NOVEDGE blog

Novedge Pulse Pushes the Limits of Social Media for CAD

Blogs are an important source of information. We all know this. Most of us started bookmarking one CAD blog and going back every day to read the new posts. It was a nice way to stay updated while drinking a morning coffee. Soon, we found our attention and time split among a set of cross-referenced blogs. Gradually we realized that going through all this interesting stuff would take up a good slice of our morning, more than we could afford. This was the moment when we switched to an RSS reader. In the beginning, the RSS reader worked perfectly. It reduced the time we dedicated to blogs and news with minimal compromises. But before we knew it, the amount of blogs and news exceeded the time budgeted. At this point the more adventurous of us began experimenting with Digg and Delicios, and found, unfortunately, that they didn't work. Digg and Delicios are general tools that can't be customized to focus on our specific areas of interest. At this point I realized I could create something new, something that would take the best of available technologies and rescue CAD users and professionals, giving back the pleasure of the morning coffee-CAD news ritual.

take the best of available technologies giving back the pleasure of the morning coffee-CAD news ritual

Today Novedge Pulse processes the feed of about 350 different sources, matching each post and news with a database of over 550 authors. Each author is clearly recognizable by his picture, and fully traceable with a link to his LinkedIn profile and his Twitter page. Posts and news are grouped together on a daily base. Readers vote on each item with a click of the mouse -- either promoting it with a heart beat or demoting it with a heart burn. The collective preferences of Novedge readers dynamically creates a list of the most interesting and relevant posts as they appear on the Internet.

Novedge Pulse processes about 350 different sources, matching each post and news with a db of over 550 authors

I receive feedback from Pulse users almost every day. My goal is to improve usability, adding a few select features while keeping Pulse as simple as possible. I recently released a new version of Novedge Pulse with some important improvements and tuning. Now I have additional reasons to believe that Novedge Pulse is the most advanced source of information in the CAD and 3D graphics online world. Here are the reasons for my statement:

• Novedge Pulse collects information from about 350 sources and matches each news item with a database of over 550 authors.
• All news and blog posts are gathered and published on Pulse in real-time.
• Readers can easily vote on every single item with just a click. This simple rating system lets the best posts and most interesting news of the day quickly emerge at the top of the page, while pushing the less important items towards the bottom.
• Novedge Pulse contextualizes each news and blog post. Based on the type of information and availability, each item shows a link to the author profile on LinkedIn, the author page on Twitter, the source RSS feed, and for companies, a link to the corresponding Yahoo! Finance pages. This is valuable for readers who want to be able to quickly verify employers, affiliations, and resumes of every blogger.
• Novedge Pulse can be browsed by date and by author, selecting different levels of detail. The page will remember your preferences the next time you come back, without requiring a login.
• Each news or blog post can be easily identified and linked by a permalink. Text and video comments are also enabled on every item page as way to complement the comments on the original blog page.
• All news and blog posts on Novedge Pulse can be easily republished thanks to a public RSS feed. Publishers don't have to worry about annoying ads. Pulse is free and the RSS feed is ads free.

The number of visitors to Novedge Pulse is constantly growing, pushing Novedge to improve the service and allocate more resources to guarantee a better and more reliable service. We are committed to support and extend Novedge Pulse. Make Novedge Pulse your first website in the morning!

Franco Folini

Interview with Daniel Ha, DisqUs Founder and CEO

Novedge recently added a section at the bottom of each page of its website providing a space where visitors and customers can leave comments sharing their opinions and experiences. The tools that allowed us to implement this service are provided by Disqus, a new startup located in San Francisco, just a few blocks from Novedge headquarters. Disqus has been deployed on over 38,000 blogs and is hosting the comments of over 70,000 users. After only a week from the introduction of this feature on our website we started seeing the first comments appear on our pages. While many visitors post comments about products, some use this space simply to ask Novedge technical questions or to find out more information about prices. I'm getting very excited about this technology, and its future developments and implications. In order to satisfy my growing interest, I went directly to the founder and CEO of Disqus to get a first hand opinion on this topic. Daniel Ha, who is still in his early twenties, promptly accepted my invitation for an interview and almost in real-time answered all of my questions. Here is the text of the interview.

Daniel, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

I founded Disqus with my friend Jason Yan toward the beginning of 2007. At the end of 2006, we decided to work on a web project together while we were in school (studying computer science). Discussion was an area most familiar to us and we began working on tools for forums, group discussion, and community building. Today's Disqus evolved from this as the blog feature of our project became popular amongst our earliest testers. We both participated in Y Combinator, which gave us some money and a lot of guidance and connections. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough for us to leave school and work on our project (which became our company) full time.

We benefitted heavily from enthusiastic bloggers

After launching publicly at the end of 2007, we raised some more money and began expanding the service as fast as we could. We benefitted heavily from enthusiastic bloggers and commenters are naturally vocal with their opinions. Today, Disqus is the leading comment system and management tool for all sorts of sites.

Disqus is quietly introducing a Copernican revolution for the net. While in the past users had to bring content to their social network websites, with Disqus the social network goes where the content is. What are the implications of this paradigm shift?

I think most implications are yet to be seen. What we've witnessed thus far is that people are more willing to contribute to websites when they feel they are rewarded or have control over their comments. If I know that my comments are claimed by me, and they're not just attached to a single site, I'm more wiling to contribute and develop my online persona.

people are more willing to contribute to websites when they feel they are rewarded or have control over their comments

One issue that is brought up often is the fragmentation and overall messiness of discussion. People tend to use their content aggregator or discussion tool of choice, and the discussion may stray far from the original content. I think Disqus will play a pivotal role, moving forward, in bridging all of this together. We certainly think this is one of the most interesting things about what we do.

Disqus is starting to face competition from some big names. How will users react to a proliferation of commenting systems?

We've always had a smattering of competition here and there. The way we will be the best is to continually innovate in providing a great commenting experience. If we can deliver on this promise better than our competitors, then I think we'll do well.

If we can deliver on this promise better than our competitors, then I think we'll do well

For users, I think it's great that they have choice. On the flip side, it may be confusing to have so many different channels for discussion -- our job is to make sure their choice doesn't negatively affect them. We want to be compatible; our network of commenters and publishers shouldn't be closed and we're working to be more open.

Another big challenge Disqus is facing is the recent establishment of login systems independent from the content provider (Facebook Connect, OpenID, etc.). Disqus promptly embraced this trend by implementing Facebook Connect. What is your strategy in this specific area?

Our strategy is to play nice. We're not going to be a login service. We do the discussion part well because we focus on that only. Our own login system is necessary for how things work, but we'll openly embrace the best technologies that will benefit the most people on the web.

Our strategy is to play nice

Facebook Connect has been working well for us so far and we're going to be adding more functionality that will allow people to take advantage of what Facebook has available in their platform.

How much interaction with Disqus is happening on the Disqus website and how much on the content hosting websites (blogs, newspapers, etc.)? How do you plan to promote the social features of your system?

The majority of interactions is on the publisher partners. That's how we want it -- we provide a service and I don't think we really need to see much traffic on our sites. Most of the interactions on our site is from the administration and profiles.

Novedge, among the first of e-commerce websites, just implemented Disqus across its entire main website. What can we expect as far as reactions from the users and benefits for them?

The first benefit I hope you'll see is an increase in engagement from your users. Novedge is exposed to a greater community of commenters, with social features that ideally encourages contributions.
Users should find it easier to leave comments and find more value in doing this. The overall experience should be more enjoyable as well.

I would like to thank Daniel for taking the time to answer my questions. A special thanks also to Giannii, Disqus Community Manager, for his generous contribution to the Disqus users' community and for connecting me and Daniel. If you have any questions for Daniel or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer. The Disqus commenting system is available on every product and brand page of the Novedge website.

Franco Folini

For more information on this topic, take a look at this foldier sPression, an online collection of the most interesting articles on the new wave of commenting technology and its players.

Interview with Anthony Frausto-Robledo, Owner of Architosh

Creative professionals have always had a fascination with Apple products and the Mac personal computer in particular. While Mac was one of the first personal computers to have a graphic user-interface, the connection seems to goes beyond that -- and to continue even after the GUI became a standard. One of the first websites who endorsed the partnership of Architecture and Mac was Architosh. This website survived the collapse of the dot-com bubble and still today brings fresh news from the computer graphics and architectural field, high-quality interviews, product reviews, and offers a public forum where Mac fans can exchange opinions and share experiences. The person that makes this possible with his daily work and dedication is Anthony Frausto-Robledo.

Anthony, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Sure. I'm a design person by nature, not a tech person and I think that gives me a slightly different perspective about tech in design fields.
I have a bachelor's of architecture degree. I have worked in architecture firms since I was in high school. I was always very good at art. Because I am old enough to have experienced the architecture firm prior to the computer I remember the predominant feeling of a typical pre-computer firm. It felt like a studio. The spectrum of focus was unbroken. When computers came into practice there was this mental shift that occurred. The spectrum of focus within the creative firm got split, like an axe splitting a log. This interrupted the combination of energy and calm that I normally felt and associated with an architect's office.

I'm a design person by nature, not a tech person and I think that gives me a slightly different perspective

When I graduated from architecture school I went to work for Fred Koetter of Koetter Kim & Associates, in Boston. Fred was dean of architecture at Yale at the time -- he's an absolute brilliant architect -- and he was my primary architectural hero. Anyway, his office had the same focus of the pre-computer office yet it had computers everywhere. And they were Macs. What I learned was this office did amazing things with these Macs, with great efficiency and simplicity, and that these computers calmly fit into the backdrop of the office. In other words, they never got in our way. And because of this there was no need for the spectrum of focus to be split. The Macs simply "served us."

Did you really feel that strongly about technology interfering with the design process? When did Architosh start?

Yes and no. I could see that some people were not as affected by the disposition between the machine and their craft. But for me it just really interfered and affected me more. When I am working at my highest level, creatively, I can't have any kind of major interruptions. But the personal computer is full of potential disaster and disruption. At this point in the late 90's I decided I needed to get a hold of technology for myself. I needed, in other words, to figure out how to get technology to simply serve, serve really well... and without interruptions. I needed to ensure that tech in practice would be a lot more like R2D2 in Star Wars versus his always yacking robot companion C3PO. So I started a consultancy in 1998 and launched Architosh.com in February of 1999.

I launched Architosh.com in February of 1999

When it launched it was simply a listing of my research on Mac software for CAD, 3D and AEC. I was just exploring back then, but I soon found I had a very large global audience. At that time the Net was all the rage and so I began to look at it differently. Within two years I realized I loved the journalism challenge and opportunities it presented.

As a long time Mac user can you explain the reciprocal fascination between the graphic world and the Mac world?

The relationship you speak of centers on just a particular body of creative people -- and not just in the graphics world. I think they see a reflection of themselves in the way the Macintosh computer is conceived as a whole. In other words, there is a shared sense of design values.

there is a shared sense of design values [between Mac and creative people]

The fascination part comes in because the personal computer by nature is an enchanting device -- like the TV was back in the 50's -- except that you interact with it. When you meet someone who shares the same values as you, sees the world the way you do, you feel affirmed and that mutual affirmation sponsors a bond. In a sense the Mac has a powerful way of affirming one's sense of values as they relate to being who they are -- as creative individuals.

Architects seems to be particularly attracted to the Mac platform. What are the specific features of the Mac that are more important to architects?

Well... architects are creatives like painters, photographers and other graphic artists. It makes even more sense that they would like the Mac because they often have large philosophical views about the world and they design and conceive at very large urban scales. The more important they hold their values the more likely they are going to want to surround themselves with same or supporting values. Apple's products speak with a crystal clear voice about the values behind them.

Apple's products speak with a crystal clear voice about the values behind them

This makes them ideal models for creation. I can't say that there are particular features of the Mac or any Apple product that make them more popular with architects. I would be speculating if I did that. What I can say is that Apple's products lead the world in the areas of ease-of-use, product and service integration, and that Apple's products are generally more beautiful, by both critical and popular agreement, than any competitor's products out there.

There is a large community of users that orbits around your website. What kind of interaction is there between the community and the sponsoring companies or companies that are simply the topic of discussions?

Architosh is somewhat famous -- at least in the Mac news world -- for its executive level interview articles. These are very popular with a company's end users. They get a chance to hear what might be coming down the pike, where a company's values lie, and what to look forward to.

[Architosh users] get a chance to hear what might be coming down the pike, where a company's values lie, and what to look forward to

However, company's now use Blogs to do a lot of this, but that medium cannot authenticate a neutrality around larger issues -- which is the primary value in independent journalism. Architosh will be launching a new site this Fall that will be building in more interaction capabilities into its journalism.

The business rules on the Internet are always changing. Your website has been able to adjust and adapt to new trends and users' expectations. How do you manage to thrive in this ever changing environment?

There is a lot of writing about companies being nimble and flexible in order to survive and thrive, but I think that publications work more around issues of trust. In this case, discussions about be adaptive are a little different. Architosh is here because of a strategic long-term bet I made personally about Apple a decade ago. What we write about today is more relevant than ever. But what is more key now is that we have built up trust, respect, and reliability by doing this back when nobody else was interested in writing about Apple.

we have built up trust, respect, and reliability

So I think what I'm saying is, we have taken the long-view approach and have stuck to our guns. But doing that is not enough to win or be right. One only needs to look at US foreign policy to understand that. What you really need with the long-view approach is to be able to read the situation correctly at the beginning.

You contribute to your website content with high quality, professionally written interviews and articles. What are the limits of user-generated content and how much space is left for editors and journalists like you?

When the new Architosh launches this Fall there will be even more possibilities for user-generated content. Right now, this is mostly contained within the Architosh forums, but this will grow both in the Fall and next year. As for space for editors and journalists?

Anybody can contribute an article for publication, and many user-readers have

We have an open policy. Anybody can contribute an article for publication, and many user-readers have. In general, our product reviews are only written by knowledgeable and experienced product review writers.

The Mac has popularized the concept of no barrier between the desktop and the cloud (Internet). How will this approach affect architects and their work process?

We have been writing about this for quite some time now. We do quite a bit in the cloud internally with Architosh and have been for more than three years.

The Architosh team is globally dispersed, from Germany to Perth, Australia

The Architosh team is globally dispersed, from Germany to Perth, Australia. What cloud computing will do -- for not just architects but all businesses -- will enable them to globalize their reach for talent and services. I believe that doing this will allow them to strengthen their competitive position relative to their peers.

I would like to thank Anthony Frausto-Robledo for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Anthony or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

Measuring the Pulse of the CAD Community

A lot of information is available over the Internet for professionals like you and me working with CAD, CAM, AEC, and DCC systems and technologies: blogs, Press Releases, tutorials, comments, product reviews, etc. In order to access this wealth of information one option is to subscribe to hundreds of newsletters, activate all sorts of Google notifications, and spend most of the day digging in an overcrowded e-mail inbox.

A reasonable alternative is to organize some of the information sources into an RSS reader such as the one offered for free by Google (Google Reader).  However, a lot of interesting stuff is not available as RSS feed.  Another downside is that RSS Readers are intended as personal tools and thus lack access to others' opinions and ratings.

Wouldn’t it be great to have all this information well organized in a single place, already sorted by relevance and quality based on the opinion of other users with similar interests? What about without annoying ads?

This place now exists, and it's called Novedge Pulse. It’s a new free area of the Novedge website where blog posts, Press Releases, tutorials, and other pertinent information is collected, organized, and presented in a simple and clear way.  At Novedge Pulse, you can also vote for each item with a simple and effective thumb-up, thumb-down system.

I would recommend giving it a try. Feel free to express your opinion by voting for the items you judge most interesting or boring. And if you have a blog, Press Release, product review, or tutorial you would like included in Novedge Pulse, just send an e-mail to pulse@novedge.com

Franco Folini

An Interview with Tim Westergren, Pandora Founder and Chief Strategy Officer

Tim Westergren is the founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Pandora. Pandora is a personalized online radio based on a sophisticated music classification system called the Music Genome Project. The idea is pretty simple from the user point of view: you start your own online radio station by selecting one song or one artist. Pandora Radio will start playing songs similar to your selection, offering you the option to "approve" or "disapprove" of each song. Over time the proposed songs align more and more with your taste and mood.

The Music Genome Project (MGP), at the core of Pandora, is the system that defines the similarity between songs. On the MGP each song is classified and ranked by human musical experts according to more than one hundred parameters or genes. The result is a continuous stream of music, from well known pieces to totally unknown and therefore enjoyably fresh songs. Be aware that Pandora can be addictive: after configuring a few Pandora radio stations you will not be able to go back to your car radio. While driving to work in the mornings, I find myself looking for the "skip" or "more like this" buttons on my car stereo.

I'm fascinated by Pandora not only for the pleasure of discovering new songs and artists, but also because I see a sophisticated and powerful technology made available (for free) in a simple, user-friendly yet effective way. I wish more hi-tech companies would take a look at Pandora and get inspired. Tim (profile) is the man behind Pandora and I had the pleasure to meet him personally and to interview him.

Tim, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

I played in rock bands and I was also a composer

I'm a musician. Prior to founding this company I played in rock bands and I was also a composer for a while, so I wrote music for movies. I've lived in California for a long time and I was living here in California in the late '90s when the idea for the Music Genome Project came to me largely arriving out of my own musical experiences. What I really wanted to do was create a company that would help musicians more easily find their audiences by connecting things musicological. Pandora, or the Music Genome Project which powers Pandora, was begun in the very end of 1999. We didn't actually initially intend to launch this as a radio service -- that came later -- but it has become now a sort of personalized radio service.

The codification of a musical piece within the “Music Genome Project” is mostly a human (expert) based activity and therefore expensive. According to Chris Anderson's book, in order to be a profitable long tail business, unit cost (per product) should be close to zero. How do you manage these limitations?

the only way to help people discover songs that they've never heard before is to understand the intrinsic qualities of that piece of music

In our world in web-casting when it comes to performance fees and royalties etc. we operate under some statutes, sort of a one-size-fits-all compulsory license and so there's actually no difference in cost for us for streaming an icon versus a lesser well-known artist. I think that in theory what Chris said is true, if we were actually getting direct licenses from artist we could probably command a lower license fee from somebody that was less well-known and needs the exposure more. But the reality for us is that the cost, both for analyzing a song -- because it takes just as much time to analyze an individual track from any artist -- as well as the cost of streaming is the same, regardless of the popularity. So as for your question about how to overcome codification -- our belief is that if you want good music, if you want to help people discover songs that they've never heard before and songs that nobody else has every gotten to know very well so there's no kind of data around the music -- the only way to do that is to understand the intrinsic qualities of that piece of music, and that's what allows us to recommend music regardless of whether anybody knows it or not.

How would you compare the human-experts’ approach of Pandora with other selection and recommendation technologies such as the purely algorithmic or the collaborative-social?

one thing that does stand out about what we do is our ability to really pluck out music that is really unknown and effectively promote it

I think they're just different. I don't think scientifically you can say one is necessarily better from the other. I think the only way to really determine that is based on how listeners respond. And I think different people like different things so there are some people who much prefer to discover and explore music based on either well known critics than sort of shape makers or those who like to explore based on their peer group or other people that they consider themselves to be like are enjoying, and that's a different approach. I think though that one thing that does stand out about what we do is our ability to really pluck out music that is really unknown and effectively promote it. I think that's a distinct advantage of the Music Genome approach.

Do you think that the Pandora and the Music Genome Project experience could be successfully exported in some other field? Do you know anything about those companies?

there are already some companies working on the Wine Genome and the Art Genome Project

I think there are already some companies working on the Wine Genome and the Art Genome Project. I'm afraid I don't actually know anything about those companies; they're kind of in stealth actually. Nobody knows, I don't know they exist, I don't know anything about them, no.

Personally I perceive listening to a Pandora radio as a “pleasant continuous musical stimulation” opposed to the “reassuring comfort zone” of the iPod. Do you think the two approaches are complementary or alternatives?

one phenomenon that I think is common among a lot of iPod owners is iPod fatigue

I think they're complimentary. I think that people want different things at different times. There are times when you really want to hear something specific, or when you want to hear a whole album, or you want to hear something that you know, or a playlist you've built. And that's a particular frame of mind. But then there are times when I think that gets tiring. One phenomenon that I think is common among a lot of iPod owners is iPod fatigue, where they get tired of what they own and they want to learn more. I think that discovery and serendipity and a fresh supply of new music is critical for a long term love affair with music.

One of the most exciting aspects of Pandora is that it puts an extremely sophisticated and powerful system under the full control of the end user with an amazingly simple interface. Does it frustrate you, in your daily life, having to interact with great technologies by means of poorly designed and unnecessary complex interfaces?

a lot of products that are made in technology are made by people for themselves

I do think that one of the biggest problems with technology is how complex it is, and how difficult things are to use. And I think that a lot of products that are made in technology are made by people for themselves. So you know people who make music services or music playing devices often times make them in a way that they, as a really sophisticated user of technology, or a sophisticated consumer of music would like and that is not what the larger audience is prepared for. And I think that one of the real advantages of Apple is that they've managed to really keep things simple and elegant. That runs throughout their products and is something that it's interesting other companies have just not been able to replicate. Simplicity is one of the hardest things to accomplish. It seems easy when you do it right but it's very hard to get right.

Can you tell us anything about Classical Music coming to Pandora radio?

Absolutely, we're coming up on that. We've been working on it for a couple of years now and we're going to be launching it soon, so we're very excited about that.

I would like to thank Tim Westergren for sharing his time to do this interview. If you have any questions for Tim or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini