused on solving real business needs.

As mentioned in an earlier answer, we target content providers, online retailers and premium content providers as our KlipFolio Branded customers; application vendors, service providers, ISPs as our OEM customers; and corporations as our KlipFolio enterprise customers. We have a solid base of customers in all three areas and (with out venture funding I might add) are profitable.

You are right - lots has happened, but I think the interesting stuff is yet to happen. Same goes for Serence ...

 

Thanks, Allan."


Was this useful for you?

Any ways did you ever think why should one blog at all? I mean where does blogging fit into a balanced successful life? Think and do shoot back....Nice Day,
SKG

My Signature:"Happy to have you in my life,
Am Thankful to Him for you are reading this,
H0p@ to - meet, laugh, relax and grow with YOU soon".....बब्लू
My belief: "esercitare liberamente il proprio ingegno, ecco la vera felicità" means using your intellect free from restraint, that's true happiness मतलब असली ख़ुशी अपनी अक्ल को बंदिशों से मुक्त करके इस्तेमाल करने में है!!! Ha Ha...:))

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Geeta - Quote for the day

|| Knowledge and Wisdom ||

The Supreme Lord Said:

"Among thousands of men few strive to achieve perfection (in yoga) and of such successful men very few indeed actually know Me"
[Chapter 7 Verse 3]


"O Partha, know that I am the eternal seed of all beings. I am the intelligence of the intelligent and the brilliance of the brilliant."
[Chapter 7 Verse 10]


"Four kinds of pious people worship Me O Arjuna. The person in great distress, the person in search of knowledge, the seeker of wealth and the man of wisdom."
[Chapter 7 Verse 16]


"Out of them the man of wisdom who is constantly engaged in devotion to Me, is very special and dear to Me. Certainly to the man of wisdom I am very dear and he to Me."
[Chapter 7 Verse 17]


"All these men are definitely magnanimous souls. But the man of wisdom in my opinion is verily like Myself. He is certainly situated in Me and attains the highest end."
[Chapter 7 Verse 18]


"It is only at the end of many births, the man of wisdom surrenders to Me, realizing that Vasudeva is all. But it is very rare to come across such great souls."
[Chapter 7 Verse 19]

 
 
Courtesy : http://www.hinduwebsite.com/chapters.asp btw its a nice website, what say you?
 

 
My Signature:"Happy to have you in my life, Am Thankful to Him for you are reading this,
H0p@ to - meet, laugh, relax and grow with YOU soon".....बब्लू
My belief: "esercitare liberamente il proprio ingegno, ecco la vera felicità" means using your intellect free from restraint, that's true happiness मतलब असली ख़ुशी अपनी अक्ल को बंदिशों से मुक्त करके इस्तेमाल करने में है!!! Ha Ha...:))

Love, Relationship, Google, April Fool

Around 10days ago, I had a break up in a 11year old relationship and man it hurts..and i feel terrible that its was me who lead to precipitation of the situation. I dreamt that I will be forgiven on the occassion of Easter but that also did not happen.

I still believe that situation will change for better and may be this incident is an April Fool joke by someone for whom my love is more than my need.

Btw, did you guys notice the April Fool Google had on us! They announced a service to give free prints for all the mails as a feature of Gmail and then while all of us were wondering on getting invited in the beta of lovely feature, Google cutely disclosed that it is an April Fool. Man, you fooled me...

Moving on, did you know 7th Apr is World Health Day! I also did not know till I was spammed on SMS by Ministry of Health, Government of India! :) Mera Baharat Mahaan!!

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

WiFi, Security, Environment, Paint, Sales

Our team just noted the news article copied below on the web

"My wireless network is very protected, thanks to my husband who takes plenty of preventive measures that keep intruders out of our network. The Gadget Hound also taught us a thing or two about the subject in this post, in which a reader's concern prompted him to ask more about Wi-Fi scamming. If you haven't changed the default name and password on your network, you're contributing to your network's susceptibility to malicious attacks, so don't be surprised when intruders—either neighbors or strangers parked outside your home—bog down your network with spam, or illegal downloads. Like Tom said, the best way to keep those intruders out is by enabling WEP or WPA encryption on your network by changing the password on your router. Chris has a step-by-step guide on how to do this too.

SEC Technologies has another option: wireless blocking paint. One coat of this paint "creates an electromagnetic fortress by preventing airborne hackers from intercepting signals." Sounds a little too much like something the government would be interested in, and less like a technology that would benefit the average Wi-Fi user who has already ditched the landline over a cell phone. The Register thinks the RF-proof paint would be put to good use in movie theaters, or similar places where cell phones interruption is frowned upon. EM-SEC currently sells laptop inserts and phone holsters with an electromagnetic shield that restricts the detection of Wi-Fi signals, which is another option that might deter laptop thieves. What a great idea."

Source:http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/hughes/10031/wi-fi-blocking-paint

Sunil's comments : Hey folks where are we heading to? Will we need to secure WiFi using Paint as claimed in this news is this the way human race really head anywhere. I am not very thrilled to realize that we have taken lack of safety for granted and thus we are developing newer methods to protect ourselves from the risks from the environment. I guess solution lies in slowing down and becoming happy not necessarily by acquiring...Kya Khatein Aap Saheb it vishay mein??? :)

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Aaj Ka Vichar

|| Arjuna's Sorrow ||

Arjuna said :

"With the destruction of the family, family order (dharma) and eternal order (dharma) are lost. The whole family transforms itself into adharma (disorder or irreligiousness)."
[Chapter 1 Verse 40]


"With the emergence of adharma, O Krishna, women become impure. And when women fall into bad ways, O descendent of Vrisni, admixture of castes takes place."
[Chapter 1, Verse 41]

Courtesy - Sri Maan Babloo Baba Mahan

Fwd: Blogger blog invitation from Sunil

I did not know that one can publish on a blog by just ending an email...this is simply cute, what say you :)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Blogger Invites <no-reply@blogger.com>
Date: Apr 3, 2007 5:10 AM
Subject: Blogger blog invitation from Sunil
To: hope@pudhucheri.com

Sunil wrote:

Hey this is an invite by Sunil to join him in writing blog of our life
---------------------------------------

You have been invited by Sunil to join a blog called Sunil & Neetu's
Dream's den

Blogger is a free service for easily communicating and sharing ideas on
the web.

Next Steps:

1. Please follow the link below. If you do not follow this link, you
will not be able to logon to the correct blog.

http://www.blogger.com/i.g?invID=7960557883039602488&hl=en

Note: If this link wraps in your email (not all of it is on one line)
copy and paste the entire link into your browser's location bar. Be
sure to include characters that may have wrapped to the next line.

2. If you already have a Blogger account, you will be asked to either
accept of decline this invitation.

3. If you do not have a Blogger account, you can create one for free in
less than a minute. Just click the link and press the 'Create an
Account' button.

Thanks!


--
My Signature:"Happy to have you in my life,
Am Thankful to Him for you are reading this,
H0p@ to - meet, laugh, relax and grow with YOU soon".....बब्लू
My belief: "esercitare liberamente il proprio ingegno, ecco la vera felicità" means using your intellect free from restraint, that's true happiness मतलब असली ख़ुशी अपनी अक्ल को बंदिशों से मुक्त करके इस्तेमाल करने में है!!! Ha Ha...:))

Google Calendar - place to plan

Invitation, 3 years, Questions, Challenges

Hey you all its gonna 3 years since you got me here...join me for the 3rd Anniversary of my blog in Jun'07...do write back at hope at pudhucher.com to plan the celebrations

Do you know that I also blog at www.apollon.in and I am also helping Tom to blog at http://www.pudhucheri.com!

I wish I can manage myself and leverage various gifts God has given to me in my life...

Recently someone very important to me asked me whats the goal I have in mylife and this was nth time I have been thrown this question in last 12months or so.....I would like to know is it necessary to have a goal??? I believe its enough if we have dreams because if we a dream / desire that pure and intense universe will fall in place to fulfill it...what do you say??