After declaring the world of traditional comments dead last year, Echo has continued its quest to bring the world of real time reactions from around the Web to publishers looking to surface more engagement with their community. Today, Echo introduces a product they call "Echo River", which brings responses from commenters to media stories practically to equal footing of that of the author, raising the visibility and surfacing real-time feedback that practically promises to make sites more sticky as users participate.

Last month, Echo introduced a "Recent Comments" widget, which brought the newest responses to the front of the site. This new real-time widget updates live, not requiring refresh. It plays a key role in this morning's update, as the comments widget runs alongside River-enabled sites, which also display real-time comment counts for new entries, and nests the reactions (be they from comments on the site, Twitter, Digg or other sources) below the entry.


Echo, which has a wide array of large media customers in its roster, highlighted its River offering with staged demos on Slate.com, TechCrunch and Mashable. The River function even managed to pull comments from disparate technology sources, such as WordPress (on TechCrunch) and Disqus (from Mashable). This move further separates Echo from its assumed competition, and puts them more into the real-time space, rather than vanilla comments.

"Displaying conversations on the home page in this way changes the way people see the front page of a typical news site," said Chris Saad, VP of Strategy for Echo in a press release. "Readers get to see a summary of what people like them are saying right from the front page, getting a new perspective on the headlines of the day... This new product continues our mission to turn static web pages into vibrant real-time experiences, driving Facebook style engagement on our publisher sites."


While the old way of comments might be dead, by their positioning, what this new product does do, for its premium members, is practically give sites' community equal prominence to that of the original writer, who sees their work do battle with often opinionated readers. And if a conversation flareup does ignite, Echo will show each update in real time. It's enough of a push that the service's executives used lofty phrases about changing the world of publishing "one product at a time", fighting against a world of static media.

For premium subscribers to Echo, adding the new River functionality is simple, just requiring a little Javascript code. The company says the River can be customized as to its content and appearance.

Disclosure: Chris Saad of Echo and I occsionally co-host the Edge Theory Conversations podcast.

Even as Android gains in market share, assuming the #1 position by most metrics, ahead of both Apple and Blackberry, the very nature of its expanded ecosystem presents weakness. With an Apple product, you are getting an Apple hardware device with an Apple operating system. Should something go awry, you can usually look to Cupertino (or AT&T). But with an Android-based phone, issues could be tied to the hardware provider (HTC for me), the Android OS, or even a thin software layer on top of Android which many manufacturers are using to "enhance" the experience. And you know what? This makes fixing any bugs that do arise a pain. When my Evo does something unexpected, I can't tell whether that's a bug with HTC's software or hardware, or if it's Android itself. And I don't know that getting the latest Android build will fix it.

For those unfamiliar with HTC Sense, it's essentially a launcher, a UI environment that resides on top of standard Android, between you and your apps or data. It's as if Apple shipped an iPhone with iOS 4, and then handed the UI over to Microsoft to make a skin on it - or even more directly, if Microsoft gave Windows 7 to Dell and then Dell made their own UI. From my own experience, and comments around the Web, it is HTC Sense which is to blame for much of the battery drain on the Evo and other similar devices. And it is HTC Sense which has given me the most trouble with the Evo, in terms of being extremely sensitive to touch, and affected by heat. I mentioned the occasional issues last month when I detailed my switch to Android, and they have been intermittent, but they are debilitating when issues do come up.

What's the worst thing your phone could possibly do to you? Not make a phone call?

Forget Antenna-gate. Beyond losing data, blowing up, or sending a virus, there's little worse a phone can do, in my opinion, than taking actions without your initiating them. HTC Sense at times seems possessed, making artificial clicks in my e-mail, in apps, or even launching phone calls without my permission. Imagine my annoyance when the Evo called my mom at 1:20 in the morning one Saturday, and the only thing I could do, as the screen had locked up, was to turn the device over and yank the battery out to stop the call. Brilliant.

At the bottom of the Evo's design are four small keys, used to navigate the device. In HTC Sense, an arc at the bottom of the home screen features fast access to "Phone". When clicked, the next click would automatically call the last number dialed - both in or out. So in moments of hyper-spaz-osity (a real word), I could see the device dialing on my behalf to the last person I talked to, again and again. It even called back telemarketers who thought I was interested in their pitch. Guess what? I'm still not.

At the risk of bringing attention from the pro-iPhone crowd, I know this is not an Android issue per se. The problems didn't even arise until HTC "helpfully" loaded an over the air (OTA) update at the beginning of July, which did little to improve the phone, but coincidentally started at the time problems began. So I worry a bit that even though Froyo 2.2 may have amazing magical powers, that HTC Sense could still bungle it up. This specific OTA update even disabled the Root access I had on the phone, blocking ShootMe for screenshots, and making Sense mandatory after I had previously disabled it.

Android gets slammed on occasion for the issue of fragmentation, and I believe they are working on that, of course. I know they aren't too interested in some devices running old versions of software and others running new, as the ecosystem splinters. But the problem will always be worse if the handset manufacturers also think they are great at user interfaces and they want to put their content on top of the vanilla software. There's a reason Dell and HP and IBM and many other Microsoft OEMs tried to get a standard Windows experience. Google may be pushing for an open and flexible partner-friendly channel, but it'd be great to do away with the modifications that slow down progress and introduce problems.

For now, I've downloaded Launcher Pro from the Android Marketplace and told HTC Sense to take a hike (again). But who knows if when their approved 2.2 build comes out if that will stay? I love the Evo as a phone, and love Android's capabilities, but HTC Sense is a drain on my cycles, real and mental.

For the past several years, much like many of you, the fastest Internet speeds I have enjoyed have been at home. Very often, corporate networks, be they those at headquarters or client sites or shared networks at events and public settings, lag well behind my own home experience. For me, considering my devotion to being always-on, fast Internet is practically as important, if not more so, than good food or other more traditional human comforts, and any interruption of said flow is personally trying.

That would explain why when moving the family to our new house last Friday, getting access to high speed Internet again as soon as possible was a major priority, and finding a stopgap for the interim was just as critical. Luckily, Comcast took care of us Wednesday, bringing fast WiFi to our new home at great speeds, and for the five days previous, the HTC Evo did the very best it could, making the extra $30 a month I pay for its Hotspot capability, powered by Sprint, worth every penny.

In contrast to AT&T's sloth when it has come to empowering tethering and letting my previous smartphone reach its full potential, Sprint has been leading the charge in letting phones be as much about data as they are about voice. In the same month that AT&T eliminated their unlimited data plan and set their highest end plan at 2 GB, I not only flew past that point, but 3 GB as well. This is because, as I mentioned at the end of last month, I am using the wireless hotspot often - at client sites, at cafes, restaurants, shopping centers, and yes, in the last week, as the sole provider for Internet at our home. It might not have been the fastest Web ever, but it sure got the basics going.

If you have experienced full-speed always on Internet, only to have that taken away for a longer period, the available narrowband becomes much like a triage situation. YouTube viewing has to go away (much to my own kids' consternation and much iPad banging). Streaming music services (like Spotify) are a non-starter. Downloading movies or apps from iTunes was a pipe dream, and as great as the Hotspot is, only two computers can share at one time, so we found ourselves disabling one iPad to let another device - be it laptop or tablet - onto the Web. Survival of the fittest.


As someone who refuses to be out of the loop on information, despite such data hurdles, I found myself making time to get the most critical data and skipping out on more frivolous activities. I still powered through Google Reader, gnashing my teeth at photo-laden entries, and browsed Twitter mostly by phone, but activity on social networks was reduced - especially on Google Buzz, where the prospect of waiting for Gmail to load before getting to the network itself was too much to consider.

The good news is that Comcast not only turned on our Web access Wednesday, but the speeds are fantastic. After about 5 days of strained narrowband, we were more than happy to turn over our iPads to the twins and have them back to surfing YouTube - and it only took seconds for me to pull down the 40+ megabyte download for Safari 5.01 yesterday. In fact, SpeedTest.net shows 20 Mbps around the clock, so our broadband is back and kicking. I'm glad we have the HTC Evo ready for a backup, but it's not going to replace the full-speed stream any time soon. I love my broadband.

On Saturday, I highlighted the recent release of Friendly, an iPad-optimized application for Facebook that enhances the world's most popular social network to take advantage of the iPad's screen and touch interface. One of the co-founders on Friendly and Twazzup, its sister product, Cyril Moutran (@mocy), met with me for lunch today and discussed how developing for the iPad presents new opportunities to make a splash in a less-crowded field, and gain real revenue. He also said he believes the launch of more touch-centric interfaces could be as revolutionary as the mouse and hyperlink did with the first generation of the Web.


Since its launch late last week, it would be safe to say that Friendly is seeing initial success. Despite its $4.99 price, the Friendly app has bumped into the list of the top ten paid iPad applications on the iTunes store, and sits at the #13 position overall right now, and is the #15 most grossing application across all of iTunes' iPad apps, going up against Apple's office productivity apps, and even beating out MLB's At Bat application for the iPad, which is in the #25 position. Just yesterday, Moutran said the application was purchased in 60 different countries around the world. And yes, the app sits in the #1 spot for paid social networking apps for the iPad, as many of the apps are free.


Moutran, who also counts time at Netscape, Schlumberger and Vignette on his resume, believes part of the reason for Friendly's success, as well as that from other iPad apps that have sold well, is their development of a unique experience that takes full advantage of the product's touch-based characteristics. Rather than expand a game to the full screen by doubling pixels, or hoping a more standard interface of small links and pixel-perfect clicks are going to be good enough, he suggests smart developers need to recreate their products for this new experience, and when there is a gap that needs to be filled, as there was with Facebook not having a dedicated iPad application yet, smart entrepreneurs will fill it.

I managed to get Moutran to do a quick interview, which is embedded below. Hope you listen.