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15 Aug 2005
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;
| Service Provider | MicroContent types | Web 2.0 rating |
| enabling billing | invoice | 3 / 10 |