4 ms·

Announcing BlogFire - new from Notifo (YC W10)

64 points by jazzychad 15y ago

michaelfairley 15y ago
The last thing I want is for TechCrunch to be able to push to me. That said, I think this is an excellent way of making RSS accessible to lots of non-techies, especially those who use an iPhone/iPad more than a computer. How do you plan on getting this in front of people who don't already use an RSS reader?
- jazzychad 15y ago
  To each his own :) I go back and forth on turning TC on and off. The nice thing about BlogFire is that you can subscribe to as many feeds as you want in the app and enable/disable notifications on a per-feed basis. Then you can just use the app as a feed reader for the others. There are a couple of ways baked into the app that should help spread it to people that don't use RSS readers. Being able to share posts from the app (with a link back to BlogFire) is one way.
jazzychad 15y ago
Protip: you can follow your favorite github users' activity by entering github.com/username and blogfire will find their feed for you. likewise you can follow project commits by entering github.com/username/project Since github has an apple-touch-icon, you'll get the lovely Octocat staring back at you in the app!
Pewpewarrows 15y ago
Interesting. Is this actually real-time, or are you just frequently polling feed urls from a central source and then pushing them to the clients on a case-by-case basis? I'm assuming the latter, since the former has traditionally required participation on the part of the feed provider, in the form of something like Google's PubSubHubBub.
- jazzychad 15y ago
  it's real-time when possible (if the publishers are using PSHB) otherwise it is polled as timely as possible. most posts come through within a few minutes of being posted.
jolan 15y ago
I don't understand Notifo anymore. I thought the idea was that small companies would pay for push alerts in Notifo that contain links back to their webapp (or something). Basically, a universal app until a company-specific one can be written. I thought things weren't going well. How does releasing a free app help? Are you pivoting?
- jazzychad 15y ago
  pivoting, yes. Notifo itself is still running, and there is a core group of users that love it, but it is almost too technical of a product to get really big the way I wanted. BlogFire (and another app or so) is a more mainstream app, which will be monetized with some upcoming features I plan to build into the app, but for now I wanted to release it to see if it is even a product that people want, then iterate etc...
  - jolan 15y ago
    > almost too technical of a product to get really big the way I wanted I can see how it's too developery/B2By. > BlogFire (and another app or so) is a more mainstream app, which will be monetized with some upcoming features I'm glad to hear that, good luck!
  - imack 15y ago
    I'm definitely one of that core group, but since the twitter app started doing push notifications on mentions the only notifications I get from Notifo are ones I send myself from my webapps. Grantit, I've found those insanely useful, but can see how that's only getting so big.
    - Splines 15y ago
      Me too. I have Growl set up to forward notifications to Notifo so I can get notified when interesting things happen during my work day (machine pave events, automation problems, etc.). I feel like I'm a bit of a free-rider though, using Notifo's infrastructure without really offering any value back to them.
  - 15y ago
noelsequeira 15y ago
Installed. Quite ironically, this is more or less what I thought Notifo would aim to be the first time I stumbled upon your website. While I'm not particularly crazy about receiving notifications from most blogs I read, what I'm really looking for (from a notification aggregator) is the ability to receive notifications from the sources that I care about (essentially, social networks + email + blogs) in one place. What this means is, I can disable popups (alerts) and enjoy a zen-like experience. And when I do take a break, there's one app that lets me know about everything I've potentially missed out on and need to be updated about. Push notifications create this insatiable itch and the cognitive cost of context switching ensures that life goes downhill once more than a couple of apps have been allowed to notify me. This is something I'd be happy to pay for (and I admit, I might be alone). I think Boxcar comes closest to scratching my itch, but their implementation still leaves a lot to be desired, so I guess there's an opportunity there.
physcab 15y ago
A month in review? Is that normal? What are the average review periods to be expected for both paid and free apps?
- jazzychad 15y ago
  it was rejected 4 times (for various overly pedantic reasons based on their in-app-purchase policies). Each resubmittal review took 1 week. total time spent updating the app to fix rejections was about 8 hours. total wall-clock time was a month. ouch.
matthodan 15y ago
Why are you offering it for free? I'd gladly pay for this. Feature request: I'd like to be able to subscribe to podcasts too.
- jazzychad 15y ago
  You will have a chance to pay for it... there are going to be some in-app-purchase upgrades coming soon! Podcasts would be interesting... let me figure out how best to integrate that...
- larrywright 15y ago
  You should check out Instacast for podcasts. It's the reason I started listening to podcasts again. Well, that and http://5by5.tv http://5by5.tv

64 points by jazzychad 15y ago

The last thing I want is for TechCrunch to be able to push to me. That said, I think this is an excellent way of making RSS accessible to lots of non-techies, especially those who use an iPhone/iPad more than a computer. How do you plan on getting this in front of people who don't already use an RSS reader?

jazzychad 15y ago
To each his own :) I go back and forth on turning TC on and off. The nice thing about BlogFire is that you can subscribe to as many feeds as you want in the app and enable/disable notifications on a per-feed basis. Then you can just use the app as a feed reader for the others. There are a couple of ways baked into the app that should help spread it to people that don't use RSS readers. Being able to share posts from the app (with a link back to BlogFire) is one way.

jazzychad 15y ago

Protip: you can follow your favorite github users' activity by entering github.com/username and blogfire will find their feed for you. likewise you can follow project commits by entering github.com/username/project Since github has an apple-touch-icon, you'll get the lovely Octocat staring back at you in the app!

Pewpewarrows 15y ago

Interesting. Is this actually real-time, or are you just frequently polling feed urls from a central source and then pushing them to the clients on a case-by-case basis? I'm assuming the latter, since the former has traditionally required participation on the part of the feed provider, in the form of something like Google's PubSubHubBub.

jazzychad 15y ago
it's real-time when possible (if the publishers are using PSHB) otherwise it is polled as timely as possible. most posts come through within a few minutes of being posted.

jolan 15y ago

I don't understand Notifo anymore. I thought the idea was that small companies would pay for push alerts in Notifo that contain links back to their webapp (or something). Basically, a universal app until a company-specific one can be written. I thought things weren't going well. How does releasing a free app help? Are you pivoting?

jazzychad 15y ago
pivoting, yes. Notifo itself is still running, and there is a core group of users that love it, but it is almost too technical of a product to get really big the way I wanted. BlogFire (and another app or so) is a more mainstream app, which will be monetized with some upcoming features I plan to build into the app, but for now I wanted to release it to see if it is even a product that people want, then iterate etc...
- jolan 15y ago
  > almost too technical of a product to get really big the way I wanted I can see how it's too developery/B2By. > BlogFire (and another app or so) is a more mainstream app, which will be monetized with some upcoming features I'm glad to hear that, good luck!
- imack 15y ago
  I'm definitely one of that core group, but since the twitter app started doing push notifications on mentions the only notifications I get from Notifo are ones I send myself from my webapps. Grantit, I've found those insanely useful, but can see how that's only getting so big.
  - Splines 15y ago
    Me too. I have Growl set up to forward notifications to Notifo so I can get notified when interesting things happen during my work day (machine pave events, automation problems, etc.). I feel like I'm a bit of a free-rider though, using Notifo's infrastructure without really offering any value back to them.
- 15y ago

noelsequeira 15y ago

Installed. Quite ironically, this is more or less what I thought Notifo would aim to be the first time I stumbled upon your website. While I'm not particularly crazy about receiving notifications from most blogs I read, what I'm really looking for (from a notification aggregator) is the ability to receive notifications from the sources that I care about (essentially, social networks + email + blogs) in one place. What this means is, I can disable popups (alerts) and enjoy a zen-like experience. And when I do take a break, there's one app that lets me know about everything I've potentially missed out on and need to be updated about. Push notifications create this insatiable itch and the cognitive cost of context switching ensures that life goes downhill once more than a couple of apps have been allowed to notify me. This is something I'd be happy to pay for (and I admit, I might be alone). I think Boxcar comes closest to scratching my itch, but their implementation still leaves a lot to be desired, so I guess there's an opportunity there.

physcab 15y ago

A month in review? Is that normal? What are the average review periods to be expected for both paid and free apps?

jazzychad 15y ago
it was rejected 4 times (for various overly pedantic reasons based on their in-app-purchase policies). Each resubmittal review took 1 week. total time spent updating the app to fix rejections was about 8 hours. total wall-clock time was a month. ouch.

matthodan 15y ago

Why are you offering it for free? I'd gladly pay for this. Feature request: I'd like to be able to subscribe to podcasts too.

jazzychad 15y ago
You will have a chance to pay for it... there are going to be some in-app-purchase upgrades coming soon! Podcasts would be interesting... let me figure out how best to integrate that...
larrywright 15y ago
You should check out Instacast for podcasts. It's the reason I started listening to podcasts again. Well, that and http://5by5.tv http://5by5.tv