Orangeinks

PodiPodi’s Joyful Version

PodiPodi, a website enhancement tool which launched a few months back, just released a new version called the PodiPodi Joyful Version. Users can now choose from the Geeky interface in which you need to type a command in order to open up a service and the “Joyful” where you can browse the service you wish to load.

When PodiPodi was first launched, there were mixed feedback about the service. Some said the service is unnecessary while others gave great reviews and thought that it’s a great enhancement for websites. The old user interface confuses most visitors and it usually takes a while to open up a service. One needs to click the PodiPodi icon or press Shift+Spacebar to load the command interface, type help to see what services are available and load the command interface again so that you can type the command for the service. With the new version, the user just clicks on the icon or press the shortcut key and the choices will be instantly available. You can also type in a letter or the service name and it will bring you to the service that matches the letter/name that you entered.

This is a great upgrade for PodiPodi, even if some of the features from the old interface are still not included. You can head over to their site to check out the old interface. As for the Joyful Version, you can check it out right here. Just click the PodiPodi icon or press Shift+Spacebar after this page fully loads.

Tags: podipodi, website enhancement

PodiPodi Opens to the Public

You may have noticed the flashing black thing every time you visit Orangeinks. It’s a plugin called PodiPodi. In case you missed our review on PodiPodi, it’s a website enhancement tool that lets you upgrade your website and packs it with multimedia viewing features, Google searches and lots of other cool stuff. PodiPodi is embedded in a page as a java-script gadget, but thanks to its unobtrusive architecture it doesn’t change the page layout.

Anyway, I would just like to inform you all that PodiPodi is now on public beta. You can register for free and try out the plugin in your own websites. You can tweak the features inside your PodiPodi account and choose which features you want to be available in your blog or website.

Added Features:

•find: just type in find and some text (e.g. find widget) and PodiPodi will search and highlight for you all the matched words in the page containing the searched text.

•Google Gadgets: this is probably the most exciting update! Now you can customize your PodiPodi with thousands of Google Gadgets and bind them to whatever commands you’d like to give to your users, from weather reports to news or games! If you are a developer you can create your own Gadget, post it to Google Gadgets and embed it in your PodiPodi box.

•admin tools: we have worked on the administration pages, now it’s possible to change the password, the name and URL of your website.

Tags: Plugin, podipodi, web tool, website enhancement, website upgrade

The PodiPodi Website Enhancement Tool

PodiPodi is a very cool way of adding non intrusive user interface enhancements to your websites. It is an experimental project in human-Machine Interaction inspired by Enso, a command line interface for desktop systems developed by Humanized, Inc. PodiPodi is a widget developed in JavaScript which allows you to easily add features without redesigning your blog or website.

I just received an invite from PodiPodi and got a chance to test their service. I must say that this particular enhancement widget is very impressive. It looks great and what I like about it is that it doesn’t interfere with the browsing. It gives the user the power to choose if he/she wants to use it or not. It will only load a service only if initiated by the user. The widget is customizable and can be done in your PodiPodi account. The owner can select which additional services he wants to add in his website.

How it Works:

Once the plugin is installed, just click the PodiPodi button or simply press Shift+Spacebar. A command line interface will appear and the user can immediately use the additional services that the owner added. Just type help on the PodiPodi command line to get the list of commands and services available for the particular site. I installed the widget and it’s already running at Orangeinks so that you can test it here.

Below is the list of service enhancements available (and coming soon) in PodiPodi.

• Info: Show additional information about the website
• Calculate: Calculate the result of a simple
mathematical expression.
• Send a comment: Visitors of the site can send messages to the web owner
• Tell a friend: Visitors can send messages to their friends and tell them about the website
• Sitemap: Show the site map of the website for a better navigation
• Flickr: show web designer’s pictures posted in Flickr or search for photos on Flickr
• Friends: Show your friend sites
• Google Web Search: make possible to perform searches through Google, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Google Images Search: make possible to perform searches through Google Images, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Yahoo Web Search: make possible to perform searches through Yahoo, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Yahoo Images Search: make possible to perform searches through Yahoo Images, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Youtube Search: make possible to perform searches through Google Videos and YouTube, parameters (languages, regions, etc.) are customizable
• Weather (coming soon): get the weather of a specific location or the city specified by the owner of the website
• Wikipedia (coming soon): Search wikipedia for specific contents

PodiPodi has been tested and works great in the browsers listed below:
Firefox2, Firefox3, Safari 2,Opera 9 and Internet Explorer 6 and 7 (in IE6 no rounded corners yet, probably never…)

The service is still in private beta. If you want to try it in your websites, you have to register as a beta tester for PodiPodi.

Tags: podipodi, website enhancement, widget