During my time here at Headup I’ve come to realize one of the things that characterizes our progress as a startup company, is that it isn’t linear.
In other words, similar spans of time don’t necessarily manifest comparable progress.
Whereas for certain periods the work we invest is manifested in minor evolutions, other times our toil manifests itself as a major revolution.
Today marks the fruition of such a period, & what a revolution it is…
Headup – The News
I’m happy to announce the release of Headup v 1.10 which marks the launch of our official Beta & introduces the following improvements & features:
- Headup Snippet – The new slim Headup widget.
- Headup Topic Pages – Topic Pages you can customize to display your content & match your design.
- Analytics – Now you can follow exactly how your widget is performing & what are the most popular topics on your site.
Please note this is a Beta, which means we’re still tweaking and testing these features. We’d love for you to try them out, and would appreciate any, and every feedback you have for us. If you run across something you feel is broken or silly, please let us know, so we can fix it.
Thanks!
Headup Snippet – A New Widget is Born
The new Headup “Snippet” is a lightweight widget that displays a short summary & related articles from your site for the topics it identifies in your content. It’s the default widget on this blog & it looks like this:
Headup Snippets - Introducing the Diet Widget
To activate Snippet widgets instead of your default Tabbed widget enter your dashboard & select “Snippet” from “Widget Mode” options in the new “General Settings” box:
Want Snippets? Set your Widget Mode to "Snippet"
Snippet widgets are linked to Headup Topic Pages via the “View Topic” button
Headup Topic Pages – All the Freshest Content about your Topics in 1 place
Headup Topics Pages show in-depth dynamic coverage for your topics & offer related activities & topic-to-topic browsing. They can be accessed via Snippet widgets or directly by setting your “Widget Mode” to “Link”.
All the Freshest Content about your Topics in 1 place
Topic & Usage Analytics
By popular demand we’ve added a brand new “Analytics” tab to the publisher dashboard. Use it to learn how many times your visitors use Headup, for how long, & which topics are the most popular on your site.
Topic & Usage Analytics
A Word of Thanks
As you can see over these past few months we’ve been working intensively on improving Headup & developing exciting new features for your enjoyment, however hadn’t it not been for a wonderful & select group of supportive bloggers, some of which you’ve met here in our weekly blogger interviews, we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to check these new features &test their value.
Before I sign off I’d like to take the opportunity to say a heartfelt “Thank You” to Dave, David & Ruhani for all their support. Thanks guys! We couldn’t have pulled this one off & launched our Beta without you…
I’m very disappointed that you have discontinued the plugin for WordPress. I’d just found you weeks ago because of your integration into the Jerusalem Post website. It was the perfect addition to my blog, which strives to stay on top of the news.
I hope you reconsider, maybe even just a paired down version. The best features were the related news stories and the Wikipedia entries. I could have done without the rest.
Blessings and shalom.
Sorry to disappoint you Shalom, you may imagine how disappointed we are after investing much effort into the Headup bloggers widget.
Unfortunately, as it was running – this product didn’t have business viability – and we had to shut it down. It became a big drag on our operations and budget.
Out of curiosity – how much do you think you were willing to pay for such a service.
Sincerely,
-Eitan
Didn’t see your reply. Thanks for the email.
I wouldn’t be interested in a monthly cost. I know, we’re so spoiled on the web… getting amazing programing like WordPress and its plugins for free.
I really did like your plugin, though. I’d be willing to pay a one-time price after a 30-day trial. $10-$20. It’s a great peace of software. I was hooked after just a couple of weeks.
It would need to be a little more user friendly. For instance, I liked that you had a list of tags to exclude from Headup highlighting. However, I’m not familiar enough with WordPress and the theme I use to keep the headlines from getting marked by Headup. Well, I hadn’t played enough with that yet. I ran out of time, as you had to discontinue the plugin.
A couple more suggestions. I really liked the related news feature, but it went straight to Wikipedia on some entries instead of news… obvious news topics like names of some nations and other geographical features (i.e. Syria, Mediterranean Sea, Iran).
Some items marked were just a nuisance. I think it kept marking “Shalom”. It is a foreign word, but my readers know what it is. But not everybody does, so that’s just nitpicking at this point.
I tried to personalize the related news sources but wasn’t satisfied. I had intended to continue to play with that to fine tune it. I wonder if one could personalize news sources using RSS feeds.
Loved the idea that it would reference my own posts. Never saw it do that on my blog. Was it based on word search or would I have to use tags?
The Twitter and video tabs were useless to me. I can see the Twitter one working… I’m just not a tweeter (well, I tweet but I don’t dialogue through Twitter like so many do).
I really appreciate your feedback. I saw later through web searches that you had notified your users that Headup would be discontinued. I must have signed up after you sent out that missive. I was just shocked when I updated the plugin and it was deactivated.
Blessings on your future endeavors. Let me know if you decide to resurrect Headup.