Enabling Services

Writely

This service allows the user to create documents.  The service consists of a document manager and an editor. The editor allows the user to set fonts, sizes, etc. And the document manager shows the documents that have been produced. The user can tag, rate (star) and activate a document. The interesting feature of the service is that the user can see who can author and view a document. One can also see all teh revisions of a document and revert if necessary. But a document can also be published to the entire Internet.

I am not sure whether this is a Web 2.0 service. The service does have import and export facilities, which makes it Datalibre compliant. I like the access control, but miss the licenses. And I would like to see a RSS-feed per document.

tags: microcontent; service; writely;

Jeteye

Jeteye is a combination between a search service and a bookmarking service.

The search service allows users to do a free search, which uses Google, but one can change to other search service providers. The search service also searches the Jetpaks created by users. Jetpaks are collections of links, images and notes. These Jetpaks are created by users of the bookmarking service. Search results are shown in reverse time-order. Each item shows the title, a summary and a link of the Item. A user can expand an Item to see the full web-page.

The primary service seems to be a bookmarking-service. A user can create collections called jetpaks. A jetpak can contain bookmarks, image urls and notes. One can assign a title and tags to a jetpak. The most interesting feature however is that it is very easy to add a search result to a jetpak: just clicking a button.

• Structured MicroContent - YES, it recognized bookmarks and images;
• Data Outside - NO, it is not possible to subscribe to other bookmark services.;
• Licenses - NO;
• Feeds Galore - NO, where is the RSS of a jetpak?;
• Web API’s - NO, not that I am aware of;
• Desktop Integration - NO;
• Single Identity - NO;
• MicroWeb - NO;
• lc Structure - NO;

tags: microcontent; type; bookmark; service; jeteye;

OPML Editor

This service helps the user to publish a structured blog. I call it a structured blog as it is based on OPML. The user has to download a specific client to create and publish his blog items. The editor allows the user to set several characteristics of his blog (template, image, blogroll, etc.) and the user get’s an url assigned.

The user interface is still a bit crude.

tags: microcontent; opml; blog;

Consummating

This is a service that brings supply and demand together. It is a Broking Tele-service. The product that is brokered is the user themselves. It can also be called a dating site. The service combines two service sets: one for the supplier and one for the demander. The interesting thing about a people broker is the equality between demander and supplier. Each demander is a supplier and vice-versa.

The supplier service set is actually an Enabling service. A user can set up a profile with information on himself and pictures. One of the most important items is that is part of the profile are the tags.

The demander side allows the user to browse profiles and add comments on profiles. One can add someone to his hotlist and add tags to persons. This is similar to bookmarking. The service also recommends people based on their tags.

The service is not very Web 2.0. Only the fact that there are profiles are Web 2.0.

tags: microcontent; people; service; consumating;

Pheedo

This service offers an advertising network for RSS/Atom-feeds. The service consists of two components: the advertiser and the advertising space.

The buying of advertising space is a Advertising Marketing CRM Enabling service. It is about helping to make a product or service of a company known.

The selling of advertising space is a Tele-Enabler Enabling service. I have not yet figured out how I should call the sub-category.

tags: microcontent; feeds; ads;

Spurl.net

The Service Provider Spurl.net offers a combination of multiple services.

The basis is a bookmarking service. This service allows publishers to enter bookmarks and publish them to the world.

The other service offers viewers the ability to browse and search the aggregated bookmarks.

tags: microcontent; type; bookmark; service; spurl;

Flickr

Flickr is a Service Provider with two types of users: publishers and viewers.

A publisher can upload and publish his images on Flickr. With each image there is a variety of fields that can be filled: title, description and tags. Most interestingly is that one can create hotspots in the image with comments. This can be used to describe who is who on the image.

Viewers can search for images based on the most popular tags, groups or people or interestingness. Some free search options are available as well.

• Structured MicroContent - YES, images;
• Data Outside - NO;
• Licenses - NO;
• Feeds Galore - YES, there are a lot of feed possibilities;
• Web API’s - YES, there are several API’s;
• Desktop Integration - YES, I use an extension to iPhoto to upload images;
• Single Identity - NO;
• MicroWeb - NO;
• lc Structure - NO;

tags: microcontent; service; flickr;

Scuttle

Scuttle is an intermediairy site in that has two types of customers: publishers and viewers. The service revolves around bookmarks.

The viewers are offered a guided bookmark services: recent bookmarks, recent tags. The results can be sorted by date, titlke or url. It is also possible to view the bookmarks of a publisher. And on a publishers bookmark-page it is possible to do a free search on that page. As a registered viewer it is also possible to watch bookmarks (although I did not find out what it does).

On the publisher side a user can add bookmarks or import them from the desktop or del.icio.us.

• Structured MicroContent - YES, bookmarks;
• Data Outside - NO, although it is possible to import;
• Licenses - NO;
• Feeds Galore - YES, it is possible to various RSS-feeds;
• Web API’s - NO, not that I am aware of;
• Desktop Integration - NO;
• Single Identity - NO;
• MicroWeb - NO;
• lc Structure - NO;

tags: microcontent; type; bookmark; service; scuttle;

MyWeb 2.0 @ Yahoo

This new service by Yahoo was all over the web last week. One of the services is a bookmark service. Users can add their bookmarks and publish them to their community, to the world or keep them to themselves. This service also allow a user to add tags. It is nice that the service does give tag suggestions based on what a user types. This might keep the typos down.

I guess the most interesting service is their new search. I do not yet quite get it, but it seems to search only within the bookmarked pages your own community. I guess that is supposed to give better results.

Is this good enough? I do not think so. For one thing they should pool bookmarks with other bookmark hosting services. I am not again going to enter my stuff there. It can import from my del.icio.us feed, but they should subscribe. And what about bookmarks that are no longer in that feed? Nice that it takes the tags as well. Anyway it is a good start.

I do not know about the search service yet and whether it will give me better results. The idea has been around longer and is related to the trusted web. I will decide on that later. Again the most important is that something is happening in this space.

tags: microcontent; service; bookmark; yahoo;

Shoebox

A post by Barb Dybwad points me to Shoebox. I had a bit of trouble defining what this service does, but I will call it an image bookmarks hosting service. The basic idea of the service is to collect and remember URL’s that point to images (image bookmarks). A user can add web-pages from which the service extracts the image URL’s. A user can also add RSS-feeds, such as produced by Flickr. As a RSS-feed is only temporarily, you can add an image from a RSS as permanent. It is also possible to add feeds from webshots itself by specifying a tag or a user.

On the output side one can specify one or more images sets and subscribe to the corresponding RSS-feed. It is really mixing and matching sources to create something new.

More about my definition of the service. It is all about bookmarks, but only a limited set: images, thus image bookmarks. The service does not seem to store the images themselves, hence we talk about bookmarks. The service keeps a record of the image bookmarks a user puts in, hence the hosting. There are no options for searching, browsing or finding image bookmarks added by other users. So there is no aggregation functionality. They might introduce that later.

tags: microcontent; type; image; service; showbox;

BlinkList

Yet another bookmarking site. It seems to have a usual set of functions, so let’s just have a Web 2.0 look at it:

• Structured MicroContent -  YES: a bookmark consists of title, description, url, tag. And one can set some access control and a rating (0 or 1). The user can edit and delete a bookmark;
• Data Outside - NO. I can import form a browser, but not from other bookmark services;
• Licenses - NO;
• Feeds Galore - NO. I can only create a feed for my bookmarks and for tags;
• Web API’s - NO, not that I am aware of;
• Desktop Integration - NO, not really. I can not export to any bookmark client, such as a browser. Only to RSS-clients;
• Single Identity - NO;
• MicroWeb - NO;
• LC Structure - NO;

This gives it a rating of 1/10. Not very good.

tags: microcontent; type; bookmark; service; blinklist;

Blinksale

Techcrunch discussed the service BlinkSale. In short the service allows a user/client to create and send invoices. Visit techcrunch if you want more information on the service itself. I decided to look a bit more into this service as I have only been looking at consumer oriented services and not business oriented services. And MicroContent not only lives in the user realm, but also in the business realm.

From a Web 2.0 checklist view:

• Structured MicroContent -  YES: the MicroContent type for this service is an invoice and a customer address;
• Data Outside - NO: the user must create clients and invoices inside the service. Some vCard import services would help on this point.;
• Licenses - NO: but this is not required here. Normally an invoice is private to the two parties involved;
• Feeds Galore - YES: the user can subscribe to an RSS-feed of the invoices created. And very interestingly the user can also integrated the iCal on a Mac. Thus one can see when an invoice has been created and when it is due;
• Web API’s - NO, not that I am aware of;
• Desktop Integration - YES: although there is integration with a RSS- and iCal-client, there is no integration with an invoice client. But I gave it a point thanks to the iCal-integration, it shows that MicroContent is not just RSS;
• Single Identity - NO: again I had to create something new;
• MicroWeb - NO: there is no integration with other services;
• Wild MicroContent - NO: one can not change the invoice fields;

Although the service gets only 3/10 Web 2.0 points, I think it is very interesting. It is possible to add more Web 2.0 things to it. The service uses Ajax and Ruby by the way, which improve the user experience here and there.

A minor gripe is that the service is still US oriented in it’s address format. International customer should be able to define where the address fields appear and more importantly the address country should be added to the invoice. Some more flexibility is needed.

tags: microcontent; type; invoice; service; blinksale; web2.0;

Dinnerbuzz

This service allows users to enter reviews of restaurants. This is the hosting service.

Users can search or browse for restaurants based on location (cities), tags, rating or authors. The user also sees restaurants closeby.

Weblogs.com

This service allows users to check whether a weblog has changed. This service is the backbone of the blogosphere.

The service receive pings from blog author CMS’s, which indicate that their weblog underwent a change.

Feed Burner

I am not quite sure what to make of this service. It seems a syndication service to me, i.e. you can republish your feed through them. That might keep the load on your hosting service low. And the people can sign up through feedburner. Then you can get all kind of statistics on your feed usage.