Merry Chrismukkah and Happy new year!

Good morning everyone! We're back on deck after a couple of days break for Christmas. I am sure we will loose a few more days over New Years but that's another story.

Looking forward to 2006 it looks like 'Citizen Journalism' or 'Participant Created Media' are going to explode. My personal hope is that time-shifted media becomes a reality beyond BitTorrent and amature content (and beyond iPOD/Tivo). Not so much so I can begin paying for TV, but rather so that better TV gets made (my theory is when fan audiences pay for good content, Fox can't/wont cancel shows like Firefly).

In the web space this all means lots more RSS, and lots more clamoring for our Attention. That's ok - because very shortly the world will have Touchstone (hah)!

Here is a little post that talks about the actual business side of things (as apposed to my rant about saving my favorite TV shows).

I Think Therefore "I-AM"

"I-AM" who I know.
"I-AM" what I read.
"I-AM" where I am.
"I-AM" how I work.
"I-AM" me.

During a huge Australian Summer Storm on the 8th (and the subsequent black-out), Chris and I took the down-time to fine tune and clarify some of the details about the TouchStone Attention Engine.

It wasn’t like we were going to code anything.

During this conversation, Chris mentioned that TouchStone embodied Intuitive Attention Management or "I-AM". This initially was just a rather fancy nickname for the “How-Important-Is-It-Parser”, but the trouble is (despite my previous directives about what he was and wasn’t allowed to call the parsers) – I loved the name.

After arguing/talking about ways of defining and encapsulating the essence of what a user does and doesn’t want to be notified about, we settled on the idea that each and every item generated by a source (be it RSS or other), has a given relevance to the user at any given time. This relevance is based on a number of internal and external factors. By defining, naming and weighting these sources it’s possible to give each item an 'importance value' and then allow the user to define alert types based on value thresholds.

Further, we decided, we could encapsulate this functionality its own library so that other developers and their software can tap into its power.

The result is we take a source item, it's content, it's source, the author/publisher, key concepts/tags and apply pre-defined global and user defined “rules”. By biasing (positively or negatively) the final importance value, we can begin tuning the user experience based on relevancy.

After we fleshed out the specific details on how we would accomplish this, I-AM was born. An external class library with the methods by which we should be able to determine, intuitively, the value of a piece of content to a given user. The result of this calculation should be an ‘importance’ value that is attached to an item moving through the Touchstone system. This value is then used to determine the way in which an alert is presented (i.e. level of user interruption).

I love diagrams!

All values involved (we decided) should be from -5 to 5. A negative value being a vote against the relevancy of that item for the user. 1 being the least import, and 5 being the most.

With a growing number of Meme Engines out there, it is clear that there is an ongoing effort to try and reduce the RSS Overload and help content rise to the top. In essence, I-AM might be a personalized Meme engine that any feed reader could use to place a value of importance on content coming in from a user's OPML file (for example). It is then up to the news reader to determine how to act on that value for a great user experience.

I-AM is not intended to replace the existing attention ranking and suggesting methodologies, but merely to enhance the user’s ability to sort and control the flow of syndicated content on the client side.

Plus it has an awesome name - don't you agree?

Update: An article about personal relevancy

The comments are broken!

I can't believe it - I found a post where the author is effectively begging for a Touchstone-esque solution, but the comment system is broken so I can't tell him we exist.

Read all about it - Maybe one of you can find a way to ping him for us!

This is also an interesting post about RSS -> SMS. I actually had this thought once - but I realized that there was too much garbage on RSS to just blindly SMS it all to someone! But perhaps, with Touchstone sitting in the mix, we could set up a visualization that sent the most important updates to SMS. With 'importance' being determined by all the smart attention engine work we're doing!

*Goes back to working on the all new Touchstone 'Status Map' feature*

Docking is not just for ships

Another serious development session was held yesterday (once again Mike joined us to help control the ticker docking behavior in all its C# craziness.) and I have to say the outcome was amazing. Certainly far more productive then we initially believed – this new version actually compiles now - always a good sign.

This all brings us another step closer to Limited Alpha.

Trac informs us that we only have a handful of tickets left before we can release a sneak peek of TouchStone to special people.

Most of the work being done now is focused on usability polishing. Since the beginning we have always been highly focused on the idea that the way Touchstone behaves (and makes the user 'feel') is as important - if not more - than what it can actually do. Chris tells me, this is more important then buying a 360.

In addition, the memory footprint has been reduced even further!

Time for a moment of honesty

Chris doesn't much like it when I get all DNM because I tend to force brute honesty from every orifice of my body, but release 3 of the private alpha, is ... well, highly experimental.

Yes, the transit system is flash and fast, but the BagItAndTagItParser seems think that a dropped item due to cache is a failed 'item injection' - Bah! I am getting the bugs out slowly, but we are making significant progress. Momentum is growing and (so far) it's having a positive effect on the project.

Michael has sort of become our unofficial C# and XML consultant; building a few little classes to extend our libraries. He is also extremely adept at spotting the objects I have created, but not initialised, catching those god forsaken object exceptions .NET keeps throwing in my face.

Private Alpha Release 3 (and the impending Limited Alpha) is getting there slowly!

Ahem! Items-in-transit

Sorry for the overly contemptuous nature of this post, but I simply must emphasise the erroneousness of Chris' last blog. He, being so caught up with his "buzzwords" (obviously a symptom of his self-diagnosed "dependency on metaphorical crutches") that he totally understated just how much the revamp of the "items-in-transit" model has improved the TouchStone Attention Engine and API ;)

What I am sure he meant to say was:

We have completely replaced and re-engineered the entire array handling methods of the core. We replaced the visualization array with a powerful collection of item objects, and collected these together, extending the standard .NET collection class to handle specific scenarios for the needs of the TouchStone Item Cache and the Visualization Widgets. This not only increases the overall efficiency of the core, but means future innovation implemented with a minimum of code changes.

The new system allowed us to eliminate HUNDREDS of lines of code, and more clearly abstract the various moving parts of TouchStone - something both of us are always working to do.

This new mechanism (it's currently being debugged now) should also allow greater opportunities to expand and clean the current code, which should assist us greatly in releasing the limited alpha sooner then expected.

Oh and go Ariel!

I have a problem...

They say this is the first step to being healed - to acknowledge and accept your problem.

According to Chris Sacca's "At the end of the day..." post on his blog - I have a dependency on metaphorical crutches.

Ashley hates it - I can't live without it - what can I do? Help me dear friends.

*Goes looking for the 12 step program*

On a more serious note, as of yesterday, Touchstone now has the ability for basic rebranding. The whole ticker can now have its graphical elements replaced with someone else's. Why? So that publishers can use it as their own news dashboard!

We have also done further work on optimizing what is now called 'Items in transit' and building in an item buffer in the visualization engine that allows each widget (the ticker for example) to store and manage its "current items".

Soon this powerful collection system will be used for alerts and other widgets to keep track of what's what for the user in more intelligent and intuitive ways.

Oh - we have also given our default visualization a name - "Ariel". This is a homage to Joss Whedon's "Firefly". It's the name of a 'core planet' that's all Shiny and new. The fact that it is under strict control by the Malevolent Alliance is beside the point.

Touchstone v1 Private Alpha Release 2 is here!

It's been a great night. We are now at the second release of the Private Alpha - taking into account all the feedback we have recieved to date.

According to Trac - all our tickets are closed for this milestone. Look for yourself.

Here is the email going out to our Private Alpha testers (remember if you want to be included, please email us).

Good evening everyone. The Touchstone Private Alpha (second release) is here. I would like to invite you all to find out more about it at the download page.

[Secret URL Here]

You have received this information because you are friends, trusted colleagues or enquiring minds who have contacted us for a copy of the Private Alpha. We appreciate your support and look forward to your feedback! If you would like to stop receiving updates about Touchstone, just let us know!

Just to refresh your memory:

Touchstone is a gadget that persists on your desktop displaying news and information that you subscribe to. Initially this will be based on RSS and eventually could include all types of alerts/information from various programs.

In this current release, Touchstone looks like a news ticker (like the one you see at the bottom of news shows/stations on TV). Eventually there will be additional ‘visualizations’ such as a ‘sidebar’ version, various ‘alerts’ that popup when important changes occur etc.

You can find out more at the website linked above.

Thanks!

Chris Saad & Ashley Angell
Touchstone: What would you like to know today?

Abstracting Complexity

On "Abandon the Web" there is an interesting post about The Sky Ahead.

In it, there is a theory of how "The Net" will turn into "The Cloud" (which is a term that is already used to describe the internet) and the interface should become no more complex than a power point in the wall (which itself hides the complexity of the power grid).

This type of approach factors into our thinking with Touchstone.

How? Well the complexity that we geeks experience when finding, subscribing and using RSS is only the beginning when it comes to 'barrier to entry' for mainstream users. This barrier is being well looked after by Microsoft and Mozilla with their respective implementations of browser based feed subscription interfaces.

The problem is, though, that with hair trigger subscription mechanisms - we (and the mainstream) are going to run out of attention time.

This brings us to the second barrier - the one we are trying to solve - time. Mainstream users don't have time to read 200+ feeds like us geeks do.

So with Touchstone, we are trying to move the complexity of choosing what new items matter (and how much that change should interrupt the user) into the cloud. A decision making process that takes into account your interests, your feeds, your OPML profile, the current site your on etc...

Keeping informed should be as easy as glancing at your Touchstone news ticker.

What is Web 2.0?

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I love 37signals.

I read their blog - Signal Vs. Noise - religiously and most of it is blogworthy. I don't blog it all because:

a) some of it is off-topic and
b) we would have to rename this blog to 'the Signal Vs. Noise Echo Chamber'.

But I found a neat little post that embodies their humor and good nature while also linking to/discussing an Adaptive Path article that, I think, is one of the best examinations of 'Web 2.0'.

In their post, they make fun of the article because it uses lots of big business type words, but those who know me also know that I tend to use those words too.

The fact is, this article deals with the actual phenomena/psychology/technology categories of Web 2.0 - not the little technical details that make up the 'unwritten rules' about what a Web 2.0 app should feature.

So congrats to 37signals for continuing their wonderful blog with wonderful humor and great work by Brandon Schauer at Adaptive Path for writing a great article with a very pretty diagram (I love their design sensibilities too).

That's a lot of love - but you all get the picture.

Are you keeping Trac?

Tonight Ashley and I installed Trac for the second time. What is Trac and why did we install it twice? Well funny you should ask!

First, Trac is an open-source product by EdgeWell that helps geeks like us keep track of their software projects with a minimum of fuss. It's like Backpack except you get to install it on your own server and it has a number of software development specific features like SVN.

I love it - I have spent all night setting it up, lodging tickets and generally getting a handle on our project.

Why did we install it twice? Because the last time we did it (about a week ago) our server crashed. 900gig RAID Array - and it went *BANG*

Was very sad. Lucky Touchstone was backed up hey :)

The Would-be Yeti

Just an update on my previous post about us approaching the public alpha. Good news! I managed to get the touchstone memory footprint from 50mb to 13mb (much more respectful). I guess this means people won’t want to stone me to death when they install the alpha! ;)

Internet history in the making

I have to say this is a pretty fascinating piece of internet history for me. The 'Five Year's Today' post by Evan about Blogger.

I wish I'd have said something more visionary, like, "It's going to be huge, I tell's ya! In five years, Google's* going to own it! And even the president will have a 'blog.'"

I have often wondered what it would feel like to change the world (or at least part of it), and Evan Williams and his team have, with blogger, definitely made a big dent.

It's people like Evan that make you believe that great things are still possible, even for a small team who are just starting out.

The link to their first blog post and the screenshot of their early web page is a wonderful look back at how it all started. It also gives a glimpse as to their initial plans/strategy - for a whole site management tool it seems - and yet how one sliver of that tool (the innovative part) is what really mattered and made them successful.

As Evan said in his 10 steps, narrow your scope to focus on what you do best and beat the big boys.

*Rolls up my sleves for a fight*

Integrating user feedback

Hi everyone, just an update to let you know that we are getting great feedback about the Alpha

As a result, I’ve reworked the entire OPML import feature and it now works a little better. It's still a little buggy, but in the end, you will be able to track multiple OPML files in-place on your hard-drive (maybe eventually on the web too!) We have also reduced the overall memory footprint (we WERE up to about 50mb footprint!) by optimizing various data structures in the RSS adapter and Attention Engine

Overall, things have been moving much slower then before but the outcome is positive

Since Alex Barnett has visited, we have received a sharp rise of communiqué about TouchStone and the whole thing has been very exciting and encouraging.

Don’t forget, that while the private alpha is technically reserved for the elite few, if you really, really want it – let us know! Oh, and don't forget to see Chris' screenshots.

Success in 10 steps?

Evan Williams was the co-founder of Pyra Labs which created Blogger. If you don't know these two brands, then you probably don't care about this post! He is now doing something called Odeo which is about recording and sharing audio (podcasts++).

He has written an article for the Web 2.0 generation about '10 things you need to know to be successful'.

I have come across it more than once and each time I think to myself that I need to read it - but invariably I get distracted.

Finally, I have found the time to sit down and read through it - and even some of the links! I think it's fantastic. Evan has a great writing style (Casual you might even say hah) and is obviously an authoritative source! There is also something surreal about his using blogger to communicate his thoughts.

Read the article: Ten Rules for Web Startups

Inside that article he also links to another post he has made about "Running your company on web apps" Beyond the fact that its a great list, he also mentions creating a 'dashboard' for keeping track of your web-based business tools.

Perhaps a 'Universal Gadget' will help? Now if only we could con Evan into using Touchstone ;)

Touchstone screenshots now available

We have polished the UI to a point where we are happy to publish early screenshots. We hope you enjoy. Look forward to your feedback.

Remember - the ultimate goal is to make most things re-brandable/skinable as well.

You can see the Touchstone Screenshots here.

What's an Attention Engine?

While working on Touchstone tonight we have been listening to Alex Barnett’s podcast. Great stuff! (Alex has also been very kind to mention us on his blog recently as well).

This particular episode he was talking to TailRank’s Kevin Burton. It was very enjoyable to hear the voices behind the names and blogs while we worked.

One thing that we noticed though, was Alex's use of the word "Attention Engine". It was weird because we have been using this term since my post about it on the 14th of November. At the time, I didn't give it much thought and wasn't really interested if the phrase had been used before.

But it also got me thinking - what is the difference between a Meme Engine and an Attention Engine (as was being discussed by Alex and Kevin).

For our purposes though, I think we could describe it as such.

A Meme Engine is something that might make use of a number of mechanisms in order to intuit what a community (maybe even a community of one) is interested in - essentially allowing the best content on a given topic to rise to the top.

The discussion that specifically piqued our interest though was about tweaking that mechanism so that it takes your personal tastes and attention information into account.

This is, as far as I understand, what distinguishes Tailrank from the others.

An Attention Engine (as far as we were concerned as it related to Touchstone) was something that consumed data from any source (be it straight RSS from a blog, the result of a Meme Engine or even a Meme Engine skewed with your personal attention data) and found interesting ways to manage your interruptions for you while you were being productive.

This is something we feel that, right now (or soon at least), Touchstone will be uniquely positioned to do, because, being a persistent client side application, we can take into account all sorts of context indicators and client-side business logic that isn't possible in the browser sandbox.

What's My Server Doing Anyway?

While sitting at my workstation, working away (and listening to Alex Barnett’s PodCast on Attention and OPML) – I realized that my system uptime screensaver for my Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Server was doing many things I want to know about, behind an otherwise black screensaver.

It got me thinking another PERFECT job for Touchstone.

There are RSS, ATOM feeds and other things going on (such as the current state of my Azureus downloads, sever up time and load etc) and Touchstone provides the ultimate engine to bring these together as a screensaver visualisation!

I can imagine, in the near future, LCD screens scattered around a house, streaming attention information to a person based on their current physical location (if I’m in the kitchen I might want to see feeds related to food and current events, while in my living room, my wall is showing me productivity and work related items).

With the ever decreasing price of LCDs and the power of Touchstone, the on-going effect of an attention engine could be greater then we ever imagined.

The Bandwidth Is Behind The Tomato Sauce

Continuing our current topic of distributed network load sharing (a.k.a Bit Torrent) I was thinking about another way to divert the bandwidth load of syndication feeds even more. It’s possible through the TouchStone architecture to develop a syndication adapter which, by using a centralised tracking server, spreads the load of syndication feeds across other TouchStone clients. This method is quite handy, because it actually moves the data off the web servers completely.

Obviously the idea needs fleshing out, and we’re not about to integrate it ourselves (unless someone else wants in and wants to do it), but its handy idea which has a number of useful applications.

Also, I was thinking about another fair easier option – shared feeds. An adapter which allows you to share the RSS feeds as your updated, so your buddies can get the feed off you instead of the actual web server.

Very exciting stuff.