Foldier Publishing: How and Why

August 5, 2008 by foldier

How to publish a foldier

Publishing in foldier is easy. Open the smart folder you want to publish (you will be in the My Items page), click on the ‘Folder’ menu button and hit Publish.

Publishing a smart folder from the 'folder' menu

Publishing a smart folder from the 'folder' menu

A this point foldier will open the Publishing Box and ask you three things:

1 - How many items you want to be visible to the outside

Publishing a smart folder generates a public page, a RSS feed and the ability to embed the folder as a widget within any HTML pages, blogs, social networks etc. You need to tell foldier how many articles will be broadcast at any given time. A number between 10 and 20 is the norm.

2 - If you want to publish all the items currently in the folder

This option will change the permissions to everything inside the current folder to Public. Only public items are visible through public folders to the outside.
If you already have some selected items marked as public and do not want everything else in the folder to be published then uncheck this option.

3 - Few words to describe your published folder

This is important because the description will appear on the top of the public page. So write something meaningful introducing your audience to the content of the page.

See here an example »

Why publishing a foldier?

You may want to publish a folder for all sort of reasons. Here I have a few for you (in random order):

  • Because you are an expert on a given subject and want to expose what is best (or worst) out there
  • Because you want to keep your friends informed and up to date on something you care
  • Because you want to show support to a cause
  • Because you are too lazy to write a blog and post everyday. It is just easier to publish who you agree with.
  • Because is fun
  • Because it aggregates news and web pages that are not available as RSS feeds
  • Because you are conspiracy theorist and want to create a feed with all the evidence of your case!
  • Because you want to show in your blog a list of articles relevant to your posts and want the list to be dynamic and changing…

And this list can go on …

We gather traffic statistics on all the published folders and the ‘Most Popular‘ section is updated every day. We look forward to see your editorial capabilities in action!

I will post next a few tips on how to setup within a foldier account a quick publishing system you can update everyday with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Michele Ursino

The Interoperable Internet

August 4, 2008 by foldier

In a recent post Tim O’Reilly writes about an incumbent problem that the open source movement may encounter in a near future: the rise of cloud computing may create a new, proprietary lock-in where users are trapped by services holding their data rather than software installed on their machines.

I can see this problem very well. I think about it every time I hear this nonsense talk about some new sites becoming new platforms for the Internet. New and well established companies play this game: Google, Facebook, Salesforce, Microsoft and all the WebOS startups out there.  Their game is to reproduce - in some form or shape - what Microsoft has brilliantly done with Windows and the PC, and Apple with MAC OS.

Most people (but not Tim O’Reilly) do not see that the platform is already there! It’s called the Internet, or - as Tim writes it - The Interoperable Internet.

Take note: All of the platform as a service plays, from Amazon’s S3 and EC2 and Google’s AppEngine to Salesforce’s force.com — not to mention Facebook’s social networking platform — have a lot more in common with AOL than they do with internet services as we’ve known them over the past decade and a half. Will we have to spend a decade backtracking from centralized approaches? The interoperable internet should be the platform, not any one vendor’s private preserve.” (Tim O’Reilly)

We could not agree more!

And don’t we all know that the AOL approach was not the right one? Don’t we all want a rich open platform where small and big applications can freely coexist and “interoperate”, allowing user’s data to move freely from one point to another?

We – here at foldier – believe the Interoperable Internet is the future. A platform no one owns. Where every user owns his or her data regardless of where it is stored. A platform that offers standard protocols application developers can use to connect the dots.

Use foldier a bit and you will quickly recognize that foldier does not hold any of your data, rather it links to it, organizes it and makes it available to you, wherever it may be. Foldier logically organizes your data; it does not change its physical location. Who cares where the data is as long as you can reach it? foldier lets you create your own version of the Internet, the one with the information you care the most; a central place where you can connect the services that make the most sense to you, not just the services provided by the people holding your data.

Keep following us here and on foldier.com. The vision is taking shape.

Michele Ursino

Widgets!

August 4, 2008 by foldier

Few weeks ago we introduced the ‘Community’ section. This public part of the foldier web site features the most interesting and popular published foldiers from our users.

A published foldier is not just a public page connected to a user profile, but is also a RSS feed that can be connected to any RSS reader available, and a HTML widget that can be embedded in any public or private web page.

To generate the widget code to embed in a web page you can use the widget editor. Once you published a folder the widget editor is available in the folder menu.

Opening the widget editor for a published folder

Opening the widget editor for a published folder

Once you are in the editor you can adjust various display features, like dimension, style, etc.

Adjusting parameters and customize the appearance

Adjusting parameters and customize the appearance

When you satisfied you can grab the code (copy it in the clipboard) and use it in any page you like.

Getting the code!

Getting the code!

Here is an example of a foldier widget embedded within the social networking home page of BAIA LINK.

BAIA Link using foldier widget

BAIA Link using foldier widget

So enjoy and widgetize your public folders!

Private, Shareable and Public: Permissions in foldier.

July 22, 2008 by foldier

In foldier we can set permission for items and folders. These permissions control how links and files can be accessed by other people.

Setting permission to private tells foldier the data item is not to be visible to anyone other than the owner. This remains true even when the item is picked up by a shared folder or public folder.

Setting permission to shareable tells foldier the data item can be accessed by people we explicitly share it with. The item can be shared to other users but will not be visible to the general public even when is picked up by a public (published) folder.

Setting permission to public tells foldier to remove any access restriction to this item. It will be shared to other foldier users and will be visible to everybody else when is discovered by a public folder.

Setting permission to public for a folder means the folder is published and it is available in the Community section of the web site open to everybody. Only public items inside a public folder are visible to the outside world.

New foldier update. (Build 25)

July 16, 2008 by foldier

A new build went online last night. We codenamed this release ‘Goldfinger‘. It has various improvements and some great new features I think you all will like.

So these are the highlights:

Community section: this part of foldier is freely accessible from the public site and features the public foldiers and the profiles of the users part of the foldier community. Check it out at here.

Publishing: the publishing feature has been greatly improved. When you publish a smart folder you produce content consumable in multiple ways: as a public web page, a RSS feed, and a widget to include in your own web page (blogs, personal site, social network, etc. )

Widget Editor: this is a brand new feature. It allows you to customize your published widget foldier to your specification. In a few clicks you can change style, colors and layout of your widget and retrieve the HTML code to include in your page.

Del.icio.us: the popular Yahoo bookmarking service it is now supported as data source. You can link all your bookmark in del.icio.us to your foldier account. Of course, when you add a bookmark in delicious it will also become available within foldier and will have the exact tags you set on delicious. So no reason to change, keep using delicious (or start using it), and integrate your online bookmarks with the rest of your online data using foldier!

Browsing: we add new display styles to the foldier browser. Now you can visualize your data in tiles mode, details, or simple lists. The view mode are available in the “View as..” menu in the “My Items” page.

Improved “add to foldier” bookmarklet: the new version detects more information and behave better even with non well formed web pages. You can now share your added links to you contacts, contact groups, or you can just type the email of your recipient! (For the ones who already installed it I recommend to install it again because the new version adjust  the size of the pop up window to accommodate the new features)

Convert links in comment to foldier items: when you add a full URL to a comment foldier will automatically add that link as a new item in your account (it is saved, it is searchable and it is automatically organized). And, if your comment URL is on an item followed by multiple people, then your link is also automatically shared to all of them.

More options when uploading files to AmazonS3 storage: if you have an S3 account within foldier you will see more options in the upload page. You now can share, and organize your uploads directly from there.

Behind the scenes we also worked hard fixing bugs and improving the performance of the system. Your feedback is key in this BETA process. Keep sending us your notes, requests and observation.

We linked the ‘Send you Feedback‘ button (available on the top of every page within foldier) to our bug tracking system. So you are in direct contact with the developers!

Thank you and enjoy foldier
Michele

Adding links and RSS feeds to foldier

May 29, 2008 by foldier

Another great feature of the new version of foldier is the so called ‘bookmarklet‘ that allow to add page links and RSS feeds from within your browser with few clicks of your mouse.

Installation

First you need to install the bookmarklet. In your own foldier home page follow the link ‘Get the Bookmarklet’ on the right side of the screen. The installation is super easy if you are on Firefox, Safari or Opera.
Just drag and drop the ‘Add to foldier‘ button in the center of the page in your bookmarks toolbar.

Add bookmarklet in Safari

In Internet Explorer you need to right-click on the ‘Add to foldier‘ button from the bookmarklet installation page and select ‘Add to favorites’. Pick “Links” as target for your favorite and press OK.

Add bokmarklet in IE

Use

Now - while you navigate - you can just click ‘Add to foldier‘ (now in your bookmarks toolbar) and save the page or the embedded RSS feeds to your account in foldier.

Try with this url: http://www.spreadfirefox.com. You will see a popup window appear and you can select the page or the RSS feed embedded. If you click on the page link, you can then add tags and description.

Add to Foldier in Firefox

Last, but not last, when you add a link you can also decide to share it with some of your contacts in foldier. Click on the ‘Share‘ checkbox. It is easier then copy and paste to an email and allows the recipients to add comments on your share directly within foldier.

After adding your link and you go back to foldier.com you will find notifications in your flash feed:

Flash alert for a new bookmark

Enjoy!
Michele

Public profiles and public smart folders

May 28, 2008 by foldier

With the latest update we introduced a couple of new interesting features: public profiles and public smart folders.

Every foldier user has now a profile page visible to everybody. Here is mine.

foldier user profile

In the profile page you see the public information for the user and the list of his/her published folders. If you are a foldier user you can reach your profile page (once you log in) by clicking on your name (in top right corner) and from the settings page.

Publishing smart folders is easy, just click on the Publish button on the right side of the folder title.

Publishing a smart folder

A published smart folder is listed in your profile page, is available to everybody on the Internet and grants visibility to its public items (shareable items and private items remain invisible to outside users).

Public folders are also available as RSS feeds and the profile page provides a link to a OPML file that can be used to import all the public folders in many RSS news reader.

Enjoy!
Michele

Omnidrive is back

May 27, 2008 by foldier

omnidrveOmnidrive is back and with a new strategy: “All your file together at last”.

Sounds a lot like foldier. So we may officially declare Omnidrive to be our first direct competitor.

This new approach is coming after a difficult period culminated with the web site being down until few days ago.

Some interesting posts about it were posted on Valleywag and on The Inquisitr .

Overall I expected this to happen, and I am sure Omnidrive is just the first. The fact is that what we envision 2 years ago has one of the biggest challenge for the usability of the future Web is now gaining recognition as one of the big opportunity for new companies in the post web 2.0 era.

We will report more on this and other new players as soon as they appear.

Michele

Startup Camp in San Francisco

May 4, 2008 by foldier

Startup Camp

We are attending the Startup Camp today. Will report about this unconference later this week.

Why foldier is going to be your next social utility

May 3, 2008 by foldierteam

Because it’s there? No.

Because it makes digital life what it’s supposed to be: easier.

You’re going to use foldier because it’s time you got hold of all the digital fragments flying around your own personal digital galaxy. Instead of you going to the planets, though, foldier brings the planets to you. No rocket ship necessary.

Simply save your digital items to foldier, and the link to them will stay on foldier — while the content stays where it was created.

  • Your best contact list is on Facebook? No need to copy the list to foldier — just connect your Facebook account to foldier and you can send your contacts any kind of link. Without invading their privacy.
  • Your photos are all on Flickr? Just connect your accounts and you have a virtual photo file.
  • Trying to keep up with the latest political developments? Create your own custom RSS feed from all your favorite news sources.

And you can access your content from any PC anywhere.

Watch this space to hear about new features and enhancements. And click here for your invitation to join the foldier beta.