The ZapTXT blog has moved to http://www.zaptxt-inc.com/blog

Just a reminder...

The ZapTXT blog has moved to http://www.zaptxt-inc.com/blog

See you at the new site!

ZapTXT 2.0 - About this release...

On behalf of the ZapTXT team, I'm thrilled to announce the new release of ZapTXT.
As Ed mentioned, we have currently opened up registration for the first 10,000 users that sign up. Our current users of course are already registered.

If you would like us to drop you a line when we open up registration, please email us at feedback@zaptxt-inc.com.

Before I get to high-lighting the some of the goodies in this release, I want to say 2 thank you's:

First, we are very grateful to those that provided incredible feedback during testing. We can't thank you enough.

Second, my heartfelt gratitude to our dream team that helped put this together. Alex Wright patiently worked through multiple interaction design and content iterations; Jane Devon brought her amazing talents (as usual) to shepherd us through design directions and Xavier Vanvlasselaer was able to produce the application beautifully and in a very short time frame. Of course Ed rocks. ZapTXT was his baby before I got involved, and I have yet to work with another developer that could so easily be open to fundamental changes put forth by the team and put his emotional attachment to the side as we baked the roadmap for this release. I don’t think developers get nearly enough credit for conceiving new ideas but that's a different show.

For those of you that are new to ZapTXT, a big welcome to you. Here's the skinny on our service: We allow you to create custom keyword searches to track your favorite rss-enabled websites via email, instant messenger or mobile device. For more information, click on the "Learn More" button on ZapTXT.com or check out the FAQ.

Objectives of this release:

- Re-architect the concept of feed monitoring by focusing on why the user really came - which is to monitor specific information for a given task, sometimes across trusted sources.

- Bring the amazing benefits of OPML to the forefront for the every day user.

- Improve usability via the use of widgets, auto discovery and good interaction design to simplify the process of creating, monitoring, refining and delivering your tasks.

Highlights of this release:
The new ZapTask: We've turned the notion of monitoring feeds on its head. With this release you bring your tasks and your multiple trusted rss-enabled sources to ZapTXT, we monitor that task for you and you move on with your life. So search for that digital camera across Craigslist, eBay Stores and CNET reviews at one time and get the best deal available. Get the best out of the web, on your terms - when you want and where ever you are.

We've also made it very easy to edit a ZapTask. You can now change just about anything on a current ZapTask - keywords, feeds you want to monitor and delivery preferences.

Here are some use cases to get your juices flowing:

• A researcher, journalist or PR/communications professional can create ZapTasks using specific key words (e.g. CEO, resigns, downgrade, earnings for a company and monitor these keywords across say PR Newswire and the Wall Street Journal or “Joe Lieberman” on Daily KOS, CNN, Digg and Sphere) and receive real-time updates on when news is covered in any of your chosen content sources.
• A diabetic can have ZapTXT monitor a new drug, alternative treatment, across the FDA, a set of blogs, the drug manufacturers site and the health section of the New York Times - all as one task.
• A sports fan can monitor a team, a player on his/her favorite blogs, news feeds that Fox Sports provides and your local newspaper.
• A systems security professional can now know right away if new security holes or virus are discovered and move swiftly to protect against a new threat.
• For the shopper or jobseeker or any classifieds user, let the deal come to you and be first to respond. Monitor a job across Craigslist, SimplyHired, Edgeio, New York Times or just about any rss enabled feed. Same applies for that snowboard you want to buy, or that apartment you're looking to rent. You get the idea…

OPML: In the event that OPML interests you, this release brings one of the more user-friendly approaches to importing, creating, refining and searching across an OPML file. So bring your trusted feeds to ZapTXT or create a set within ZapTXT and in a few seconds you have ZapTXT serving as your agent looking for what you consider juicy content across that feed set. No need to browse every day to see what's new and whether you care about what's new. We'll do that for you.

Widgets: We've brought some of the widgets that were previously hidden in the application to the forefront. So no need to come to ZapTXT every time you find a site that has useful information. Add the ZapTXT bookmarklet to your browser and just click on it - the feed passes automatically into ZapTXT. Simply enter your keyword filters, pick your delivery mechanisms and frequency and your done.
Publishers can also add the ZapTXT button to their sites to allow users to be able to monitor their blogs for topics of the users interest.

Delivery Mechanisms: In addition to Gtalk and Jabber, this release also allows for MSN and AIM to be used for IM alert notifications.

That's a lot for one post. We can't be more excited about this release and what's to come in bite size pieces over the next few months.

Thanks for stopping by,

Sameer

New Release!

The new and improved Zaptxt is live! I took the first version as far as I could, but I am an application developer, not a designer or UI expert. With the help of a talented team, we created the new version which is a much more user-friendly application and one that truly brings the benefits of RSS to the everyday user.

Keep an eye out for Sameer's upcoming blog that will give more details. And a big thank you to everyone that worked on this roll-out.

By the way, this is a beta release, open to the first 10,000 users.

eduard

ZapTXT Update

Hello ZapTXT users. Its been quiet on this front for a while but not for nothing...

ZapTXT now has a real team behind it! I'm thrilled to announce a big development here at ZapTXT. Sameer Patel of SpanStrategies (www.spanstrategies.com) agreed to invest in ZapTXT and partner with me on driving the functional roadmap and building out a stable and reliable set of services that are needed by everyday users. Sameer has spent the last 10 years helping user communities at leading organizations improve communication and collaboration via the use of emerging technologies. Sameer formally got involved in late May but began advising me for a few weeks before that. We are both co-founders of the new ZapTXT Inc.

I'm really excited to have him come on board, not only because of the direction he's given the ZapTXT product development roadmap in the few weeks before jumping in formally, but because together we can really do some exciting things to make ZapTXT a very useful service.

I've always felt that ZapTXT has only scratched the surface on how to make the content available on the User's terms. Now that we have an expanded team (more on others that are involved when we release) to execute on product development and interaction and visual design, we are closer than ever to making a real go at it. Thankfully, I can focus on architecture and development going forward.

We've been quietly working away at a lot of exciting things over the last 2 months but the end is in sight. I'll post about our next release in a few weeks. The new ZapTXT team will be blogging collectively going forward.

Happy Zapping,
Eduard

OPML Export

ZapTXT now allows you to export your OPML. To export, go to the "My OPML" screen. Next to each OPML, there will be the option to export. When you click "Export", ZapTXT generates an OPML script that you can save to your hard drive and use with your RSS reader.

What's next?

Now that the first version of ZapTXT OPML filtering is released I would talk about what's coming next. There are three things that I wanted to include in the first release, but I decided to wait and see the reaction to version 1 before I add them.

1. Ability to add individual feeds to existing OPML.
2. Ability to export existing OPML.
3. Ability to import "external" OPML to ZapTXT.

It seems that John Tropea from Library Clips had the same idea when he mentioned that it would be nice to have these features.

I am working on these features now and will post when they are live.

ZapTXT OPML Filter

I finished the first version of the ZapTXT OPML filter. Now users are able to build an OPML file with the feeds that were added and tagged by other ZapTXT users. Search keywords, frequency and delivery method for notifications are applied to the whole OPML file. Every feed in that OPML will "inherit" those attributes. It's great if you want to filter many feeds for the same keywords.

I tried to make this feature as flexible as possible. Users will be
able to do the following:

- edit OPML
- deactivate OPML
- re-activate OPML
- delete OPML from the system
- edit individual RSS feeds in OPML
- remove individual RSS feeds from OPML and from the system

Click here to see images of what it will look like.

A couple of things to keep in mind:

1. It is possible to use the same feed to create a ZapTask and in an OPML. If you have the same search keywords, you will get duplicate alerts. To avoid this, remove one feed, either by deactivating the ZapTask, deleting the feed from the OPML, or not adding the feed to OPML in the first place.

2. Currently I limit the number of feed you can have in OPML to 10. I'll change that later.

3. Please be patient and let me know if you see any bugs, so I can improve it.