If you need proof that the stream makes complex services more accessible, take a look at Glide Engage. Launched last week, Glide Engage is a stream front-end for the Glide, a Web OS which offers a suite of integrated Web Apps including docs, spreadsheets, photo and music uploading and sharing, calendar, email, Website creation and collaboration tools. Glide can be overwhelming. There is a lot there. But it has attracted its own loyal following of about one million registered users.
With Glide Engage, the various features of the Glide OS become available on an as-needed basis and gives a better entry point for the service. At first glance, Glide Engage is a micro-messaging service on steroids. You can follow (”engage” with) other people in Glide, add comments to your stream, share links and files, create discussion groups and bring different media and people into online meeting spaces. In the left-hand column you can also set up news alerts and see the latest articles being shared on Glide about those topics.
What makes Glide particularly interesting is that it is also a Twitter client. You can import your Twitter stream and read it within Engage like you can with other Web-based Twitter apps. You can Tweet out messages, but also add links to photos, documents, playable music files and videos which bring people back into Glide. Imagine if Seesmic or Tweetdeck hosted their own photos, videos, and other shared files, and had a Web productivity and communication suite as well.
The Twitter functionality is very limited at this point. You can reply to a message or retweet it, and find some information about the person whose Twitter message you are looking at. And when you send a Tweet, you get redirected to Twitter. All of this is a work in progress and will improve over time. To the extent that Glide Engage can extend its OS capabilities to Twitter, the more interesting it will become. Soon, you should be able to create Twitter groups and send out links to Glide’s collaboration spaces, which let multiple people look at photos, videos, documents, and videos in an online meeting environment.
Glide also allows you to assign rights to each file you share, so a document or photo can be shared in view-only mode or you can give others editing privileges. These privileges can be changed on a message-by-message basis. The overall user interface could still use some simplification and isn’t as zippy as other stream reader apps (and I am not sure why the logo looks like a flaming IE logo crashing into the water), but Glide Engage also has some novel features worth exploring.
Glide is built on a sophisticated syncing engine, which means that it can share all of these files on mobile phones as well. It will release an Android app for Glide Engage next week on August 18, followed by BlackBerry, and Windows. The company will do an iPhone app at some point, but since this syncing capability competes with Apple’s MobileMe, it wants to establish Glide Engage on other mobile platforms first.
1,000,000 users!?!? Not according to their alexa / compete scores…
1,000,000 *registered* users
If Glide offers a way to integrate all of their services well with both my Twitter and my Facebook, then I would definitely check them out. Other than that, not sure if I need yet ANOTHER social network to deal with…
I just tested engage and you can post to facebook as well as twitter.
LOL… I am speechless
A site with 30.000 visits per month ranks around 50.000 in Alexa. You would expect to get at least one visit per month for each registered user, wouldn’t you? Well, glideos.com ranks 200.000 in Alexa so it is definitely getting much less than 30.000 visits per month. In other words, a million users is bullpoop.
Glide has over 40 web portals including white label services for Time Warner. Since you are so smart, why don’t you do the math…
Hi,
Glide’s alread a cool product and Engage is a great new feature! Can’t wait to see how far they take it!
@adcause — As far as alexa — it seems the Glide OS uses different URLs for their applications vs. information pages — alexa ain’t perfect.
This Glide product is interesting and with new webstream space application Google watch out.
(Alexa not handle https well either.)
>The company will do an iPhone app at some point, but since this syncing capability competes with Apple’s MobileMe, it wants to establish Glide Engage on other mobile platforms first.
awesome Apple, thanks for turning the iPhone from the platform mobile app developers wanted to work on, to one they’re afraid to waste time on.
Glide used to support the iPhone before anyone. Now it seems as if it is a low priority for them probably because of Apple’s recent miscues.
Usnig the term “Web OS” when “WebOS” is a product name might cause some confusion. At least it did for me. I was waiting for the reference to Palm WebOS to come up until I realized that this has nothing to do with WebOS.
finally a usefull app. we use twitter in the commodity pit but this is way more effective to get info quickly to the traders.
I really like it. I have to get used to the new ui but i like that you can have private discussion groups. i am so tiered of the twitter hype…
Just checked it out. Clunky interface. Very slow. and 90s graphics. Not a lot to offer…
It needs facebook and twitter connect.. I am not filling out another form that does’t use it…
This is a goofy story. The Glide OS (operating system) will be released on Android (an operating system), then on Blackberry (which runs what? Symbian?), and then on Windows (Windows or Windows Mobile? Doesn’t matter, both are Operating Systems.)
Why does an operating system require another operating system to run? Maybe because it is an application!
agreed. I guess it is just popular to call it an Web OS even though it needs another OS in order to work or at least a browser program on the OS to run the Web OS
It’s more than that, people! It needs an OS AND an application (browser) to run.
Everything is part of a stack. Those operating systems that you mention — Android, Windows, Symbian — themselves run on top of a kernal. The difference between Glide (as I understand it) and a traditional application is that other software is meant to run on top of it.
Anywho, if you think of these components as a stack then it makes more sense that Glide runs on top of other OS’s, and yet might be considered an OS itself.
Just checked it out. There is lots in there. It’s very cool how all the applications are linked together and to all the collaboration apps. Also cool how you can get to the Glide OS from Engage by clicking on Glide OS in the top menu.
have to compare this with EyeOS and see what the differences are.