Recent Activity

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  Fresh News

  I think sliders are the answer (as I've mention in a previous post). A slider to set the maximum age of posts to be shown (with the option to disable this slider). That way people who are only interested in the new news can adjust accordingly.

  I think that these sliders should be fairly near the surface of the app, not as deep as the "change settings and skins" so that you can change the sliders and see the results instantly.
   

  
  
   

  Posted 28 Oct 07 in Particls.com Feedback

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  Ticker doesn't autostart

  I get the same thing every now and then when I dock the sidebar. The os makes room for my sidebar but it doesn't appear. I'm on the last major build on XP sp2 on a thinkpad x60s. I have to disable the sidebar and enable it to fix.

  Posted 28 Oct 07 in Particls.com Feedback

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  Immersive modes, progress graphics and metrics

  On second thoughts, maybe some of these ideas (if embraced fully) would encourage my old bad habits of reading every post.
  
   

  Posted 28 Oct 07 in Particls.com Feedback

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  Folders in Particls?

  APML supports profiles, you could have a profile for each of your blogs. not sure how particls handles profiles at the moment, if at all?

  Posted 28 Oct 07 in Particls.com Feedback

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  Implicit/Explicit and interface

  Firstly, Hello. Thanks for all your work on Particls and APML. I think the work you guys are doing is really important and will shape a lot of future development. So much so in fact, that Particls, Engagd and APML are a significant part of my dissertation I am currently writing about personal information data, the attention economy and ambient intelligence.
  
  But anyway, that's not really why I am here. I imported a huge OPML thinking that I could sort out the stuff I didn't want later. However I had difficulty doing so with the Particls feed adapter. So, I Opened up my APML file and started playing. The ImplicitData didn't seem very relevant, this is possibly because I've not been very good at teaching Particls and partly because Particls had been processing the huge OPML file (belonging to some one else) that I hadn't cut the fluff from. So I decided to start again, I went through all the Implicit data and copied the feeds that I had discovered with Particls and liked into my explicit data. I then deleted all of the Implicit data, cleared my caches and fired up Particls.
  
  Particls worked with the APML that I created (it is not creating a new one and giving mine a .corrupt) It has created an OPML file with your Particls blog feed in, which now appears in the Particls feed-adapter but Particls doesn't appear to be doing anything with my implicit data. It's still there in rate my sources.
  
  I then figured that Particls must need some encouragement to use my explicit data so I copied all my explicit data into the implicit data part of my APML (reformatting it to include my Particls device and a creation time). However, these feeds are not appearing in manage my feeds, all I see is the Pariticls blog.
  
  So my questions are-
  
  

  1. What is the relationship between Particls and Implicit data, and if I have all of my sources set explicitly in my APML what is the need for the OPML that Particls is creating?
  2. How (short of creating an OPML file and importing it via Particls interface) can I get Particls to start showing my feeds which are set explicitly?

  
  And my (possibly naive, depending on the answers to above questions) suggestions are-
  

  • That the Particls interface should show the implicit / explicit nature of APML. Before reading the spec and looking at my APML, I had no idea that they existed. It was then really annoying when I found feeds that I really wanted to read (that I had subscribed to via Particls)  were in my implicit section, where it was possible that Particls would delete them and I wouldn't have any record of these great sources of information. In short I think the Particls interface should have explicit and implicit sections and explicit/implicit actions (ie on right click).
  • The tick boxes in the basic options section that say Auto-detect my interests and Automatically find information for me are not given enough importance in the interface. These two functions fundamentally change the way Particls works. Personally I'd like to be able to put Particls in a filter mode and an exploration/discovery mode. Filter mode would filter my explicit data and only show me articles above a threshold. It would be great if this threshold could be set with a slider that instantly showed me what articles would be filtered out!
  • When I click on an article that particles has found for me (eg, from the side bar) it opens in my browser and is removed from the side bar. If I liked that article there is no direct way of telling Particls what I thought about it. I can tell it I want to watch it with the Firefox plug-in but I can't tell it that the article was irrelevant and I never want to see anything from that author again. So maybe the Firefox plug in could have some more options? Or, the side bar could have a history toggle? With the history toggle (located next to the icons in the side bar) set to "on" I could see recently clicked on posts and what Particls did based on my interaction with them, I could then give Particls more accurate feedback about what i thought about them.

  
  I understand that there is an argument that the Particls interface shouldn't be bloated with ways to customise and that part of Particls brilliance is that it does things automatically, however sometimes it does things wrong. Generally I don't think the interface tells the user enough about how Particls is doing what it does to my profile, and there is no way of correcting what it does wrong. Until the interface is able to do this, I would like some more documentation, or maybe an explanatory screen-cast.
  
  This has been a long post so thank you for making it this far, I imagine that most of what is above is on your to-do list already (or has been written off) and apologies if this has been brought up before but if there is anything you would like me elaborate on let me know, it's all relevant to my dissertation anyway.
  
  A version for Linux would be great.

  Posted 26 Aug 07 in Particls.com Feedback

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  Manually removing feed sources?

  May I also suggest a click-able link next to each feed in the feed adapter to that feed, this is useful for reviewing your media consumption diet and you can't remember which feed is which, or when you import a whopping opml and want to sift trough unknown feeds.

  My feed adapter is quite buggy, "right-click -> delete feed" does not always delete the feed. Sometimes it does but doesn't update the list. I'm running XP sp2 and latest particls. Hopefully new addapter will fix this.

  Is anyone outside faraday media developing input/output adapters?

  Posted 24 Aug 07 in Particls.com Feedback