Posts tagged as: grazr

You can find me at Feedonomics.Grazr.Com

The initial funding and paperwork for Grazr Corp. is now complete, and we are in the middle of hiring some of the best coders from my last company. Mike Kowalchik will continue to run the development process as Grazr's Chief Scientist and I will be the CEO. My principal focus at first will be documenting the whole area of feed management and Grazr's role in that space, which is why I have started a new blog called Feedonomics. I hope you can join me there.

Running away to play with Grazr

When I started this blog, way back in last October, I wrote that one of my goals was to come up with an idea around which I could start a new company. At the time I assumed that this would take at least a year. The search ended up taking half that time. I was lucky enough to meet Mike Kowalchik in late January, and that friendship has helped produce Grazr. I originally stated that I didn't want to take an equity position in Grazr, because that would conflict with being an independent blogger. A few weeks ago I started helping Mike raise money for Grazr development from angel investors. I soon found that the story I was telling people was so compelling that I ended up selling myself on the idea of investing. Mike and I have now come to a verbal agreement to have me invest and to join the company full time as president. Since I've always stated here that I wouldn't invest in companies that I blog about, this means that I will be changing the way I blog on this and my other sites. I'll probably stop posting anything here other than updates on OPML Camp in two weeks. When Mike and I have sorted out the goals we want to reach, I'll start blogging here about my work at Grazr. I'll use other company blogs as models to decide how I will discuss products that compete with Grazr.

Grazr update

Grazr has now been in an Alpha test for a little under a month, and the response has been overwhelming. I believe that there is an intrinsic demand for any piece of software, and you never know how big that will be until the product is offered to the public. In the case of Grazr, the possible uses have completely outstripped the original conception of a simple OPML viewer. One big area that wasn't anticipated is the use of MP3 files within OPML. Dan MacTough supported this first in his Optimal Browser, and Mike Kowalchik quickly followed suit and added an MP3 player to Grazr. James Corbett came up with the term Podgrazing to describe this type of application, and within a week or so one of James' countrymen launched Podgrazr.eu to showcase Irish podcasters. Another Irishman, Robin Blandford, also launched CommentCasting using Grazr as the user interface.

Another great idea from James Corbett has been the reinvention of the old webring idea in the form of OPML rings. James calls this grazer blades, but thankfully everyone is ignoring that particular pun. You can see this demonstrated in the Grazr box on the left side of any page of James' blog. Click on the link for "My Grazer Blades," then click on the link for "Pieter Overbeeke." At the bottom of this list of links you'll find a link for "James Corbett" that brings you right back to where you started. James is also making a good start on a world wide outline through the rapid growth of his Open Irish Directory, which is in the same Grazr box on his navbar. This makes use of the include capability of OPML, which allows the growth of distributed outlines with many sources and independent editors.

Ireland is a real center of Grazr and OPML activity, thanks to James, but the overall global appeal of Grazr has been a real shock. The Grazr below shows the results of a Google blogsearch for "grazr," and the number of links in languages other than English is impressive. Mike had to spend some time in Unicode Hell to get all the languages working well, but that has really paid off in international adoption.



Another area of interest that wasn't anticipated, but should have been, is the use of Grazr on mobile devices. Russell Beattie wants this so badly that he even created a mockup of it on his blog to show everyone what it would look like.

Grazr will be entering Beta test in a few weeks, and the new features that will be added then should really open some eyes. Right now Mike is working on making the backend as stable and scalable as possible, but once that is under control, the real fun can begin. People assume that the current interface is the only one available, but that is just the starting point. Grazr is built on a Javascript library that makes all types of interfaces possible, such as an expand/collapse outline, and an automatically scrolling "river of feeds." Different types of transitions, similar to what are used in video editing are also in the works.

Once again, I'll make my disclosure that I have no financial connection with Grazr, and hold no equity position. I just love the idea of seeing good software get built and helping to grow a community around OPML.

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.

Grazr works directly on RSS files too

The response to the public alpha test of Grazr has been tremendous, but one thing that seems to have escaped most people's notice is the fact that it can display the contents of an RSS feed, even if there is no OPML file. Here is an example of Grazr displaying the RSS file for this blog. Note that the URL it is using is my RSS feed, not an OPML file. One great application for this is a listing on every blog's page of its most recent posts. The visitor can read past blog posts without leaving the current page. You can use this capability to display the result of searching for tags on sites like Del.icio.us, or Digg. The alpha version of Grazr still needs work on the display format for posts, but that will be cleared up soon. Since Grazr can display photos without having to open a new browser window, you can also use it to display images from RSS feeds delivered by Flickr, or NASA.

Grazr OPML viewer begins public alpha test

I've been hinting about Grazr for a while now, but I didn't post anything explicit because it wasn't open for public testing. Mike Kowalchik, Grazr's author, has now opened up his website to allow anyone to try an Alpha version of the product with any OPML file, and to put a copy on their own web site. Here is an example of Grazr with a sample OPML file:



Grazr uses Javascript, so if you don't see a really cool OPML viewer here, your web browser or aggregator isn't displaying Javascript output. You may have to change your browser preferences. You can also experiment with different OPML files on the Grazr site, as well as create a script to run your own copy of Grazr. If you want to see the raw OPML that is being displayed above, it is here.

The dimensions of Grazr are flexible, and you can shrink the text size, so you can also put one on your side navbar. James Corbett has been using it on his Eirepreneur blog for a while to display his Open Irish Directory. This form factor makes a great reading list widget, because your visitors can actually do feed grazing right on your web page. The term grazing may still be foreign to many people, but basically Grazr is a very capable RSS aggregator. There are still a number of cosmetic issues to improve, but that is why this is still an Alpha version. If you want to make suggestions for improvements, I'm sure Mike will be glad to get the feedback. Here's an example of Grazr with my Tech.Memeorandum dynamic reading list:

I've been helping Mike with the design of Grazr for a while now, but I have no financial relationship with the product or any of Mike's efforts. This is true of all the OPML products I'm working with, and actually all other products and websites. I don't believe in blogging as an independent observer and taking money or equity positions at the same time. There is nothing wrong with writing a company blog, however, such as Mike's own blog, or the blog of any other company employee, as long as that is the clear position of the blogger. For now, I'd rather remain independent, so I'll avoid any financial relationships. When I decide to join a startup or become an investor in one, I'll probably stop this blog and start a new one. At the very least, I'll make my new situation known and change the focus of my writing.

Any product based on the idea of feed grazing owes a debt of gratitude to James Corbett for inventing the term and promoting the concept. James has been a big supporter of Grazr and the rest of the OPML community.

Blogging from Mashup Camp

I'm going to be at Mashup Camp today and tomorrow, so I'll be posting mostly to my mashup blog. You can see pictures as they accumulate at Flickr with the tag "mashupcamp". This picture is of me demonstrating the Grazr OPML reader during the party last night. Right now I'm at breakfast at the Computer History Museum, and power seems to be in short supply, so I have to stop now and search for an open power strip. For more details switch over to my mashup blog. I'll be posting about the party as soon as I can plug in somewhere.