Inform.com, a recently launched news aggregator, is re-launching on Monday with a number of feature additions and enhancements. I am calling this a “re-launch” because the changes are significant and affect the core platform of the site.
The most significant change is that Inform is no longer operating within a “pop-up”, a process that allowed them to use Ajax functionality but avoid some of the drawbacks like lack of a “back button” feature. Inform now operates cleanly, without popups, in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. This change alone makes Inform a much more interesting and useful service.
Other significant changes include the addition of audio and video content to the site, a subject filter that offers related content and which works quite well, and the addition of RSS feeds for search results. Finally, the “top channels” tab now allows drill down into sub-topics, which were not available before.
Overall, Inform is an excellent resource and continues to improve dramatically. They have not yet added a feature to allow users to add non-included news source RSS feeds, but that is on the roadmap and will be released soon.
Comments
looks ok, although i hate it when i can’t middle-click the links/stories in firefox
My belief is once you launch a business and you didn’t win over the critics, focus on developing strategies that will build your business looking foward.
I’m going to assume Inform.com PR went out the way to communicate their new “technical” features to the blogosphere. I do not understand this approach. Initial launch, they went out and got MSM publicity, bloggers wrote about them very critically and the past is the past. I say get over the past - get to business!
Inform.com is in a hostile competitive market - headlines aggegration. Mainstream media is fighting mad for survival, Search engines and portals are competiting hard and Inform.com need get in the fight instead of trying to win over bloggers for nice reviews.
In other words, mentioning these new features have little value when Inform.com haven’t answer the question why should anyone use Inform.com and how do their service differentiate?
Thats it! If I see one more Smiley graphic ad on a “Web 2.0″ site, I will flip.
RSS aggregators are abundant and yet I still like the look of Inform. So, here I am looking at the slick interface and clicking around when I notice the dreaded graphic smiley ad.
Alas, we cannot do away with advertising but that specific ad ONLY reminds me of spam sites and cheap tricks.
Hmmm, clicking on any story crashes Safari outright. Interesting that they don’t even use HTML links but opted for (apparently non-functional) javascript instead. After the popup fiasco and now this, I wonder if anyone technical is leading the charge over there.
It just seems like someone had a decent idea for a web site but couldn’t find anyone competent to build it. I know this is still a beta but these sorts of things are not “kinks” really… they are poor decisions made at the architecture level. Almost unthinkable ones really, in this day and age.
Seems interesting, but are they making any money?
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