I’ve recently started using a new Internet retrieval utility that allows me to quickly access all of the information that’s important to me from one user-friendly Internet page. The utility is called IngBoo. It’s a major time saver, it’s SPAM free, clutter free, free to use and you can sign up for it at www.ingboo.com. (Disclaimer: IngBoo is also a new Weber Shandwick client of mine).
How it works
From the main IngBoo page, you can select from a number of predefined news/content providers, including CNN, CNBC, YouTube and Financial Times. In addition, IngBoo collects and reads RSS feeds, Twitter and Linked In updates. And the software includes a number of other handy features, such as the ability to track eBay auctions, monitor the weather and traffic in your area and stocks you’re keeping your eye on. Once a news source is selected, IngBoo creates a capsule reader for that source that is updated with the latest news and information. The point of the utility is to reduce the amount of time you spend daily tracking the information that’s important to you, while at the same time reducing overall email clutter.
I know what you’re thinking, is it really that hard to enter the URLs of all of the news sources you’re tracking? No, but it can be a major time suck. What happens when you hit a site that hasn’t been updated since the last time you visited? You’ve just wasted 20 or so seconds of your life that you’ll never get back. IngBoo, on the other hand, only updates your news capsule when information on that site has changed.
Think of IngBoo like a suburban mall. Malls are successful because they offer everything a person needs under one roof. You can get a haircut, buy a new pair of pants, buy dinner for the family… Before malls, people would spend half their day driving around town to get their errands done. With IngBoo, in a matter of minutes, you can find out what’s going on in the world, catch up on your friends’ blogs, read your Twitter updates and figure out whether or not you need to bring an umbrella to work tomorrow.
If there’s a news or content source you don’t see on the provided list, it’s not a problem. Click the “Search” link and enter the Website (or content) you’re looking for. If IngBoo can’t find the information on their site, you can enter the site’s URL and make it a new capsule. Anytime that Website is updated, IngBoo will let you know. IngBoo also prioritizes your news capsules, which helps if you have more than 20 or so capsules running at the same time. Capsules that have been recently updated are moved to the top of the stack, while older capsules are then pushed to the bottom.
I’m guessing your next question is, “Is this a portal?” No, IngBoo is not a portal. A portal essentially hosts other people’s content on their portal site. The problem with this approach is that portals tend to get cluttered fast, which makes finding the information you’re after difficult. Additionally, the information that resides on a portal, resides on the portal, NOT the website where the content originated. This is problematic for Website publishers who are trying to monitor how many people are reading their content every day. When you go to IngBoo and click on a news story, the hit actually gets tracked back to the original publisher.
Which brings us to the little IngBoo publisher’s button some of you may have noticed on my blog today. It’s the little green button, under “Followers” (towards the top right-hand side of the blog). The cool thing is that anyone can put one of these buttons on their site.There are several advantages for having an IngBoo button on your site:
It’s an easy way to get people to subscribe to your site. And more subscribers translate into higher traffic. Yes, there is RSS, but that technology is difficult for many people to set up and use. Only about 11% of Internet users are RSS literate.
IngBoo tracks the people who go from IngBoo to your site and will send you an analytics report that tells you where they went or what they bought when they went to your site. The report provides more granularity than you’d normally get with something such as WebTrends.
It will allow your content to be mobilized (i.e., sent to people’s mobile devices).
Bottom line: Give it a try. As I mentioned above, it’s free, it’s a time saver and a potential traffic driver to your site. What have you got to lose? Drop me a line if you’re interested in becoming a power user or if you simply have any comments/feedback you’d like me to relay to the developers of the utility.
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