Attensa

Attensa for Outlook 1.5 on Performancing - "All Smart and Stuff"

Chris Garrett on Performancing says the new version of Attensa for Outlook 1.5 with the river of news and AttentionStream predictive ranking that automatically prioritizes your Web feeds based on their importance is “all smart and stuff.”

He sums up his first take with “If you are an outlook user like me it is well worth trying out. I wouldn't be without it now.”

You can try the beta free for 60 days. Active contributors to the beta program will get a free copy of the final product.

Attensa and KnowNow on RSS in the Enterprise Podcast

Charlie Wood interviewed Matthew Bookspan, Attensa's Director of Product Management and KnowNow's CTO Ron Rasmussen for his first podcast. It’s solid overview on the state of the enterprise RSS market, how companies are using RSS and the road ahead.

The audio makes everyone sound like they are in a Warner Brother’s cartoon but stick with it.

 You can listen here.

Attensa for Outlook 1.5 Public Beta - RSS reader prioritizes RSS feeds based on what's important to you

At Syndicate in New York we gave a preview of Attensa for Outlook 1.5, the first version of Attensa for Outlook that uses our AttentionStream technology to automatically and intelligently prioritize RSS feeds and articles and bring the subscriptions and articles you find most interesting to the top. We said the public beta would be announced in June. We were off by about two weeks.

We are opening the public beta today and we’d like to invite you to give Attensa for Outlook a try.

Download the beta here.
You can download a getting started with 1.5 guide here
You can see screenshots here.

Attensa’s predictive ranking AttentionStream™ technology continuously observes and analyzes explicit and implicit behavior as you read and process RSS articles. By constantly analyzing AttentionStream™ data, including the time and frequency that feeds are accessed and articles read, deleted and ignored, RSS articles can be displayed in a prioritized list based on the likelihood that they will be of interest to you. Feed priorities are constantly refined as the continuous stream of attention is processed.

Attensa for Outlook 1.5 lets you choose how you want your feeds and articles presented.

Subscriptions can be displayed in a "River of News" view that simulates a single news feed, regardless of how many RSS feeds you subscribe to.

Articles can be read in order of importance based on:

• Priority – This view uses Predictive Ranking to intelligently predict which subscriptions and articles will be most important to you at any given time.
• Favorites – Articles are displayed based on which subscriptions are read most frequently and consistently. In addition to viewing prioritized list based on AttentionStream analysis. You can manually rank feeds by simply dragging and dropping the subscription to the top or bottom of their subscription lists.
• Date - This view displays articles based on the most recently updated newsfeeds.

Of course, you can also read their articles using a standard Outlook view.

If Outlook is the first application you open in the morning and the last one you close at night, you need Attensa for Outlook, the RSS reader designed for business users looking for an easy to use, secure RSS reader for Outlook that helps track and monitor critical business information… automatically.

Participate in the beta - Give and Get

Active contributors to the beta program will get a free copy of the finished product.

Once you experiment with Attensa for Outlook you'll probably have suggestions for features and improvements. We've set up an Attensa for Outlook 1.5 beta forum where you can post bug reports and provide feedback.

Attensa at Supernova in Second Life & Real Life

On Thursday evening  at Supernova, the real world and the virtual world can watch Craig Barnes, Attensa CEO, explain in five minutes why the AttentionStream technology and products we are building matter. It's all part of the Supernova Connected Innovators showcase and gala created in collaboration with TechCrunch.

If you have a Second Life account you can catch streaming video of Craig's pitch in the Supernova Lounge.

You can keep up on the Supernova happenings in the Supernova media center and you can access the Supernova blog, wiki and more at the Supernova Community Connection.

"Making Corporate RSS Dreams a Reality" - Somewhat Frank on the Attensa RSS Server

We met Frank Gruber at Syndicate in New York in May and last week our Director of Product Management, Matthew Bookspan, brought Frank up to date on our RSS server plans. He's posted an overview on Somewhat Frank covering RSS applications, how an appliance approach simplifies installation and how having a central access point for receiving and distributing internal and external feeds uses bandwidth efficiently.

Thank you Frank.

The Growth in RSS - The Fire Hose is Getting Connected

Jupiter Research has a report "RSS Comes of Age: Budgeting, Deploying, and Measuring RSS" by Greg Dowling. Currently 29 percent of large companies ($50 million + in annual revenues) publish content via RSS. That number is projected to jump to 63% by the end of 2006. That's just six months away.

The report's recommendation's include, "In order to maximize their investment in RSS, site operators should leverage emerging tools and technologies specifically tailored to RSS."

If you're one of the companies making the move to RSS, talk to us about lowering the barrier for feed management and deployment while helping users control the flow of the inevitable RSS fire hose. It's what Attensa is all about.

Moonwatcher on the Attensa Enterprise RSS Server

We gave Charlie Wood an overview our Attensa Enterprise RSS server yesterday and he has a great write-up on Moonwatcher.

We're planning a July launch of our server which includes RSS proxy services, a web-based reader, optional integration with Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory, and support for secure feeds.

To simplfiy installation and configuration we'll be offering the server as an appliance. The major advantage of shipping a pre-integrated hardware appliance is the dramatically simplified install and config process. It's built on Linux, Apache, Tomcat, PHP, and an open-source database, and includes all of those components out of the box.

Charlie does a great job on his competitive comparison. In an earlier post he discusses the pros and cons of software versus appliance for installation.

If you want more details on the server let us know.

Charlie - I talked to Matthew Bookspan this morning and he's ready for the podcast.

The State of Enterprise 2.0

Three articles caught my attention this week and together they create a snapshot of the current state of affairs of Enterprise 2.0.

The first is BusinessWeek's CEO's Guide to Enterprise 2.0 written by Rob Hof. It's a terrific overview with examples of how innovative companies are using blogs, wikis, search and RSS to improve customer communications, overcome information overload and streamline collaboration. The article concludes with an observation by Tim O'Reilly that companies who embrace Enterprise 2.0 technologies will outperfrom those who don't.

Next I read Enid Burns' piece on Executives Slow to See Value in Corporate Blogging on ClickZ. In a survey with 150 senior executive from Fortune 1000 companies only 5 percent said they see corporate blogging as a communications medium; 3 percent see it as a brand-building technique; and less than 1 percent see it as a sales or lead-generation tool. Many respondents doubt the credibility of blogs as a communications tool (62 percent); brand-building (74 percent) and a sales or lead generation channel (70 percent). Robbin Goodman, EVP and partner at Makovsky & Company, the firm that released the study, said in what may be the understatment of the week, "There is a learning curve that needs to take place." Robbin also points out "The benefits of blogging for a business can significantly outweigh possible risks."

I also listened to David Berlind's podcast Reality Check: Wikis? Sorry. Never Heard of Them. He turns the table on a technology tradeshow by interviewing the attendees instead of the exhibitors. His conclusion, technology executives who are beginning to explore these new technologies and tools are extremely clear on why they need to embrace the newer technologies but they're just not sure what those technologies are.

Taken together, the articles are a clear indication that companies including Attensa need to do a better job explaining the benefits of adopting our technologies. They also point out that technology executives who embrace Enterprise 2.0 tools early can have a significant competitive advantage.

Attensa is a Supernova Connected Innovator

It's good when your company name begins with the letter A. That puts Attensa at the top of the list of the Supernova Connected Innovators. Attensa joins 11 other companies with "extraordinary potentional to create new markets and shape the connected future."

The companies were selected by Supernova and Mike Arrington of TechCrunch from nearly 100 submissions. Thanks.

Supernova 2006  is June 21 -23. In San Francisco.

Central Desktop and Attensa for Outlook

As Web 2.0 applications evolve and become more relevant to business, we believe that easy to implement and easy to use collaboration applications are key to a new level of team productivity.

We are partnering with Central Desktop, a web-based collaboration and project management tool for business teams.

Central Desktop provides a secure online project management space where teams can share files, track projects, converse and automatically keep up to date on their progress through a project specific RSS feed.

Attensa  for Outlook makes reading and interacting with Central Desktop Workspace feeds easy. Updates can be delivered to an Outlook folder dedicated to the project.