Grazr update

Grazr has now been in an Alpha test for a little under a month, and the response has been overwhelming. I believe that there is an intrinsic demand for any piece of software, and you never know how big that will be until the product is offered to the public. In the case of Grazr, the possible uses have completely outstripped the original conception of a simple OPML viewer. One big area that wasn't anticipated is the use of MP3 files within OPML. Dan MacTough supported this first in his Optimal Browser, and Mike Kowalchik quickly followed suit and added an MP3 player to Grazr. James Corbett came up with the term Podgrazing to describe this type of application, and within a week or so one of James' countrymen launched Podgrazr.eu to showcase Irish podcasters. Another Irishman, Robin Blandford, also launched CommentCasting using Grazr as the user interface.

Another great idea from James Corbett has been the reinvention of the old webring idea in the form of OPML rings. James calls this grazer blades, but thankfully everyone is ignoring that particular pun. You can see this demonstrated in the Grazr box on the left side of any page of James' blog. Click on the link for "My Grazer Blades," then click on the link for "Pieter Overbeeke." At the bottom of this list of links you'll find a link for "James Corbett" that brings you right back to where you started. James is also making a good start on a world wide outline through the rapid growth of his Open Irish Directory, which is in the same Grazr box on his navbar. This makes use of the include capability of OPML, which allows the growth of distributed outlines with many sources and independent editors.

Ireland is a real center of Grazr and OPML activity, thanks to James, but the overall global appeal of Grazr has been a real shock. The Grazr below shows the results of a Google blogsearch for "grazr," and the number of links in languages other than English is impressive. Mike had to spend some time in Unicode Hell to get all the languages working well, but that has really paid off in international adoption.



Another area of interest that wasn't anticipated, but should have been, is the use of Grazr on mobile devices. Russell Beattie wants this so badly that he even created a mockup of it on his blog to show everyone what it would look like.

Grazr will be entering Beta test in a few weeks, and the new features that will be added then should really open some eyes. Right now Mike is working on making the backend as stable and scalable as possible, but once that is under control, the real fun can begin. People assume that the current interface is the only one available, but that is just the starting point. Grazr is built on a Javascript library that makes all types of interfaces possible, such as an expand/collapse outline, and an automatically scrolling "river of feeds." Different types of transitions, similar to what are used in video editing are also in the works.

Once again, I'll make my disclosure that I have no financial connection with Grazr, and hold no equity position. I just love the idea of seeing good software get built and helping to grow a community around OPML.