Disqus - Latest Comments for Vishy Venugopalan

Re: Redefining relationship through a collaborative Twitter project

Vishy Venugopalan — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:31:50 -0000

Hello,

Iâ€™ve just implemented related functionality (not necessarily collaborative, but related to event tracking) as a content-timing service called WhenGuard (http://whenguard.com). Website visitors can create special timed links, known as jitlinks, around RSS feeds or any Internet content that has a URL. These jitlinks will automatically publish the content they mask at a given time (and can optionally, unpublish it too).

If you set up a jitlink around a Twitter RSS feed with both a publish time and an unpublish time and then stick it in an infinitely caching reader like Google Reader, youâ€™ve effectively created a time slice for feed contentâ€“the equivalent of Tivo for RSS.

The service is in its early stages, so Iâ€™d appreciate any feedback I could get through the siteâ€™s feedback link: http://whenguard.com/feedback

Thanks,
MidtownNinja

Re: The News Feed - A Powerful UI Innovation

Vishy Venugopalan — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 10:10:42 -0000

@ceonyc: Yes, I don't particularly like the LinkedIn update stream either. I suspect it's because the feed does not adhere to the UI innovation Fred talks about above. Instead it's a disparate bundle of updates (invitations, profile updates, people who joined) each displayed in their own category, which splits it up conceptually and may even give off the perception of information or design overload.

News feeds from friends are picking up steam, thanks to services like Twitter and Tumblr. But if it hasn't happened already, these updates too will eventually add to information overload. I've attempted to create basic time-slices for Twitter and Tumblr (or any other RSS feed) with a content-timing service called WhenGuard (http://whenguard.com). Here, you can provide an RSS feed URL and start and end times that you want to track it. WhenGuard gives you a special URL--known as a jitlink--which will start passing through updates from the RSS URL it aliases at the specified start time and expire after the specified end time.

You can stick jitlinks in your RSS reader and follow interesting people only for the time that they are interesting. Want to see what Robert Scoble has to say, but only for the duration of the next Web20 conference? Create a WhenGuard jitlink around his Twitter feed around the right start and expiration dates and there you have it. Marry this jitlink to a perpetually caching RSS reader like Google Reader and you have a TiVo equivalent for RSS. See http://whenguard.com/faq#rss for more info.

WhenGuard works not just for RSS content, but for any content that has a URL. Feedback is welcomed, as the service is still in its very early stages.

Re: WhenGuard - Easy Web Scheduleing

Vishy Venugopalan — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:10:30 -0000

Hello!

I am the creator of WhenGuard. Thank you very much for your comments.

I've just updated the faq with two new uses for WhenGuard:

-- If you're a musician and you want to start distributing tickets for your show at a particular time, you can do so with WhenGuard and still pass out the link ahead of time.
-- If you're an online merchant who wants your audience to get to Internet coupons at exactly the right time, you can distribute a jitlink to the coupons or special offers well before they take effect.

WhenGuard is still young and in active development. Many features are coming out in the next week or two. Please keep giving feedback so we can improve the site for you.

--MidtownNinja