[xwiki-devs] xwikiwatch competition -- filtrbox

http://filtrbox.com looks interesting, although the filtrbox : dashboard<https://www.filtrbox.com/dashboard/>application is in flash, which means you don't get the excellent emergent effect of having google be able to search the filter pages, or being able to have a search-hit bring you back to a "deep state" in the collaborative feed reader... For those planning on upgrading xwikiwatch in future releases, it is well worth looking at filtrbox to get an idea of functional UI for doing this class of application, even if it may be more difficult to achieve this style of UI using standard web browser technologies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/26573 <http://alwayson.goingon.com/user/bradfeld>I have a very patterned daily information consumption routine. The left-most tab in my browser is called "Daily" and contains a set of web sites that I open up each morning and look at as part of my routine. Recently, Filtrbox <http://www.filtrbox.com/> - one of the TechStars <http://www.techstars.org/> companies - graduated to be part of this tab. I try virtually every news alerting system that I come across. I have a set of about 100 keywords that I track daily - all of the companies we've invested in, a number of people that I follow, and a handful of random things I care about. My current staples are Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts, and Technorati. I can only seem to get Google and Yahoo via email, so they show up in my inbox and get moved to my "Daily" email folder (which I read - er - daily.) Technorati comes via RSS so I read it each morning in FeedDemon. The vision for Filtrbox <http://www.filtrbox.com/> when they started at TechStars last summer was to create an integrated single dashboard of all this keyword alert information. The tagline "more knowledge, less noise" says it all. My partner Seth Levine and I totally resonated with this - Seth has a great post about Filtrbox up titled *Know what you don't know<http://www.sethlevine.com/blog/archives/2008/04/know-what-you-d.php… *which addresses how he thinks about the problem and how Filtrbox solves it for him. For a while I found the Filtrbox data interesting, but not really that additive. In addition, the UI was "ok" but there where lots of little things that slowed me down. About three months ago I noticed I was finding new information from it that wasn't appearing in my other keyword searches and that it was streamlining this information in ways that I hadn't expected, such as eliminating duplicates (e.g. the same alert coming from Google, Yahoo, and Technorati - which happens many times each day - only appeared one in Filtrbox) and allowing me to filter based on thresholds for each keyword. In addition, as the UI evolved, I found I was spending less time scanning the alerts and more time clicking through onto the interesting ones. I hit a tipping point about a month ago where Filtrbox became more useful to me than Google+Yahoo+Technorati. I haven't turned off the other alerts yet, but I find that I'm not getting much additional info from them anymore now that I use Filtrbox as my top level sort. Filtrbox is still in private beta, but if you are interested in playing around with it you can get a golden ticket by clicking on the special magic Brad Feld Filtrbox link <https://www.filtrbox.com/signup.php?code=foundry>. I'm really proud of Ari Newman, Tom Chikoore, and team. They have reached the point where their service is very valuable to me and gets noticeably better every single week. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Niels, Welcome to Filtrbox! You are joining thousands of professionals and businesses who use Filtrbox to stay in-the-know and ahead of the game. The Filtrbox service is in private beta, which means we are still adding features and improving the service. Your feedback is greatly appreciated so let us know how we can make Filtrbox even better. We will send out a survey in the coming month to ask more specific questions. The purpose of the Filtrbox private beta is for us to get real-world feedback from our customers and to ensure the service is ready for prime-time usage. We hope you find real value in Filtrbox, and that you will provide us with feedback, good or bad, on your experience and what you'd like to see in the product going forward. With this registration code you are given a "Filtrbox Free" account which provides 10 Filtrs and 15 days of article history. You can also invite friends and colleagues to try Fiiltrbox via our "Shared Filtrs" feature. Once you create a FiltrGroup, you can click on the Share button on the Filtrs tab and add email addresses. If you find you need more Filtrs or article history, you can upgrade to "Filtrbox Pro", our subscription-based service which provides 25 Filtrs and 45 days of article history. You can upgrade right from the Account tab. In exchange for your free account, we ask that you give us feedback and ask questions! There is a new community-driven web support site we are trying out. Right now it requires you to register with them, but shortly we'll have in integrated with our service. Check it out for FAQ items and answers to common questions. http://getsatisfaction.com/filtrbox If you don't find what you are looking for, please email us directly at support(a)filtrbox.com and we'll get right back with you. We highly recommend watching the screen-cast tutorials for a quick primer on some key features: http://www.filtrbox.com/video.php +++++++Account Info+++++++ Login: NielsMayer(a)gmail.com Account Type: Free Access your Filtrbox Account at: https://www.filtrbox.com/dashboard/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++ There are three ways to get help if needed: FAQs: http://filtrbox.com/help.php Support/Community: http://getsatisfaction.com/filtrbox Email: support(a)filtrbox.com Stay in touch: subscribe to our blog: http://filtrbox.com/blog follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/filtrbox Thanks for your business! The Filtrbox Team ----------------------------------------------------------- -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com