YourMinis is a Flash-based customizable homepage product that will compete for users with a number of similar products that use Ajax – Netvibes, Pageflakes, Google, Live.com and more. This was launched by a startup called Goowy, which created a flash-based productivity suite (email, calendar, IM, etc.) last year – see here for our Goowy coverage.
Goowy CEO Alex Bard gave me a demo of the product at the Web 2.0 Summit this week. YourMinis is a solid product, offering completely customizable modules like RSS feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, POP Email, etc. Users can create multiple tabs to better organize information, and any tab can be turned into a public URL and shared with friends. They have also published an API and allow third parties to create modules which will be available to all users.
YourMinis also has a browser extension that makes it easier to add information to the site. Videos, photos and RSS feeds can added to a user’s YourMinis page by simply clicking on a button added to the browser. This is particularly useful for subscribing to RSS feeds – a module is automatically added to YourMinis based on the auto-discovered feed.
There are other interesting features on the site as well that are worth exploring, and YourMinis is certainly a showcase for what can be done with Flash.
The problem with Flash is that it can’t open new pages in new tabs, and always open a new window. So, yourminis won’t make it for me…
Goowy was a nice product. Yourminis… hmmm, not sure why someone would pick it over (say) Netvibes. Also the name is not that attractive.
I think its a really promising product. The use of flash gives them many more options.
I’ve just done an interview with Alex Bard for a podcast. We talk about their decision to use flash over Ajax, business models and their API that they’re launching soon.
http://gizbuzz....d-ceo-of-goowy/
FYI – I did an interview with Alex on the day of their yourminis launch:
http://www.cent...goowy-yourminis
We discussed goowy vs. yourminis, how they market the tool, what Alex has learned since funding, tips for entrep’s and what’s been his biggest mistake.
Hey…no one mentioned their FF extension that adds widgets to the browser. Something similar to what opera 9 does.
Otherwise, this is not a real competitor to Netvibes/Pageflakes as it’s focus is on eye candy and not on productivity
URL to official extension: https://addons....g/firefox/3808/
I’ve been using goowy since day one, and this new piece is awesome. Publishing pages for friends/co-workers is just awesome.
I wanted share some of the differences between yourminis and other personalized start pages…
1. Experience – we offer a more rich multimedia environment for customizing your dashboard – look at some of the published pages below to see how far you can customize your dashboards.
http://www.your...is.com/coldplay
http://www.yourminis.com/mavs
http://www.your...is.com/web2news
2. Access – we offer 3 ways to connect to yourminis
a) As a personalized start page in the browser @ http://www.yourminis.com
b) As a browser plugin that gives you a lot of powerful added features including 1 click options for adding rss feeds, interacting with microformats, saving videos and pictures to your dashboards, and more.
c) As a destkop client leveraging the Appollo platform coming in the near fuure.
All 3 will be synched so if you use one method one day and another the next – the experience and content will be synched.
3. Publishing – we offer you a whole new way to publish both dashboards and individual minis to your blog / myspace etc…
To see a demo of yourminis take a look at this video interview / demo I did at web 2.
http://media.po...3-YourMinis.mov
yourminis is what you want to make of it. For some people it will be an interactive multimedia dashboard, for other people it will be a productivity tool.
I have dashboards for both…for example take a look at one of my tabs that i just published that aggregates my news from across the internet.
http://www.your...is.com/web2news
I have other tabs that have my email from yahoo, goowy, gmail, more news, etc….
Thanks for your support.
Alex
Before you dismiss this as just another start page, I suggest you really explore around it… I know I was just as skeptical as all the other Netvibes fanboys out there until I tried it. After using it for a while, I was amazed at the level of detail, the speed, and just the overall slickness of the app. But far more importantly, there’s just a ton of great features there. I don’t know where to start, but I think the two coolest ones that separate them from the crowd are the firefox extension and the published pages. I know other sites have published pages, but the ability to create rich multimedia experiences is just not there with the other ones. For example, it took me literally seconds to drag my Flickr photos from the widget and create a custom scaled, rotated collage. Like I said, just not possible in an Ajax environment.
i don’t get it; isn’t this all going into the OS with vista; “gadgets”
I know this is old school, cause its not 2.0 anything, but I like pop urls
http://popurls.com/
does anyone really think people will “build” minis/gadgets/widgets so they can keep in touch with “cold-play”
I’m listening to the CEO fromt the podcast…good luck guys.
A Protopage clone without Ajax!
Will give it a try.
One other thing…by being able to create a webpage, I can create a guerilla syndication at work. I use Diigo and create feeds for intranet links via tags. With yourminis, I can add those feeds and create my own blog/wiki and then add that. I can also add a photo(s). Publish the page and can send it to others in the org. They then have access to a page of links and info I think is important.
I develop e-learning so I can create a repository of info/blogs, etc Now I can send my page to people without telling them how to add RSS feeds to their own pages. Using netvibes, I was always having to go through this complicated process of teaching people how to use it and set up their feeds. Now I don’t have to.
That looks identical to Yahoo Widgets/Konfabulator.
http://widgets.yahoo.com/
Thats why I have Dashboard on OS X. Why would I complicate the process and move it away from the OS, only to then try and sync it with the OS?
I liked goowy, but I think this is really just ‘fluff’. It has no real competitive advantage over the other sites doing the same thing. If anything, its worse because flash just annoys me when it could be done without flash.
On smaller resolutions or smaller windows, content is cut off and there are no scroll bars. I guess yourminis is only targeting larger resolutions.
Looks nice, but its going to take a lot of initiative to get people to begin using it. I’ve seen a couple of these services, but haven’t ever used one. It would have to be extremely comprehensive to win me over, almost like a mini-OS.
one of the reasons why i stop using goowy is because the keyboard mapping is too persistent and it does not release when you switch to another browser tab which cripples the browser’s functionalities. It is a good showcase piece of what you can do with flash but not ideal for use as a home page.
It shows off some cool flash programming skills but its flat out unusable. I cant see anyone ever using this product.
I would much rather stick to Microsoft’s Live.com. And the name is just horrible. YourMinies… lol come on now.
I compared my netvibes with this (plugged in the same feeds) and netvibes still wins hands down. Netvibes hold lots of feeds in short space compared to this service and yes the name is awful. Watch out for a drop in traffic after a few days of techcruch fame.
I would love to understand some of the comments a bit more…
1. Jason – what do you mean by it is unusable? I would love to understand this further so we can address your concern.
2. Arifsali – We are adding scrolling in the client this week. Can you tell me what other concerns you have ie holding a lot of feeds in a small space?
Thanks.
Alex
The RSS reader is incredibly fast.
Hey, cool stuff, but you have to have a fast connection/provider. Tried it twice, home. dsl=perfect, at a internetcafe:modem, freezes the browser, of course the bollox ie 6…
Love to get more in depth of it, but my Firefox has a huge problem with Flash for some reason. :’(
This is the best! Better than Netvibes and Goowy. Guys try it. You didn’t even fully test it probably! .This is the best! I just hit ctrl ~ and get all my feeds, recreation in one second.
I’ve looked over this system here. I think the developers have their heads screwed on tight. It comes across in a friendly manner visually.
The whole engine appears as uncluttered and simple to utilise.
The Photo and resizeable elements are fine here, wonderful. The colours are also excelling and a sadly lacking missing element for those of us who are colour blind.
I think this system has a long life ahead of it; has gone further than most already and wins a 9.5/10 with me.
I get p*ssed off when people who have been psychologically preconditioned to live in their self dug rutts for the better of those who control them (Firefox users???) whinge and gripe when anything threatens its muddy banks.
I get excited when people push the limits & focus on change by walking a couple of years ahead of the rest and come out with ‘appetising’.
Where is the desk offline ???
The future is a part online like Goowy / NetWibes… and a part shared on the computer to be used offline inside the Web brower too ? This could be the real revolution !
Yet another one…it’s a trend already
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Can anyone help me out to find out more tutes regarding the widgets (Yourminis)
Regards
GAGAN