Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Gritwire Version 1.0 Launched
With this launch I'd like to take the opportunity to describe some of the thinking behind Gritwire in general.
A question that keeps being asked is "who is our user?" Are we building this for people familiar with terms like RSS, podcasting, and OPML--the technophiles--or is there some other group we're catering to. A lot of the design decisions that went into this version were based on appealing to the existing RSS user base. We went with a 3-pane layout similar to RSS Owl, added OPML import capability, and there's not a whole lot of tutorial/explanation on the site of how to use it. You have to be fairly familiar with RSS to work comfortably with the site.
There are a couple notable exceptions to presenting this for the RSS afficienado. For example, "what are speedfeeds?" is a question I'm sure we'll be asked. I've been convinced for quite some time that for popular adoption of RSS a more palatable name will be needed than it's current TLA. Several months ago I stumbled upon CmdrTaco's recommendation to call RSS feeds Speedfeeds. Since that time Microsoft has started chattering about "web feeds." I'm fine with either or neither of those, but something needs to stick.
Another potential confusion to a hardcore Internet user is our wiki offering. Some might not even call it a wiki, and yeah I understand that argument. They aren't fully featured, but I think they qualify in the most basic definition.
I suppose there will always be more features you wish you could cram in before a product launch. I'm sure many out there will have feature suggestions, bug reports, and hopefully some positive feedback will make it into the mix. Going forward I'd like Gritwire to be driven more by user input, so please, any and all comments are appreciated.
A question that keeps being asked is "who is our user?" Are we building this for people familiar with terms like RSS, podcasting, and OPML--the technophiles--or is there some other group we're catering to. A lot of the design decisions that went into this version were based on appealing to the existing RSS user base. We went with a 3-pane layout similar to RSS Owl, added OPML import capability, and there's not a whole lot of tutorial/explanation on the site of how to use it. You have to be fairly familiar with RSS to work comfortably with the site.
There are a couple notable exceptions to presenting this for the RSS afficienado. For example, "what are speedfeeds?" is a question I'm sure we'll be asked. I've been convinced for quite some time that for popular adoption of RSS a more palatable name will be needed than it's current TLA. Several months ago I stumbled upon CmdrTaco's recommendation to call RSS feeds Speedfeeds. Since that time Microsoft has started chattering about "web feeds." I'm fine with either or neither of those, but something needs to stick.
Another potential confusion to a hardcore Internet user is our wiki offering. Some might not even call it a wiki, and yeah I understand that argument. They aren't fully featured, but I think they qualify in the most basic definition.
I suppose there will always be more features you wish you could cram in before a product launch. I'm sure many out there will have feature suggestions, bug reports, and hopefully some positive feedback will make it into the mix. Going forward I'd like Gritwire to be driven more by user input, so please, any and all comments are appreciated.
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Great product really, there was no really good web based rss reader upto now. Blogline was good upto some extent but in this Web 2.0 boasting of web apps providing desktop apps like funcationality, there was no web based rss reader that can be as usable and fast as desktop ones. This one fills the gap.
I am unable to find out an easier mechanism to add new feeds. You should add some feature like bloglines provides to subscribe current page, ie, just by clicking a link in your browser favourites. del.icio.us also provide such buttons.
Apoorv, thanks for the comments, really love what you said about us filling the gap between web and desktop based rss reader apps--that's exactly what we're shooting for. Good call on the subscribe button. I'll work on the button script, but in the short run the automatic subscription URL for anyone that wants to figure the button out is: http://www.gritwire.com/default.htm?feedurl= followed by the feed URL.
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