Lingospot Revisited – great search driven app for publihsers and bloggers

Back in June I did a short post about a new web 2.0 service called Lingospot. I have finally found some time to try out and review this service in more detail. My initial thoughts are this is a killer app that is fun for users, a useful utility and has the potential to drive revenue for publishers. The fact that this application can drive revenue while also being useful could prove to be a winning combination as while we are in an economic downturn.

Q:  So what is the Lingospot service?

A:  Lingospot is a content discovery plug-in or application (bubble) for publishers and bloggers.

The one liner from the website is:

Lingospot is an in-text content discovery service enabling authors to increase reader engagement and dynamically interlink their content.

My description description of Lingospot is a search (contextual) driven plug-in/app for punishers that:

1. Helps drive a better user experience
2. Develop and grow your site/network (syndication and content cross-linking)
3. Can lift revenue

Simply, a publisher can hyperlink any keyword or phrase and then a dynamic bubble appears that can have a number of content tabs.  In the discovery bubble you can have related stories, video content, content from other sites – either your site(s) or 3rd parties (such as Clipsyndicate), ads, wiki or even search results.

Here is are an on Lingospot examples from the Forbes.com website:

In 2009 many publishers, especially in the newspaper and other compititve verticals, will be looking for ways to improve user experience, drive page impressions (what I call stickiness and others “audience development”) and most important optimise revenue (or at a minimum protect existing revenues). Lingospot can help with all three and that is a winning combination.

I’ve got to alos think tthere is a SEO angle to this techonolgy that can help drive page rank and traffic via cross links etc.

In addition, Lingospot can also provide a related story widget that is contextually relavant – see below.

Customer of the service include Forbes.com and Brietbart. The technology is behind Lingospot is powerful search based on natural language processing (NLP). I am not aware of any competitors, but the bubbles are similar to services from Snap Shots, Vibrant Media and other web 2.0 bubble apps such at Retaggr.

Additional info about Lingospot:

• Interview with the CEO
• Forbes annoucement
• AltSearch Engines post

Bookmeetingroom.com – useful Web 2.0 app

Bookmeetingroom.com came to me via my ‘virtual’ inbox and looks to be a pretty useful Web 2.0 service. I am guessing with future cost saving in mind and more remote working this kind of service/app could take off.My only comment is does it/how easy to integrate with email service (like gmail, etc)? And is there a Facebook plug-in the works?

From the website:

• Simplify Meeting Room Reservations. Instant booking of meeting rooms, conference rooms, studios and other facilities.
• Self Service. Allow self-service booking by all staff or/and clients and reduce administration overhead and costs.
• Eliminate Double booking. Real time availability checking and booking removes the potential for scheduling conflicts.
• Generate Reports. Track room utilisation, by person, dept, company and user. Generate itemised usage and cost reports.
• Total Control and Security. Comprehensive rights management and administration controls. Easy to use and intuitive.

Xobni Rocks

I finally installed Xobni on my Outlook at work. This plug-in was reccommended by a couple friends awhile back here on Razorshine and by SB, hey I am slow but I finally got there. Anyway, plain and simply this plug-in rocks! It has productivity gains, is fast, great search & navigation, easy to use and has cool analytics which are both userful and fun. Try it, use it, love it.

World Wind is a cool app from NASA

I was doing some map research/surfing and found World Wind – a very cool open source app from NASA. World Wind stitches together tons of NASA Earth imagery and satellite data from multiple sources:

World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

The app has gotten plenty of press over the years in Wired and tome on the geo spatial web (from Springer). Its like a Google Earth but for super geeks and researchers. Warning: this app could suck many hours out your day – but in a good way.

Weekly Wrap-up for 18 Jan 2008

This is a brief wrap-up of various news and stories for the past week. I’ve included a few comments.

• Sun is buying MySQL – interesting news indeed. MySQL is a big piece of the backend of many Web 2.0 applications and is here to stay as a mainstream database. Maybe Google buy Sun one of these days?
• Google acts fast with a MSFT smackdown move in the enterprise search space and there is more commnet on this here at CMS. This relates to the MSFT FAST deal from last week. Google is definitely being a bit cheeky on this sales effort. Apparently they are even offering a free spa day to customers?! See below, I think the person who sent this to me toke some poetic license on the last line…

Offer details To make it easy for you to switch, we’re offering existing enterprise search customers some exciting benefits when they replace their existing solution with a Google Search Appliance by March 31st, 2008. You can choose from one of the following options:

· FREE website search.

· FREE training.

· FREE jumpstart package.

· Spa Day at Googleplex – Alleviate all your worries and come enjoy a paid trip to sunny California, including round trip airfare, hotel, a gourmet lunch from our 5 star chefs, and, of course, one full hour of massage therapy. OK, we’re just kidding about this whole Spa Day at Google, but we know the recent events will only represent more work and stress for you. We’re here to help!

• Semantic Wave 2008 Report – free interesting report available to RWW readers. Worth getting this if you have time.
• More rumor mongering on MSFT YHOO – a good analysis of why this deal is not going to happen is here.
• Xobni launched its beta last week – thanks to my buddy at Razorshine for pointing me to this new app. I’ve got to get it next week when I move back to Outlook for my work emails.
• Newsgator is now apparently free – cool.
• Survey finds people are loosing trust in search results.

Last night I attended the mashup event here in London and the theme was ‘local.’ First off I applaud the organisers of the mashup events for continuing to put together these generally very good events. The mashup events are filling a useful niche in the London online business community. So, please keep organising the mashups… However, last night’s event was very much ‘local search 101′ and I didn’t find it particularly valuable (that’s my view anyway). What I did notice was the significant number of investor types lurking around. I’ve got to think there isn’t much room for any more local Web2.0 start-ups – at least not in the UK. There are too many. There is too much local UGC that’s just not user friendly (more on this in thread in a future post). So a note to Investors: before you invest anything in the local space, contact me first I’ve got some valuable insight to share (I mean sell you).

Consumer Apps Post on RWW

Need to dig into this piece at RWW – some interesting analysis and comment. I am clipping the MySpace vs. Facebook traffic graph as well for the record (see below).

New Stuff from and Data on NetVibes

The other day, I posted briefly about the iGoogle presonal homepage service I use and it made me wonder abotu usage of other similar service such as NetVibes. TechCrunch UK has a post of earlier in the week that answers my questions.

- 2 years of operation, 25m unique personalisation pages. 69 countries.

That’s pretty impressive – 25 million personal pages. I wonder how active they are?

NetVibes have also just announced a “social widgets platform they have dubbed ‘Ginger’” – which looks very interesting. Here’s a little more on the story from the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin from TechC UK:

What’s next?

Netvibes has been a personal start page for a long time. A question we ask is we could try to be a social network. But we can’t do that, it’s too late. So what about tapping into an existing social network?

Netvibes + UWA + social APIs = Social Widgets everywhere

The full story is here and below is a diagram that explains the ecosystem.

Skype MySpace Deal – This Sounds Cool

If you are a MySpace users then the new deal between the social networking site and Skype is very cool. Both O’Reilly and TechCrunch have more details on the link up with MySpaceIM and Skype calling. I know some of the product team over Skype which is headquatered in London. Time for me to take them out to lunch and find out more of what the Skype team cooking up. Or better yet maybe I need to head up to Tallin to see the R&D center in action.

Today’s Top News and Posts from Around the Web

Here’s a quick summary of top items so far this week:

• BBC and Adobe Partner on Future iPlayer
• AdMob Snares Google Executive
• Upgrades to MSFT Local & Mobile
• Google Copyfight Update

Check back soon, I am working on a review of DocoLoco and WeLoveLocal – two new entries to the “local search/user generated content/IYP” space.

Facebook Apps – Long Tail Market?

 

The good and the great at O’Rielly have done an interesting study on the Facebook applications market. I am linking to Chris Anderson’s post because I like his summary.This is not a real surprise – that the Facebook apps market – follows in the long tail curve (the Pareto 80/20 rule). In my mind this raises two initial questions:

1. What isn’t there a better filter or tool to help drive new and more useful ups up the curve to the head? Maybe this is the next great Facebook app? Or maybe as CA points out it’s the tyranny of the network or so far most apps suck?

2. What is going to drive change in the apps on the leader board at the head of the tail? Will it be random, merit based, cultural, regional or based on intangible behavior? I have no idea, but I’ve recently reading the research of R. Alexander Bentley. Once I’ve digested some more of his work and crossed it with the overall long tail analysis – I will be back to post some more on the subject.