from pull to push

The increasing popularity for desktop applications, webbrowsers, widgets and application platforms the question rises what will be the possibilities for the branding and Marketing issues of companies.

With Swoot this is an important part of our strategy.

How to use the rich internet solutions for brands in their strategy is providing uniqueness and experience for the brands end users.

i.e. Nike is trying hard with cool flash sites to get to the user and make them experience the Nike feeling, or Heineken beer is sponsoring the UEFA champions leaugue to get to the soccer fan with their brand. They even created a widget-like application wich runs on your desktop.

So user experience is the key factor. Gladly Swoot can deliver that. Within several weeks two branding concepts from Swoot will launch ( a cartoon tv company and a company for newsvideo distribution). And more brands which we are negotiating with as we speak ( of course I'll keep you up to date with that).

So what does Swoot add to that uniqueness and experience factor > the magic word is Push technology.

Because of the fact that our technology is server based , you don't have to download an application. It runs from a server adress and with that the browser can work like a website.

Because of the single plugin we use, we give brands the possibility to build their own branded plugin, which will install a branded icon on your desktop.

This technology also enables the possibility to create an interactive icon. This icon will blink, make a sound, change color or highlight every time the backend is changed. So every time the browser content or the webcontent inside the browser is changed the branded icon can interact with the desktop of the user and makes narrowcasting become possible.

With this feature the pull strategie ( scream to everyone "come to my website") can make place for push strategy ( don't scream , just push forward the change).

Underneath you'll see some examples

Swoot on Ning

Swoot on Ning! why?

I like the ning project.

On our Ning page we like to invite all of you who are interested in design and development and help you to try out the swoot software platform!
This will give an entry to everyone who can build cool stuff with our software!

check it out > http://designyourownbrowser.ning.com/

guestblogger

browsing through the internet yesterday, I didn't found something really interesting to
blog about ( exept for Ning , but everybody wrote about it, so I'll skip), then I just
had an idea.
I use some of my colleage's as guest writers, but I figured that worldwide their are
many guestwriters.
But no place to adress them or for the guestwriters to write and post.
A marketplace for writers and blogs to find eachother would be a great idea if you
ask me
Now I am curious if anyone knows if this exists and whether it's interesting or I
have to forget about it.
If it's interesting I'll set it up!

So if you are a blogger and also like to write for others, or if you have a blog and like to have other people write there too, let me know!

Cool sites

Cool links I found today:

http://hotspotr.com/wifi > a site where users can post their wifi connection for others to find and use

http://my.nba.com/index.jspa > being a fan of the NBA , let your voice be heard here

http://www.tree-nation.com/ > help save the world and plant a virtual and real tree at the same time

splashcast

In paris on Leweb3 I met Alex Williams of splashcast. A promising new site for user generated video content. At that time it was still in Beta. Of course I promised Alex to keep up with their developments on Splashcast.
I hounestly have to say it catched me in Paris, but was not yet convinced about the uniqueness of the site.
Since several weeks the site launched out of beta and are gaining users and the user-generated content. And I have to admit , it is a very cool enriching product.

To go short: The SplashCast service enables anyone to create streaming media ‘channels’ that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages ‘tuned’ to that channel.

And it looks really cool, Users can make their own slideshow and use video or text to let you enter their visual world and spread their message.

I can not find any info on the site about their growth in the last weeks, but I am sure it will grow rapidly. I will keep up with the site and let you know as soon as I find out!

Alex and your team , good luck to you! A cool web2.0 product!

the web forward on digg.com

The web forward is on digg also

check is out : under the section technology > software you'll find the story on Dekoh
On the section entertainment > celebrity you'll find the elvis story.

Go to www.digg.com and digg the stories if you like them!

Swoot Highlight > Elvis browser

>On this forum I will show cool Swoot browsers and give them some extra attention: This time a browser made by huge Elvis fan. Everything you ever wanted to know about the king is represented in this browser.




This one let's you easy browse through 12 different sections like his music, movies, people around him and more. The funny thing is that you browse and explore all kind of subjects you never would have thought of when searching through i.e. google
A simple test learns that typing elvis in google wil get you more than 48 billion hits. A little too much I would say.

Suprisingly exploring around the browser gets you more than you could ask for. The cool thing about getting all this info in the browser is that everywhere you click on happens in the browser, you never leave the browser and so never leave the experience.

Try it yourself > elvis browser

Dekoh

Last friday I saw an interesting article on the techcrunch blog posted by Ryan Stewart.

Dekoh is another initiative for getting content and applications to the desktop. They created a desktop platform where users can browse on and offline content and applications, build their own and share applications. There are three parts in Dekoh:

- Desktop > you have to install this 4mb installation to get access to the services ( i presume, because it is not possible to view it yet)

- Applications > all rich content applications build by Dekoh-

- Network, Here you can share the applications you use with other Dekoh users, like photo's music etc.

If you already want to see the things they do, you can view the presentation here http://www.dekoh.org/presentations/DeveloperIntroToDekoh.pdf
http://www.dekoh.org/ .

Within a few weeks yo'can get access to the early access software

One of the things Dekoh tries to do is to let users stop uploading to all kind of sites but just share these items from up your own pc.

With all this the question rises what the difference between Dekoh and Appollo seems to be,Vijah Puller, CEO of Dekoh says;

1. Apollo apps don’t run on standard web browser (IE, Firefox) but inside their own UI. Dekoh applications run on any browser.
2. Dekoh consists of Dekoh Desktop (software) and Dekoh Network (your own portal like ryan.dekoh.net). You can share content from the desktop and viewers can go to your Dekoh network site and view your shares. I think Apollo does not offer sharing this way
3. Dekoh supports most popular web standards like JSP, Servlet, Flash and AJAX. I know Flash and AJAX is supported on Apollo, not sure of others
4. Dekoh is open source

There are some ideas on http://www.dekoh.com/build.jsp2. Some that dekoh ships are http://www.deko...com/explore.jsp.

Again a very interesting development on getting content and web applications to the desktop. When I receive my login for Dekoh within several weeks I will let you know what it really looks like

netvibes solves widget platform problem?

In the growing interest for widgets, the need for a universal platform gets bigger by the day.

On fowa event Netvibes Tariq Krim announced a universal platform on the upcoming "coriander" release.

This is great , everyone who wants to build a widget first has to choose the single platform to build on, like yahoo, google, microsoft etc. Netvibes release of the universal platform can fix this problem.

And what we saw on the FOWA presentation looks promising.

This will solve the problem for the standards of vista, google and mac for now. The update later on will include yahoo and others.

Tariq also mentioned that netvibes will be open sourcing the platform so any widget platform can be included.

A big advantage for the widgets and well done by netvibes.

here are some screenshots:

great links from futureofwebapps

Here are some great links from the FOWA event

http://flickr.com/photos/tags/fowalondon07/
www.adobe.com/go/apollo
http://www.futureofwebapps.com/index-livecoverage.html

Future of Web Apps

We just arrived back from the FOWA in Londen.
2 days without internet, tuesday we decided to buy internet from BTopenzone, expensive and pretty worthless. But we managed!
The FOWA was well set up, a big lounge and a large presentation room.
The first day started with an interesting presentation from Michael Arrington, he talked about new ventures, how to start your own and the highlighted some interesting developments like Adobe Apollo. Apollo is a new platform where designers and developers can create outside the browser boundaries. So you can make desktop applications, even the possibillity to use them on and offline.
Later there was a presentation from Mark Anders from Adobe. Unfortunately he did not show very much about the upcoming Apollo project. On the onther hand he showed some nice things about the possibilities of Flex and the new Flash9. The contribution of Digg was also an interesting one.
There were many designers and developers at the event, we had some nice conversations about the way the web is evolving. And we got to show Adobe, Aol and Chris from microsoft and we got a "wow" effect...!
It was fun, unfortunately the upcoming futureofwebdesign is sold out!

The Swoot Project

Here you will read the amazing story of the swoot project;

What is it:
Swoot developed a technology platform which enables you to view the web in a new rich way. The platform give designers and web builders the control over the browser instead just the content like websites, flash or widgets. So what does this mean, simple; You can create anything what is in your mind regarding design, functionality and content. You can let your browser design become content.
This sounds to good to be true, what is the catch. There's isn't any ( one, not yet available on apple, you need Microsoft OS). The platform and technology are freeware, there are no boundries.

How does it work;
For anyone who just wants to enjoy browsing > just download the plug in and click and enjoy!

For anyone who is interested in building;

First you have to install a plug-in from swoot.
A browser can be designed in i.e. Photoshop and used to create a so called .bdt file. This .bdt file is the carrier of the browser you develop. Then you get it on your server of ours and you'll get a url adress that ends on .bdt. This adress launches your browser. There is a great tutorial ( aka swootorial) online a www.swoot.com .

Examples:
We make browsers to show the world what you can do with the technology but we rather have anyone around the world use it to build their owns.
Beside that, we build browsers for brands. The technology gives a brand the possibility to get a branded environment where users can surf and enjoy content from that brand ( i.e. jetix, kids tv with a branded kids environment where kids can enjoy the Jetix cartoons and experience online >this will launch next april). Beside that brands can get their own branded plug-in, which will give them a solid place on the desktop > one click away from the user and top of mind!

So download the plug-in >" swoot plug-in" and try and experience the examples below;

- http://www.bluesymbols.com/ ( on the site you can click to the browsers they made)
- Spiderman
- Superman
- Mini Cooper
- Swoot for kids ( safe)
- Cartoon TV
- Guitarbrowser
- Marvel

So check these out, this says more than a thousand words!
When you installed the plug-in and click on the desktop icon you'll get access to much more browsers.....

In the near future you'll see much more about the swoot project on this blog!

A warm welcome

Today is the big day I start my blog.
Why? There is just so much to write about all the internet things I see and experience in my job getting the Swoot Project a worldwide browser player.
There are so many great developments taking place at this time that I see it as a great pleasure to blog about it.
On the other hand, in the case of the Swoot Project, I need to process all those new internet startups and projects to see where it meets the swoot technology.

So that's the why, see my next post on the swoot project. You'll like it for sure!