Context Services

JamBase

This service is a comprehensive portal for the music enthousiast. It combines serveral services on music: information articles, information on tours, a personal site and search. The search functions allows a user to search on date, venue, city and band. Thus it acknowledges MicroContent structure.

I am not sure whether I should call this a MicroContent services or even a Web 2.0 service. At the moment it is a Music Affinity Context service for me.

tags: service; jambase;

Netvibes

Netvibes allows the user to create a personal start page. A startpage consists of a three column-format with one or more blocks per column.  Each block is called a feature and can contain certain content. A feauture can be a rss-feed, a note, the weather, a search field or the gmail mailbox. Each element can be seen as the Items-view for either a MicroContent item or list of Items. One could call this an aggregator of MicroContent.

tags: microcontent service

Protopage

This service provides a personal start-page to its users. At the moment a user can add a list of links, add notes and change the background of the page.

tags: service; personal; portal; protopage;

The GoingOn Network

It seems that Marc Canter’s new idea is out the box. As Marc Canter says that he has a free hand in helping design it, I will attribute it to him. As the service is not yet out we have to look at the comments and pictures to see what it will be. I did see already a lot of MicroContent types (pictures, people, links, events) around. I see output through RSS, but also import from other services, such as del.icio.us. There is Social Networking, communication, etc. Interesting to see how all this mixes and matches. And the interoperability thing will be great. It implies a lot of Web API’s.

Looks extremely interesting, I would like to sign up.

tags: microcontent; service; goingonnetwork;

Personalised startpage

Google started a personalised homepage. Interesting to see something from the past come back. But I do see a reason for me to back to it.

Yahoo 360

I want to try this new service. But alas, I need an invitation.

Content WiFi Packages

in Cnet an article appeared in which examples are give of bundling content with WiFi. Telepocalyse thinks that this is a very stupid idea. I totally agree.

For starting users such a content=access package might be useful, but advanced users just want raw IP-access. These users have their own content they want to view. Especially hotspot users seem advanced to me. One might argue however that travelling users might want to access local information in order to get around. I would, when I am at a new place! And some help might be appreciated then. But that is indeed location. I guess that in the long run these packages will die, as they will more expensive than access-only providers.

Kunekt

Kunekt‘s idea is to publish your contact information on your website (as a RSS-file), so that interested people can subscribe to it. This allows the subscribers to have the latest information. The information can subsequently be imported into your favourite address book.

This seems like a good idea. I remember other services that tried to create a central directory, which did not work. A distributed solution seems to be much better. It depends on whether the importing from RSS is a standard and the markup will become a standard. Kunekt allows you to create a RSS address card and they will host it. They also have import and export tools. I will add the file to my site.

Do-Not-Call list privacy

Techdirt discusses the lack of privacy around the Do-Not-Call list, which has been created in the US. It is possible to view other phone numbers, add numbers of others and there is no way to change mistakes.

It surely looks like a badly implemented service. This also calls for a distributed solution (RSS again), where the owner of the information can change his info when he needs. A Do-Not-Call flag can be used to define whether the user does not want to be called by telemarketeers. He could then send a ping to the central directory in order to add his feed to the central database.  What rests is some way to certificate the phone number, so that can be certified the user is indeed the owner of the number (federated identity?). In the end private data will stay with it’s owner under his own control.

[see also TMCnet]

BT Yahoo!

BT seems to have given up creating their own portal site and has started with BT Yahoo! Broadband. They started using a branded version(?) of the Yahoo portal. It seems to be added to the broadband access services only. By adding this add-on service to their access service BT hopes to create a more compelling service package for their customer.

Personally I do not believe in the package of access plus portal, but then I am not a marketeer and not the average Internet user. I guess I have to write up something about packages.
[by way of Ian Fogg of Jupiter Communications]

.Mac bookmarks

Apple introduced a bookmark storage and synchronization service. Does not seem very special. It is more a need to have service for them.