Feeds get better

We’ve just pushed out a few changes in our RSS feed generation that should make them work a bit better. There were a couple of cases causing RSS validation issues which we’ve sorted out. Please let us know at feedback@scouta.com if you are still having any issues with feeds.

Just as a reminder, here’s where you can find RSS from Scouta:

• Rated favourites per user at http://scouta.com/username/items. Insert any username you like, including your own. So, for example, my favourites list as RSS is http://scouta.com/members/gra/items
• Recommendations provided by Scouta at http://scouta.com/username/recommendations. Another example: see my personal recommendations feed at http://scouta.com/members/gra/recommendations
• The favourites in any group at http://scouta.com/groups/groupname/items. So, to get the faves in the Science group, try http://scouta.com/groups/Science/items. Setting up feeds for you favourite groups keeps you up to date.
• You can find the current top ten recommended items at http://scouta.com/top_10. We’re not really into driving everything from the top ten, but, well, maybe you like it?

You can, of course, take these feeds and stick them into desktop or web RSS reader applications or iTunes to give you a unique personal view of Scouta.

So, please have a play. And there’s more coming to feeds soon, including full Media RSS where we have the metadata available.

[Update: we just pushed out another little change to make RSS links work a little better.]

Scouta and TubeTV

We’ve been using an Apple TV for a few weeks with Scouta, and when we release the Scouta iTunes agent it’ll become even more useful.

One thing we discovered was a useful application called TubeTV.

TubeTV is a new freeware program for Mac OS X Tiger and above which enables you to search for and save Google Video and YouTube videos in a format suitable for playback on your Apple TV or video capable iPod.

The latest version also works with vimeo.com, ebaumsworld.com, myspace.com, and revver.com, and we guess more sites will be added.

This makes it a great companion application for people using Scouta and an Apple TV or iPod video. If you receive a few recommendations from any of the sites, you can always use TubeTV to convert for consumption while away from your computer.

I find it handy, because some video - especially long form - I prefer to watch on my television.

Improving Your Recommendations

As I’ve mentioned, Scouta’s main goal is to provide you with great recommendations that match your taste and interests. But, with an aim of making Scouta simple to use, we hid the workings under the hood.

So, I thought I’d put together a simple description of how you can improve the recommendations Scouta provides you.

Add Favorites

The best way to improve the recommendations is to add Favorites from the Internet. Be really specific and link directly to the actual media file: like a .mp3, .mov, .avi, YouTube pages, Google Video page, MySpace Video pages, etc. That way the results are really refined.

Rate

A quick way to improve you ratings, but is a little less specific to you, is to rate items that already exist in Scouta, including those in your Recommendations list. This gives Scouta an insight into what you like and don’t like.

Join or Create Groups

If you’ve joined or created a group, then not only will you find some great Favorites, but Scouta will also be able to take these into consideration.

Add Title, Description, and Tags

Over time Scouta builds up an understanding of your tastes and interests based on keywords that are included in all the details associated with a Favorite. So it’s important to add as much detail to anything you add or rate.

That’s it. Simple isn’t it.

We also aim to make it even simpler, and soon will release the Mac version of our iTunes agent. That way you’ll only need to listen to or watch media in iTunes, on your iPod, or with an Apple TV.

Don…

We’ve pushed another new release up onto the site.  Two big changes…

1. A bunch of recommender tuning.  The recommender generates your recommendations on your MyScouta page. As the Scouta population grows, we have more recommendation technologies to apply, so in the Don release we’ve turned on some more.  You’ll probably feel a difference in your recommendations.  Let us know what you think.

2. The front page is a bit more friendly for visitors — there’s more to go and do straight away.

So.. pop back for a look if you haven’t been by for a couple of days.

Tip: Scouta faves and recommendation on your iPod

So, if you’ve been playing with Scouta a bit and have some recommendation generated for you, it is really, really easy to take those recommendations and get some of them onto your iPod. This means you can end up with an always-ready feed of new podcasts to watch and listen to on your iPod from your Scouta recommendations.

Not all generated recommendations are compatible with iTunes and the iPod playing formats, but happily iTunes figures that out in a nice friendly way so we don’t have to bother about it.

Here’s how:

1. Firstly, you’ll need to be a Scouta member if you want to get your own recommendations. Join up at http://scouta.com/members/join if you haven’t already.
2. On your MyScouta page, there are two lists — one called favorites and the other called recommended. See under the headings, there’s a subscribe in itunes link. Clicking on those links will start your iTunes and go to the podcast section, where it will add these links as RSS feeds. (If you haven’t joined yet and want to see a MyScouta page, have a look at mine)
3. iTunes will read the feed and start downloading the files it can use with iTunes or the iPod.

Okay, you now have one or two new RSS feeds coming into yout iTunes. What next? Make sure your iPod is downloading the podcasts and videos for these feeds - when you sync your iPod, look on the Podcasts tab to make sure that you are downloading the relevant feeds. They will be called something like Scouta: recommendations for username and Scouta: username’s items. They’ll be named the same on your iPod too.

The recommendations… feed is your recommendations generated by scouta, whereas the items… list is the set of faves you’ve added to scouta yourself or given good ratings to.
I use this feature a lot to serve up fresh podcasts for my commute. Each day is a surprise, but the power of the recommendation system is that I’m almost always served up something interesting. Try it. But be warned. Once you set this going, you get pretty quickly frustrated having to go back to searching for podcasts by hand.

And for bonus points, you can do the same with groups as well — so get your friends together, make a group, and you can all listen/watch the same stuff together as you all add stuff to the group together. This works beautifully for a community working together on something.. This is a great way to all be on the same page by sharing a set of audio and video favourites.

This is Clarice, ladies and gentlemen

Here in the Scouta development centre (a large roughly spherical campus that we share with about six billion others) we name major releases after people. Our first production release was Ariel, and that was followed by Bernice which was the release we went public with.

A couple of days ago we rolled out Clarice and I want to talk a little about some highlights:

• Comments: We’ve added threaded comments to both Faves and Groups, so one and all can discuss group issues or particular media Faves. There are large helpings of ajaxian goodness that makes it all work smoothly and quickly (thanks Simon) which means you can watch video or listen audio on the site while joining in the conversation at the same time. For example, take a look at London to Brighton time lapse, set the video going and browse the conversation near the bottom of the page.
• Scouta HQ: Because we now have comments running, we’ve made a special group called Scouta HQ which is a good place for you to come and chat to the Scouta team about the what and how and where and why of Scouta. Drop in there and start a conversation. We’d love to know what you are thinking.
• Invite friends: From your MyScouta page, you can invite friends by email to come and join Scouta, and when we email them we tell them how to find you. Or otherwise you can just tell them to get on over to scouta.com/members/join and fill in the quick form there.

Those are the big ticket items. We’ve also made lots of little changes that just make it better. Enjoy.

Our next big release is called Don, due in a couple of weeks. I’m not going to announce features here just yet, but just let me say that after Don, Scouta may well feel quite different.

Update: Simon blogs about the comments implementation: Sometimes, you _need_ AJAX.

How-To Make The Most Of Scouta

Scouta’s main aim is to provide highly relevant recommendations for each member. We think of it as enhanced word-of-mouth, like a best friend that knows exactly what you like.

But how do new members get the most of Scouta?

We thought we’d whack together a brief how-to that focused on making the most of it.

When you join Scouta you are provided with your own “My Scouta” page. This is where you see all your own information, including your member name, bio, profile, and importantly any Favorites you bookmark, or your personal Recommendations.

But these are usually empty when you start. So what should you do?

Favorites

Favorites are the bookmarks of online audio and video that you love. To get the best out of Scouta you should only add the ones that you are passionate about. Scouta gives a lot of weight to things you bookmark, because we figure you must really enjoy them to make the effort.

It’s also important to link directly to the source of the audio or video. So that means the actual MP3 file, AVI file, YouTube page, Google Video page….you get the idea.

So far, Scouta will also automatically add an embedded player for a range of file types: any MP3, and video from YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Veoh, Metacafe, Revver, iFilm, Grouper, Guba, Jumpcut, MSN Soapbox, Liveleak, Brightcove, and Superdeluxe. More are coming.

But what if you can’t immediately think of anything worth-while bookmarking. You can still browse Tags or Groups to see what other members are paying attention to. When you find bookmarks you like, you can rate them as “Good,” and they’ll be added to your own Favorites.

Recommendations

Recommendations only happen when Scouta begins to learn about your interests and tastes. It’s also like any good friend, the more your tell them, the better they are at making great suggestions. So Scouta will only provide recommendations as your either add bookmarks, or you rate other people’s favorites. The more you do, the better it will get.

It’s also going to get much smarter as we tweak the system.

Bottom line: add bookmarks, and rate things you enjoy or hate.

Groups

When we first built groups, and deployed it with our friends testing the beta, I was amazed at how useful they were. I always thought they’d be great, but when I started to use them myself, the penny dropped.

You can setup a group on a topic, like Battlestar Galactica, Entrepreneurs, or Music Videos.

You can also set up a Group for a bunch of friends or family, and if you like make it completely private, so only people you invite can share the videos.

So there is a brief bunch of tips to help you get started using Scouta. There is much more to it, but we’ll leave a few of the other features for a future article.

Geek Business Myths

Here is a fantastic myth list by Ron Garret. He runs through a few myths that any geek entrepreneur should understand when starting a company.

This blog post is more a bookmark for me to ensure I re-read the myth list a few times.

Popcorn

My daughter loves popcorn. She had her first try a few months back when I took her to see the Pixar movie “Cars.” Since then, with every visit to the cinema (usually with her grandmother), she’ll bring back half a bucket and play with it for hours in her toy kitchen.

I love this analogy, from Start-up CEO.

Popping popcorn the old fashion way consisted of dumping the kernels in the pot, turning on the stove and waiting, waiting some more and waiting a little bit more. Just when you waited so long that you felt like it was time to just do without popcorn, you hear a pop, and then another, and another and another, until the entire kitchen comes alive with popping sounds.

I think it is the perfect analogy for a start-up. You put in so much time into getting the business ready, and aside from a few very lucky companies, results don’t happen soon or fast afterwards. Rather you wait, and you keep chugging along, until you cant wait any longer, and all of a sudden one good thing happens, followed by another, which leads to another, and before you know it things have picked up.

Here at Web2Thing, we’re loading the kernals into the pot.

Tips For Startups

A few months ago there was a great deal of discussion on if it is the right climate to start a new company (especially in the web 2.0 space in Silicon Valley).

Without delving into the arguments for and against, I stumbled across two blog posts in the last 10 minutes that suggest now is a great time, if only because the amount of resources available to an entrepreneur are so vast.

Ben Barren points to an article by Don Dodge discussing Kleiner Perkins’ 7 rules for software start-ups. Moments earlier I was reading a tidy list of 5 Steps to Building Better Websites.

There are surely arguments that’d complain of information overload, but when I fly out tomorrow I’ll also be armed with a bunch of podcasts that’ll provide another range of tips, tricks, advice and case studies.

There hasn’t been a better time to start a business, if only because of the ease by which I can access everyone else’s knowledge.