The idea behind it is to provide a rapid development framework for mashing feeds into Google services, using common technologies such as XML, JavaScript, CSS and HTML. It also offers a JavaScript API for more advanced behavioral interactions. Google describes the Mashup Editor as "a great tool for grabbing information from feeds and letting users see and manipulate it."

Documentation

For keen developers who haven't yet received access to the beta, there is a strong set of resources you can use to start learning the GME application functionality, structure, code and controls that don't require a login. Ample documentation is available, including a diagram of the application structure and a comprehensive tag reference. Typical of Google, the documentation is the bare necessities, without even a index of the listed tags at the top of the reference page. Also, there is currently a short list of articles & tutorials, a FAQ, the official project blog, and, of course, a Google Group.

Components

The application itself is divided into 3 main parts: the Editor, Feed Browser and Sandbox. A screenshot of each is included in this article.

The Editor is for building projects. Each project can have multiple GML files (I'd guess that stands for Google Markup Language, but it's not documented), and you can also upload resource files such as JavaScript or images. Each GML file can contain a mix of XML, HTML, JS, CSS and the GME tags. The examples don't encourage good coding practices, but at least you have a lot of flexibility with how you code the applications.

The GME Feed Browser, browsing the Read/WriteWeb feed.

The GME Feed Browser is a convenient tool for checking your source feeds. You can use Google Base, or external feeds that you source yourself. The documentation frequently suggests using Yahoo! Pipes to clean up feeds before bringing them into GME. It offers some simple options for choosing the maximum number of results and pages you want returned.

The Sandbox is the simplest of the GME components. It's a running version of your applications. Just hit 'Test' in the Editor and, after a sluggish pause, you're automatically delivered to the Sandbox where your application begins running. You can test all functionality and see how your app will look. It also offers a simple option for viewing it as a Google Gadget.

The GME Sandbox, displaying a quick basic app I wrote for reading Read/WriteWeb feeds.

Publication

Publishing is as simple as pressing a button and choosing a name for your application. That name becomes the subdomain at googlemashups.com, such as this sample application at http://mapwiki.googlemashups.com/. Google curates a full gallery of other mashups. Getting your mashup live and into that gallery as quickly as possible will result in massive exposure - the balance will be making sure it's good enough to stand out.

Conclusion

The Google Mashup Editor is an incredibly powerful tool for rapid testing and deployment of mashup concepts, particularly those that utilize Google services or products. This opens the space to all those developers who don't have their own servers to play on and gives them a framework to kickstart development. It's simple easy and fun to produce something very quickly, but it will be much harder to produce fantastic products. Nonetheless, the cost-savings in development time are going to make this a popular testbed for all sorts of concepts. Google Mashup Editor is a name you will hear a lot in future.

The homepage is reminiscent of Google's original unadorned page with just a simple search form. The vital difference,is that SeeqPod also displays a sample of current music being indexed by its engine. These songs are meant to draw you in, and succeed at it. There's something mesmerising about watching track after track scroll by.

Searching

Quick searches for my favorite artists consistently brought up dozens of tracks. When more obscure artists aren't found, SeeqPod promises to look for them. All search results can be added to a playlist, either audio or video. Playlists can be named, shared and saved, although the latter requires an account.

The site offers numerous options for interacting with a track including the ability to share, embed or delete them. There are also options to find out more about the track like its lyrics, blogs that it appears on, and MySpace and Wikipedia entries. Some tracks give users the option to buy them on Amazon, check tour dates or even download it as a ring tone.

Hands down the best feature, though, is "discover." SeeqPod uses their own patented algorithms that "analyze and mimic the way people make associations, using a biomimetic approach revealing direct, indirect & hidden connections between different objects." In practice, that means that SeeqPod can tell me that Pearl Jam is associated with both Temple of the Dog and Mother Love Bone - which is pretty good given the intertwined history of those bands. Using the discover feature can help lead you to new music that relationships SeeqPod has figured out suggest you will enjoy.

Each track has numerous options.

Potential

SeeqPod has a lot of potential. It is fun, interesting and useful, and I already find myself using it daily. The whole site is built in Flash, which makes song interaction and playing very smooth and easy. There are some simple implementation issues such as tracks that cut out - which is incredibly frustrating, but may be due to the source files rather than SeeqPod itself. The biggest downfall for me is the lack of recommendation on the fly. You need to find your own tracks and queue them, there is no radio option a la Pandora.

I may have been spoiled (or possibly corrupted) by all the social networking sites out there, but I'd love to be able to find other users. I can share my playlists specifically with friends and SeeqPod offers a number of ways to do that, but I'd love to just be able to check out what other cool music my friends have found without them having to initiate it, or be able to find friends based on common musical interests.

Open for play

SeeqPod also has an API which offers access to its search results and, more importantly, to its recommendations capabilities. So far documentation is limited, but coding for it looks straightforward.

The site also has a bunch of experimental products under development, such as an iPhone app. Being an Aussie, I have no access to that particular device, but I'd love to hear what iPhone users think of it!

SeeqPod is a very exciting product. The combination of massive search index and immediately playable files is a big winner with everybody I've talked to. "Playable search" may be the future, but even if SeeqPod is wrong, they have a very cool useful site that's great to use right now.

Pownce is self-described as 'a way to send stuff to your friends.' You can send links, files, events and messages, each as a distinct type. The messages functionality has prompted comparisons to Twitter, but this is no presence/status application. It may be a micro-blogging app in a sense, and some people are using it as such for now, but the lack of automatic line break formatting discourages lengthy posts - they simply become unreadable. As usage evolves, messages are more likely to be used for questions to groups of friends since replies are threaded.

Pownce is currently invitation only, but because each new member automatically receives 5 invites, it is spreading fast. The default account allows for an unlimited number of messages, links, events and files, but each file is limited to no more than 10mb in size. For $20 USD per year users can choose to go 'pro' and send files up to 100mb in size. Going pro also removes advertisements from the site - ads are inserted in-stream with your regular content.

Cross-Platform Desktop Access

The web app is also accessible via a desktop application built on the shiny new Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) platform (formerly codenamed 'Apollo'). The AIR application offers all the same functionality as the website in an interface that will be instantly familiar to any users of Twitterific. It requires an install of the AIR plugin for your specific OS, but the Pownce developers only need to build one version to deliver it cross-platform. I installed the original alpha and uninstalled it the same day due to instabilities that froze out functionality on my OSX machine. I installed the Alpha 2 version for the purposes of this review and it initially froze my machine again, but since I rebooted it has been fine. The problems may be isolated to my machine and given that AIR is still in beta, it's hard to judge whether the problem lies with the Adobe runtime or with the Pownce app.

Using the Application

Sending your 'stuff' is easy. It's simple to add content and upload files. Uploading requires a bit of a wait, but most people are used to that. Easily the best feature is being able to make sets of contacts. Few social networks offer this functionality well, and Pownce is leagues ahead in this area. Pownce 'sets' are totally granular. You can have as many as you like, and your friends can be added to multiple sets. This offers lots of opportunity for targeting content at particular groups of people.

It's easy to be critical of an application that was launched on June 27th, but there are a bunch of little things that make Pownce incredibly annoying to use:

• All notifications are done via email, and only provide a link - forcing a click-through to the site.
• There is no RSS
• Reply notification is only for the thread originator - so you don't see anybody else's contributions unless you look for them
• There is no coherent navigation system amongst your bits and pieces of content
• Events don't have reminders, or attendee lists
• It sends advertisements to you desktop when using the AIR application
• All content sits on your homepage as a chronological stream, meaning replies are disconnected from the rest of the thread
• Despite the interesting 'Friends of Friends' feature, finding and adding contacts is still not as easy as it should be

Making sets of friends (names blurred to protect the potentially innocent)

Summary

Pownce has incredible potential as an application for sharing specific content with particular groups of contacts. There are some things it does very well, such as grouping specific friends and contacts into sets. But from a usability perspective, there are also a lot of flaws. Pownce is backed by a strong, veteran team, and they are actively seeking feedback so hopefully we can expect improvements relatively soon.

Scouta is virtually unique. It takes the recommendation model that everybody seems to be doing with music and expands it to all types of media. The closest similar product I've found is StumbleVideo, but again that is limited to only videos. Scouta allows video and audio - so your media can range from music videos, to movie-length documentaries, to podcasts or songs.

Recommendations

The recommendations model is simple, although I bet their algorithm isn't! Scouta takes all your interactions on the site and uses them as behavioral indicators of interest. According to a post on their blog by CEO Richard Giles, Improving Your Recommendations, adding media you like from around the web is the strongest indicator, but it also measures your interests based on your ratings of media added by others, groups you join or create, and any descriptions, titles or tags you add.

This is just the kind of modeling system that I advocate to everybody who will listen. It costs the user nothing. There's no extra work for you. No bonus clicks or monkey-dancing to get the application to start working for you. You can just use it and the benefits start to accrue.

This is now much clearer on the brand spanking new homepage. Launched only this past weekend, it allows users to experience recommendations without an account. I logged out and cleared my cache, but the homepage didn't take too long to start recommending more and more Pearl Jam clips to me. Given I started the Pearl Jam group on Scouta on the weekend as part of my testing for this review (and because Pearl Jam rock!), I think that's a sterling indication of what this application can do for you. Obviously, the recommendations get smarter and smoother for members, as they have a longer history of more actions to work with.

member - A member's profile shows their latest media, recommendations, groups and friends

Scouta surfaces recommendations to you on your profile page, but also subtly on media pages. This means that while browsing, you can always find something you want to click on. Profile pages also show the groups you belong to and, of course, in our ever-social web world, your 'friends'. There is no particular functionality around friends in Scouta. It's just an easy way to find people later and see what they've been watching/listening to.

Downsides

The site feels slow. Although I don't think it actually is, because the pages are quite quick to load. The problem seems to be more the responsiveness of some of the Ajax functionality. I've become used to instant actions when clicking a rating and on Scouta there's a slight pause. The same applies for various other functionality. Worse, at time of writing, I'm unable to add media to Scouta - temporarily the error message assures me.

Anybody will tell you that I'm no designer, but there is something about the Scouta interface that feels unfinished. I applaud the brave graffiti-stylings. That design is really several steps beyond where most startups would have stopped, for fear of not looking "2.0" enough. And I like that. It's some of the content modules that feel out of place, as if they hadn't been designed. My guess would be because that's the case. It looks like the development is getting ahead of the design.

media - The design allows plenty of options for browsing, but feels unfinished

Scouta has a pretty rapid development cycle, pushing out new builds regularly, so I'm sure speed, reliability and design issues will be fixed in due course.

Conclusion

Scouta is pushing a common and effective services model into new territory and doing a great job of it. The recommendations work remarkably well, even with relatively limited use. There are still some issues with speed and reliability. The design needs polish, but over all this is an exciting application that really achieves its claims.

Interface

Built with a focus on absolute simplicity, this application is a joy to use for my task lists. It allows a hierarchical structure of categories or projects - each with their own task items. Sub-projects can be collapsed to simplify the interface even more.

Each item is added to the appropriate list with just a title and a date. A variety of date formats are recognized automatically upon submission - "Next Wednesday" is just as acceptable as "20 Jun 2007", and "+5" translates to due in 5 days. Some abbreviations are also accepted: if I want a task due fortnightly on Mondays, I type "ev 2 mon". In similar fashion, priorities can be assigned directly in the title of the item by using syntax shortcuts such as "!p1" and "!p2".

Quickly add an item

Everything about this application begs for power-users. You can just use it as is, using the mouse for most options and typing as necessary to fill in the details. Just like the date and priority shortcuts, however, everything else can be done faster and faster as you get a handle on the powerful keyboard shortcuts.

The interface itself is very straightforward. Virtually all functionality is Ajaxified for speed and the display of help files and information is done via lightbox popups. There are virtually no other page loads once you've logged in. However, informative pages are available at real URLs for external reference. The downside to all that speed is that the application was not built with accessibility in mind - no JavaScript means no Todoist.

Choose 'Reorder' to move your items around by click and drag

API

Like all the best web applications, Todoist offers a comprehensive API that offers access to all of the basic functionality. This allows what is quickly becoming the most highly sought prize of Web 2.0 - ubiquity of access. The simplicity of the API means that a developer network is rapidly building up around the tool. Mac OSX users can access it via Quicksilver or the Dashboard widget. Todoist creator, Amir Salihefendic, has also released a widget for Netvibes and iGoogle that completely replicates the app's functionality from within your own page on those sites. There is also a Firefox extension for Gmail that allows you to delegate emails to your task lists for dealing with later. And another that allows access to Todoist from your browser status bar. Naturally, Todoist has a mobile site for quickly checking or adding items when out and about. All in all, a multiplicity of touchpoints increasingly reminiscent of Twitter.

I've made a big deal about the simplicity of this interface, but for good reason. Todoist is easier to use than Ta-da List and it's much lighter than Remember the Milk. If you're looking for the simplest, easiest way to keep track of your tasks, this might just be it.

Negatives

There are downsides, of course. As mentioned above, accessibility appears not to have been considered. Another major feature some people might miss is notifications. Todoist doesn't remind you of tasks, nor does it let you know when you've missed them. You have to be using the app to keep track. It mitigates that to a certain extent by being available in more locations, but it certainly pales in comparison to Remember the Milk's comprehensive methods of notification.

Conclusion

Todoist is an elegant, effective and efficient application that lets you sort, arrange and prioritize tasks easily. The lack of notifications is the only major feature missing. Given it is the work of one developer, it's rapid pace of development is astonishing and I doubt notifications will be unavailable for long. I expect it to improve still further in the immediate future, particularly as more developers take advantage of the API to tie it into other applications.