Emergintex

Out with autonomous blogging. In with Democratic blogging ! Well atleast thats what I can think of after seeing BlogEverywhere after reading about it for 10 minutes. Idea of Sabeer Bhatia, who struck gold with Hotmail in 1995.

The idea is simple. To allow readers to blog about a site, article or a blog post. Basically anything that is identifiable by a URL. The small download (yes there is a download) installs a Browser Helper Object (IE only at the moment) that enables a small window at the bottom of the browser, where you can add comments about a URL currently active in the browser. These comments are actually stored on the BlogEverywhere site, with a reference to the URL. Users can later on search for a URL and see if someone has a comment posted about the URL. Other users can again write comments on that URL and everything is aggregated around that URL. It is good in the sense that it will allow for more user views revoloving around a static URL, and that too in a centralized fashion. Apart from that, what is the real usability, I am not able to decipher at the moment.

When you browse to a URL in the browser, the BlogEverywhere BHO senses the URL and detects if anyone has already made any comments on this URL. It then shows the number of comments on this URL as a alert in the BHO toolbar as shown below:

The BHO has a built in Ticker for RSS feeds that you have subscribed to. Here is a screen shot showing posts from my blog:

The service also claims to have a built in Hotmail enhnacer, which I guess at the moment logs into your Hotmail account and caches the e-mail messages on your PC, for faster access. More screenshots when I use that.

What could be the business model for this service? Guess we need to wait and watch, if there is any.

BlogEverywhere was developed by KPIT systems, Pune, India.

BlogEverywhere, Sabeer Bhatia

This is a test post for listing tag for edgeio

Listing,Car

Listing

As everyone today is focussing on networked social applications, the instant messaging guys are not left behind. We have seen a number of IM services mashed up under one client (Meebo), we are seeing changes in MSN (Messenger Live), which brings in your content into the IM landscape. Today most of these services provide one to one communication, except for some where you can start a Group Conversation or a Conference.

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Russ recently wrote about Campfire from 37Signals, and again, pushed for a real requirement for a mobile based service which is:

Secure multi-user chat and file share all baked into a simple interface

I am not sure if 37Signals would be happy to have Russ over in Chicago, but one thing is sure, that the demand itself is valid. We need to move out of the PC, and start looking at other connected devices.

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After being unhappy with Google Ad-sense, I went to Yahoo publisher network, to see how Yahoo! would perform in serving meaningful ads to my content, given the keyword ‘blog’ in my URL.

I am adding these 2 ad providers to my blog, simultaneuosly to see the performance side by side. These ads are on the right sidebar and at the end of every post when you are viewing a post.

Update: Multiple delete was added today to Live Mail. You can select multiple mails by holding on to control button and clicking on the messages. Once done selecting, you can right click and select Delete. Cool !

I did a hurried post about Windows Live Mail here, a day ago. I used the new UI today extensively and found the following issues:

1. There is no way to select multiple emails to delete them. The old UI had checkboxes to select multiple emails and do a action on it. Here I had to select them by holding the SHIFT key down and selecting the mails in question. It was a hard user experience from where it came from.
2. Windows Mail Live Beta is not yet implemented fully for FireFox. My Home PCs have FireFox usage more than IE7

Outside these, there was this interesting piece of information flashing at me:

Since the system already found that the sender is a known sender (because it is in my allowed senders list), why does it need to show me “Why?” and “Report and Delete” links now. If this is only for Beta to explain the feature, then its ok. Else it is a issue.

More later !

Technorati Tags: Windows Live

Got the invite tonite for Windows Live Mail Beta. It looks slick as most MS products. Nice usage of Ajax, brings nice refreshing experience to read your Hotmail.
First impressions after the initial wow ! Too much clutter going on. Not sure if this is just my idea, or someone else also reports the same clutter. I dont know why it is there, but things would be good if there was some room for the eye to settle at.

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I blogged about Google Video coming up with a pay service a couple of days ago, which was then later on confirmed by thores of sites inclusing CNN.

It went live today and Om has a brief post about it going live.

Technorati tags: Google Video

Google Pack was launched today, at CES. At the moment it is an installer for various Google Goodies, and some non Google stuff too.

It promises to be an updater too, so you wont have to worry about updating to newer versions of Google Goodies when they are out. It is clean and to the point. Like that.

Is it just a small ’side-app’ by Google, or is it a step towards installation management market? It could well evolve, and given Google’s reputation, could well become a publisher for software updates. Searchable, Sortable Software delivery and updates.

Though the rationale given behind the birth of Google Pack was rejected by some bloggers (which I agree to), but I see a lot of potential behind this service if Google decides to venture into Software Management landscape.

Technorati tag: google pack.