With Xobni Enterprise, I.T. admins can manage the deployment and permissions surrounding the plugin's use via a web-based portal that provides access to user's profiles as well as a groups management feature. By placing different subsets of users into groups, I.T. can deploy custom versions of the plugin to different users. For example, everyone company-wide may get a plugin that offers LDAP integration, but only sales professionals would receive the version that connects to Salesforce. Admins can also choose to "switch off" other previously default integrations such as the Facebook and Twitter extensions.

To push the plugin out to end users, Xobni Enterprise offers an MSI file and registry settings that can be modified as necessary.

Extensions for Salesforce, SharePoint, and More

At launch time, Xobni's Solution Provider Program has partnered with a number of Enterprise vendors to provide extensions and integrations for their new system. The current list of partners includes Atlius Consulting, Cogent, Echo Lane and Interdyne BMI, which help Xobni integrate SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce CRM platforms among others.

The new service also comes with an Extensions Software Development Kit (SDK) which allows in-house developers to write their own extensions to integrate other platforms beyond those which are currently available. Xobni suggests this SDK could be used to deliver company news and information from an internal corporate portal, specific business application, or any other web service.

Other Features

Another general enhancement available with this version of the plugin is Xobni's expanded search capabilities that allows users to search calendar appointments, tasks and archived PST files. The search feature includes advanced filters which let users find results by limiting searches to email contents only or the To:, From:, and  or Subject: fields of their email messages. Users can also access their entire contact database from the auto-complete field in Outlook's "Compose" window.

Pricing

The company webpage for Xobni Enterprise does not include any pricing information, only a link to "Request More Info" from the company. This is likely because each Xobni system is being somewhat custom-built in terms of price because there are additional costs to run the pre-defined extensions created by the company. Depending on which extensions a company chooses to deploy and however many users will be using them, the overall cost of the Xobni Enterprise system will vary. However, the company informs us that the system starts at $30 per user per year with volume discounts available.

Xobni has seen over 3 million downloads of their plugin, including both free and paid versions, since their initial debut. This new offering represents the second revenue stream for the company, the first being the launch of Xobni Plus, a premium version of the plugin that sells for $29.95. They also claim to have a presence in 80% of Fortune 500 companies thanks to employee adoption outside of the traditional I.T. infrastructure, a trend known as self-provisioning and one that has steadily increased over the years.

Companies looking to maintain control over what their employees can do on their company computers often end up having no choice but to purchase the enterprise services provided by the startups their employees are already using in order to once again centralize control within I.T. If Xobni's adoption across the enterprise is as strong as they claim, they may soon have several companies looking to implement the Xobni Enterprise Service so they can do just this. Other companies may be tempted to try the product for the first time now that it offers I.T. friendly tools and enterprise level support.

More information about Xobni Enterprise is available here on the company's website.

As Google's Mike Smith and Alex Russell told us when we talked to them about this project, a lot of companies have good reasons why they can't just simply switch away from Internet Explorer. After all, these enterprises often have made large investments in an infrastructure that is only compatible with IE. As Google pointed out to us, though, this shouldn't hold back developers who want to explore the possibilities that newer, faster and more modern browsers like Chrome can offer.

Google, which has lately developed a tendency to route around other vendors, developed this plugin without help from Microsoft, but Smith and Russell noted that Microsoft gives developers a lot of ways to easily extend Internet Explorer.

Focus on Developers

Thanks to this plugin, developers will now be able to give these users an option to at least switch to a faster rendering engine by just adding one single line of code to their sites ().

Indeed, this current release is mostly meant to give developers a choice for how they want to deliver their web apps to their users. At least for now, users won't be able to make the switch to the Chrome engine persistent, though they can invoke the plugin by putting 'cf:' in front of any URL.

Google is obviously interested in getting its web apps into businesses. These web apps tend to work best in a modern browser with a fast JavaScript engine and that is not something Internet Explorer is known for. As Mike Smith told us, the Web shouldn't be hobbled by this.

As for the user experience, the Google team tells us that the switch will be absolutely seamless and that the plugin will offer the same speed and reliability of Chrome inside IE.

A Trojan Horse?

Google hopes that this plugin will enable developers in enterprises to write code for a modern browser that isn't held back by some of the old paradigms. That, of course, is a noble undertaking. At the same time, though, we can't help but wonder if Google also plans to use this plugin to plant a Trojan horse inside these companies. After all, very few businesses are ready to make the switch from IE to Chrome right now, but Chrome Frame now offers companies the option to get the best of both worlds and - maybe - switch over to Chrome completely in the long run.

As for Google itself, the company plans to use Chrome Frame to make Google Wave run smoothly in Internet Explorer but hasn't announced any other plans to use Chrome Frame in other products yet.

The suite of DeeperWeb enhancements to Google results include tag clouds, metrics, Q&As, and results from specific sources such as journalism sites, blogs, and Wikipedia. And unlike other next-gen search engines, DeeperWeb plays nice with Google, allowing users to maintain the familiarity of the Google interface and the reliability of Google results while experimenting with new paradigms.

The tag clouds in particular are helpful for suggesting new keywords or areas to search, and users can click terms to instantly add or exclude them and get more focused results.

According to DeepCloud's website, businesses and marketers can also use the tags as a simple, fast, and free means of "identifying main competitors, pinpointing targeted sites for most effective advertisement, and isolating the authoritative websites of a particular topic." While larger companies would have far more sophisticated tools at their disposal, this could be a good starting point for small businesses.

Narrowing search results by source and type of media also has great implications for individual productivity. For example, searching for statistical information on peanut butter using Google alone yields strange and limited results and takes quite a bit more time than Googling "peanut butter" and letting DeeperWeb's Metrics tab sort out the empirical data on that most sticky of condiments.

Better yet, co-founder Alex Rinsky said in a phone conversation this afternoon that the next version, slated to be released in 2-3 weeks, will allow users to further narrow news results based on industry (business, tech, general, etc.) and will provide options for searching for video, podcast, slide deck, and other multimedia results.

First and foremost, the biggest news regarding the latest release is definitely the added support for Linux operating systems. In order for Cooliris to work on Linux, you need to run a recent Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 10, OpenSuse 11). You'll also need hardware-accelerated graphics, Flash 10+, and Firefox 3.

Another new feature is the software's ability to now view files that are saved on your own computer. At the moment, this local media support is limited to photos only, but the company is working on adding video support in a later release. In a way, this makes the browser plugin behave somewhat like desktop software as it blurs the line between what's online and what's not. Just as you can browse through Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, and Google Images, you can now click on an item that reads "My Computer" to gain access to your local media store, too.

Finally, the software has been upgraded to include additional metadata about the content you're viewing. This may seem like an inconsequential upgrade, but it actually may be the most useful of them all. Instead of simply browsing through the photos or videos, you can now see additional information like ratings, view counts, title, resolution, etc. If you're flipping through the Facebook photos, you can easily move from one friend's photos to another's by clicking the names of the people tagged in the photo, accessible from the metadata section at the bottom of the image. This upgrade also applies to items in the "Shopping" section of the plugin where you can virtually window shop at Amazon.com.

Glorious Metadata!

Coming Soon: A New Cooliris for iPhone

Cooliris is also releasing an upgrade for their iPhone application, too, which will include some of the same features as the browser plugin. One notable exception, however, is that it won't have the ability to browse through the photos stored locally on the device itself. This is because Apple prevents the application from tapping into that local store, explains Shashi Seth, the company's Chief Revenue Officer. That said, the new iPhone app will display metadata, which should make it a more useful way to surf through your online media, go shopping, or catch up on the news.

Cooliris Raises $15.5 M

The company also announced that it has completed $15.5 million in Series B funding from a group of investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DAG Ventures, The Westly Group and the T-Mobile Venture Fund.

The software, originally launched in January 2008, has been downloaded over 10 million times and is seeing 50,000 new downloads per day. The iPhone app has reached 800,000 downloads.

The way the Backtype Connect WordPress plugin works is fairly straightforward with no additional registration needed. After installation and activation on a WordPress standalone blog, the plugin queries the BackType Connect database with the article URLs and starts importing them in to the WordPress comment database, including a footnote with a source of the comment. Icons for all of the BT Connect services are also included so that the comments indicate clearly where they are coming from.

I took an hour this morning and installed BT Connect on my personal blog, Scribkin. Installation when smoothly, but I will warn you that if you are using a comment system that is a full replacement for the one built in to WordPress (like Intense Debate or Disqus) you won't see what Backtype Connect is doing since it is acting directly on the built-in comment database. The new comments will only start showing up after a sync. If, however, you are using other WordPress comment enhancement systems like SezWho and JS-Kit, there shouldn't be any problem.

In this release, Xobni has also included additional user controls which will allow users to better customize Xobni's behavior. This feature is designed to help people with "underpowered" computers to take advantage of the plugin. (Can we say netbooks?) The controls let you customize the indexing times and configure a delayed load when Outlook starts, among other things. Although we never did formal tests on the Xobni plugin ourselves besides just using it on our own machines (where it performed just fine), we heard of some anecdotal evidence where people had claimed it slowed Outlook down. For those who reported the slowness issues, these performance enhancements and configuration tools will likely be a great benefit.

As for the funding, the company says the money will be used for continuing development of the product and will help them proceed with work on a premium version of the software, slated for release this summer. The investment from BlackBerry Partners Fund brings the total raised in Xobni's Series B funding to over $10 million and adds BlackBerry Partners Fund Partner, Rick Segal, to Xobni's board of directors. Xobni closed the first part of the Series B in January 2009, led by Cisco Systems ($5 million).

You can download the new version of Xobni here.

To integrate Facebook into Gmail, Xoopit's new plugin uses a Facebook Connect button that logs you into your Facebook account. Once activated, you can set your Facebook status at any time by clicking the "F" icon at the upper right corner of your Gmail where there's now a Facebook status update box that displays your profile picture and your current status.

However, the best part of this plugin is that when you email with people who are also on Facebook, those messages will now also include their Facebook profile photos and status messages.These appear in Gmail's right-hand sidebar. Underneath each person's name is a link to "Recent Mail" and "More Info."Clicking on "Recent Mail" takes you out of the message you're in to a Gmail search for that person's email address (or addresses). The "More Info" button, though, just expands the box in the sidebar to display the latest attachments sent to you by that person.

These interactions aren't just fun - they're useful. Finding past messages or attachments sent is a common email task, so having these quick links available is a great feature.

As before, Xoopit's plugin also still installs a toolbar which is added to the top of your Gmail inbox and a sidebar widget. With either tool, you can find photos, videos, or files in your inbox. The sidebar widget also has a link that launches various games, perfect for when you can't read any more email but you just can't leave the inbox, either.

Although in the past we've shared our concerns over any plugin that needs your Gmail credentials to operate, the functionality provided by Xoopit may sway you to put your security fears aside and give it a try.

Note: Xoopit is a Firefox plugin.

Mozilla has cultivated one of the most active and interesting developer communities around its products and seeing numbers like these will surely give a lot of other developers an incentive to try their hands at developing new plugins for Firefox as well.

Your Favorites

We asked our readers and Twitter followers about their favorite apps and, as expected, received a wide variety of answers. For web developers, Firebug was clearly a winner, though a lot of you also mentioned Greasemonkey, the bookmarking plugin de.licio.us, and DownloadHelper. Other favorites included Ubiquity, and FoxMarks, AdBlock Plus (though we hope you disable it on RWW and your other favorite websites), and Tab Mix Plus.

Our Favorites

Among the RWW staff, Sarah Perez listed the magazine-style RSS reader Feedly and the FFHolic Toolbar for FriendFeed users as some of her favorites.

Rick Turoczy is a big fan of the CoolIris plugin that allows you to browse pictures and videos in a very pretty 3D environment, though he also likes Iterasi, which allows you to take live snapshots of any web page. (Disclosure: Iterasi is one of Rick's consulting clients, but he assures as that he likes it so much that would use it anyway)

Richard MacManus likes StumbleUpon and the Google Toolbar.

Other favorites among the rest of the staff here included ColorfulTabs, Evernote's Web Clipper, and the Google Notebook plugin.

Also, all of us at RWW try to use our sponsors' products, so we are currently checking out AdaptiveBlue's Glue as well.

Did We Miss Something?

These are just some of the plugins we and our readers are using (and we surely missed quite a few). Did we miss your favorite? Feel free to let us know in the comments.

At the time, it wasn't clear when the new version of the IntenseDebate product would be publicly available. But assumptions were that it would remain under wraps until the release of WordPress 2.7. Now, IntenseDebate has returned from its post-acquisition secrecy with some "hi-octane conversational mojo."

But WordPress users haven't been left out. They get even more functionality with the beta of the IntenseDebate plug-in, including inline replies from the WordPress dashboard and enhanced user management features.

But does a plug-in compromise control or ownership of comments? With IntenseDebate, it's been exactly the opposite. IntenseDebate has been very careful to avoid the "walled garden" complaints that have been lobbied against other commenting plug-ins which allowed comments into the system but made it difficult - if not impossible - to get those comments out of the system.

In fact, here at ReadWriteWeb, the comment exporting functionality is one of the many reasons we've been impressed with IntenseDebate since its launch a little over a year ago:

"The single most important thing about Intense Debate is its data export options. If you are using the service in [your blog] and you decide you want to stop using IntenseDebate, you can export your comments for import into your native blogging software's comments database."

Given the quick work of the IntenseDebate development team in scaling the plug-in, it will be interesting to see what features will be unveiled over the coming months. But, even as it currently stands, IntenseDebate offers bloggers and their commenters a much richer commenting experience than what comes "out of of the box" with many blogging platforms.

Users interested in testing IntenseDebate for themselves can visit the installation area to give it a whirl.

What's Glue?

Glue is a new browser plugin from Adaptive Blue. It uses semantic technology to connect you to your friends around things like books, music, movies, stars, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants, and more. The plugin places a bar - not a toolbar, just a bar - at the top of your browser window when you visit certain popular web sites like Amazon, Yahoo! Finance, Wine.com, IMDB, Wikipedia, Citysearch, Last.fm, and many others.

As you read about the album, movie, book, or whatever else it is that you're viewing at the time, you'll have a toolbar at the top of the page where you can see which of your friends had visited the same page, if they liked it, and if they left a comment.

Glue Is Not Co-browsing

Glue is not a co-browsing plugin like Me.dium nor does it try to socialize the entire web surfing experience like Socialbrowse (our coverage). Also, unlike Headup, another semantic browser plugin we covered recently, Glue doesn't bother you with pop-up messages as you surf. Glue simply provides a social element to web pages in context - there's no destination site to join and your social graph doesn't need to be re-created in order to use it.

How It Works

In order to tap into your network of friends, Glue uses APIs from popular social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed to import your friends. You can choose to import one or all of those friend lists into the plugin.

To participate in the Glue network, all you do is continue browsing the web normally. When you visit a supported site, the Glue friend bar appears. If you choose, you can view what your friends say about the item on the page, or you can ignore the bar and continue on your way. However, your visit is recorded and when one of your friends visits that same page, they can see that you've been there recently, though not the exact date or time your visit occurred. This information is only stored for the last 20 things you've visited on the web.

While surfing, if you want to share your thoughts about the item you're viewing, you can optionally use the Glue "like" button and/or the "2 cents" button which lets you add a quick thought about item. You can also click on the bar to see the profiles of your friends, other recent Glue users, and you can explore their interests even further by clicking into their profiles, which display in a pop-up box that appears when you click their avatar. You can also optionally click on "Actions" to explore the item you're viewing on other Glue-supported sites.

Making The Social Web Relevant

By providing this social experience in context, Glue can actually be more useful to you than simply joining isolated social networks surrounding your interests where your data and that of your friends is trapped inside the network's walls. It may also have some appeal over a lifestreaming service like FriendFeed, because you don't have to happen across the information - it's there when you're actively interested in something and have sought it out on the web.

In the official version coming soon, the company is also soon going to provide a method for any web publisher to "Glue-enable" their site by simply adding AB Meta to their sites, by inserting three lines of code in the header of a page.

Glue is the next generation of the Adaptive Blue plugin, a tool that currently has around 350,000 active users. Current Adaptive Blue users will find their plugin updated to Glue through the standard Firefox plugin update process. For everyone else, you can download the plugin here.

Although at the present time Glue is available as a Firefox plugin only, an IE version is in the works and an iPhone plugin will arrive in a few weeks.

Disclosure: AdaptiveBlue's CEO, Alex Iskold, is a feature writer for RWW.]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/put_the_social_web_in_context_with_glue.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/put_the_social_web_in_context_with_glue.php Products Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:00:00 -0800 Sarah Perez While separate search boxes have long been a standard feature of every major browser (except for Chrome), their functionality and intelligence has not gone much beyond autocompleting searches. Yahoo is trying to change this with its Inqisitor plugin for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. This plugin not only autocompletes your searches, but can also directly display the results of your search as you type, which can potentially safe you quite a few clicks.

The default search engine for Inqisitor is obviously Yahoo's own product, but you can also switch to Google as your default search provider. While Flickr and Wikipedia are already built into the plugin by default, Inquisitor also allows you to add shortcuts to any other search engine to its repertoire.

Personalization

In this new version, Yahoo has also started to personalize the results based on your previous search behavior.

In our tests, the personalization seemed to work quite well, though it takes a few searches before the plugin learns enough about your behavior to become useful.

The plugin can now also analyze your bookmarks and include them in your searches. This is useful, but modern browsers like Firefox 3 and Chrome already include this functionality in their own address bars now and can display their results a bit faster than Inquisitor.

In the future, we assume that this functionality is going to become a standard browser feature, but if you are looking to enhance your search box now (and especially if you are using Internet Explorer), this plugin is definitely worth a try.

Parental Controls

The parental controls in Glubble function on two levels. First, parents have the ability to unlock certain sites for their children. Glubble already includes a large selection of pre-screened sites, but parents can also add other sites individually. If a child tries to access a locked site, it can request access through a simple form and the parent is immediately notified and can then approve or deny the request.

Glubble monitors your children's Google searches and filters out any inappropriate content. Glubble also keeps a record of all the sites your children visit.

When a child uses Glubble, it is presented with a full-screen Firefox skin that blocks access to the rest of the desktop. From there, children can browse the web, post to the family wall, or chat with family members.

New Features: Message Wall, Calendar, Photo Album

One of the most interesting new features in this version is the 'family wall,' which is similar to the message wall in Facebook. Families can also use a shared event calendar to keep their schedules organized.

The new Glubble for Families also includes a shared photo album. Photos are uploaded through a simple web interface. These albums will not replace a full-featured online photo gallery, but they give you the option to easily share one or two pictures with your family. Whenever you upload a new photo, a new message is posted on the family wall and all your family members are notified.

Verdict

Glubble is a great way for parents to keep their children's online activities under control. We really enjoyed using the new features and we especially liked the fact that every family now gets an internet accessible homepage, which allows family members to stay in contact while keeping children safely away from some of the darker sides of the Internet.

If you used Glubble before, you will notice that the layout and theme has changed dramatically. Personally, we prefer the simpler and more colorful theme of the Glubble Family Edition, but given the wealth of new features, a new theme was probably necessary to accommodate all the new functions.

That's because the challenge for established bloggers isn't knowing where to link or what content to add, it's the tedious process involved in having to do so. What these bloggers needed was a more personal recommendation system...one that would suggest articles and images that actually meant something to them. Now that's exactly what Zemanta delivers thanks to the addition of four new features: My Friends, My Feeds, My Pictures, and Filtering.

New Features in Zemanta

My Friends

In the new version, bloggers can connect Zemanta with their social networks. At launch time, those networks include Twitter, Facebook, and MyBlogLog, but more may be added in the future. This feature lets you automatically insert links to your friends' social network profiles when you write about them in your blog post.

My Feeds

In order to provide you with more relevant content to link to, Zemanta's new version lets you import feeds from your feed reader as opposed to just simply suggesting "popular" content from top blogs. This way, you can link to your friends and to the other blogs you read instead of just to those sites that have the most "authority." You can add feeds one-by-one by entering either the feed link or blog URL or you can import an entire OPML file.

My Pictures & Filtering

With My Pictures, Zemanta can connect to your own Flickr account to give you instant access to your own photos. This can be combined with the new filtering feature to help you locate the images or other content you need. For example, if you had just attended the DEMO conference, you could enter the keyword "demo" in the box provided to retrieve photos from that event.

You can see the new features in action in the video below:

Zemanta works via a browser add-on (IE or Firefox), a server-side plugin (WordPress, MT, or Drupal), or as a plug-in for Windows Live Writer. It supports all major blogging platforms including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Tumblr, Drupal, Ning, and MySpace.

Although we had liked Zemanta in concept, this latest upgrade makes it far more useful as it incorporates the things that matter the most to you: your friends, your photos, your feeds. We expect to now see Zemanta used much more heavily by everyday bloggers who are looking to save time and add more specific content to posts.

To get started with SemantiFind, you must first create an account. You can then download the browser plugin which installs the SemantiFind toolbar. This plugin is available for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

To begin using SemantiFind, you must go to www.google.com - the service won't work from iGoogle or your Google search box in your browser. After you enter your search term in the box as usual, you then are prompted to indicate the precise meaning of your term before starting your query. This is done through the use of a drop-down box where specific terms and their definitions display. For example, if you were searching for "Georgia," you would be presented with the option to select either the U.S. state or the former soviet republic.

Once you've selected the word which matches your search term, you'll then be taken to the search results page. The results are simply Google results as you would normally see them, but the extraneous noise from items that don't match your desired query will not display (in theory).

When you find a page you like, you can then mark it as being relevant and useful with one click of the "Semantify" button on the toolbar. This page will be then be included in your future searches and will also become a part of the SemantiFind community so others may benefit, too. Those "semantified" pages will display at the top of future search results in a separate box.

Does It Work?

Unfortunately, SemantiFind is one of those tools that's good in theory, but not so good in practice. When performing some test searches, results were not as precise as they should have been. For example, in the above-mentioned search for "Georgia," a search for the U.S. state returned Google results for the country as well. Also, the SemantiFind search box included a link to a Valleyway story about the Russian invasion of Georgia the country. Obviously, whoever marked that story as relevant to a search for the U.S. state made a mistake, but that just goes to show why search engines that rely on people to filter the results might not work. Human error shouldn't be a factor in web searches.

Without the "community" element to SemantiFind, the technology could have potential if they would work on providing more accurate results. However, "wisdom of the crowds" is the precise angle they're going for with this tool as they believe it will lead to the best results. We're not so sure, but it's still nice to see some innovation happening in the semantic search space.

You may be wondering why you should use a Firefox plugin to create a wish list instead of simply using Amazon's new universal wish list service. The reason is openness. Where Amazon's tool comes from what is somewhat of a closed platform, Giftag is using an open data format: hProduct.

hProduct is an emerging data standard that is suitable for embedding in (X)HTML, Atom, RSS, and arbitrary XML. The format will be related to several other microformats like hListing and hReview. Since we like to support open standards here at RWW, we like what Giftag has done.

The Giftag Homepage

How It Works

Using Giftag is simple, especially if the site you are on already supports hProduct. You just click the button in your Firefox toolbar and, at the bottom of the screen, a tray will appear where all the information about the product (name, description, price, etc.) displays. All you need to do is select which of your lists to put the item on. If the retailer's site doesn't support hProduct, you're still able to add items to the list by drawing a box around the item, but you'll have to fill in the information about the product yourself.

All the lists you create can be selectively shared with others. You could choose some lists to be shared with family and friends and others could be shared publicly. You can also share your items with your friends on Facebook via the Giftag application. Developers can access Giftag APIs to build applications of their own.

The value of the hProduct standard is clear when you use an application like Gifttag. Given Best Buy's involvement, we hope that this will push more retailers into adopting the standard on their own sites. A web of retail sites that support the same standard could open the door to even more applications that take advantage of the standard - and that's something we would like to see.