Frogans? Is this spam or something?
Got a comment sent to me on a post of my blog… didn’t approve it. Something about a new web media format called “Frogans” (http://www.frogans.com). Anyone seen this stuff? Looks intersting, if a little late to the party. The design for the site isn’t doing the technology any favors, either.
Anyway, I’m too tired and too busy to write more now. I used to wonder why my Dad and Mom were so worn out at night after work… man, was I naive.
Posted on April 18, 2007
Joe Cady Apr 19
Given that Frogans technology hasn’t yet been launched to the public, I’ve so far been pretty selective as to who I contact. This site here is a slight exception because, in my bleary-minded haste, I sent it without considering that it might be posted for everyone to see.
“Anyone seen this stuff?”
- Practically no one has for the moment.
Anyway, I’m trying to keep away from spam-like tactics. The only thing worse than being perceived as a spammer is to actually be one. But ultimately, spam is in the eye of the receiver.
“The design for the site isn‚Äôt doing the technology any favors, either.”
- Design? We figured that a stylizd site might suggest that a certain “look” would be more appropriate to frogans slides than an other. That would be the opposite of what we want to say, so we made the site appear as neutral as possible. We prefer that frogans slides take on a visual identity according to their content rather than from an image associated with the frogans format.
At this point in time, at least until the beta for the Frogans Player is released, we’re more interested in informing individuals rather than communities about Frogans technology, hoping to ignite a little itellectual curiosity here and there. Tempted?
Joe Cady Apr 19
Oops. I forgot to mention -
“Something about a new web media format called ‚ÄúFrogans‚Äù”
- An aspect which is very important to us about Frogans technology is that frogans slides are served over the frogans layer of the Internet, not over the Web, even though they can link to websites (opening a page in your browser, for instance), email, etc. They have their own addressing format (ex. “frogans*myfrogans.subcategory…”). The Frogans Player is standalone, so you don’t have to mess around with browser compatabily, think about whether your browser is open or not, consider the browser window when authoring, and so on.
Lawrence Apr 19
I don’t think the site does a good enough job of explaining just what they are. Are they an Internet-equivalent of a “widget” (such as Yahoo!, DesktopX, and Apple Dashboard widgets)?
Joe Cady Apr 22
- “I don‚Äôt think the site does a good enough job of explaining just what they are.”
You have a point there. So far we’ve put more effort in describing Frogans technology in general, than on the user experience.
- “Are they an Internet-equivalent of a ‚Äúwidget‚Äù ?”
Maybe. It depends on what aspects you think that frogans and widgets share. I tend to place frogans outside of the widget world because, unlike Widgets, Gadgets, etc., frogans slides are accessed exclusively over the Internet.
Any device with an Internet connection and the Frogans Player installed (a quick no-brainer – Mac OSX, Windows, Linux) can open any frogans slide. A widget can only dream of being that accessible.
Another big advantage of this approach is with security. Frogans slides are loaded into active memory (there’s a 2meg limit imposed on slide content by the Frogans Player), and there’s no cache. So nothing potentially malicious gets can be installed on your machine. No cookies either. As far as we can tell, the opportunites for attacking your computer in any way from a frogans slide are zilch.
The word “widget” is becoming the “kleenex” (or “band-aide” or “post-it”) of the desktop, and we natually want to distinguish frogans from that whole can of beans. At the same time, comparisons are inevitable, (as you’ve well demonstrated) so we’re looking into talking more about this on the site.
Joe Cady May 21
As a follow-up on my last comment, I have done something about getting more explanations
Joe Cady May 21
As I was saying, before I hit the return key at the wrong moment, I’ve done something about getting more, and better explanations about Frogans technology online. That “something” is a blog:
http://www.froganeyes.org/
Here I go over things like explaining what the difference is between a frogans that appears on your desktop and the technology that put it there, or why a frogans is way different from a desktop widget, or what that frog is doing at the head of the page.
joe Black Nov 11
This technology seems to have been around since 1999, and all that has been seen since then is a player (that is no longer around on the company website…) that abled you to open a “widget” with a specific address. It now seems that they will bring back this technology by the year 2010…. Looks like some major upgrading is going on….