I am a University student. As anybody who has had to study at uni can understand, researching assignments can be a long and tiresome process. For my last assignment, I used Particls to research. I added all my research topic words to Particles and lo and behold, I had about 20 relevant pages without actually having to waste time finding them myself. Sure, I may be a lazy bugger, but for me, Particls can be a really handy time saver.

I have my issues with Particls. As do many people who have used it for some time. But something that most people here don’t seem to understand is that Particls has only just gone Beta! You can’t expect perfection at a Beat release. Bugs take time to fix. There are priorities to sort out and the bug you have reported may very well be at the bottom of the list.

I am really disappointed in the people here (especially those at techcruch) for passing judgment on something that they really don’t seem to understand, or even tested. You don’t look at a new car and buy it without test driving it first… but then again, judging from your comments, maybe you do.

My daily work is extensive as it is and I really cannot be bothered to browse my 50+ rss feeds, and other various data inputs to figure out what I should read. Each rss feed alone would produce on average 5 posts / day, 250 posts to read a DAY. I do need to work to make $.

If you are a basic rss reader (1-5 feeds), there is no need to use the software. However it won’t be long for a basic rss user to start adopting more feeds and before you know it, you’ve got 50, 100, 200 feeds to read. Particls is excellant in sorting your rss feeds and displaying what YOU want to read, just requires some simple setting up.

Ticker, I find the ticker very easy to use and one of my favourite output adapters of this application, however it’s not going to be everyone’s favourite – but you can simply turn it off. More and more output adapters are being developed every week, it’s just a matter of time before they are reviewed and approved for public release (no one wants a bad adapter do they?). I was one of the earlier users of Particls so I luckily get up-to-date from the developers on what’s new (and get to test them out).

BTW CodeMonkey, it probably won’t be long until the input feeds that are inserted into Particls will have better keyword matching by use of synonyms and other various types of methods.

“Personally, I want news when I start my RSS reader, not at random times during the day.” – Particls will give you the the news as it gets it, it won’t hold it for 2 hours or anything like that and then decide to give it to you, that would be stupid.

“Why does the domain have to be “particls”? Who the hell can remember that many names omitting letters? “Flickr” is enough! Please use some whole english words for your domain” – this guy doesnt understand the lack of remaining real word domains.

– I remember when AIM (Aol instant messenger) used to have a ticker for actual stocks / that didnt last long …

The core concept is based around trying to solve the “information overload” problem we all face today by collating our Attention Metadata and structuring it into an open exchangeable format APML in order to ultimately develop a personal discovery engine.

Today that discovery is exposed as a ticker but it is only one of several ways to view the Particls attention stream.

Like Particls there are many other “LifeStream” services – http://lifestreamblog.com/ –
Twitter, Jaiku, Plazes, Dandelife, Last.FM, Wakoopa, etc. All looking to capture and combine our different forms of attention metadata into some usable format in order to return us ‘discovery’ value. e.g Last.FM tracks my musical taste and returns that attention back to me as new music discovery and concerts.

The bottom-line is that Particls is a self-funded (pre-series A) company looking to develop a new and different discovery concept to overcome the information overload problem. Have they got it perfect, probably not given some of the comments but that is why they have gone into a public beta to get honest feedback.

I know Particls are working on other means of attention capture other than keywords in order to start building our attention profile. One option under consideration is to use application plugins, so that we can choose which applications we want to record our attention. Much like Last.FM’s audioscrobbler for Windows Media Player/iTunes but on a wider scale e.g to include Flickr, Delicious, Firefox etc.

Ultimately it is about combining our identity, presence, attention, location and semantics (iPALS) in order to exchange it with a trusted online broker who will exchange our personal information for some value.

In the last few days I’ve made a couple of references to Particls, first in writing about our Web 2.0 in Australia event next week, where we had invited Particls to present as one of the most interesting applications on……

Moreover, none of the comments posted says the ticker can be turned off. Particls will continue to do it’s job in the background and still deliver pop-up alerts or route the news to an appropriate place when important material is found.

Yes, Particls includes a ticker. That’s great. Get over it. What about the ideas you simply regurgitated as quotes – “Particls offers free API access to developers”, “publishers are able to customize Particls with co-branding and site specific data”, and what about the key concepts you didn’t bother explaining such as “Personal Relevance” and “Output Adapter”? Didn’t get it? Couldn’t explain it? Or, just couldn’t be bothered? Either way it’s this sort of regurgitation badged as intelligent review that I hope Particls or an equivalent will soon filter out.

I’ve been a loyal follower of TechCrunch for a hell of a long time, but this disappoints me. This isn’t journalism. It isn’t even opinion. It is simply the handing back of a couple of press releases with a TechCrunch logo on them, and a few things taken out so that the focus becomes the ticker.

What about the fact that, as Chris explains later in comments, that Particls can be used as “a filtered RSS feed for use in other readers and widgets” (very neat usable idea by the way), or that the ticker is one of 3 delivery mechanisms provided as standard. What are “Pebbles”? Do you know?

This is fresh development, a new idea based upon existing ideas, but implemented in a new way and made better by it. OK, so it’s not a VOIP service, it’s not a Facebook/MySpace/YouTube/Flickr/Digg plugin or clone, it isn’t one of the many startups being courted by Google and it is based upon Web 1.0 ideas, but so what? Examine the idea based upon it’s own merits.

I hope to see better reporting next time I come back to TechCrunch, and I’m not sure I’ll even bother reading the comments from the followbots.

Out of 30 comments, I counted 2 that contained any kind of relevant informed criticism, the 2 referring to bandwidth and platform requirements.

btw. A quick subset of the above comments demonstrate a real lowering of the collective contributer intelligence. I hope this is only cursory and that it is not the result of a lowering of TechCrunch standards, and a subseqent drop in quality…
eg.
“Why does the domain have to be “particls”?”… Does not require comment
“anything that requires so many obscure words in sequence to describe is going to have a hard time pulling users in”… Because these were obviously the words used by Particls and not the words used to title a TechCrunch post hey???
“we are just good at cutting through PR bullcrap”… How? What do you think this writeup was? Have you downloaded Particls? And if not what makes you such an informed source? Or do you simply have that special sense?

Come on guys…

Faraday Mediaのアテンション管理ティッカー「Particls」が今日（米国時間5/28）ブライベートテストから公開ベータになる。
Particlsはアテンションデータを受け渡す「アラートプラットホー…..

1. it remembered my personalized settings (finally).
2. The problem with reserving the screen space even when not set to “always on top” seems to be fixed, however…the stealing focus even when the ticker is below other windows still occurs, and is still VERY annoying.
3. The Particls icon can be changed to something a bit smaller (like 1/4 the size) if you go into the advanced options for the ticker. So, the logo is too big, but it is “fixable”.

It is a great idea, and when it works correctly it works wonderfully. However, many of my issues are little annoyances that definitely add up. For example, upon reinstall most of your personalized settings are overwritten (not your feeds, just your settings). I’ve reported this “bug” several times to the point that I gave up trying because it seemed Chris really did not care. Also, on a similar note, the news ticker still reserves the screen space even after you’ve unchecked the “always on top” option. Any window will still open up compensating for the ticker’s screen real estate. Again, not a huge issue, but something that I have reported probably 6 different times to Chris and was promptly ignored. Not to mention the ridiculous waste of space for the branding. Literally, the Particls logo takes up a good 1/5 of the news ticker. I understand the need for brand identity, but someone needs a serious lesson in user experience and user interface design.

I am not affiliated with Particls, I am just a VERY long time tester for them. I’d suggest people give it a shot before they jump to any uneducated assumptions.

No, we are just good at cutting through PR bullcrap. I think TC should hire some of the more cynical posters here so they’re not posting useless crap all the time.

Anyone who went through dot com will realize that this was done before and companies that offered stuff like this failed miserably. Heck, this stuff was tried over 15 years ago, numerous times and all of them have failed. It’s not like TC editors had to search for some obscure dot com company to find a predecessor:

http://en.wikip...wiki/PointCast_(dotcom)

Seriously, can TC please hire someone who went trough dot com so they can weed out nonsense a bit better?

I am not a fan of tickers because of the distraction when I am working at my day job, and I don’t enable the pop-ups for a similar reason – but I have found it extremely useful to having it “pull” content on my research interests when I am READY to be distracted.

The big innovation is the attention engine – yes, it pulls key words, but if you look at the APML file stored on your hard disk (I don’t see google giving me access to the information they collect about me…), you can see it how scores various subjects, further refining your preferred content. In other words, with time it gets better. I can attest to this, because I recently had a fresh installation with a new APML file storing my data, and I am finding the results to be not as special anymore…it takes time for it to profile you properly.

I really think this techcrunch article did a disservice to what makes Particls so great – it’s basically a copy and paste of some one liners from the press release, and where there is some original thought, it is focussing on the wrong things. Yes the format is not for everyone, but why haven’t you looked into the attention engine? You can just as easily reapply the “output” in an RSS reader, with the attention engine determining what you should read.

Go and try it!
(I am just a satisfied user, nothing else)

Particls, ein Dienst, der seit einem Jahr in einer privaten Beta-Version gestestet wurde, traut sich nun, öffentlich live zu gehen.

Ziel der Anwendung ist es, den aus Feeds einströmenden Informationsfluss einzugrenzen und so dem Nutzer Zeit zu spare…

I use NewsBliss (http://www.newsbliss.com) for about half a year and it does exactly what real RSS streamer should do: scrolls feeds I subscribed to, without all that extra BS (so called ‘relevance’). Moreover, it displays media and plays podcasts.

The private alpha ends today. Yep the guys from Faraday Media have made Particls available to anyone who wants it. Go get it now.
For those who don’t know Particls is an extensible attention platform. It learns what you like to consume and gives you …