We've updated the support section of KlipFolio.com with a brand new help system. Check it out.
Rather than update the reference manual style of the previous user guide, we've moved to more of an FAQ structure. Questions are now based around tasks, and these tasks are logically organized into groups. Each answer includes links to related questions and answers, too.
In addition, we've beefed up the search interface to make it easier to find the answers you're looking for.
Got comments? Couldn't find what you were looking for? Let us know.
If you've ever wondered about the future of dashboards and desktops, we've got an article for you to read. And the gang over at Dashboard Insight, a new portal all about dashboards, seems to agree. After a number of conversations around the office about how human decision-makers are the final constraint on successful dashboard deployments, Allan had to write it all down.
We liked the sound of it so much we shared them with Dashboard Insight and they made it their feature article. Give it a quick read and let us know what you think. He even suggests a few rules of thumb that all point towards desktop dashboards over other implementations. The acquisition frenzy in the business intelligence market over the last few months supports some of what he has to say. Is he crazy or is he on to something?
There are about 250 folks here at the Widget Summit, a two day conference for companies that are building, syndicating, tracking, and monetizing Widgets.
I was on the the enterprise widget panel (a new addition to this year's conference) yesterday morning with Jeff Ragusa from Google Apps Solutions.
Jeff spoke about their over-arching web-based platform for search, e-mail, and portals. I focused on our real-world successes; customers who are deriving value from a desktop dashboard within the enterprise. It was great to be able to talk about our customers (Lufthansa, PNC, EMC, and IBM) and their deployment of our product.
Some of the questions we received were: "How do third party data sources help deploy widgets within the enterprise?" While Google said that enterprise is interested in adding third-party data, our experience suggests a different answer. In our experience, when the IT group deploys a dashboard, they are laser focused on getting their internal business data on the employee's desktops, and their data alone. In fact, they want a product they can completely lockdown, manage the deployment, and keep everything within the firewall.
I ended up chatting with quite a few companies afterwards about widgets in the enterprise, and the message was the same: download and try KlipFolio yourselves. It's easy to get your data into the product and, when you want to deploy it, we have a product called KlipFolio Enterprise that can help.
Here are some themes we saw at the conference:
There are companies springing up to support the widget vendors.
Last year there were just the widget vendors, this year there are companies that are springing up to service the widget vendors. Specifically, tracking widgets and managing ads in widgets.
No one seems to be making much money yet.
The business models for widgets (i.e. companies that are in the business of building widgets) are still being worked out. It's early days as developers move from stand-alone widget platforms to integrate with social networks.
Enterprise is still early days.
There was lots of interest in our panel session, but not many companies had started using widgets in the enterprise yet. Yet many of them could see the value of having a dashboard and alerting platform.
Widget providers are starting to go vertical.
The gydget platform was focused just on the entertainment space.
Facebook is making a big impact.
Over half the web-based widget providers talked about their experience creating widgets for FaceBook. Two comapnies that were seeing big update were rockyou.com and slide.com .
The success with FaceBook APIs are being replicated across the social networks
Many folks commented they are seeing (or expect to see) the other social networks open their platform.
Fred
It turns out desktop dashboard dreams do come true. After participating in the first ever Widgets Live show in San Francisco last year (thank you Niall Kennedy , Om Malik), it is now an annual event and Serence is headed back to Shaky Town for Widget Summit on October 15-16, ‘07.
We're so excited, we can barely keep our APIs straight, because we can geek out with all the other desktop widget vendors, share our latest news about KlipFolio dashboard for SugarCRM with the widget press, and hopefully enjoy more fantastic sushi.
This year our own Fred Dixon is part of the widgets in the enterprise panel where we can talk performance management, bi dashboards, and key performance indicators with our peers and some startup called Google . Areas like executive dashboards and employee alerts are increasingly hot topics that we hope to discuss with other industry insiders.
From last year we remember rows of frothing media people blogging their hearts out at the show. If you’re one of them, or you’re just headed to the show for fun, drop Fred a line with our handy contact form. Maybe you can share some gyoza or spider crab afterwards.
Regards,
Brian
phpBBHacks.com has recognized KlipFolio's Forum as their Featured phpBB implementation for the month of September 2007. According to their web site the featured phpBBs are "the standard in which phpBBs should be measured by. The pride of phpBB." We're honoured to receive the recognition, and would like to thank phpBBHacks for the award. We'd also like to thank all of our users who participate in the discussions on the KlipFolio Forum and help to make it a great resource for KlipFolio users.
If you haven't checked out our forum, have a look at it, then register and participate. Whether you have questions about Klip development, feature requests for future versions of KlipFolio, or need help troubleshooting an issue with KlipFolio, its an essential resource for KlipFolio users. The forum is also the first place we announce new versions of KlipFolio, so keep your eyes pealed - you may see an announcement there sooner than you think...
The KlipFolio desktop dashboard and Serence listings on Wikipedia have just been updated and we’d love to hear your feedback. Better yet, maybe you can improve on the dashboard data that’s there. All the appropriate pages we could think of have been updated but here are the two big ones:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klipfolio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serence
If you’ve got a desktop dashboard fact or an informative tidbit that you think should be included, by all means add it to the appropriate listing. Maybe you’ve bumped into an online article on branded desktop applications, executive dashboards, or enterprise widgets that mentions us? Even if it just discusses desktop dashboards in general, the more objective reference material we have the better. Alternatively, if you don’t want to Wiki your day away, just drop us a line with your idea and we’ll add it for you.
Does your KlipFolio dashboard need a daily dose of Wiki?
If you love your Wiki in the morning, check out these three Wiki Klips for your desktop dashboard.
Brian O'Grady
Join us in Philladelphia at the InfoCommerce07 conference later this month as we talk to B2B publishers regarding desktop widgets, BDAs and Rich Internet Apps. Consumers have been quick to adopt desktop widgets such as Google Desktop, Yahoo Widgets and Serence's KlipFolio for tracking weather, stocks, comics and a thousand other uses. Online retailers like Staples weren’t far behind and have proven that B2C firms can transform these miniature applications into increased customer loyality. Fred Dixon will share Serence's experiences on how these applications apply to B2B applications.
The KlipFolio Dashboard for SugarCRM is ready. As per Fred's note on April 23rd, we're big fans of SugarCRM and now we've added what we think is the missing piece of the puzzle - top notch desktop notification and alerting. You can learn more about it and download it for yourself on our new product page .
In short, this new application lets you keep your most important SugarCRM information on your desktop 24/7 without logging in or switching applications. And because it's built using Klips, as your priorities change you can swap different CRM data in and out of your desktop dashboard. We like to think that instead of adjusting your behavior to suit your data, now your data adjusts to match your behavior.
Take a look, give it a try, and let us know what you think - we're slaves to your feedback.
Brian O'Grady
A few days ago AllAccess went live with AllAccess Desktop, a desktop alert application to notify its members of updates to music charts. AllAccess Desktop was built using KlipFolio and the KlipFolio Bunder.
You'll need an account from AllAccess (it's free) to download the application. You'll also find they created a number of videos showing how to setup and configure the application.
We think this is a really cool example of what can be done with KlipFolio. And the best part is that AllAccess did it all for free! Of course, they could do an even better branded version with KlipFolio Branded, but this example shows it is possible to go pretty far with KlipFolio and KlipFolio Bundler.
