Headup

Like many people out there I like to think of myself as a “web-geek” and “early-adopter”.

Ever so often I go to geeky events to soak up the atmosphere and shoot the breeze with my fellow early adopting friends. It was during one of these events that I learned about “headup” and met Tal Keinan – one of its founders. Tal and I chatted a bit and he gave me an invite code for the application’s private beta.

Installing the headup extension on my browser

The thrill of knowing that you are one of the first people to try out a new website/gadget/service makes the words “private beta invite code” irresistible bait for early-adopters like myself. Naturally I couldn’t wait to get back home to redeem the invite I’d just received. I installed headup’s Firefox add-on with tingling fingers and restarted my browser. I was redirected to headup’s post-installation page where I was prompted to visit select web-sites to see how headup enhances the experience they deliver. One of the sites suggested was last.fm.

My headup experience on last.fm

Although I have a last.fm account, I never quite figured out what to do with it. This, to my mind, made it an ideal candidate for my 1st headup experience.

I signed in to my last.fm account and immediately noticed that the (few) artists I had bothered to add to my account were underlined by a dashed orange line:

headup underlines objects it identifies - like bands and artists

Since I happen to know the DJ-duo “Pacotek” personally, I was interested in seeing what discoveries headup would have to offer me about them. I moved my cursor over their underlined name and a little “loader” icon appeared. Personally I love hover interactions so headup scored its first point here:

the headup loader indicates something is about to happen

After half a second headup’s menu popped up above my last.fm profile page and offered me a selection of tabs related to specific types of content:

The addon's interface hovers over the browser

As an artist and designer I tend to be drawn to visual media, so naturally I clicked on the label “Photos”.  The tab opened and let me browse thumbnails of photos semantically related to Pacotek (my initial query subject):

headup

I found a picture I liked and clicked on it. headup then displayed the full-size photo within the application while still hovering above my last.fm page.

headup delivers content within the application without interfering with browsing

It was at this moment that I began to feel the excitement one experiences upon discovering something really cool. It dawned on me that what I was doing was discovering meaningful relevant online content outside the structural constraints I had come to associate with “browsing the Web”. I was following up on my interests and I was completely freed from the constraints posed by web-pages and the links that connect them. The icing on the cake was that although I was viewing content that was highly relevant to me I never had to actively search for it…

headup served me stuff I enjoyed without requiring any action on my part

I think that this googly age has led us to accept “searching the Web” as a necessity.

headup’s greatest innovation is that it questions this premise:

Why search for something if it can be delivered to your doorstep?

headup helped me understand that “searching” is NOT a prerequisite for discovering meaningful and enjoyable content. In fact I suddenly realized that having cool content “find” you is not only far more natural, it’s also much more FUN…

Epilogue

Ever so often in life you are presented with a chance to be part of something grand and exciting. As I sat in front of my computer realizing the implications of what I had just experienced, I knew that this was one of those moments, and I also knew that I wanted to be part of making this a reality for everyone.

Three weeks later I joined the headup team…

That’s all for today!
For headup invitations contact me via @headup on twitter, or directly (miked[at]semantinet[dot]com)
Catch you later…
: )

Mike
Creative Marketing – headup.com

Keeping up with what interests you in a constantly expanding Web poses a serious question

The story of headup is the story of a bunch of people who came together to solve the following question:

“How do you know what you don’t know?”

The paradigm elaborated

The Internet is the greatest repository of information humanity has ever compiled, moreover it’s growing, changing and evolving constantly. As the Internet grows and evolves the following fundamental paradigm emerges:
How do you keep track of the things that are important and relevant to you in an environment that contains a practically infinite amount of constantly evolving information?

The Semantic Web

For the past few years the Internet’s leading thinkers, in view of the paradigm described above, have been predicting the emergence of a new iteration of the web – “The Semantic Web” – A World Wide Web of information linked together not so much by the predefined links we are familiar with today, but by an adaptable and scalable set of semantic relations. A web where information is served to you not according to the links you follow but according to its semantic context to whatever you are viewing.

headup is our attempt to realize this vision.
We hope you enjoy it…

For headup invitations contact me via @headup on twitter, or directly (miked[at]semantinet[dot]com)
: )

Cheers,
Mike
Creative Marketing – headup.com

As an add-on we're always available

Recently we’ve been asked by quite a few users and pro-bloggers:

“Why is headup a browser extension and not an website?”

It’s actually a very good question especially since our current version only works with Firefox therefore limiting us to servicing only the Firefox user community.

A method to the madness

The reason we chose to be an add-on is related to our mission of giving our users a truly semantic web experience that is related to the content they are browsing, but is entirely independent of the mechanism displaying it. Choosing to be a browser extension, or “add-on”, frees us from the restrictions inherent in traditional page based web browsing, and allows us to concentrate on realizing for our users a truly semantic web experience.

Travel without moving – Browsing without leaving the page

In Dune, Frank Herbert’s visionary science fiction novel, Guild Navigators move spaceships through space in a process described as “Travel without moving”. We can’t offer you this experience yet, however thanks to the fact that we are a browser add-on, we can let you browse a wealth of content that interests you, without ever leaving your page of origin. Check out this video to get a better understanding of the headup experience:

SemantiNet Introducing: headup from SemantiNet Ltd on Vimeo.

Well that’s all for today. As always feel free to contact me via @headup on twitter, or directly (miked[at]semantinet[dot]com) for headup invitations.

: )

All the best,

Mike

Creative Marketing – headup.com