Joint App Brings Instant Messaging, Group Chat to Twitter

Twitter's direct messaging system is an easy way for two people to engage in back and forth discussion through the site, but the serve and volley type of chat is a far cry from real-time, and doesn't allow for broader group chat. Today, Joint, brought to you from the team behind LazyFeed and LazyScope, is launching to bring the flow of instant messaging and semi-persistent chat topics to your existing Twitter social graph. You can get your exclusive invite by posting a comment or by following @imjoint on Twitter.

With group chat applications on mobile being all the rage, the desktop experience has been somewhat forgotten, but a dedicated app presents the best keyboard and CPU cycles to avoid any latency between updates, argues founder Ethan Gahng. And once you've tried Joint with a friend or two, you can see how fast you can go from the ping pong manner of DMs in Twitter to real, instant, conversation.

I Can Invite You to Joint Via a Personal URL

You first get connected with Joint through getting invited by a friend through a dedicated, personal, URL. (Such as this one) You are then asked to download a small Adobe AIR client that runs on multiple platforms, and near instantly discovers your Twitter social graph, letting you have real-time chats with people to whom you are bidirectionally connected. This way, all of those with whom you can send and receive DMs can also chat with you in Joint.

Joint In Action With Friends On Left, Chat Rooms Center, Discussion Right

(Click for Full Size Image)

If your friends are using Joint, public chat rooms they have created are displayed in the left sidebar, so you can pop into any chat room and start talking with those who are there. It's a lot like Convore, but on the desktop, and designed as much for 1-1 communication as for static topic chats. In fact, the chat rooms in Joint are set up so that new users who join a room don't see previous entries. Magically, if every user leaves a chat room, it too disappears, so don't be surprised if you set up a popular room more than once.

Adding A New Comment to An Existing Chat Room In Joint

(Click for Full Size Image)

What makes Joint even more like the well-known world of instant messaging (IM) is the idea of status indicators. A green status bubble means you are signed in, while a clock shows you are idle. Once in, you can create a room with any topic, or invite any of your friends to join you. You have the option to create the room with three types - Public, Protected, or Stealth. Clearly, public rooms are open to all, protected means the creator requires a password, and stealth rooms are not displayed at all - even to friends. To get into a protected room, you must be invited, or enter the known password. Stealth rooms even feature a cool stealth bomber icon.

Before you shrug off Joint as "yet another chatroom" service, think of using this first to replace those back and forth DM sessions you've no doubt had with friends, and then think about starting real group chat with your Twitter social graph. Want to get in? Leave me a comment, and follow @imjoint on Twitter. This one's a keeper.

Lazyscope RSS and Twitter Client Slims Down, Speeds Up

Last week's launch of Lazyscope brought an intriguing new Twitter and RSS client into the world which allowed for full story viewing in a right pane that supported rich media, effectively replicating Twitter's iPad experience on the desktop in a versatile Adobe AIR application. Just over a week later, the application has already seen significant updates that show its potential to become an option for Twitter power users - with the adoption of real-time user streams, a new "mini" single column size and keyboard shortcuts.

Like fellow desktop Twitter client TweetDeck, Lazyscope's support for real-time user streams eliminates the need for a refresh button, as updates flow into the application practically as they are posted to the microblogging network. The more active the users, the more frequent the updates, of course, as they cascade from the top down, simulating the stream in real time.

Lazyscope in Single Column View With User Streams Enabled

The option for a single column view that does not monopolize the screen is also important - as the content viewer (right pane) only opens when an article is selected, and closes when you are click the back arrow to return to the stream. In fact, the single column view is now the default view, giving you your screen real estate back.

Lazyscope in Full Expanded View

In addition to these two updates, Lazyscope, from the makers of Lazyfeed, has turned on keyboard shortcuts, letting you navigate the stream with arrow keys, reposting with the enter key, and my personal favorite, scrolling to the top of the screen with the space bar. As someone who uses keyboard short cuts all day long in Google Reader to go from story to story, doing the same in Lazyscope can make me even more efficient, and as they put it... more lazy.

If you haven't yet tried it, check out Lazyscope at http://www.lazyscope.com.

Lazyscope: An Immersive Twitter Desktop News Experience

As Twitter becomes an increasingly valuable resource for consuming new content online, replacing RSS for many and augmenting it for others, new and inventive ways to visually deliver this content are being developed, including the ability to "unpack" URLs to provide a preview and excerpt of the shared link - and in some cases, the option to display the entire article altogether. The #NewTwitter release introduced the concept of a rich media pane to the Web. Today, the team behind Lazyfeed releases Lazyscope, a full-fledged Twitter consumption app to help you read all the news in one place. And as a kicker, you can even use it as a full-fledged client.

Lazyfeed made its name initially as an intuitive Web-based RSS client that followed real-time streams to discover keywords you had selected to follow. Its latest release introduced social features to help people follow collections of items and discover what your friends thought were cool. With Lazyscope, the team has extended its reach to the world of Twitter and has developed a cool and immersive way to find content from your stream as it comes in.

Lazyscope Displaying News from Links In Line

Like most desktop Twitter clients, Lazyscope delivers new tweets in a column format, first delivered by TweetDeck. The newest tweets are at the top, with oldest chronologically below. Every tweet that contains a link offers an unpacked long URL, the headline of the article and the first paragraph of that piece. Clicking on the tweet itself displays the full content of the page, including imagery or video, in the right hand pane.

As new updates come in, they await your command to approve as they stack up, just like on the regular Twitter Web site. (2 new updates, 19 new updates, etc.) Also, a notification in the bottom right hand corner alerts you to new entries that may catch your eye. Like the original LazyFeed, the flow itself is addictive.

Lazyscope Makes Reading Twitter News Easy

While the objective of Lazyscope is primarily as a consumption tool, the developers, led by Ethan Gahng (@ethpresso) have included the option for you to post updates from Lazyscope, check mentions by hitting the @ symbol, or check direct messages with the small envelope in the top left corner. You can also select lists to which you are subscribed from the bar next to your avatar.

Alerts from Lazyscope as You Read

But the fun's not done with just Twitter. If you want, you can add subscriptions to RSS feeds within LazyScope, either by subscribing to the news source in the right hand pane, or clicking the + sign in the top right and entering a valid URL. Lazyscope will do the rest, and provide updates from that feed in your column, just like any other news source.

Subscribe to Any Feed Within Lazyscope

In a world when most Twitter clients are quite similar, Lazyscope is one of the coolest and most innovative options I have seen in a long time. This seems to bridge the gap, like Flipboard did on the iPad, to bring a true reading experience to the desktop.

You can find Lazyscope at http://www.lazyscope.com/. They are on Twitter at @lazys.

Lazyfeed Gets Social, Interactive, With Real-time Remix

Lazyfeed's July 2009 debut was arguably one of the most interesting new services to hit the information consumption market in the last few years. Built upon the belief the people wanted to follow topics, rather than feeds, and get updates in real time, the product offers a unique, and lazy, way to see streams of info on topics you like flow into your field of view, while prompting you to find more related sources and topics. Today, after months of incubation, Lazyfeed launched a new interface that brings the product out of the world of solitary RSS feed reading, and into the world of social.

True to the product's origins, Lazyfeed still lets you discover new articles, in real time, based on keywords you select. But you can now group those keywords into something called a "Channel", and you can make those channel mixes public. Connect with other friends using the service, and now you have a community building around those terms which you follow - sharing you interests with other connections in your social graph.

The New Lazyfeed With Channels, Followers, Posts and More

For example, I created new channels on Google, Apple and techno music. In time, I could build out my Lazyfeed to include updates for traditional media, sports, blogging and social media, or practically any topic. If it gets blogged, Lazyfeed will find it.

Creating the Google Channel With Keywords

Two of My Channels and Updates By Keyword 

With the added social elements of Lazyfeed, I can now see what topics my friends are following, and what specific posts have caught their eye - and now, every user has a public profile page. For example, mine is http://www.lazyfeed.com/user/louisgray. Is this yet another place to follow the same people? Maybe. But it's a new category of content sharing that hasn't been made possible before - with the possible exception of Google Reader sharing.

Posting from Lazyfeed to Facebook Is Simple

From within any Channel, I can now make new "posts" in response to articles that I have found particularly interesting. These posts, with my comments, will be shared with my new Lazyfeed network. This way, we can discuss topics we both find of note, and can make the once passive approach of real-time feed consumption one that you are now doing with your peers. Additionally, you can send these posts to Twitter or Facebook to alert others to your activity on Lazyfeed.

Lazyfeed has come a long way since its initial debut nearly a year ago. Now that you don't feel you're doing this in a solo environment, it's likely the community elements will spur major interaction and traffic. Find me here: http://www.lazyfeed.com/user/louisgray

Guzzle Revamps Personal Aggregator, Adds iPhone App

The world of news personalization powered by RSS has been very interesting over the last year or so, with innovation coming from companies such as Lazyfeed, my6sense, Feedly and tweaks to Google Reader, including its "Magic" feature. One personalized aggregator, called Guzzle (which I first covered in July of 2009) has gotten less visibility, but the company is hoping to change that with two major updates - including the refresh of its news aggregator, and the introduction of an iPhone app - to let you get news on topics you have selected while on the go.

Guzzle Highlights News By Topic You Select, Displayed As You Wish

How you get news in today's world of streams varies by site. RSS readers primarily ask you to bring your own feeds. Social networks let you follow people. Some sites, like Regator, show you news from select sources by topic. Lazyfeed and Guzzle show you updates by topics you have picked, and the pages are regularly updated. But Lazyfeed doesn't yet have a mobile application, and Guzzle does. True to form, it quickly captured top stories on the topics I'm most interested in, and lets me view them one by one in the browser.

Guzzle's back-end has been completely rewritten from its 2009 launch, and is now powered by PubSubHubbub, thanks to support from Superfeedr. Every time a monitored feed publishes a new article, it is parsed by topic and assigned to the categories you may be viewing. This is similar to the work the late Socialmedian pioneered in 2008, but Guzzle has a portal-like interface to see the updates, reminiscent of My Alltop.


Guzzle's iPhone App Sorts By Topic
Interesting features of the new Guzzle? The product keeps track of every article published, and you can search its archives. You can also display news in an expanded mode, like Feedly, with large images (on the desktop version anyway).


Viewing Stories On Guzzle's iPhone App
While the desktop version of Guzzle is free, the iPhone application is $1.99. (get it here) If you don't mind parting with two bucks, Guzzle on the iPhone is a quick way to get caught up on the topics you're monitoring while mobile - and is an alternative to the personal prioritization of my6sense or the editorial sifting performed by Regator.

Guzzle also is transparent in terms of the sources that power its database. You can see them all here or can suggest new ones that haven't made the list.

Disclosure: my6sense is a client of Paladin Advisors Group, where I am Managing Editor of New Media. My comments on the company's product are always independent, and do not pass their way in advance.

Zite Launches Personal Web Filter, Recommends Content

Practically everywhere I turn these days, new products are cropping up to help you find content relevant to your interests. In addition to my6sense, who I covered yesterday, we've seen a fair share of Twitter applications, iPhone apps and Web sites looking to find signal in the noise, and each takes a unique approach. The latest to join the scene is a service called Zite, which bills itself as a personalized Web filter, leveraging your social profiles to guess your interests. You can improve the filter by grouping keywords you are interested in, and can dive down by domain to see what different sources are saying about your interests.

Setting Up My Zite

Upon entering Zite (and you can use one of 50 invites with this code: http://zite.com/?code=louisgrayorg), you are prompted to enter your user name for Twitter and Delicious. Zite analyzes the content you share on those sites, and delivers two things: recommended articles and keywords called your "Follow List".

Today's Recommendations from Zite

Older Recommendations from Zite

The recommended articles are split into two: first being today's recommendations, and the second being older items you might like, going from 1 day ago to as much as a month. If you like the articles you see, simple click the star to the left of each article, or you can read it. Zite intends to improved based on your feedback, so the more stars, the more you get to tailor it to your interests.

The "Follow List" at first is a quick stab at what Zite thinks you are most interested in. But the power of this list comes from your own edits. You can add new terms to follow, and interestingly, drag and drop topics into groups. This lets you have a set of results for "Startup, VC and Venture Capital", or another group for "Branding, Marketing and Public Relations", for example. You can also set up groupings for multiple domains, for example "louisgray.com and scobleizer.com", if you wanted to.


The Editable Follow List on Zite

Once the follow list is created, you can click on any of the groups and see recommended results on Zite from those terms. Zite tries to guide your exploration further with related topics, called "Parents" which are higher level topics, or "Siblings" which add more terms to those you're currently viewing.

Searching on one domain with a specific term on Zite

The ability to parse through RSS and other news sources by topic is something I like a lot, and you could see that from my feedback on Lazyfeed. Zite lacks the real-time updating element and cool UI that Lazyfeed brings, and doesn't clearly respond to implicit feedback, working on the explicit nature of your own activity. But if you want to see recommended articles from the Web on topics you like, you should check it out. You can get in to Zite's closed beta with one of 50 invites using this code: http://zite.com/?code=louisgrayorg.

Disclosure: My6sense is an assumed competitor to some aspects of Zite, and My6sense is a Paladin Advisors Group client, where I am managing director of new media.

Lazyfeed Real-time Topical RSS Preps Multi-Column Revamp

Lazyfeed's real-time discovery engine for following topics has been among my favorite services to debut this year. The service has made following terms I am interested in, and getting live updates as they pour in, very simple - helping me to further populate my Google Reader and other services with new blogs that I can discover as I see their stories on terms I've hand-selected as my favorites. Early next week, the service will see its most-dramatic overhaul thus far, branching out from a single column interface to one that can take up your entire browser window, with a cascading of news, making the experience feel much more visually rich and watchable, like a TV screen.


The New Lazyfeed: Click to See Full Size


One Corner of the New Lazyfeed as Two Panels Update

In addition to the revamp, Lazyfeed has introduced a new character, Mr. Lazy, who can prompt you to provide more information about popular topics you may be following, such as your favorite director, if you are tracking Movies or the genre of music you like best, if you are following tunes. When you answer, that answer becomes a new tracked topic, further enhancing your stream.


Mr. Lazy Helps Me Populate More Topics. Lazy!

The new experience of Lazyfeed is one that will make you want to avoid blinking. Instead of a passive "3 new updates" type of approach common to many social networking sites (including Facebook and Twitter), the new Lazyfeed's updates cascade in from the top, by topic, prioritizing headlines and showing featured photos. It's an entrancing visual not unlike the first time one experiences TweetDeck and sees the multi-column format come to life.


I've included a quick little silent film to show the new Lazyfeed in action. Until it debuts, you can still get to all your updates at http://www.lazyfeed.com.

Cinch Puts Simple Podcasts In Your Pocket

In August, I suggested that Apple should find a way to record phone calls on the iPhone, leveraging its Voice Memo product, to make it drop-dead simple to create podcasts at any time. While the company hasn't achieved such a goal, an offering from BlogTalk Radio, called Cinch, has delivered on an extremely easy to use product that lets you record audio clips and post them to your social networks, including Facebook or Twitter. I've been using it the last few weeks, and while I try and discard a huge number of different technologies, this is one I know I will be returning to often - as it meets a need not currently served by other providers.

The idea behind Cinch is to provide short-form audio updates much like Twitter is for text, and 12seconds.tv is for video. Twitter's ease of use has come largely due to its short-form definition, keeping us all in 140 character soundbites, and CinchCast makes it just as easy to provide short updates, in audio form.


The Cinch Interface on the iPhone - Record and Publish
A free iPhone application, Cinch provides you with the option to record using the iPhone's built in microphone - good for solo updates, or one to one quick interviews - perfect for "people on the street" situations or for events. Once recorded, you can hit play to preview the Cinchcast, or hit Publish to send it off to destinations you have selected, including Twitter or Facebook. You can also add a photo to help tell the story, and can provide, yes, a 140 character update explaining what the Cinchcast is all about.

Should you want to, you can also search the service to find other CinchCasts or click Radio to see BlogTalkRadio's on-air schedule.


Cinch Shows My Published Updates and Those from Others on the Service
I never got into 12seconds.tv given its brevity and my lack of need for quick video shorts. But I can already see getting into regular updates on Cinch to augment my other blogging and social networking activity. As you can see on my Cinch page, I used the product to have a quick interview with Ethan Gahng of Lazyfeed last week, and earlier today, made some comments on the new report that once again, people are blaming social media for employees' lost productivity.

Now, whenever I want to speak directly to people on all the social networks, and have a follow-on discussion in the comments on Cinch, all I need to do is take out my iPhone and speak into the microphone. I will be looking forward to posting many more. You can find Cinch at http://www.cinchcast.com/.

See Also: Webtop Mania: Cinch: better than Twitter, better than Evernote.

BlogWorld Expo 2009: The State of Technology & the Real Time Web

For the third time this year, I am back in Las Vegas. And per usual, I'm not here for anything resembling a vacation, as it's conference time. But instead of attending an event on behalf of a specific company, as I have done many different times, I am going on behalf of the blog, and making many of the connections I have forged online since 2006 onward more concrete - through participating in Blog World Expo. This is my second year participating after going last year, and for 2009, I have the challenging, yet exciting, opportunity to talk about what has to be one of the biggest stories in technology this year - the real-time Web.

On Friday, the second day of the conference, at 11:30 a.m., I will be speaking solo - trying to discuss the impact the Web is seeing as real-time becomes further embedded in many of our daily online activities.

The subject of the real-time Web is near and dear to me. As an information consumer and producer, anything I can do to get my data out to more places faster than ever, or the easier I can get to more data, faster than ever, reducing latency is huge. That's part of why I made the real-time Web central to my #1 prediction for the world of tech in 2009 back on New Year's Eve.

Excerpting from my post back on December 31:

"Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-timeoffer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options."

I've been well known for getting my predictions wrong, but every once in a while, I feel like I am on to something, so this is gratifying.

If you are here for BlogWorld Expo, you can expect to hear a lot more about things like PubSubHubbub, Lazyfeed, Reader2Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter Search, and more at 11:30 on Friday. Just make sure you add the session to your own custom schedule. It will all go down in real time. Looking forward to seeing you there.

No More Beta Codes: Lazyfeed Is Open for Everyone

Almost two months ago, we first introduced Lazyfeed, a real-time blog search and feeds engine, which has grown to be a big part of my information gathering process, following topics which I like, rather than people, or specific RSS feeds. The product's uniqueness is one of the more innovative services I have seen in 2009, which was a big part of why I practically have had a part-time job as a beta code broker, trying to gain people access to the site. As of today, that unpaid gig is done, for Lazyfeed has removed the beta wall, and opened the site to all who want to enter. If you didn't get access to the site, I strongly recommend you go and try it, as you will find the wave of interesting news and blog posts from around the Web addicting.


Topics for Lazy Me from Lazyfeed
As I've mentioned in my previous coverage of Lazyfeed, including a quick how-to video on the service, the site does two major things - first, finding blog posts and news articles relevant to me based on topics I have provided, and second, find related items to those entries I have added to my own social sites, including this blog and my Twitter account. Blog posts that have tags will generate new items, while hashtags on Twitter will do the same. This second portion is what Lazyfeed says gets you the lazy portion of the name, because in "Topics for Lazy Louis", I haven't even had to enter the topics into Lazyfeed - it just happens on my behalf.


The New Lazyfeed Home Page Is Open for Business

Ethan Gahng, CEO of Lazyfeed, uses his own product in a much different way than I do, leveraging the search engine for entertainment, sports, TV and other things, where as I just continue to feed my tech obsession like a bright orange RSS-powered IV drip. But that's what makes a site like Lazyfeed so powerful - it can be whatever you want it to be, and hopefully, without too much work. Stay lazy.

Parse.ly Spices Up the News Based On Your Interest Filters

I am enjoying seeing the growth in Web services tailored to finding the very best news just for me. From My6Sense's attempt to only show me the best news, and hiding the less-important items, to Lazyfeed's topics-based blog search engine, we've recently seen two interesting approaches to cutting through information overload and finding the best data. A new invite-only beta service, called Parse.ly, claims to offer "fresh content" with "minimal garnish", and, leveraging my interests, gives me the highest-ranked stories, derived not just from my leanings, but how strongly I find myself aligned with specific topics. The result is another news source with an outstanding signal to noise ratio.

If you are among the lucky few who has thus far obtained access to Philadelphia-based Parse.ly (I am betting the best way is to follow their Twitter account), you start by entering terms you want to find news on, and dragging them to boxes that signify your intensity of interest. The five boxes range from "Most" to "Extremely", "Very", "Moderately" and "Somewhat", in descending order.


Prioritizing My News In Parse.ly
Per my usual approach, I filled the boxes with tech terms, and deigned to see if Parse.ly could find me new, interesting stories about the topics I am most interested in. And it came through - no question.

Each of the buckets ("Somewhat" to "Most") gained a numerical score, from 2 to 10. As a result if a blog post had two of my "10 point words" in its title or excerpt, it would have 20 points, and be pushed to the top of the results queue. Higher yet would be a story on Google around Pubsubhubbub and RSS, which weighed in at 28 points, sporting two 10 point words and an 8 pointer. Like traditional feed readers, Parse.ly shows the title of the story and the date, but it also includes a short summary and, yes, the post's numerical score. Sorting by score shows the highest ranking results.


My Starred Items In A Parse.ly Reading Pane

How Stories Got Scored Based On My Preferences
If you click on a story in the standard view, an excerpt is displayed in the reading pane, which also features a "Score Explanation". And if you click on the story itself, a new window will open with a Parse.ly share bar, prompting you to either save the story for later viewing, or share it to a myriad of other social networks.


The Parse.ly Sharebar In Action on eWeek
Parse.ly clearly states that its focus is all about the content and minimal when it comes to garnish (or design). That's absolutely the case. The product is reminiscent of GMail and Google Reader with its simple interface and the ability to star items, or show only read and unread items. You can also archive old items or delete them, just like you would for old e-mails and RSS feeds.

I am eager to see Parse.ly open up and let people get into the product, for while I have plenty of places to get news, Parse.ly has among the best I've ever seen in terms of quality. The company even says it could be a solid alternative to Google Alerts. Not a single spam blog was found, a testament to Parse.ly's selection from 50,000 different sources. The option to share out to other networks will also make it an interesting part of the social ecosystem.