Company: Technorati (Public Beta Redesign)
What is it?
Technorati is Web 2.0 “old school” – one of the original (and best) real-time search engines. It requested customer feedback and has used it to launch an extensive redesign of their site as a public beta. The original site is still up at www.technorati.com and the beta, for now, is at beta.technorati.com. Technorati claims to be indexing 800,000 new posts daily, which is in line with competitor estimates of the size of the blogosphere.
Technorati helped to increase the popularity of leveraging blog site metadata by allowing tag (or category) searches in their engine. By searching via tags, users can find content specifically tagged by the publisher (for now) under certain categories.
The Technorati 100 is the definitive list of popular bloggers on the web.
The new UI has several key upgrades:
- Simplified Interface
- RSS feeds for tag searches
- Tag searches return indexed results plus flickr, furl, delicious, and buzznet
- More homepage personalization – including watchlists, claimed blogs and profile information
- New Watchlist functionality
Screen Shots:
David L. Sifry -Founder and CEO
Adam Hertz - Vice President of Engineering
Joi Ito -Vice President of International Business and Mobile Devices
Teresa Malo - Chief Financial Officer
Richard Ault - Director of Product Marketing
Liz Westover - Director of Developer Relations
Tantek Çelik - Senior Technologist
David L. Sifry
Kim Polese
Andreas Stavropoulous
Ryan McIntyre
Dan Beldy
Relevant Links:
About Technorati
Press
Dave Sifry (founder and CEO of Technorati) blog post on the beta release
Company: FeedLounge
What is it?
The FeedLounge web-based RSS reader alpha was announced on June 9, 2005. Feedlounge is the newest entrant into the increasingly crowded RSS Reader space. Feedlounge is web-based, like Bloglines, Pluck, Kinja and Rojo, and has tagging (both feeds and posts), saving items indefinitely, and flagging items.
Scott Sanders, one of the founders, writes in his blog that he created FeedLounge as a web-based application because he works from many different machines. Their goal was to create a thin-client-like experience, and the early alpha testers are coming back with very positive reviews:
FeedLounge often feels much more like a desktop application than a web page. Clever combinations of Ajax and CSS add a ton of “hey wow” moments when using the system. As with Alex’s other works, the user interface is clean and easy to navigate.”
Key Features:
- choice of layouts
- useful keyboard shortcuts
- OPML import support (export support later)
- Tagging (both of feeds and posts)
- Works only with Firefox, by design (a plus in TechCrunch’s view)
Screen Shots:
Management:
Alex King
Scott Sanders
Relevant Links:
About FeedLounge
FeedLounge Blog
Dougal Campbell Review of FeedLounge
TechBlog Post on FeedLounge
Alex King Blog
Scott Sanders Blog
List of web-based RSS Readers
Company: Plazes
What is it?
Plazes made an announcement at Reboot 7.0 in Copenhagen on June 10, 2005, although the service has been around since at least January.
In their own words, “Plazes is the first global location-aware interaction and geo-information system, connecting you with the people and Plazes in your area and all over the world. It is the navigation system for your social life and it’s absolutely free.”
To gain full functionality, you must install a 1.11 mb file on your computer. I did this, and it had trouble syncing with my router. I’m not surprised, since my internet connection is down and I am currently “borrowing” wifi from one of my neighbors. Anyway, I was able to logon and create my very own plaze in Manhattan Beach, California (see the third screen shot below).
This is a very useful application, and I can see using it to find friends and meet new people. The design is well thought out and the social networking tools are as good as we’ve seen.
As their blog indicates, the product is still in beta mode and functionality is being added continuously.
Service Features:
- Discover Plazes anywhere in the world - like hotspots, restaurants, offices, based on search or your current location.
- Hook up with people nearby - see people (and their “metadata”) who are online and near a “plaze”. Message with them.
- Stay in touch with your friends - Plazes has social networking tools like invite, messaging, status, karma etc. Friends can see your currentl location (or keep yourself invisible)
Screen Shots:
People Involved:
Relevant Links:
What’s Plazes?
Plazes FAQs
Plazes Blog
Felix Petersen Blog
Plazes Merchandise 
Robert Scoble on Plazes
Christian Heindel on Plazes
