Adding a Bitty browser to your browser
I talked to Scott Matthews of Bitty yesterday by phone, and learned a lot about what he wants to accomplish with the product. Some bloggers have been describing Bitty as an OPML viewer, like Optimal or Grazr, but it really does more than that. Bitty is a full web browser than can display HTML web pages as well as RSS and OPML files. Scott's goal is to allow people to create a "picture in picture" experience within their web pages. For example, I have added a Bitty browser below to display the contents of my mashup blog:
Admittedly this is a silly example, but there are many great uses for Bitty. Imagine a site for a fan of a sports team using multiple Bitty browsers on the page. There could be a window for browsing the official team site, and other windows showing the sites of the top players. Bitty would also have been useful when people were demonstrating the differences between the US version of Google and their censored China search site. Both Google sites could be put side by side on the same web page. The key to this idea is that the user of a page with a Bitty browser can navigate a different site or even the entire web without leaving the original page. I know lots of people who dislike reading blogs, because they keep getting sent off to other pages to follow the bloggers train of thought. Within a few links, they lose track of where they started. Creating a browsable container within the constant context of a web page would be very useful as a way of solving this problem.
Bitty can also be used as viewer for OPML and RSS files. Here is an example with this blog's feed:
Whether you prefer Bitty's RSS display over Grazr or Optimal is a matter of personal taste. I like Optimal's expand and collapse outline, and Grazr's compactness. On the other hand, when the RSS item contains a link to a web page, Bitty can display the page without launching a new window. One thing to be aware of when displaying RSS or OPML with Bitty is the fact that it adds a set of Yahoo advertisements at the end of the RSS or OPML content. Bitty is the only one of these products to display ads. User reaction to advertising within one of these web page widgets is still something that has to be worked out in the marketplace.
One feature that Grazr should definitely adopt from Bitty is the ability to launch itself into a separate, smaller window. This is done by clicking the small launch button on the top right corner of the title bar. This window can then remain open after you have left the page where you found the Bitty browser. I'm sure Scott can also get ideas for Bitty by studying Grazr and Optimal as well.
In a field that is this new and this active, we are sure to see lots of cross pollination, which is great for users. I'm working on getting Scott and Optimal's Dan Mactough to come up to Boston for OPML Camp, so they can sit down with Gazr's Mike Kowalchik. I love it when things are at a stage where authors can just talk to other authors, instead of company reps talking to each other.
