Cinch Puts Simple Podcasts In Your Pocket

In August, I suggested that Apple should find a way to record phone calls on the iPhone, leveraging its Voice Memo product, to make it drop-dead simple to create podcasts at any time. While the company hasn't achieved such a goal, an offering from BlogTalk Radio, called Cinch, has delivered on an extremely easy to use product that lets you record audio clips and post them to your social networks, including Facebook or Twitter. I've been using it the last few weeks, and while I try and discard a huge number of different technologies, this is one I know I will be returning to often - as it meets a need not currently served by other providers.

The idea behind Cinch is to provide short-form audio updates much like Twitter is for text, and 12seconds.tv is for video. Twitter's ease of use has come largely due to its short-form definition, keeping us all in 140 character soundbites, and CinchCast makes it just as easy to provide short updates, in audio form.


The Cinch Interface on the iPhone - Record and Publish
A free iPhone application, Cinch provides you with the option to record using the iPhone's built in microphone - good for solo updates, or one to one quick interviews - perfect for "people on the street" situations or for events. Once recorded, you can hit play to preview the Cinchcast, or hit Publish to send it off to destinations you have selected, including Twitter or Facebook. You can also add a photo to help tell the story, and can provide, yes, a 140 character update explaining what the Cinchcast is all about.

Should you want to, you can also search the service to find other CinchCasts or click Radio to see BlogTalkRadio's on-air schedule.


Cinch Shows My Published Updates and Those from Others on the Service
I never got into 12seconds.tv given its brevity and my lack of need for quick video shorts. But I can already see getting into regular updates on Cinch to augment my other blogging and social networking activity. As you can see on my Cinch page, I used the product to have a quick interview with Ethan Gahng of Lazyfeed last week, and earlier today, made some comments on the new report that once again, people are blaming social media for employees' lost productivity.

Now, whenever I want to speak directly to people on all the social networks, and have a follow-on discussion in the comments on Cinch, all I need to do is take out my iPhone and speak into the microphone. I will be looking forward to posting many more. You can find Cinch at http://www.cinchcast.com/.

See Also: Webtop Mania: Cinch: better than Twitter, better than Evernote.

BlogWorld Expo 2009: The State of Technology & the Real Time Web

For the third time this year, I am back in Las Vegas. And per usual, I'm not here for anything resembling a vacation, as it's conference time. But instead of attending an event on behalf of a specific company, as I have done many different times, I am going on behalf of the blog, and making many of the connections I have forged online since 2006 onward more concrete - through participating in Blog World Expo. This is my second year participating after going last year, and for 2009, I have the challenging, yet exciting, opportunity to talk about what has to be one of the biggest stories in technology this year - the real-time Web.

On Friday, the second day of the conference, at 11:30 a.m., I will be speaking solo - trying to discuss the impact the Web is seeing as real-time becomes further embedded in many of our daily online activities.

The subject of the real-time Web is near and dear to me. As an information consumer and producer, anything I can do to get my data out to more places faster than ever, or the easier I can get to more data, faster than ever, reducing latency is huge. That's part of why I made the real-time Web central to my #1 prediction for the world of tech in 2009 back on New Year's Eve.

Excerpting from my post back on December 31:

"Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-timeoffer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options."

I've been well known for getting my predictions wrong, but every once in a while, I feel like I am on to something, so this is gratifying.

If you are here for BlogWorld Expo, you can expect to hear a lot more about things like PubSubHubbub, Lazyfeed, Reader2Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter Search, and more at 11:30 on Friday. Just make sure you add the session to your own custom schedule. It will all go down in real time. Looking forward to seeing you there.

No More Beta Codes: Lazyfeed Is Open for Everyone

Almost two months ago, we first introduced Lazyfeed, a real-time blog search and feeds engine, which has grown to be a big part of my information gathering process, following topics which I like, rather than people, or specific RSS feeds. The product's uniqueness is one of the more innovative services I have seen in 2009, which was a big part of why I practically have had a part-time job as a beta code broker, trying to gain people access to the site. As of today, that unpaid gig is done, for Lazyfeed has removed the beta wall, and opened the site to all who want to enter. If you didn't get access to the site, I strongly recommend you go and try it, as you will find the wave of interesting news and blog posts from around the Web addicting.


Topics for Lazy Me from Lazyfeed
As I've mentioned in my previous coverage of Lazyfeed, including a quick how-to video on the service, the site does two major things - first, finding blog posts and news articles relevant to me based on topics I have provided, and second, find related items to those entries I have added to my own social sites, including this blog and my Twitter account. Blog posts that have tags will generate new items, while hashtags on Twitter will do the same. This second portion is what Lazyfeed says gets you the lazy portion of the name, because in "Topics for Lazy Louis", I haven't even had to enter the topics into Lazyfeed - it just happens on my behalf.


The New Lazyfeed Home Page Is Open for Business

Ethan Gahng, CEO of Lazyfeed, uses his own product in a much different way than I do, leveraging the search engine for entertainment, sports, TV and other things, where as I just continue to feed my tech obsession like a bright orange RSS-powered IV drip. But that's what makes a site like Lazyfeed so powerful - it can be whatever you want it to be, and hopefully, without too much work. Stay lazy.

Parse.ly Spices Up the News Based On Your Interest Filters

I am enjoying seeing the growth in Web services tailored to finding the very best news just for me. From My6Sense's attempt to only show me the best news, and hiding the less-important items, to Lazyfeed's topics-based blog search engine, we've recently seen two interesting approaches to cutting through information overload and finding the best data. A new invite-only beta service, called Parse.ly, claims to offer "fresh content" with "minimal garnish", and, leveraging my interests, gives me the highest-ranked stories, derived not just from my leanings, but how strongly I find myself aligned with specific topics. The result is another news source with an outstanding signal to noise ratio.

If you are among the lucky few who has thus far obtained access to Philadelphia-based Parse.ly (I am betting the best way is to follow their Twitter account), you start by entering terms you want to find news on, and dragging them to boxes that signify your intensity of interest. The five boxes range from "Most" to "Extremely", "Very", "Moderately" and "Somewhat", in descending order.


Prioritizing My News In Parse.ly
Per my usual approach, I filled the boxes with tech terms, and deigned to see if Parse.ly could find me new, interesting stories about the topics I am most interested in. And it came through - no question.

Each of the buckets ("Somewhat" to "Most") gained a numerical score, from 2 to 10. As a result if a blog post had two of my "10 point words" in its title or excerpt, it would have 20 points, and be pushed to the top of the results queue. Higher yet would be a story on Google around Pubsubhubbub and RSS, which weighed in at 28 points, sporting two 10 point words and an 8 pointer. Like traditional feed readers, Parse.ly shows the title of the story and the date, but it also includes a short summary and, yes, the post's numerical score. Sorting by score shows the highest ranking results.


My Starred Items In A Parse.ly Reading Pane

How Stories Got Scored Based On My Preferences
If you click on a story in the standard view, an excerpt is displayed in the reading pane, which also features a "Score Explanation". And if you click on the story itself, a new window will open with a Parse.ly share bar, prompting you to either save the story for later viewing, or share it to a myriad of other social networks.


The Parse.ly Sharebar In Action on eWeek
Parse.ly clearly states that its focus is all about the content and minimal when it comes to garnish (or design). That's absolutely the case. The product is reminiscent of GMail and Google Reader with its simple interface and the ability to star items, or show only read and unread items. You can also archive old items or delete them, just like you would for old e-mails and RSS feeds.

I am eager to see Parse.ly open up and let people get into the product, for while I have plenty of places to get news, Parse.ly has among the best I've ever seen in terms of quality. The company even says it could be a solid alternative to Google Alerts. Not a single spam blog was found, a testament to Parse.ly's selection from 50,000 different sources. The option to share out to other networks will also make it an interesting part of the social ecosystem.

Lazyfeed Adds Sharing Options to Real-time Blog Discovery Engine

As Lazyfeed inches closer to being open to the public, the real-time topic-based blog discovery engine has been listening to feedback from its beta users - many of whom had hoped there were more social elements from the potential feed reader replacement. This morning, Lazyfeed will incorporate the ability to share found items to Facebook, Twitter or by e-mail, alerting your followers to interesting news you may find through the product.

Now, every item that you see flow through Lazyfeed can be shared, levering a bottom bar that says simply "Share with friends". The service leverages both Twitter OAuth and Facebook Connect to simplify the process, letting you post a link to your Facebook Profile, or on Twitter. Both actions highlight the discovery took place on Lazyfeed.


This Item About Wikipedia On the iPhone Can Be Shared


Here Is the Item Posted to My Facebook Profile


Sharing An Item From Lazyfeed to Twitter
In addition to this feature enhancement, Lazyfeed CEO Ethan Gahng has cooked up a not-so-lazy YouTube video introducing the service, backing up my short screencast I posted last month.



Most interesting to me in the video is how Ethan uses Lazyfeed to find music, entertainment, and TV shows, branching out from my own tech news obsession. It just shows how versatile the product can be. Check out the new options at http://www.lazyfeed.com.

RSS Is Doing Great, But Stand-Alone Feed Readers Are Collapsing

Three years in technology can be an eternity. I marvel that just over three years ago, I was telling you that "RSS Is a Demanding Mistress", showing off a screen capture of my NetNewswire application, powered by Newsgator. At the time, as I complained about having nearly 100 articles to read, I didn't anticipate the impact Google's entering the market with Google Reader would be, and my screenshot now seems quaint. By 2007, I had switched to Google Reader, and despite multiple assaults on Reader in the ensuing two years, you can tell most challengers apart by their epitaph.

In the past few years, I've helped champion more than a few new approaches to the RSS feed reader market, each with its own approach to making the stand-alone process more social. First there was Assetbar, who had tremendous technology, but a clunky interface, and never really got off the ground. Not too long afterward, we saw Shyftr debut, but following a highly visible controversy over shared comments on full feeds, the company eventually shut down their interesting product as well, moving instead to RSS filters. Even last week we saw NewsGator turn off their synching functionality, pointing customers to Google Reader. Yes, NetNewsWire is still around, and now points to Google Reader, but it's pretty much a legacy app at this point. (In my opinion, of course)


Isn't this cute? (From back in 2006 on NetNewsWire)
While some are debating RSS' role in a new world of real-time information discovery, there is no question that Google Reader has won this specific battle. If I exclude FriendFeed data from my own FeedBurner statistics, the combination of Google Reader and iGoogle accounts for 84 percent of all my RSS readers. In contrast, NewsGator is below 4 percent, and BlogLines checks in at just above 2 percent, with PostRank and Netvibes coming in at just over 1 percent each. Mice nuts.


My FeedBurner Stats Show Google Reader and FriendFeed Dominate
That's not to mean the RSS ecosystem is in anything resembling a freefall. The recent launches of My6sense for the iPhone, looking to find the most relevant content, and Lazyfeed for real-time blog search by topic, show me that not only is innovation alive and well, but blogs and RSS are key components in creating new products. And while Caleb Elston has been quiet of late, I am still using Toluu every day to share my OPML, and keep track of new blogs I am adding to Reader. Also, Feedly, which builds upon Google Reader with some very interesting social options, continues to plug away, gaining loyal fans.

But just think of what's happened over the last three years.

In 2006, folks like Jeremy Zawodny reported Bloglines' share at between 30 and 50 percent. Steve Rubel cited a Pheedo report showing Bloglines "slipping" from 37 percent to 30. Go back far enough, and you can see it even had the majority of the market way back in 2004, according to ReadwriteWeb.

By early 2007, Hitwise said that Bloglines had three times the market share of its nearest competitor, which was Rojo. Interestingly, that report mentioned Google Reader in passing, saying "as of the week ending 1/13/07, it had only 1/13 of the market share of visits of Bloglines." That's right. One thirteenth the share of Bloglines. I should mention that not everybody saw the gulf that wide, as others, including Bob Lee reported the two were in a practical dead heat the next month.

The last two years have been all about Google Reader, as the search leader and RSS distribution leader, through the acquisition of FeedBurner, also became the RSS consumption leader. Rojo disappeared in July of 2008, and Bloglines' own stumbles made it that much easier to switch, forcing Marshall Kirpatrick of ReadWriteWeb to say, "Do you really want Google to nail down complete dominance over the world of RSS? We sure don't."

The onetime debate about whether Google Reader is number one or not is pretty much gone, and Newsgator's turning off their online synching essentially throws in the towel. The once promising Feedeachother.com has turned off its lights. Shyftr and Assetbar aren't coming back. A new entrant called Fever is interesting, but looks more like My6sense than a traditional client. RSS is powering aggregation sites like FriendFeed, which in theory, provides 30 to 40 percent of my feed reader count, but when it comes to stand alone, all must stand in awe of Google Reader, for to do battle is futile.

Video Demo: How to Use Lazyfeed for Real-time RSS Feeds By Topic

Ever since Lazyfeed's debut two weeks ago, I have been a frequent user of one of the more innovative tools to hit the worlds of realtime Web and information discovery - two of my favorite topics. Many people, getting acquainted with the service, have asked me how I use the product. So, this evening, I put together a quick demo. Still don't have access to Lazyfeed? Let me know in the comments here, and together, we'll make sure you get access.

Also: I'm pretty new at this video demo thing, so please do provide feedback as to whether you would like to see more of these, or if I should leave the training to real professionals.

Guzzle It: The RSS-Powered Personalized Site With A Unique Name

The Web has moved away from one built around stale Web sites that treat you like any other visitor. Now, practically every leading site features personalization, giving you customized news sources, social aspects, and increasingly, the option to choose specific topics to keep you updated on. Just two weeks ago we introduced you to Lazyfeed, a cool Web project based on real-time topic discovery, and tonight, we've been looking at another customizable site that is focused on topics you select, called Guzzle It, complete with the .it extension, awkward name and logo.

Jolie O'Dell, who wrote about the service for ReadWriteWeb a week ago, called it "one of the cleanest, coolest, most intuitive, most customizable news dashboards we've seen". And yeah, it's cool. It has a solid user interface, and as I liked with Lazyfeed, it doesn't ask you to come packing OPML. It just asks for topics you like and builds out your page.


Getting Set Up On Guzzle It
To start "guzzling", just enter topics you want to follow, arrange them on a grid for how you would like them displayed, and say you're done. Guzzle It will look through its preselected news sources and spit out the answers, arranged as you want, and then give you the option to display it in article (text) mode, or with images. Clicking on any image or story brings you to the original source.


Setting Up Headlines for Google, Apple and Twitter
Like with most strong news sources, Guzzle It highlights the most-recent article chronologically, with older items fading to the bottom part of the feed. But instead of following up on specific news sources and blogs, I could choose to follow cool topics I like, from "Silicon Valley" and "Google" to "Venture Capital" or even "Oakland A's". If I had to complain, I'd say Guzzle didn't gulp down enough sources for me, relying mainly on the most prominent sources for news.

It's clear the world is getting more customizable. And topics are aiming to fight social as the big differentiator. Guzzle It is a cute easily laid out alternative, but I'll probably stick with Lazyfeed, thanks to its much broader array of sources, and its real-time capability. If you want to start guzzling, go to http://www.guzzle.it.

We Have Invites! Five Stages of Beta and Battling to Get Access

When launching a new service, entrepreneurs have a myriad of things that make them nervous. Maybe the product won't be seen as having value. Maybe competitive offerings are good enough. Maybe there are bugs that nobody has discovered yet. And sometimes, the rush of new users who arrive to kick the tires is enough to break the system, as the infrastructure is not ready. To help reduce such public outages, many products start out with a small audience, and there are many ways to grow slowly, each with their own pitfalls.

1. The Closed Private Beta

Often sites will have a private beta period, open only to a known set of users, typically starting with the company's inner-most friends and supporters. In order to get onto the list, you have to know somebody at the company, or be so influential to gain early access.

The upside for a private beta to the developers means that typically the product is in safe hands of people who understand what you are doing, and are willing to forgive rough edges and mistakes. Also, the small load means you can fix bugs leisurely without the threat of public exposure.

The downside for the private beta is that the site itself still isn't really being tested by a more natural audience, either in terms of how they plan to use the service, or in terms of scale. What might work during a closed private beta might not be good enough when the doors open.

2. The Private Beta With Open Invitations

Sometimes, a site will start with a private beta period, but users can invite their friends - often a limited number. You saw this with GMail back in 2004, when early users could invite others, but only a few at a time. Similarly, FriendFeed did the same in 2007, as did Toluu in 2008, closing their early sites off to the mainstream, but letting you in if you knew somebody who had already gotten through.

The upside for this process is much like the closed beta in that the audience is going to be relatively forgiving and small. Also, the influx of less-known people can give a more realistic expectation of what features are needed and which need to be improved.

The downside for this process is that there may be people who could help try the product who don't have an in, so their interest is muted. Also, the small group tends to be insular and will use the product differently than an open audience.

3. The Numerically Limited Invitation Beta

After internal testing, some products will release a known quantity of invites, either through their Web site, or the media, in an effort to expand the testing, and give early users a flavor of the site. The invites, often tied to specific sources for tracking purposes, can range from few dozen to hundreds or even thousands, depending on how robust a test, and how deep the infrastructure. We've recently seen this approach with the site Lazyfeed, which gave out a few hundred invites in the last week by way of TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and from me, both on FriendFeed and Twitter.

The upside in this case is that this wave of users best simulates actual usage of a product, to see what is working and what is not working, while stressing the system's back-end only to a predetermined level.

The downside is that users who don't get to the invites quickly can get discouraged, and often, the very first people to get in aren't necessarily the ones who will most deeply investigate your product, but instead, happen to be those who were fastest at getting to the news and signing up.

4. The Open Beta

For some services who don't want to limit the testing, they might open up a site to all who wish to register, but do so under the guise of a "beta" tag, explaining that some features might be missing and others might break. While anybody can enter, they should not assume full functionality. You could see this with GMail for years, even after the product went away from strict invites.

For developers, the upside here is that they have a perpetual excuse for problems. But it's beta! Also, any user who wants in can get in, without having to get on a list or know someone. It also can often give the ability to stress-test a product under the impact of a large audience.

Downside is more limited, but can be seen if users are more wary of beta products, preferring to wait until they are more stable for use.

5. No Beta

Some products might skip the beta process altogether. They are just open for business, period. This removes the guise of the testing period and lets the entire audience at them at once. I call this the "Open. Fail. Scale." method, because often there are bumps along the way that come with growing a product, and one can never anticipate them all. Twitter would be a fantastic example of this, although both its fail and scale have gone on more than anticipated.

So how do you choose, if you are an entrepreneur, how to get your product out the door? You can see, for instance, that Brizzly, by Thing Labs, is still in Private Beta. (And I want in) Lazy Feed is opening up more, and you can get an invite here. They each may have their own reasons. In the example of Brizzly, it's probably not ready yet. For Lazyfeed, maybe they aren't ready for a million support questions and they want to start slow.

I tend to believe you should open as big as you possibly can without breaking. If users want to get in to your service, don't stop them in their tracks. Just set expectations and work with them as partners to continue to improve. Don't insult them by using beta as an excuse, but instead as a stepping stone. And yes, get me in as early as possible. I promise I won't break anything.

Lazyfeed Poised to Debut Real-time Personalized Blog Search

The overwhelming majority of attention and innovation in the world of real-time search in the last year has been paid to microblogging, with Twitter and FriendFeed making most of the headlines. But a new tool, set to debut in the next two days, called Lazyfeed, is ready to unveil a service that aims the real-search firehose at full-fledged blogs, but has done so in a clean, personalized way, based on your own activity around the Web, and the topics you hand-select as interesting.

The world of RSS readers has been slowly upgrading over the last few years. Google Reader has become the de facto standard, thanks to its simplicity and the social nature of its shared link blogs. The basic elements remain true - you subscribe to a set of blogs, and those items fill your reader, making you responsible to read them one by one, or give up and "mark all as read". Lazyfeed, true to its name, tries to bring the best news to you, by topic, rather than by source, or by friends, as other social networks do. And the result is an extremely compelling way to find new stories that are relevant to your personal interests.


Hot Topics On Lazyfeed


Entering my data into Lazyfeed. Look familiar?
Setting up one's Lazyfeed begins as many different social services do these days - through the addition of your personal network information. I added my blog, my Twitter account, and my Delicious bookmarks. Lazyfeed then checks out your sources, finds tags, and starts to present relevant information. If you write about Google and GMail, like I did in the last two days, Google and GMail may be added as tags and relevant blog posts start to flow in, on the left side of the screen. I can click on the tag to read the posts, and as I do so, new posts that match my relevant tags take the top spot - in real time. The "topics" with new posts take the top spots, while the one with oldest data sinks to the bottom.

Helpfully, Lazyfeed makes it very easy to build out your list of relevant tags. If, for example, you selected Twitter as a topic, it will offer up relevant topics, such as Facebook, Socialmedia, Socialnetworking and Web 2.0. Clicking on any of these relevant topics feeds you, yes, relevant posts on those topics, and you can add any of these topics to the list in your account.


Personalized Topics Just for Me From Lazyfeed

Lazyfeed Takes a Look at Apple as a Tag
Lazyfeed's innovation makes the old-school blog directory, Technorati, look like chicken feed in comparison. And instead of being forced to read every single post from blogs that I subscribe to, Lazyfeed presents me with only topics that I am clearly interested in, and ends up being a fantastic discovery tool for new blogs that I may not have known. While I have personally relied on social networks like FriendFeed and word of mouth to find new sources for blogs, Lazyfeed looks like a great way for me to find blogs that publish often, which are targeted to my interests.


Lazyfeed Shows Social Networking and Status Search
When I met with Lazyfeed last month, I thought the company's service had incredible potential, not just for when you are logged in, but even for the casual, not logged in user. The company knows, in real time, what popular tags are filling up feed readers. It also knows the timing of posts, and could theoretically, dynamically, present to you the trending topics of the blogosphere, or make it simple to use a directory-like format to drill down and find blog posts on topics (like Yahoo! or Open Directory). With time they could get there, but they already have taken a big step forward, by introducing what are called "Hot Topics", much like Twitter Search's trending topics - which brings common conversations around mass media trends, from "Michael Jackson" to "Swine Flu", etc.

Lazyfeed is the most innovative approach to the real-time blog search world that I have seen, period. It's interesting enough to make me want to make this a very big part of my Web experience, in addition to Google Reader, FriendFeed and the rest. You can find Lazyfeed at http://www.lazyfeed.com.