Kallow.com looks to make product recommendations pure and simple.  The site is co-founded by  Caleb Elston of Toluu.  This new project was born out of the need to help people pick the right items from those big box stores.

Caleb says,

“(We) were inspired by how often we have friends and family contact us asking for recommendations for tvs, cameras, or speakers.”

Simple is the name of the game for Kallow.com.  Caleb and his co-founder and friend Jordan look

“to take the clutter out of electronics buying.”

The site is simple.  Go to the Kallow home page.  Pick a product and there will be one recommendation that you can not go wrong with.  One product in that category that Caleb and Jordan have personally tested and recommend.

Kallow seems to be all about simplicity.   The recommendations are not based upon price or platform.  The recommendations are personal.   Check out Kallow it is live now.  I will be keeping an eye on this one to see it grow and change.

I spoke to Caleb Elston the Toluu founder about this feature.  He said,

“We actually decided to build in this functionality when we found ourselves passing by feeds because we didn’t want to wait for the page to load or have to hit the back button. Since we weren’t always willing to take a risk on a feed to see if it might be interesting we knew other users wouldn’t either.”

This should save users time and give you a better idea of the content of a feed.  Caleb had discovered first hand that feed titles may be bad but the content worth taking a look at.  He mentioned that while testing this feature he had “already found a few more blogs I had no idea existed.”

I previously made a long Toluu enhancement list I titled “My Toluu Wishlist” based upon the great potential I see in the young application. Toluu’s development in the last month has seen dramatic speed increases throughout the site and many UI enhancements.  Toluu continues to roll out features.

If you tried Toluu early on I urge you to give it another try.  It is faster, much more responsive, and the UI is more intuitive.  If you need an invite I have some.   Leave a comment if you want one.

I read an article this morning titled “The Evolution Of Wordpress.”  Wordpress is the fabulous CMS software that powers this blog.  Hack wordpress a great blog that I read was commenting on the changes and improvements the Wordpress software has seen.

In the same way the advances in Social media are dramatic.  Systems, methods, and technologies that many rely on were not around or were in infant stages just 5 years ago. 5 years in technology terms is a enormous amount of time but in the real world 5 years is a blink of an eye.  The web as we know it has changed dramatically in the last 5 years.  Its modern inception is only a mere 15 years or so old.

Web applications have given this ‘have it now crowd’ nearly instant gratification.  I have commented before that I am amazed at the feature development of some of the current Web apps.  Just bursting into prominence in the last 6 months or so FriendFeed and Toluu continually wow me with enhancements.

Social Media Addiction

Do you remember life before a cell phone?  Perhaps the cell phone era is difficult to remember we have come to rely on them so heavily. Now when I leave my cell phone at home despite $4 a gallon gas prices I turn the car around and go back for the phone.

I think many of us have the same thoughts about social media.  We have become so attached to Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and any other social media application that application failure is devastating.

The twitter addicts have been hunting all over for a place to get their fix.  They have stirred the blogosphere into a buzz over start-ups like Plurk and identi.ca.

The twitter addicts seem to have become attached to Twitter in the same way they are attached to power, water, and other necessities of life.  They seem to be the most rabid.  But I venture to say that Gmail, FriendFeed, or Google Reader went down in the way twitter has I would be equally as frantic.  Social media addiction is prominent.

Declare Your Independence

I challenge you to declare your independence from Social media at least for some period of time.  Declaring your independence will assist you in breaking your cycle of addiction.  This should assist in the event that your favorite application goes down or becomes unreliable.  So take a break from social media.

Perhaps we should stop for a minute and smell the fresh air.  It is summertime. We should take a break and get outdoors.  We could take our families on vacation.  I recently saw a user friendfeeding on vacation from the beach.  This flickr image appeared in the friendfeed stream posted from the beach.  Could the addiction be anymore evident?  No friendfeeding or twittering during family time.   Take a break so you can appreciate and enjoy social media later.

Early adopters may give the application a try but unless the buzz takes off development may be very slow.  Toluu is not normal.  Toluu breaks the mold.  I keep writing about Toluu because of its changing growing feature set.  I also see the enormous potential for an application like Toluu.

Caleb Elston the Toluu founder has done a wonderful job at taking a different tact in assuring the success of his startup.  The difference is the continuing feature development.  He has continually made hardware and software developments.  The applications stability, feature set, and application speed are drastically improved from a mere 2 months ago.

Today Toluu rolls out another set of features enhancements aimed at improving the user experience.  The enhancements include UI changes to the Matches screen, the Contacts page, and the Subscribers feed view.

The matching view is improved with the ability to add contacts directly from the view.  3 filtering options were added.  All-Time, This Month, and This Week are now available as options.  “This month” and  “This Week” will display matches from new users from the past week or month.  The Matches UI also includes a total match count.  Caleb said about the matching,

“I was finding the page was getting stale for me and so I wanted to make it more useful.”

The contacts page was also improved to be cleaner and displays a total contact count.  Even small UI improvements are great for the end user.

On a feed page the subscribers tab was added in last round of enhancements to let the user see who was subscribed to that feed.  This view has been improved as well letting you add contacts directly from this view.

I talked with Caleb about these enhancements and this stuck with me;

“We hope these new updates will help people connect easier and in turn make their time on Toluu more fruitful.”

The simple little UI changes decrease the learning curve for new users, make existing users happy, and contribute to the overall feel of the application.  Toluu’s attention to detail and constant improvements make this application one to watch.

More enhancements are on the horizon for Toluu as well it seems.  Would you like to try it? Leave a comment I have invites.

What is the Goal of Toluu?

I began writing this with a different perspective about Toluu. Where is Toluu heading? I previously wrote a post titled “My Problems With Toluu.” This was several months ago as Toluu was in it’s infancy.

I considered titling this post “More Problems With Toluu” but thought better of it. I do not want to be critical but long for the value of this application to increase.

Toluu recently had a big day rolling out enhancements. At least 8 different blogs featured a post about the little RSS matching service from founder Caleb Elston. So I have been using the service again in earnest since that time.

Toluu is still making continual enhancements and the performance increases are sizable. If you have not logged in a while try it again. Speed has increased dramatically.

What does Toluu really have to offer an early adopter? What does Toluu have to offer an everyday user? Are the answers to these questions different? Finally, what is the Goal of Toluu?

I am not sure I know the exact answer but would love to hear from Caleb on the subject. Application development is an interesting process as I know first hand. An application does not always end up in the exact place you conceive it might at the onset.

In any case Toluu adds feeds to your feed reader and Toluu via bookmarklet. As long as you use the bookmarklet the feeds stay in Sync. Toluu also provides matching to other users in an attempt to recommend additional feeds. Toluu is designed with clean UI and is what this user expects from Web 2.0. It is in private Beta so I do not aim to condemn but am contemplating its usefulness, relevance, and future.

The following is a list of ideas produced from the Toluu friendfeed room and simple brainstorming. If the goal of Toluu is to provide simple solid functionality then Toluu is well on the way. But here is a list of features I would personally like to see.

Toluu Enhancement Thoughts

• Tag/Organize/Categorize Feeds – This is my #1 the rest of the enhancements are in no particular order. Feed tagging increases Toluu ability to present recommendation, organization, search, categorization. Feed tagging would change the Toluu forever.
• Feed Similarities – What feeds are similar to other feeds. Tagging or feed meta data could greatly assist with this. I want feed relationships. Tell me that if I read Lifehacker then Download Squad and Lifehack are similar.
• Personalized Feed Recommendations – Beyond matching. Matching is certainly a good way to offer users insight into feeds they might like. I would like better feed recommendations in the way Amazon does. Tell me I would like feed “B” because 75% of users that read feed “A” also read feed “B”.
• Matching Speed – The matching speed was recently greatly increased TWICE. The speed is NO longer an issue. The matching would now qualify as instant. One comment though: I wish it would not display current contacts as matches. If they are a current contact then I already know about them.
• Syncing Between Your Feed Reader & Toluu & Feedly – See this link to the FriendFeed discussion about this one.
• Better Integration With Other services
  • Integration with Feedly
  • Integration with Friendfeed – I find Feeds more and more with FriendFeed. I have to launch the article and use the bookmarklet. It would be great to have an addon or greasemonkey script thought integrated a Toluu feed link into FriendFeed.
• I hate bookmarklets – Everything has a bookmarklet these days. They clutter my bookmarks bar and I am uncertain what each one does. Perhaps a Firefox Addon.
• User Profiles – I would love to see additional information about a user.
• Clearly Display the User’s blog(s) feed(s) – This goes right along with the previous but I am listing seperate to emphasize its importance. It is not easy to see the blog feed for each user.
• Import my FriendFeed contacts – I would say 90/95 % of my FriendFeed contacts are on Toluu. But I am not sure they are all contacts on Toluu. I would like them to be.  Bummer.
• Browse Feeds by Name
• Browse Feeds by Tag Directory
• Feed Search
• Contact/Person Search
• URI search – I put in a web address and the feed page is displayed
• Most Popular Feeds (feed stats)
• Hot New Feeds – popular
• Enhance the Bookmarklet and future Firefox addon to support Tagging
• Number of Toluu Subscribers per feed on feed view
• Site Help – Sometimes I am uncertain what Toluu can currently do and what it can not
• Edit My Toluu Feed List – A clean easy interface for editing my feed list
• Clear My Feeds / RSS Reset – Is this already possible?

Toluu is a young private beta application. From my view the future is very bright.

Most of my enhancements center around Toluu being about feeds. I understand the data commitment and strain that storing meta data and information about individual feed data could consume. But I believe it would be very worth it to the end user.

Toluu is great and I say once again I believe its future is bright. I can not wait for its features to extend and its value to increase. I have Toluu invites if you would like to try it.

I have been very interested in Toluu since Louis Gray’s first post describing the RSS feed matching site. The site had already seen many enhancements already despite being in private beta. Caleb Elston Toluu’s founder has previously added many features including social networking features and twitter integration.

Today Toluu improves rolling out improvements to the feed pages. Although not striving to be a place that feeds are read, Toluu displays the feed content very cleanly. Today Toluu adds two tabs to the feed pages. A tab called “Popular” and a tab called “Subscribers.”

The Popular tab is just what seems the most popular posts from the feed. While the Subscribers tab is the most intriguing to this user.
	Popular Tab	Subscriber Tab

It shows subscribers of the feed and other feeds they are subscribed to. I found myself clicking from feed to feed via the users that are subscribed to them. This produces a new interesting way to move around in Toluu. Caleb described the feed page enhancements this way:

“These updates really center around making it easier to decide if you really want to subscribe to a particular feed and helping you find others who read a feed you are interested in. Exposing more pivot points.”

The other significant change out today is speed to the contacts page. Speed is good. I commented early on about Toluu’s speed. Caleb indicated that they sped up the contacts page by 5x. It feels very responsive to me.

Toluu’s changes today all seem to be around helping the users see what others are reading, which feeds are popular, and encouraging movement within Toluu. This seems to be accomplished.

I asked Caleb directly; Can we expect additional enhancements soon?

He responded,

“Yes, we are working on more ways to quickly see if you would be interested in a feed.”

Toluu is great and I have 25 invites. Let me know if you would like to try it.

As a whole I like Toluu. For more on Toluu check out the KnightKnetwork’s interview with Caleb Elston and Louis Gray’s first post about Toluu. Toluu the RSS feed sharing discovery application is a cool concept and does function pretty well. The integration to add a feed to your feed reader is great. But here are few problems I found and features I would like to see.

Speed, Speed, Speed - When you click on the matches tab it takes what seems like forever to change and display the matches. That is a crucial point in the application where it actually shows you intelligent matches of RSS feeds you would like. Displaying this main feature of the application needs to be much faster. I have had it take several minutes. Users can not deal with minutes it must display in seconds. From the Contacts view I click on Matches for one of my contacts and again it sluggish.

Redundancy – When the Matches tab does finally display it shows several users who “match” you and a percentage. You then see a list of “Feeds you might like” from each user. What is interesting is that one of the same feeds is displayed for every user. In my case the feeds “Micro Persuasion” and “GigaOm” are under 4 out of 5 users. This is redundancy that should somehow be eliminated. I have also seen redundancy in the same user where it shows the same feed twice.

Feed Elimination – If a feed exists that I am NOT interested in I would like the ability to exclude from future recommendation. If “Micro Persuasion” is not what I want to read it could be put on an exclusion list.

Toluu is beta and I am sure the application will grow and change. One thing I have been looking for is user enhancements in the form of greasemonkey scripts. This has already added a lot of functionality to FriendFeed.

I will add and subtract from list as the application changes.

By the way I still have invites if anyone is interested. Leave your email in a comment if you want one.

It should be easy to fill out a bug report or feature request. Lately I have found it simply difficult to find any help or documentation. Ok granted if it is in private beta sometimes the web app is just beyond proof of concept. However if the application wishes to ever move beyond its current state feedback from its user base is a must.

For example, on FriendFeed the other day I found a problem with the del.icio.us feed updating correctly. I looked around on the FriendFeed site and could NOT easily find a place for feedback. (There is a link in an older post on the FriendFeed blog.) I opened a second tab and googled “FriendFeed Feedback” and quickly found the google Discussion group.

The point is that was too hard. Way to hard. If I have to search for the place to give feedback I probably will not give any. Unless I just love the app I will not go that far. In this case I blog posted “Are Del.icio.us feeds broken on FriendFeed?” and Louis Gray quickly responded to my post and eventually found the answer.

But I am not picking on FriendFeed. It seems that in the haste to bring out a web app that is the next big thing startups forget the basics. Contact information and Feedback should be no brainers and mandatory.

Toluu another favorite new app of mine is just the same. No clear feedback point.

The point is any new web app public beta, private beta, or even alpha should make feedback quick and easy. I suggest a link at the bottom of each page. At the very least a prominently placed permanent link on the App’s blog to the feedback system.

This may seem like a small detail but should be demanded by users.

Well this user demands it.

Who does this well? Who doesn’t?

Update 06/13/2008: Toluu is gaining alot of momentum. The latest enhancements are great. For more about the founder Caleb Elston go here. I have 25 invites. Leave a comment if you want one.