Wednesday, March 20, 2002

John Robb "Radio is personal publishing software.   What makes it different than: 1) Desktop publishing software like Word. 2) Website publishing software like Front Page and Geocities. The difference is that Radio shares, simplifies, and connects.  Here are the specific differences: 1) Radio allows people to publish to the Web rather than to printer. 2) Radio simplifies the task of constructing a website.  It automates it so you don't have to spend time learning HTML or graphic design.  It allows you to focus on writing. 3) Radio aggregates information for you from other weblogs and general news sources through subscriptions. 4) Radio connects you to other people people in your community by providing you information on which sites last updated, who is linking to you, and which sites are the most popular." [RU8]

The strategy of Radio Community Server  I'm sure there's some confusion about what Radio Community Server is, and why we released it for $0, and what the next steps are. I think that's because we did something new, and probably unexpected. First, for all the bored pseudo-hooplah about web services, Radio Community Server is fully web services, built on open specifications, all of which have been around for a while, in one easy to install package. The press are only looking for web services from the BigCo's so they probably won't cover it, but I want you all to know, this is a tour de force of web services. Some people have said it's clonable in open source, and that's true, and it would be okay with us if people did that. Some have said they can do it in a week, and that's of course not true. Sure they won't have to do some of the work we did, like design it and bootstrap it and create a community of users, but it's still a lot more work than it may appear to be, at first glance. But if you have a few months and want to do a cool piece of software, and can make it run faster or cheaper or in places we don't reach, go for it. Modulo glitches and bugs, which we will work out, we now have a server product that can be installed on private networks, so people can use Radio for workgroups. Weblogs and knowledge management. We've broken through where no other blogging software has. Any workgroup can have weblogs and aggregators, people narrate their work, gain efficiencies and make connections that weren't possible before. But it's more than private networks that we want to enable -- there's a deep feature in Radio Community Server that allows an ISP to fully brand the user experience with their own look and feel. We've been quietly upgrading the workstation software so that it doesn't care which community its tethered to. When Radio boots up for the first time it connects to the cloud, gets the templates and themes and initial aggregator channels, as designed by the service provider. It's kind of like the AOL client software, where you can be AOL if you want. Now, why $0? Have we lost our minds? I hope not. We still need to make money to make payroll. We gave this a lot of thought of course, it took years to arrive at RCS 1.0, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. But we figured that we'd do better financially if we let this out at no cost, so everyone who was interested could try it out, and since it drives Radio and Frontier sales, we'll make it up that way. Like a lot of other tech companies these days, UserLand needs cash. We want to work in a world where lots of people are running their own communities. So please accept our generosity, but if possible, return it. Buy a few copies of Radio for your workgroup or school. It's a bargain at $39.95. If you want a really powerful back-end, go for Frontier. We still have to make this work as a business so we can keep pushing the leading edge and bootstrapping the Two-Way-Web. [Scripting News]

Russ Lipton: How to Place Pictures in your Weblog.  [Scripting News]

Radio community subversion. About a week-and-a-half ago, I wrote that UserLand Software’s latest product, Radio Community Server (RCS) was a swing and a miss. Problem is, I was looking at the little picture. All RCS does is allow you to serve a community of Radio-generated websites. But when the incremental cost to do that is US$0, that picture changes radically. The big picture is that RCS is likely to have as great an impact on workgroup collaboration as networked personal computers did. Remember the first time you saw InBox. This is that all over again. (InBox was one of the first email programs for the Macintosh; it notified you of incoming email by scrolling the subject across the menu bar. This was when most people received 3 or 4 emails a day.) Here’s the really big picture. I pushed hard for RCS to meet a price point that would allow individuals to sneak it in the back door of organizations. In a best case that would be under US$50, so the yearly license for Radio and RCS would be under US$100 and enterprising project managers could pay for it out of their discretionary budgets. So what happens? UserLand ships RCS at no cost to anyone who has licensed Radio or Frontier. It’s subversive software. For US$40 a head, any organizational workgroup can establish a community of dynamic websites and aggregate and syndicate the content from those websites. No longer will it be beneficial for anyone to hoard or hide—or even try to control—information in an organization. Read more.... [ARTS & FARCES internet]