A lot has happened for and with Qumana in the last month, and we're into a busy flow.

At the same time our blushing newly-weds Arieanna and Ianiv, who are at the core of the application's development and continuous improvement, are off on Monday for a well-deserved and much-needed honeymoon (Amsterdam, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Paris, the south of France, Venice, other parts of Italy, and so on). Have fun, and travel safely .. please !

As our profile and user base has grown and spread, we have been encoruraging (and receiving) great feedback about niggling bugs and wished-for improvements and new features.

Thanks, to all of you ! We promise to keep on trying to do our best.

Whilst Arieanna and Ianiv are away, we are working with an Atlanta software programmimg / consulting firm to keep on mowing through the bugs, a list of which we maintain in Bugzilla, and we are beginning a serious usability assessment / analysis. Both of these initiatives are aimed at being able to offer you, the users, a substantially improved and more robust version as soon as we believe that there is an order-of-magnitude difference in usability and functionality.

Please stay tuned, and please keep that feedback and the requests for improvements coming.

.

I don't think blogging is the endpoint of users employing easy-to-use software to develop and publish their ideas and knowledge to the web. the very concept of *what is a document* in the digital hyperlinked age is under revision, as David Weinberger has often reminded us (wow, this article is 11 years old already !!).

Mathew Ingram looks at the issue of new Web-based tools for writing in a Globe and Mail article today, in which he points us to the increasing possibility that Microsoft Office may be threatened by the rapid ascent of and growing profile of these tools and their capabilities.

Microsoft Office facing the war of the words

MATHEW INGRAM
Globe and Mail Update

For almost two decades, companies have been trying to find a way around Microsoft Corp.'s stranglehold on the office software market, with little success.

Canada's own Corel Corp. tried to use WordPerfect as the core of a competitive office suite, but failed to make much of a dent. In the late 1990s, several companies (including Corel) tried to build Java-based suites that would be faster and cheaper, but these also failed.

Now, some companies -- including search giant Google Inc. -- are hoping that the Web can succeed where these other attempts failed.

Google has so far denied any plans to create a Web-based competitor to Microsoft Office, but it took what many see as the first small step in that direction with the acquisition this year of a Web-based startup called Writely.com, whose free service allows users to import, edit and collaborate on Word documents and other text-based files.

Some industry watchers have also speculated that in the wake of Scott McNealy's departure on Monday as chief executive officer of Sun Microsystems Inc. (he becomes chairman), Google and Sun could accelerate their marketing partnership and produce some form of Web-based software suite, using Sun's StarOffice as the engine.

Matthew continues on, introducing readers to the persistent vision and focus of an interesting and rapidly-gaining-notice offering from ThinkFree. In fact, their profile is growing so rapidly that they apologize for the slowness of their server right up front on theeir home page.

Another entrant in the "compete with Microsoft" sweepstakes, South Korea-based ThinkFree Corp., has been around a lot longer than most Web-based Office competitors, and also has a little-known Canadian connection. Founder and chief executive officer T.J. Kang went to high school in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough and got his degree in psychology and computer science from the University of Toronto before getting into the software business in the 1980s.

On Monday, ThinkFree launched a revamped version of its Web-based office suite, which Mr. Kang says offers complete compatibility with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. It also comes with a gigabyte of free on-line storage space. Within 24 hours, the company says more than 10,000 users had registered for the service, which has been available with more limited features since last year.

All that being said, I think that it's clear that blogging and blogging-like derivatives are going to be one of the key ways from hereon out that people express themselves, *talk* to each other and share ideas, information and opinions online, and that it will be increasingly used in and by organizations both large and small.

And that brings me to the continuing conviction that a lightweight, easy-to-use, versatile and very inexpensive (free ;-) tool like Qumana should be one of the tools in every digital citizen's publishing tool belt.

.

It's been a while coming and since we're in Boston, Waltham actually, meeting with Lycos Jen and I thought it would be a great time to do a little podcast talking about Lycos-Qumana partnership.

Enjoy!

Walkabout Podcast Apr 25 8.7 megs 13 mins.

Tags: Lycos, Qumana, podcast, walkabout podcast[

The Economist magazine publishes a central survey every month or six weeks ... and the newest one, titled "New Media", takes a good hard look at the capabilities that have erupted over the last three years or so.

Among the audience
Apr 20th 2006
From The Economist print edition

The era of mass media is giving way to one of personal and participatory media, says Andreas Kluth. That will profoundly change both the media industry and society as a whole

There have been a range of *false starts* associated with the promises of a digital hyperlinked infrastructure (what we know as the Internet and the Web) .. the dot.com boom (and the subsequent spectacular bust), the widespread belief that the ease-of-access to the Web and the sharing of information and knowledge would lead to widespread democratization of information and opportunity, and successive promises about the creative disruption of one industry or another.

For a while, the majority of business and government decision-makers were confident that they had escaped major disruption, and that *business as usual* was the order of the day. The ongoing, and now noticeable, buildup of integrated and less-costly capabilities, the continued spread of cheaper and cheaper broadband access, the continued creep of generational change .. all these forces and more are contributing to a growing awareness that widepread major change may be just around the corner.

Calling it the “internet era” is not helpful. By way of infrastructure, full-scale participatory media presume not so much the availability of the (decades-old) internet as of widespread, “always-on”, broadband access to it. So far, this exists only in South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, whereas America and other large media markets are several years behind. Indeed, even today's broadband infrastructure was built for the previous era, not the coming one.

Almost everywhere, download speeds (from the internet to the user) are many times faster than upload speeds (from user to network). This is because the corporate giants that built these pipes assumed that the internet would simply be another distribution pipe for themselves or their partners in the media industry. Even today, they can barely conceive of a scenario in which users might put as much into the network as they take out.

[snip ...]

This has profound implications for traditional business models in the media industry, which are based on aggregating large passive audiences and holding them captive during advertising interruptions. In the new-media era, audiences will occasionally be large, but often small, and usually tiny. Instead of a few large capital-rich media giants competing with one another for these audiences, it will be small firms and individuals competing or, more often, collaborating.

Some will be making money from the content they create; others will not and will not mind, because they have other motives. “People creating stuff to build their own reputations” are at one end of this spectrum, says Philip Evans at Boston Consulting Group, and one-man superbrands such as Steven Spielberg at the other.

As with the media revolution of 1448, the wider implications for society will become visible gradually over a period of decades. With participatory media, the boundaries between audiences and creators become blurred and often invisible.

In the words of David Sifry, the founder of Technorati, a search engine for blogs, one-to-many “lectures” (ie, from media companies to their audiences) are transformed into “conversations” among “the people formerly known as the audience”.

This changes the tone of public discussion

.

It's interesting to watch our ideas evolve on the Web, and yesterday was for us the achievement of an informal milestone that has remained important.

About two and a half years ago, we would sit around discussing the basic design (of both functionality and user interface) for Qumana ... which was then a prototype and which we called Quicklink and Quickdraft for short periods of time ... and our North Star *customer* was always the newbie or novice blogger who had decided they liked blogging, or wanted to use blogging as a DIY small business content pubishing application, in conjunction with a leading blog platform.

We wanted to make it easy-to-use, robust, cross-platform and versatile in terms of the things most bloggers want to do, so that bloggers could have a personalized-to-their-style-of-working blog editing application. We also wanted to offer it for free but with the possibility for a blogger to use it as a commercial application as well.

With About.com offering it's readers a brief tutorial on how to set up and make a post with Qumana, we feel that Qumana's versatility, ease-of-use and value for price has helped it reach a place where the newbie and novice bloggers will get a chance to try it out after they've searched for About.com Blogs

It will be cool if eventually there's an About.com section titled "How To Use Advertising on Blogs with Qumana"

How To Use Qumana as Your Blog Editor
From Sheila Ann Manuel Coggins,
Your Guide to Web Logs
.

We have a winner!

Aaron Brazell, of Technosailor, is the winner of the Qumana Ski or Surf Ultimate Vacation Contest.

The Qumana contest was a simple one - simply write at least 20 posts with Qumana, then blog about your "blogging landscape". Simply, what makes you a more productive blogger?

Choosing a winner for the contest was not an easy task. There were some really great entries. But, in the end, Aaron's came out on top. Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest, and Congratulations to Aaron!

Aaron's qualifying post talked about his journey as a blogger. His start at Ensight, where he really didn't 'get' blogging quite yet, to his start of Technosailor - as something just to pass the time - and its growth as he covered the 2004 U.S. elections. It took a while, but Aaron's journey to blogging was more about finding himself, and his desire to connect, then about any technology or defined aim.

In Aaron's own words:

"You see, blogging is all about relationships. No man is an island."

Aaron's story was a powerful one - both of a journey, and finally of what it takes to support him as a full-fledged blogger.

Aaron is now a vital part of b5media, as a tech guru, writer, and editor for the Sports channel. He's also an active consultant and fledgling author for upcoming book "You Can Blog." Phew, I guess Aaron could really use the vacation!

So, as winner of this contest, what does Aaron get?

We're all about giving bloggers choices here at Qumana, so we have two options: 5 days in Whistler, BC or 7 days in Mazatlan, Mexico. And it's a prize for two, so Aaron gets to bring the guest

So, Aaron, where do you want to go? And don't forget to take some pictures!

As I discussed in depth on the Qumana Investor Blog, David Sifry has released the latest in his quarterly State of the Blogosphere reports.

This kind of growth is nothing short of astounding and a serious question is "can it keep going?".  Personally I think it's a yes and no answer.  Yes for the short-medium term. No, of course, for the long-term.  Let's consider the growth of the web itself.  It grew extremely rapidly, then just reached a point where the "easy sites" had been done.  This is fine, there will be continued growth for years to come, just maybe not at a 6 month doubling rate!  How long at this rate?  I'm guessing at least through the end of this year.  Lots of individuals and small businesses haven't jumped on the bandwagon and I expect they will over the next six months to one year.

What's next?  As Mark Evans and I have discussed: blog-vertising.

Tags: Technorati, blogosphere growth, blogvertising

Pushing half a million impressions a day (10 million a month) takes its toll on a database.

This weekend we are going to be doing routine optimization and maintenance on the QAds server and database. Intermitently over the weekend the server and ads will be unavailable. We will be timing outages to be during off-peak hours and for as short as possible.

None of your existing data will be lost and reports will be up to date and live Monday.

This, I guess, is just the price of success.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to e-mail support AT qumana DOT com and we will get back to you as soon as we can (between biting the ears off our chocolate bunnies!).

Ultimately, I think, the Web and blogging and social media, especially in the business arena, will come to be mainly about listening ... listening to customers, listening to competitors, listening to existing and potentiual customers, listening to each other.

I'm in Brighton in the UK, on a business trip but staying with old friends .. and one of the delights about the UK are its newspapers, and the writing they contain. The Guardian is an established UK newspaper that has taken a real leadership position online over the last few years; it has certainly embraced blogging during the past two or three years. And ... one of the results, I think, is that it has been growing more rapidly and more widely in terms of readership than it's competitors ... one might say it has entered into the interactive, participative economy.

Here's an excerpt from the Guardian Unlimited's editor-in-chief Emily Bell in an editorial titled "What Is The Point Of Vetting Bloggers ?"

I recently looked at some software which we could use on our site to show which blogs are talking about which articles - a function we will incorporate into Guardian Unlimited at some point. It is possible, I was told, to screen out the negative comments. But why, I asked, would anyone want to do that?

I read with some disbelief the comments of a web editor from another newspaper site who suggested that by inviting more comments, as we have, the Guardian is taking serious risks that would end in tears. As a result, the website of the aforementioned editor allows writers to vet the comments added to their blogs. This seems to me a far more absurd idea. Why have a blog at all?

The problem with customers is that sometimes they complain, but it is better that you can see the complaints, and hopefully respond to them adequately, than to ignore them or screen them out. If you do that, people will complain more loudly somewhere else. Organisations that understand their customers largely manage it by listening to all the feedback rather than just the good bits.

One of the driving elements of our philosophy and mission at Qumana is to make it easier for people to participate in personal publishing, to express themselves and make their voices heard ... to participate in the ongoing transformation of our increasingly interconnected societies and economies.

It's interesting to note and watch a major media company that in our opinion *gets it*.

.

We all know that online advertising is increase by leaps and bounds year over year and quarter over quarter (roughly 30% a year).  But if you look only at the blog, podcast, and RSS segment (or consumer generated media -- CGM) it increased 198% in 2005 and shooting for 145% in 2006.  This is according to a new report by PQ Media (report intro and press release).

In actual numbers the CGM component is was $20.4 million in 2005 and trending towards $49.8 million this year.  The chart above shows where the dollars are going by category and it reflects overall online spending pretty closely.

The question is, why is the growth so fast and why CGM?  The speed of increase is primarily due to the newness of this media segment.  This is also why there will be a "slow down" in spending 2005 vs 2006.  But why CGM?  Frankly marketers are realizing that CGM is where the audience is.  People who read CGM are at the cutting edge of a lot of areas, and they tend to be better educated and earn more than the general online population.  Bloggers and blog readers tend to be the influencers, the connectors, and if you're looking for an affluent audience ... it just makes sense doesn't it.

For consumer electronics, automobile, and similar advertisers blogs are becoming the places people go to not only chance the latest news, but also reviews and recommendations of products.  Great place to advertise ... or sponsor.  Having your brand associated with a top-notch blog and blogger could be a very good thing.

The one piece missing in all this is that the tools to advertise on blogs are only in their infancy.  The models and techniques are just being proven.  2006 might very well prove to be the beginning of the CGM advertising explosion.

Other references: Marketing VOX -- A Feed is Born

Tags: RSS advertising, Blog advertising, Podcast advertising, online adverting, consumer generated media, CGM

Less than a week after the launch of the Lycos-Qumana partnership, Lycos has completed the upgrade process of their blogging packages so that Tripod and now Angelfire bloggers can use Qumana to post to their blogs.

So, welcome to the fold Angelfire bloggers!  A little bird told me, okay it was Jen, that your blogs have been upgraded to be able to use Qumana.  Like 30 mins ago!

We just had an update meeting on this project and we're all just overwhelmed at the positive response we've received.  We're all enjoying working together and working on getting the two teams together for some fun.  I dunno which is better, whale watching in Victoria or a Red Sox game in Boston.   Hmmm, that's a tough one.

Regardless, I know that Lycos has some really cool stuff up their sleeves to be coming out and of course Qumana does too!

As the saying goes ... watch this space and this one too.

Come on, give Qumana a try.  Hey, it's even free.  Nothing to lose!

Tags: Qumana, Angelfire, Lycos, blogging

Hot on the heels of the announcement of our deal with Lycos, today Blogware/Tucows has announced our distribution agreement with their Blogware resellers.  This agreement allows Blogware resellers to promote Qumana, QReader, and QAds to their customers.

Since several of our blogs (this one, my personal blog, and our Investors blog) run on Blogware we knew that we wanted to build a solid, long-term relationship.  Blogware is one of the leading hosted blogging platforms (one that doesn't get nearly the respect and attention it deserves) and we are excited to be working with Tucows/Blogware and all the Blogware resellers world-wide.

What does this mean for Qumana?  Where are we heading?  It's exciting times for us.  We look forward to introducing more bloggers to Qumana, Qumana Ads and Qumana Reader.  We also hope that these kind of distribution deals will help more people start blogging.  The future?  Clearly we want to keep improving all our products and services.  Everything looked at for places to improve.  Easier, smoother blogging, better RSS reading, better ads for your posts.

I think this is just one of many busy weeks to come.

Tags: Tucows, Blogware, Qumana

Despite some computer company announcing yesterday that another company's OS could run on their machines, the buzz on the Blogosphere has been quite respectable. The BlogPulse search says it all I think. The commentary we're getting is pretty insightful. Sure we've been getting the w00ts! and congrats from friends, but there have been comments like:

In a landscape of hyper-acquisitions and VC bulimia, it's nice to see an old-school-netco-meets-web-2.0 alliance where both companies gain--and so do their end users, especially those million++ Tripod and Angelfire folks who now have easy access to a super-easy blogging platform.-- Jeneane Sessum

Wow, I get a day or two behind, and look what I miss. Lycos - one of the Big Names in Internet - and Qumana - one of the Big Names in blogging - have joined forces to present the Lycos-Qumana Blog Editor, and the Lycos-Qumana RSS reader. Through the Lycos-Qumana alliance, Lycos is also offering easy one-stop blogging through their Tripod service.

Want more hype? Try this one on for size. Wired News (a service of Lycos) bloggers are now posting more efficiently thanks to Lycos-Qumana. -- Frye

Other search firms are moving to explore the expansive web as well. Last month, Lycos announced it was introducing a number of self-publishing and distribution options for content creators. It recently entered the VOIP market with Lycos Phone and today announced the release of a desktop Blog editing tool, Lycos-Qumana. -- SEO Blog

Other mentions: C|Net, Blog Herald, WebProNews, Mark Evans

So, what else do we have up our sleeves? Well that would be telling wouldn't it? Let's just say we're not resting on our laurels and are going to stay as busy as ever.

Tags: Lycos-Qumana, Qumana-Lycos, Qumana, Lycos, Tripod, Angelfire, blogging, Q Ads, QReader

Free Downloadable Application Lets Bloggers Publish Content to Multiple Blogs from Desktop;
Gives Users Control of Ads on Blogs

WALTHAM, Mass., April 5 -- Lycos, Inc. (http://www.lycos.com), a leading media destination for creators and consumers of quality content, today announced a new desktop blog editing tool, powered by Qumana, making blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers everywhere.

With the new Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor (http://lycos.qumana.com), Lycos enhances the freedom of blogging, allowing users to publish to their Tripod and Angelfire Blogs on Lycos, as well as to other major blogging sites, from the desktop. Additionally, the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor works with Qumana's Q Ads, an integrated ad program, allowing bloggers to insert ads into their blogs, while revenue from these ads is shared with the bloggers.

"If you're an active blogger, the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor now gives you the ability to post to multiple blogs with just one click, extend your blogs further reaching more people, and make more money from your blog content," said Alfred Tolle, CEO of Lycos, Inc. "With this new offering, Lycos continues to reinforce our strategy by offering content creators the tools needed to better showcase and market their independent content."

Key features of the Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor include:

• Insert keyword-specific ads in one click and customize ads to your blog

• Edit old posts from any of your blogs

• Offline editing to work at your own pace

• One-click posting to one or more blogs

• Seamless publishing and cross-publishing

• Integration with all major blog platforms

• Easy image uploading

• Spell check and thesaurus

"Qumana is a versatile and powerful personal publishing application that makes creating the content for an online conversation almost as easy as thinking and talking," said Fred Fabro, president of Qumana. "Qumana is being put to use by an increasing number of bloggers around the world, and now this alliance with Lycos puts a free tool in the hands of its millions of Lycos users, helping them blog easily and instantly from their desktop to Tripod and Angelfire platforms."

The new Lycos-Qumana Desktop Blog Editor complements Lycos' award-winning BlogBuilder tool first launched in Feb. 2003. With Lycos BlogBuilder, users can create a blog in minutes, with customizable designs, privacy features, mobile posting and the ability to easily add digital photos, video and sound clips.

About Lycos, Inc.
Lycos, Inc. (http://www.lycos.com) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Daum Communications Corp., a leading Internet portal and e-commerce destination in Korea with a growing presence throughout the Asian markets. Lycos, Inc. creates and operates search, community and technology lifestyle sites including Lycos.com, Hotbot.com, Wired.com, Tripod.com and Angelfire.com. Other Lycos products and sites include Lycos Mail, Lycos Games, Lycos Planet, Lycos Phone and GetRelevant. Lycos was acquired by Korean Daum Communications Corp. in October 2004 and has its U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts. Daum Communications Corp. is traded on the KOSDAQ: 035720, http://www.daum.net.

About Qumana
Qumana Software, Inc. (http://www.qumana.com) is a leading developer of tools and services for bloggers. Qumana's industry recognized tools include: Qumana, a blog editor for online publishing; Q Reader, an RSS Reader; and Q Ads, an advertising network for bloggers integrated into the Qumana tool. Qumana Software develops tools for every blogger: PC & Mac, experienced & novice, and multi-lingual. Qumana Software is headquartered in Vancouver, BC.

Lycos(R) is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc. All other product or service marks mentioned herein are those of Daum Communications Corp., Lycos, Inc. or their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Contacts:
Kathy O'Reilly
Lycos, Inc.
781.370.3454
Kathy.O'Reilly@lycos-inc.com

Darren Barefoot
Capulet Communications
604.727.5345
darren@capulet.com

Tags: qumana, lycos, lycos-qumana, blogging, web 2.0, deals

Wow, what a month it has been.  Our exciting news (on Lycos and Yahoo) is making its way through the Net as I write this (Thanks Toby, Lorraine, Mark, and Jeremy for early ink).  Before I get into the details and my thoughts, I have some thank yous to say.  First the whole Qumana and Lycos teams.  A project and deal of this scale cannot be pulled off by a single person.  The whole team has worked so, so hard to make this possible (and we even had a Qumana wedding too!) and I thank them so much.  Now, as good as a project might be a web-related project needs, well, servers.  So I'd like to give special thanks to our primary host Pair and our caching provider Akamai.  They have also done extra duty and came through in the clutch when we needed them to make sure the pages got served.

So ... what does this mean for Qumana?  A lot.  This is huge for us.  Lycos is one of those icons of the Internet.  Lots of history, lots going on.  We're excited to be working with them.  In many ways this is an affirmation of Qumana's mission: make blogging easier and better.  Beyond all the hype, beyond all the thoughts of blog bubbles and getting into debates about "what is web 2.0", this sea change we've seen over the last two years is about writing and publishing.  It's about people having their say.  It's about people helping to shape, expand, illustrate, and elaborate on the news of the day.  And now the legions of Tripod and Anglefire, and ... oh did I mention ... Wired bloggers can create, describe, and publish easier today than they could yesterday.

This has been a busy time, but there is no time to rest on our laurels.  Still lots to do.  Still more ways to make things better.  Still more posts to write.  Time to get going on this exciting new phase.

Tags: Qumana, Lycos, Qumana-Lycos, Lycos-Qumana, blogging