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October 18, 2007

Remember PointCast? Meet Chirpscreen

Mark Hendrickson

27 comments »

One of my earliest memories of the internet comes from elementary school where I remember seeing PointCast shown on our classroom computers. PointCast was a screensaver popular in the mid-90s that displayed news stories pulled in from over the internet. This hot Web 1.0 service died off in large part due to bandwidth limitations and the company’s inability to transition away from proprietary software and to the standardized Web.

Anyhow, I was reminded of PointCast when I checked out a new application called Chirpscreen that pulls content from Facebook and displays it in a Flash-based screensaver. Chirpscreen is basically PointCast but with personalized content (currently, only your friends’ photos and status updates, and your Facebook notifications).

The enthusiasm for PointCast may have waned because people realized how much better the web browser was for discovering news content online. Chirpscreen may succeed where PointCast failed in this respect, because the amount of online personalized content (i.e. content that relates directly to you or your friends/family members/etc.) is fairly limited, at least for now.

Chirpscreen plans on incorporating more content into the screensaver, such as your favorite RSS feeds and social graph info from other social networks (I’m sure they’re eagerly looking forward to the impending launch of MySpace’s developer platform). Chirpscreen will also be adding more interactivity and user controls that allow you to put more weight on the display of different types of content, as with the Facebook News Feed.

Chirpscreen is currently in private beta, but you can check out the program showcased as an application within Facebook here (warning: they’re still working out the bugs so it might crash your browser; it did for me a few times). If you want early access to the actual screensaver, submit your email to the invitation box on their website.

I’ve got to admit - I’m generally not very keen on Facebook applications, but I may just have to install Chirpscreen if the public beta works without hitches.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 11:17 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. whoopie

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:26 am

    pointcast was also an early lesson in sometimes-wisdom taking money when it is on the table (facebook’s present apparent debunking of this notwithstanding…)

    as i recall, they turned down $700 million to only later end up having a $10 million firesale

  2. airj1012

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:28 am

    I had this “idea” a long time ago. I’m glad that someone finally made it a reality. I used Facebook’s comment submission forms to tell them of this idea but they didn’t pay attention. Congrats. Chirpscreen.

    I would also LOVE to see high resolution images on Facebook, just another thought.

  3. * Miss Universe

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:28 am

    This was an awesome technology that unfortunately was ahead of its time.

    What would it have developed into - if it was allowes to flourish.

    It has so much potential

  4. Dave Toledo

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:29 am

    I loved PointCast! It was a service ahead of its time. I was sad to see it die. I always thought once bandwidth wasn’t an issue, a service like it would return. People leave their computers on now-a-days and with the always on connection, using the screen saver to update them with news and information they want is a great idea.

  5. Mark Hendrickson

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:31 am

    #2 - I agree, it would be great if Facebook preserved the original file size of photos…or at least gave us a decent file sharing system.

  6. Amy Wilsch

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:40 am

    elementary school in the mid-90’s? I thought you were quite a bit older than that…

  7. airj1012

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:40 am

    #5 - I also told them of that idea. As being the #1 photo sharing website you think that might be an option.

    I know Facebook did a great job by opening up their platform so developers could design their own applications but I believe that Facebook should continue to make their own and continually to update their own portfolio. I hope they don’t take a back seat approach and just let everyone else “do the work”.

    Hopefully we won’t have to hold our breathe too long and Facebook will launch their own full size imagine option in their photo application.

  8. Mark Hendrickson

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:44 am

    #6 - Amy: The truth had to come out at some point =)

  9. Michael Pinto

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:47 am

    The irony is that my Mac RSS screensaver is pretty much exactly what PointCast was doing back in the day. Those cats were ahead of their time!

  10. FakeMA

    October 18th, 2007 at 12:18 pm

    I have made an RSS reader into screensaver u can find it here
    http://www.download.com/RSS-Re.....04652.html

  11. karl

    October 18th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

    #6 - Funny… That’s the standout point for me as well. You had the internet in elementary school!!!! LOL!!!

  12. Ronald Lewis

    October 18th, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    Chirp, chirp. The “push” of data to the desktop is NOT dead.

  13. Stef

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    I don’t understand the RSS Reader integration into a screensaver. My screensaver is here to save energy when I don’t use my computer. Why would I spend time in front of my screensaver, instead of going to my RSS reader?

  14. Simon

    October 18th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    I don’t get this screensaver stuff… Doesn’t the screensaver come on when YOU’RE NOT USING YOUR COMPUTER?

    Maybe I’m the only person who doesn’t stare at screensavers… I use them to “save” my “screen”.

  15. phenom

    October 18th, 2007 at 3:27 pm

    which generation do u guys belong….never heard of Pointcast…as if it matters..Anyways the application is cool and original in my opinion.

  16. Jason McMinn

    October 18th, 2007 at 3:35 pm

    Pointcast received a $400 million offer from News Corp. I actually built some of the “screens” for their network in a previous life. The whole setup was a gimmick.

  17. Alec

    October 18th, 2007 at 3:40 pm

    I was working with PointCast at the time of their demise. Some of the modular web portal ideas we were building were way ahead of the competition. Unfortunately, the company was crumbling around our ears and most of us bailed weeks before the final collapse.
    A lot of really smart people working there…

  18. Alec

    October 18th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    Oh, one more thing…do we really want to sit and stare at a screensaver when we can simply go to the Facebook entry page to get a summary? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that much time to waste. Give me Sage — Firefox RSS reader — so I can quickly gleen the info I need and move on.
    I’m guessing there’s at least a small market out there, though. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have wasted there time, right? right? hmmmm…..

  19. Bob Warfield

    October 18th, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    Pointcast had an even more fundamental problem: it was ad revenue driven but only displayed ads after whoever was on the computer quit using it and the screensaver came up.

    How can that have been a good idea in retrospect?

    Perhaps this new whizbang will be better. At least when you come back to the PC there might be something interesting enough to get your attention before you log back in.

    I still don’t see how it’s a money maker for the same reason Pointcast wasn’t:

    Most of the time it runs nobody is looking at it by definition.

    Cheers,

    BW

  20. Aaron

    October 18th, 2007 at 8:16 pm

    elementary school? has that already been pointed out?

  21. chris

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:50 pm

    Sounds very very similar to FoxSaver, which turns idle FireFox into a screensaver.

    Except FoxSaver can play any Media RSS content.

  22. Harold Bunker

    October 19th, 2007 at 6:31 am

    Similiar to FrameChannel (www.framechannel.com), but it appears that FrameChannel is bit more mature.

  23. KUTO

    October 19th, 2007 at 8:14 am

    I still don’t see how it’s a money maker for the same reason Pointcast wasn’t:

  24. Ramesh Bhaskar

    October 19th, 2007 at 11:04 am

    Would it being a screensaver defeat the purpose of it displaying your feeds? The whole point of the SS is that it shows up when the computer is inactive. Friends photo’s I can see working, but feeds not so much…

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