YouBundle

RSS Feeds Everywhere

Today is a very special Saturday, because we annouce the launching of our RSS feeds for almost anything you can imagine.

We have feeds for you to follow the Latest Bundles,  The most recently updated and the Top Bundles as well.

We have feeds so you can follow any of our 24 individual catagories

And we have feeds of our users Bundling creations.   So you can always keep updated when they publish something new.   Just goto any users profile page to grab their feed.      You will find the Feed Icon everywhere on the site.    Start clicking around and add some feeds.

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Known Issues and Upcoming Features

First off we want to thank all of our early adopters and users for creating a small yet active community at YouBundle.    Without You! none of this could be possible.    The bug reports you are sending in is invaluable for helping up to create a vibrant community.

This is a list of some of the known issues with the service that we are working on fixing, just so that you know we are working on it.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Certain widgets do not display.    This is happens on a very small amount of widgets and we are working on resolving it as we speak.   If you install a widget and it does not show, please send us the url of the Bundle and it will help us to root out the problems FIXED.   If this happens again please notify us ASAP.
• Widgets have funny formatting on some Blogs.    On certain wordpress blogs, the widget is taking the CSS of the Blog instead of the widget.    This does not hamper the functionality, but leads to slightly interesting displays.
• Internet Explorer Bundling issues.      Using certain versions of Internet Explorer to actually create a Bundle can lead to some stalling when clearing links after they have been.    The workaround for this is to click the ‘get info’ button again and it will clear and remove.   Or you could just download FireFox.
• Thumbnail screenshots not appearing right away.      Don’t worry if you create a Bundle and there are no thumbnails for the webpages right away.   Check back and they will appear shortly

There are a few other minor ones, but as always, keep sending in those bug reports to bugs at youbundle dot com

UPCOMING FEATURES

Now the good news, we have a few really cool features that we are working on to release very shortly which should improve your Bundling experience.

• RSS Feeds!   Yes There will be an RSS feed on the home page, each category page and possibly for each Bundle and User to keep track of their updates DONE!   RSS Feeds are Active for home page, catagories and users Bundles.   Read about it Here.  In the future we will have individual RSS for Bundle action.   Hold on!
• XML output.   We already have oEmbed for our Widget output, but the XML data pipe will be a full firehose of all the data contained in a Bundle,  this will include thumbs, links, stats and descriptions.   This will really take Bundling to a new level as developers will be able to grab the raw meta data and create wicked mashups of the Bundles.
• Improvement in our recommendation system and Display of Related Bundles.   To create more a web that lets you browse through similar topics.
• There will be a few others such as public and group editing/viewing of Bundles, but this is a little further off in the future so stay tuned.   If you want it faster and you are a LAMP master, then drop us a line.

We can see that the evolution of Bundling is bringing us to a place where the Links become data.   Soon people will be making Bundles of Bundles and out of the Bundle data-verse we will be able to form UBER-Bundles from the meta-USER based on the collected information.     I hate to use the term ’semantic web;’  as it has been so buzzed out,  but the foundations are being laid as we speak.

We will leave you with a Bundle widget on Heisenbergs uncertainty Principle.   Why?    Well because we all need to remember that the mere act of observing an occurrence will change the outcome.

-Bundle On

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Intra-Linking Bundles for Sub-Niche Explorations

Wow - What a wordy Title - But it is what we will discuss today

Since our Launch, many people have come to us with the issue that they had so much information on a subject that if they tried to put all the links into one Bundle then it just becomes a big confused mess and they wanted to know if there was a way to create sub-bundles of links in order to better sort their information.

To answer this need, we have come up with the following workaround-

Lets say that you are into Sewing and have 100 links you want to share -  and 10 of those links are on selecting Yarn and 10 on Needles and 10 cool patterns.    Well  instead of putting these all into one big sewing Bundle, you 1st create individual Bundles on these subjects.   So just a Bundle on Selecting Yarn.   Then after you have made all your sub-niche Bundles - you then make an UBER sewing Bundle.

Maybe within this Bundle you put in a few key links.   However the meat of the Bundle will be made up of Links to YOUR Other Bundles.    All you have to do is input the URL of the Bundle and we will grab the Thumbnail automatically and put it into its own category.   Its that easy.

See the embedded Obama Bundle below.   If you scroll down you will see that in addition to a few key links there are also links to Niche Bundles detailing Obamas Policies on Heath Care and the Iraq War.

Enjoy.

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Live in the Water

Thats right we are %100 live.    Most things are mostly working,  there are still some overlay bugs with bundling in IE,  but in FF, Chrome and Safari it works out of the box.   We are also doing some slight adjustments to our widget to reduce the size and make it happy with bullet points and are going to release soon an XML feed of our bundle data to allow developers to mash up as they please.

Overall our launch went well, with an influx of traffic,  and steady returning base.    This is how we wanted it so we can debug and scale.   Next up is grassroots community outreach.   For this we plan to reach out to various members of niche internet communities and encourage them to use our toolset and widget in order to share information with their bases.

Already we have found a niche among a few teachers who are using our widget to share information with their classes.

I will leave you with our featured Bundle of the Day which is a collage of pictures by pop artist Shepard Fairy, the same guy who did the Andre the Giant OBEY artwork and the Obama HOPE picture

Enjoy and keep on bundling

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Ready To Launch - There and Back again.

It has been a long and perilous road to get to this junction.

The original spark came when discussing with a friend the merits of Delicious social bookmarking service.  As power users of Delicious, we were generally pleased with the service -  particular the part that caught our eye was what happened when you searched on Delicious.   We found that search results among Delicious bookmarks would generally outperform Google whenever that topic was within a niche that was popular among delicious users  (macs, linux, video games, time wasters,  best of lists)

We took that basic idea and expanded as the search results was not the core focus of Delicious and they were also position to really the hi-tech crowd only.    (only text - not much exploration)

The first thought we had was what would happen is we took this basic model and reached out to the common internet user.   What would happen if we provided a multimedia rich site where browsers could not only grab their favorite links on the internet, but to arrange them into relevant content bundles.

The idea further expanded as we looked at the general search experience of the common internet user.

The idea was that currently searching is in its infancy.   Google has become a verb and does a fine job of first line organization of information.   However, how smart a computer may be it is still a computer.

We asked the question, what would happen if for every single search query,  there was a human behind the machine, looking at the search results and organizing them to display the best of the best.

We then did a little research and saw that this had already been tried on paid method by Mahalo and Cha-Cha who in different ways were paying professional editors to search the Net and bring the users back objective search results on their topic of query.

Then we looked at the infancy of Wikia - which seems to be a great idea in itself, however is again moving towards the objective model that must be bred through consensus.

Studying further, we found all of their models slightly flawed (for our purposes) for the following reasons.

PROBLEM #1

• Relying on Paid editors does not scale
  • The internet and information is constantly evolving,  to have to pay someone $$ to create a search result is fine in itself, however when that search result changes, you will have to pay them again and then again.
  • There is too much information on the net to rely on paid models.  Even if we had 20 million in Venture Capital to hire an army of Bundle Bots,  by the time we finished with that money, many of the results would be outdated in themselves.

YouBundles Solution:

• Everyperson is an expert on something.    We decided to provide a toolkit for internet users at large to go and be able to create their own bundles
  • We are operating on the 90/9/1 principle.   Meaning that
    • %90 of our site visitors will just search and browse.
    • %9 will contribute.   (ie.. comment, rate or tinker)
    • %1 will actively create Bundles.
  • This %1 is dynamic and ever changing meaning that we have set up a self-sustainable and self-perpetuating system is which our user base will scale with itself and constantly create fresh content to feed its own consumption.

PROBLEM #2

• Relying on Paid editors or editorial consensus brings a conservative and ‘objective’ view to a subject.
  • This being ok in itself, however Google already tries to provide the conservative and objective view.
  • We know that all people are different and have different opinions/   We wanted people to express their personal view on a subject.
  • By doing this, we are not trying to compete with the Objective overlord of Google, but rather being a place where people can explore and share their niche passions.

YouBundles Solution

• By allowing people at large to create bundles,  we are going to get 10 different views on the same subject by 10 different people.    This is Great as for every opinion, there will be others that share this same opinion and find the information useful.
• We then provide a toolset for the community at large to rate these bundles.   Meaning that the userbase at large determines what they prefer and this determines what gets the most exposure.

And Then…

So studying all of these different models we found a great unanswered need on the internet.   The need to give humans a chance to create their own search results.   To do this effectively is a trick shot as evidenced by the various other players in the market.

However when correctly implemented it will call upon the more basic and primal of human instincts.   That is the desire to share useful information with others. Please take a moment to watch this 1 minute video below as it quickly sums up the reach of our vision.

We hope that you share in this vision and thank you all for your continued and future support.

-Neyma

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Which Startups will Beat the Economic Depression?

These days we cannot help but to hear about the current US and Worldwide Economic woes.    And for those in the industry this has trickled down to warning winds, fears, newsletters and blog posts on how this crises is going to effect the innovation and movement of the Web 2.0 Tech Startup Industry.

While the sky may not just yet be falling,  we believe that what is in store is actually going to be a good thing for the health of the industry as a whole.   (And consequently YouBundle)

But before we get into who will survive and why - lets first examine historical data to see what are recurring factors in success and which factors seem to be important on the surface, but at the end of the day do not define the difference between winning and losing

2 Factors to a successful startup

• Your Team is Pyramid shaped, self motivated and happy with their roles
  • Pyramid Shaped means that while there may be much discussion, advisers and consensus, in the end One Guy (or Gal)  is the boss.   This is most often the same person with the grand vision, drive and idea.   One of the Primary reasons that effective startups can run circles around existing corporations is that vison is not snuffed by bureaucracy.   All it takes for a successful product is one bull-headed person to believe in it and do it.
• Your Team (CEO in Particular)  is focused on winning - not just ‘giving it a try and collecting a salary.’
  • I think that Peter Thiel simplified this to its root value when he said that the best objective indicator of startup success was low CEO pay.
  • We can dissect this statement even further to the mentality behind it which is that Founders of start ups need to be in it to win - not just to exist
  • The issue with technology bubbles like the ones we have just passed though is that people are making money - so you have Mr.  Senior Level Management from MSYazoogOL  who sees that somebody jsut sold their virtual friendship bracelet startup for 60 million and he wants a piece of the action.   So he goes to his buddy from college who is a VC up on Sand Hill and they decide to ‘Try to see if they can‘ make it too by starting a virtual friendship anklet startup, but with a facebook app included.    So the get 2 million in funding -  Mr.  Senior Level Ligament gets a raise and a nice monthly salary, office in Union Square and the burn begins.
  • The fact is that they are taking this money to ’support or improve their current lifestyle’ and not to crunch to the limits of innovation.
  • A great way to weed those that are going to succeed and those that are going to fail is the future successes will work on and develop the project (to a certain extent at least)  without a cent of funding.   they will burn the midnight oil, max their credit cards and do handstands to get their idea off the ground.    Sure funding may come - but they would fire on their idea regardless of funding or not.    There are different ways this can show itself and not on the surface but they all point to the same thing
  • The Founder and Staff believe in the success of the idea so much that they don’t need anybody Else’s approval to throw their lifeblood into the project.   They know they have a good thing going.
    
• Other things, such as idea, market timing and such are very important,  but without the correct mentality on the team at hand, then your startup just becomes another statistic.

All this meaning that this coming downturn,  while it will weed out those who do not qualify, it will also give those with the true fire in their bellies to have a place in the arena to take the net by storm.

That is what we are doing with YouBundle and we hope that you will enjoy the ride!

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Presidential Politics, Frequent Flyers and Wordpress Themes

Thats right its time to talk about some of the best bundles of the Week here at YouBundle.   With pertinent Presidential race underway,  people are always searching for sources for un-biased (and sometimes biased)  news on the candidates and election.   one of our new users Lanshark has compiled a bundle of about 11 links that direct to various sources that you can read and follow the election.    This is a very balanced Bundle because it is has some mainstream news sources and then some on the fringes supporting either candidate.   It has the people Twitter election commenting feed and some intellectual and thoughtful editorials and stats.   All around a great daily starting point for reading about the 2008 race.

Speaking of moving fast,  one of our more creative users from UAE who goes by the name of ttk55 came across with a compact, yet fantastic bundle detailing numerous resources at the disposal of frequent fliers.  From seat pickers to mileage rewards this frequent Flyer Resources Bundle is helping people from coast to coast.

Lastly we had a new entry yesterday from loverfu of the Netherlands.   She has assembled about 8 links into a bundle detailing the best wordpress magazine themes out there.   I personally found this very useful because sometime back I spent days scrambling across the net trying to find the best Wordpress Magazine theme for an unrelated blog and she has already done the work for us.

Well those are the bundles of the day.   Keep checking back for More and keep those bug reports coming in.

If you cant see these bundles, goto out landing page and request a Beta invite.

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1st YouBundle Video Introduction

We are unveiling today the 1st in a series of videos to learn more about YouBundle. This first video discusses some of the basic feature sets and how to use YouBundle. Future videos will include advanced bundling tutorials and a video that teaches you “why” we should all bundle. Enjoy. This can also be seen on-site for those with invites at our VLOG.

YouBundle.com Introdution from YouBundle.com

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i-stage companies bundle.

Being one of the fortunate 15 chosen to present at i-stage,  we have made a bundle to showcase the companies that will be exhibiting.    If you are logged in then you can already see the widget below.   If you are not logged in then grab an invite and view it on its main page

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We are getting called to the SHOW!

Very pleased to announce publicly today that YouBundle has been selected to participate with 14 other fantastic companies in the i-stage Pre-CES conference in Las Vegas on October 20th. We will be showcasing our products and competing for a 50k prize and a turnkey booth at CES to showcase our products.

This is the text of the release. More to come soon.

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)® today announced the top finalists in the new i-stage competition, a technology event featuring the most innovative new consumer technology products that will soon come to market. The 15 finalists will unveil their products before a live audience on Monday, October 20, at CEA’s 2008 Industry Forum, scheduled October 19-22, 2008, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas, NV.

The winner of the i-stage competition will receive $50,000 to develop its product line, as well as free turnkey exhibit space at the upcoming 2009 International CES®, the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow, to be held in Las Vegas January 8-11.

“CEA’s i-stage competition serves as a phenomenal opportunity to recognize the new innovations that will fuel the growth of our industry,” said Karen Chupka, senior vice president, events and conferences, CEA. “These top finalists are taking technology trends to the next level and will no doubt shape the future of how consumers work and play.”

The i-stage finalists are:

* Amulet Devices, The Amulet Remote
* Avaak, Vue ™ personal video network
* Boxee media center
* Frontline Inc., Fitness Interactive Technology (FIT)
* GenAudio Inc., AstoundSound
* Instinctiv Shuffle
* IPEVO digital photo frame
* JFDI Engineering Ltd., GridSearch
* Lightglove, LtWv
* Next2Friends, People in Motion ™
* Occipital LLC
* Pongr Inc.
* PDT Ltd, Novo, Minora 3D Webcam
* Taggle
* YouBundle

The i-stage finalists will have their products reviewed and judged on Monday, October 20, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Vegas, by a panel of technology experts including Kevin Kelly, Wired Magazine; Ryan Block, formerly of Engadget and Jeff Pulver. Molly Wood, executive editor of CNET will serve as Master of Ceremonies for the event.

Registration for i-stage and CEA’s Industry Forum is currently open. For more information on the events, visit www.CE.org/i-stage .

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