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KlipBlog / October 2005.

The official Klipfolio weblog.

Marketing Outside the Browser - ie: The Desktop

Oct 09, 2005, by awille

I've just read a blog posting by Ian Karnell at karnellKNOWLEDGE talking about how a decade after Pointcast broke the mold and opened a marketing channel to the desktop, marketers are now starting to take note.

The post goes on to describe a few current initiatives where companies have launched branded 'desktop alert' apps (he calls them rich internet apps - RIA), where the user gets a pretty rich single purpose app, that reside in the user's system tray.

Ian believes the trend will continue, and certainly based on the leads and projects we are currently working on, we echo this trend. So; the problem follows, as he aptly notes,

... that brands need to begin to prepare to wage war for real estate in the user's icon tray and on the user's desktop.

You bet. And it will be a major hurdle once users already have a few of these RIAs installed. Picture it, each app with their own look and feel, each with their own pop-up alerts, each launching on startup vying for attention --- what a mess. And what's worse is that most of these RIAs are over the top in and of themselves - such as having animated little desktop characters that bounce across your screen when new data arrives. Not really a smart move if you're trying to build customer loyalty.

Although this targeted approach to putting little desktop apps does bring with it a certain focus and simplicity that can only benefit users, the larger context is missing. It's like giving a user a browser that can only surf pages from a certain company. It might simplify the user experience, but at the same time, the value is incredibly limited and before long if a browser comes along that allows surfing to other sites of interest, without increasing the usability complexity, then the battle is quickly lost.

So, this is, in a nutshell one of our beliefs also. The single brand, single purpose (SBSP) RIA or desktop alert app will not last too long before the user realizes it:
a) has limited value on its own
b) takes up too much screen real estate and conflicts with other installed alerting applications

You see, although ahead of its time, Pointcast did actually get some things right. It did allow users to personalize their experience. And it did so without cluttering up the system tray, or adding new UI paradigms. But there were also many, many things they did wrong (that's another topic).

Whenever we work with a client who is interested in publishing a Branded Desktop Alert app, one of the first things we do is to talk with them about "extended user value". In addition to the value of their services on the desktop, what else is there demographic interested in? If they want to foster true customer loyalty, then need to give users freedom, not lock them in (I think there is a CSNY song about that ).

Winning users on the desktop will require simplicity and value. And yes, that can be packaged within a brand - just not locked within it.

That's the difference.

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My KlipFolio Configuration

Oct 05, 2005, by peterm

I'm always curious about how people use KlipFolio, and I get a big kick out of seeing all the different ways people lay out and use their Klips. Here's how I use mine.

Peter's KlipFolio Configuration

I basically use 3 groups of Klips: work and hobby Klips that I set alerts for, news and weather Klips that I check often and fun Klips that I check every now and then.

Work Klips (all have "new item" alerts)
- Email (pop3)
- Hotmail
- Serence Forum
- KlipBlog
- KlipFarm
- Feed Viewer ("Serence Mentions" : configured with Feedster, IceRocket and Google News searches)
- Images of the Day (To make sure it doesn't show p*rn?again)

Hobby Klips (all have ?new item? alerts)
- Feed Viewer ("Cars" : configured with Jalopnik and Hollywood Extra)
- FeedViewer ("Gadgets" : configured with Gizmodo, Engadget, Infosync World, Mobile Gazette and Dave's iPaq)

News Klips:
- Slashdot (reconfigured to use their RSS feed, not RDF)
- Neowin
- Google News
- CBC News
- Ottawa Business Journal

Weather Klip
- CustomWeather (Set to Ottawa, Canada)

Fun Klips
- Hill Cam (Parliament Hill in Canada, a few blocks from our office)
- NPS Photos (Every now and then there's a stunning vintage photograph)

You'll notice that all my Klips are in a 2x1 config. Because I rely so much on alerts, I don't need to be able to see items at a glance. All my non-alerting Klips I just check every now and then, when I have a minute or two to spare. So most of the time I can't see KlipFolio, but it's always there when I need it.

Usually I'll just zoom up a Klip, and if there's more than one thing that I'll want to click on, I'll single-click the titlebar to keep the Klip expanded. I love being able to do that.

I'm using the default skin (and hue) because I've been switching skins around so much lately (building skins for Branded version for our customers) and I just happened to stop on the default. Sometimes I use Soft Plastic. Obsidian is nice too, but I like a little more colour, personally (btw, Obsidian is by far our most downloaded 3.0 skin)

I susepct that I'll be changing my layout significantly for Beta D (D, not C, is going to be a big one :) )

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