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:
I’m very excited about the great new screencast user Hao Chen put together for us.
The demo explains how the add-on works and how headup interacts with friendfeed in order to deliver users with fresh semantic web content related to whatever or, in friendfeed’s case, whoever they are browsing. In the demonstration Hao uses headup in order to discover semantically related information about Robert Scoble’s friends, the companies they work for, their locations, and more. This wealth of semantically related information is displayed in the headup panel without Hao having to browse away from the friendfeed page he used as the source for is discoveries.
Three weeks have gone by since we launched the headup browser extension as a private beta.
We’ve received lots of much appreciated coverage and feedback, and are hard at work integrating some of the excellent comments we’ve received into the add-on and generally improving service for our users.
We’ve been working so hard that we’ve actually completed a brand new release of headup, which is now ready for you to download.
Why update my headup extension?
headup’s newest version solves some of the issues that occurred in the previous version:
Your headup experience should be richer as the add-on now recognizes and offers semantic content relating to new entities.
The new version of the extension corrects issues reported by mac users.
We’ve improved the add-on’s usability based on the comments you’ve been sending in.
We’ve improved the optimization of memory usage.
Upgrade yourself to the new shiny version of headup now, and start enjoying all the yummy semantic goodness it delivers…
time to move up to the latest version of your headup browser add-on
Well it’s been a few days since we launched and so far we’re pretty pleased. The launch went well and we’ve already gotten some really great reviews.
Frederic Lardinoisfrom readwritewebwrote us up as a “a very useful little tool” and expected we’d “only get more powerful“, Paul Glazowskifrom Mashable wrote about us that we “…give you easy access to all things you might consider relevant” and Chris Sherman from searchengineland wrote he was impressed with what he’d seen and even went so far as to say that “…the tool looks like it’s well on the way to becoming an invaluable part of my searching toolkit“.
Thanks people!
I’d like to thank Frederic, Paul, Chris and the rest of the members of the blogging community who bothered to review the headup add on, especially in light of the fact that most of the reviews I bumped in to were really very supportive.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the members of our user community who took the time to write to us with their feedback and suggestions for further improvements of the headup extension. Everyone here is really excited by every bit of feedback that you sent us because, although we’ve all been fiddling with the development versions of the headup extension for quite some time now, these comments are the very first time we are getting input from you guys – our user community.
Tell us what you think
I encourage you to keep on writing to us at feedback@headup.com and to continue sharing your experiences of how the headup extension has been treating you. If you have a particularly interesting or amusing story of how headup enhanced your browsing experience content we’d love to publish it here on our blog.
If you want an invitation to headup you can obtain one here. Please be patient as it may take a while before you get your invitation as we currently have a bit of a waiting list, apparently we’re popular…
: )
We look forward to hearing from you all and thank you again for the support you are so generously giving us!
