PostRank

The next version of our aiderss.com site is coming together nicely, and soon we’re going to need folks other than us to take it for a test drive. So we’re looking for beta testers!

We don’t have stringent qualifying criteria; in fact, the broader the tester demographics, the better — RSS wizards, web apps newbies, super-fans, staunch detractors — ideally they’d all be represented. The more user needs and use cases we hear about, the better we can make our site and our technology work for our community.

All testers are welcome to a snazzy AideRSS t-shirt, a note from me, and, of course, our eternal gratitude. If you’re interested in being a beta tester for us, feel free to leave a comment here, email me, or ping me on the Twitter @aiderss account.

Once I get the go-ahead from the developers, I’ll be sending out the beta invitation information.

Thanks!

The other day some folks strenuously disagreed when I said that tweeting links to your blog posts was lame. I would absolutely agree, if that had been what I said.

It was during a discussion about content, and what companies should post online and how. I asserted that using Twitter ONLY to announce your latest blog post was lame. Same goes for using any social media only for broadcasting purposes.

Sure, marketers can get plenty of value using social media sites and apps as standalone tools these days. Inform the world what you’re up to; monitor what’s being said about you. But I think solely using that approach is evidence that, as the lolcats say, “ur doin it wrong”.

Endless digital ink has been spilled on the value that social media can bring to companies, from marketing to customer service to product development to sales to you name it. I also know that for those steeped in traditional marketing (and corporate practices in general) lowering the drawbridge and engaging with the public on their own turf can be scary.

But there’s another side to it.

We owe them.
(more…)

By popular request, we’re releasing an update to our GoogleReader FireFox Extension (version 1.3), with preliminary support for ‘All Items’ and ‘Folder/Tag’ views in GoogleReader. Kudos to all the alpha testers who have helped us pilot these features!

As part of this release, there are also a number of improvements with Greasemonkey compatibility and few other miscellaneous bug fixes. If you’re already a user of the extension, FireFox should prompt you to update it, and if you can’t wait, head to ‘Tools > Addons’ and click on ‘Find updates’.

What is the AideRSS Firefox extension? It’s a browser plugin which harnesses the power of PostRank^TM to score, filter and track performance of any RSS feed directly within GoogleReader. Now GoogleReader users can reclaim their time with a single mouse click to find the best content, boost their productivity and stay on top of the news. Sign up to join our beta!

As we rolled out the GoogleReader Firefox extension it became clear that the entire authorization token process was, ah, less then ideal. It caused users grief and unreasonable hassle and is diametrically opposed to the overall philosophy of the AideRSS service itself.

So first, we’re sorry. The authorization process was clearly not up to par!

Effective immediately, we’ve removed the authorization process from the GoogleReader Extension entirely. If you already have the extension installed, please update it in Firefox (Tools > Addons > Find updates) to bypass the old authorization process.

If you do not have the extension yet, we will continue to expand the beta through the GoogleReader Extension Microsite.

AideRSS is pleased to announce a Firefox extension that harnesses the power of PostRank^TM to score, filter and track performance of any RSS feed directly within GoogleReader. Now GoogleReader users can reclaim their time with a single mouse click to find the best content, boost their productivity and stay on top of the news.

Although you can consume any AideRSS PostRank enhanced feed in your RSS reader of choice, there is administrative burden maintaining your feeds outside of where you consume them. We wanted to provide a superior user experience that didn’t require leaving GoogleReader to manage the filtering of your RSS feeds.

The GoogleReader Firefox extension is the latest AideRSS weapon to fight information overload. By enhancing RSS feeds with PostRank and other social statistics, we believe we’re providing simply the best RSS reader experience possible.

GoogleReader is the most popular RSS reader amongst AideRSS users. Our experience shows this group represents some of the most demanding and obsessive RSS consumers. The extension itself wouldn’t be possible if not for the feedback and assistance of the GoogleReader users who participated in our early beta testing.

GoogleReader is the only publicly available RSS Reader that when coupled with the AideRSS GoogleReader Firefox Extension can harness the power of PostRank. It was developed using our freely available APIs which enable anyone to build and enhance any RSS application.

Lijit, based in Boulder, Colorado was the first third party to use our APIs to add PostRank data to their user’s blog statistics. There are other 3rd party RSS products under development that are using the AideRSS APIs that we expect to be hitting the market place very soon.

The AideRSS GoogleReader Firefox extension is in private beta. We’re eager to gather further feedback from GoogleReader users before finalizing our first version. Interested beta testers should visit our GoogleReader microsite to request a beta invitation.