Eyeballs are useless unless they are in front of a screen!

Marketers often talk about 'Eyeballs' when they talk about various mechanisms for placing a message in front of an audience. The more 'eyeballs' a given medium or piece of content has the more value it has as marketing real-estate.

It occurred to Ashley and I the other day (while having one of our usual impassioned discussions about Attention Management) that eyeballs are also important for Attention Management.

If your eyeballs are not on the screen, then Touchstone can't alert you to anything! In nerd speak - what happens when the user is 'Idle'.

We have decided that in some future release Touchstone may need to detect idle users (or even allow users to set it to idle mode) and have it catch alerts until you log back on.

Doesn't sound too fancy an idea - but we hope to build in some clever caching that will bring the user up-to-date without overwhelming them with information.

As 37 Signals would say - something for V1.1 Because it Just Doesn't Matter.

In other news, we are working hard on the next build of our little Attention Engine. This will have been the longest gap between builds since we started development, but it will also be the most significant build since the original.

We will be releasing a version of Touchstone that is actually 3 parts (as always and originally envisioned). A feed adapter, an Attention Management Engine and a Visualization collection called 'Ariel'.

This, we hope, will encourage other developers to begin creating Adapters (and the brave ones can even attempt to write a visualization of their own) and establish clearly that Touchstone is less about a news-ticker for RSS and more about an all-purpose heads-up-display for alerts from any source.

APML - OPML for Attention

Today Faraday Media (Creators of Touchstone) announce a new initiative to work with the community in order to design and implement “Attention Profiling Mark-up Language” or APML.

APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.

The idea is to boil down all forms of Attention Data – including Browser History, OPML, Attention.XML, Email etc – to a portable file format containing a description of ranked user interests.

Imagine being able to export your Attention Profile from Amazon and plugging it into Digg to get an instantly customized view of the top Digg stories most relevant to your interests.

We anticipate that an ecosystem of technologies can begin to write and consume the format and we are taking the lead with Touchstone’s U-AR and I-AM engines. We look forward to working with everyone in the community to ensure the format delivers on this promise and empowers users to take control of their Attention.

Find out more about U-AR and I-AM at www.touchstonelive.com/technology

Find out more about APML at www.apml.org

Update: For extra coverage click here

For Robert - Touchstone Brrreeeport ing for Duty

I would like to announce Touchstone's support of the "Brreeeport Report" campaign. Let's see what happens?

Why couldn't Google do it?

There is a question that people often get asked these days when they go for Venture Capital (or so I hear) - "Why Couldn't Google Do it?".

When it comes to Touchstone - I guess they could. The question is - have they or are they doing it already?

With all the recent controversy over the 3rd version of the Google Desktop/Sidebar(privacy issues etc) it got me thinking - is the Google Desktop/Sidebar a Touchstone like heads-up-display?

I don't think so. Here's why.

Google Desktop (at the moment at least) is mostly like any other widget system. It is a framework to create little widgets and display them ON something. Vista uses the Vista Side Bar, Konfabulator uses something called 'the heads up display' and both of them allow you to detach the widgets/gadgets and float them on the desktop somewhere.

But the framework is just that - a framework - not a solution.

Inside that framework developers then create stuff. And most of what they create is all about pushing content to you without any intelligent decision making.

Now perhaps Google's sidebar and its widget framework are just a pretense for getting on your desktop so that they can launch into other services. And perhaps some of the bundled widgets use Google's incredible search and relevance technology to display information that is relevant to you in an intelligent way. But it still stands that most of the content being displayed on that sidebar is pushed with very little intelligence and via a single interface at any given time. Pictures come in the Pictures Widget. Stock Quotes come in the Stock Quote Widget etc.

Touchstone differs because it is a wholly different approach. Rather than giving developers the power to develop widgets, it itself is a 'widget'. Developers (those that develop Adapters anyway) only publish content into the system and Touchstone decides how to display that content (based on any number of variables) in a way that is unobtrusive to the user and sensitive to their needs.

So... To summarize.

Google Sidebar/Konfabulator/Vista Gadgets - Frameworks that empower developers to create and publish a range of widgets that have no relationship to each other. This is giving developers power on your desktop.

Touchstone - An attention management engine that processes content from multiple sources and then uses a series of 'visualizations' - all working in concert - to give the user the right type of message/alert/content while they are being productive with other things. This is giving users power to control the flow of information into their attention/consciousness.

Important pictures from your son don't just appear on the pictures widget... They slide onto the screen and fade away while pictures from your mate's holiday only appear on the ticker for browsing when you get home. Stock quotes for 'Touchstone Corporate' barley register on the ticker while Microsoft and Google stock quotes that drop by 20% follow your mouse around so that they definitely get your attention.

So to answer the original Question... Google could do it, but their Side Bar is NOT doing it - not yet anyway.

Update: Read the post about specific differences when developing a Touchstone Input Adapter

Casual Democratization

Now for a something a little off-topic. In Australia (where I live) the idea of the 'casual web' and, more broadly, the era of 'casual business' is not really a pervasive idea. At least... not yet.

Most of us still either talk in very small business terms with phrases like 'mates rates' (which I guess is less 'casual' and more 'local/colloquial') or in monolithic large enterprise terms with corporate speak and a conspicuous lack of humanity.

This trend, the casual web/business, also accompanies another (perhaps parallel, perhaps interrelated) trend of social or 'democratic' media and technologies. The idea that technology and media is better and more powerful if it enables individuals and groups to create, publish and share their own perspective on the world - rather than waiting for mega-corporations to tell us what to think and how much to pay.

I bring this all up because I just found an article about a great startup that combines both the idea of 'Casual' with the idea of technology Democratization.

They call it 'Fon' and the idea is to, by leveraging a large installer base of regular users, create a tapestry of wifi hotspots around the world.

This isn't a pipe dream though. It is a venture that just received funding from Google and Skype (among others).

So the democratic part is the idea of giving citizens the power to make internet connectivity pervasive and free.

The 'casual' part is the terms they have chosen to use for participants. They call people who offer their hotspot for a price 'Bill'. People who give away their hotspot/internet access for free are called 'Linus' and people who just pay for access on the network 'Aliens'.

It's brilliant. A brilliant idea in decentralized/democratized technology and a wonderful play on geek culture that will get the early adaptors and 'influentials' talking.

Well done - I wish them the best of luck.

So who will you be in this growing eco-system? Bill, Linus or Alien. In a disconcerting way this reveals a little about each of us doesn't it!

Web 2.0 is so 2005

Sick of hearing about Web 2.0? After all it has become relegated to JABW (Just Another Buzz Word).

Well forget Web 2.0 - Web 3.0 is coming.

In this nice little article Anne outlines the progression from Web 1.0 where the HTML page was the most important part of the equation, the Web 2.0 world where the RSS item became the most important part, and the Web 3.0 where something a little more granular comes to the fore.

Read: More Web 3.0 Snark Bait

Welcome to the Voice of Reason

Looking back at the blog for the last couple of days, I just realized that one might assume that the post 'Why do we bother to maintain a blog?' followed by probably our longest posting absence ever (only a few days mind you!) was probably not a good idea!

So the first thing I'd like to say is we are definitely still here! We have just been working hard on implementing all the great feedback we have gotten from our rapidly growing testing team. Thanks guys (and girls of course).

Now that that’s out of the way - It is my pleasure to announce something new!

If you have followed our blog from the beginning you will have noticed us mention someone called 'Mike'. Well this Mike fellow is a pretty big legend when it comes to programming. So we asked him to come onboard and help us out full time! And he said... YES!

So I would like to welcome Mike to our team - he has blog posting rights so you might see him around the traps.

Welcome Mike - I look forward to building the first ever Attention Management Engine with you!

Update: I should say what Michael's main role will be. Ash and I often attack problems from totally opposite ends of the spectrum (my end is always right of course - but I like to let him think he has some good ideas heh).

Mike, on the other hand, has this wonderful balanced approach that takes in both our input and comes up with a great synthesis. Something Ash and I always do anyway - but Mike seems to helps facilitate an even quicker and more fruitful conclusion. So in addition to cutting code, I think his calm and measured 'voice of reason' will help us make even better decisions when it comes to implementation and feature choices.

Why do we bother to maintain a blog?

Sometimes I wonder - why we bother maintaining a blog when Alex Barnett does such a good job of cataloging Attention related content for us. Half the time I get the impulse to just re-post his posts but then I'd feel dirty for stealing so much of his hard work.

That being said - this one definitely deserves a re-post on our humble little blog. And in general, if you're reading this blog, go subscribe to Alex's as well... because... he rules (I know that's a very high-school explanation but you get the idea).

Alex has posted some musings from across the web about Attention Engines. As you can see from that last link - we have our own very specific idea of what such an engine is, because we actually call Touchstone an 'Attention Engine'. But I am sure we can't lay claim to owning the term - for now *rubs hands together with evil posture*.

Microsoft... now with 50% less evil?

Personally I have never thought of Microsoft as evil. They are competitive, aggressive, all encompassing and fierce. But I wouldn't say evil.

Truth be told, I would probably do most of the things they have done if I was in the same possition and smart enough.

But 'Microsoft is Evil' used to be a pretty common musing - even if it was just in jest. I think this is starting to turn around now with the growing transparency and 'Naked Conversations' coming out of Redmond.

People like Robert Scoble, Alex Barnett and even Ray Ozzie are turning it around and making Microsoft more agile - and putting faces to the faceless (minus Bill Gates) evil empire.

Robert even jokes that MS is loosing their Evil to google (look at me referring to him by first name - like I know the guy).

But something recently just freaked me out. I just downloaded the IE7 Beta 2 'Preview' and I was shocked to find that the default search engine for the Firefox'esque search box was.... *drum roll* GOOGLE!

Oh my god - *I* would never do something like that - I don't even think Ashley would (and he is a pretty hippy 'lets make peace with the world' sorta guy). Is this just my installation for some freak reason? Is this the default way it comes? Is this an oversight? Or is this a choice?

In any case - its funny and fun. I am glad we live in a world where Microsoft is becoming if not our friend... friendly.

So I say well done to Microsoft - and thanks for being so nice. If you're looking for your evil - maybe try the google-plex!