Inform Reforms
Inform, a news aggregation service,
got off to a tough start in October when it launched a
not-ready-for-prime-time-beta (alpha?) that lost its more points than
it scored - much like upstart (start-up?) browser developer Flock blew
most of its goodwill by releasing a 0.5 version that was really much closer to
0.1. Anyway, Inform will launch a new and improved version of the
service on Monday that will feature the ability to access audio and
video, and create RSS feeds. It looks fairly impressive, which talks to
how Inform has become better and/or the power of a Webex
presentation. To be honest, the news aggregation world as a tough
market given the competition and business models that rely - at least
initially - on advertising. While unapologetic about its
willingness/eagerness to launch a service that wasn't fully-baked,
Inform has one more solid shot at establishing a market foothold as it
fights it out with rivals such as memeorandum.
December 2nd, 2005 at 5:25 pm
I took a look at Inform too, and it's definitely gotten better — not sure it's quite there yet, though. A little too complex for most, I think. I came across a couple of other interesting attempts at news filtering: Gritwire, which I think it Flash, and Common Times, which is more sort of collaborative and makes nice use of Ajax and tags and whatnot.