Flow *

So only 2 days after my presentation at Xtech 2007 about user generated pipelines and how Microsoft have got something in store in this area. Microsoft release details of Popfly,

Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications.

There is a screencast which shows pretty much everything you can do at a basic level with Popfly. There's also some more focused videos here.

The service is split into two, one a application the other a service.

1. Popfly Creator is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups.
2. Popfly Space is an online community of creators where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.

It looks good and works well. Almost anyone power user will get the hang of it within minutes but there is almost enough to keep more advanced users going for a while. However it falls down in the same places as Yahoo Pipes. No access to the local file system again. Theres even bigger problems when you compare it to my core principles of user generated pipelines.

• Definable
• Graphical
• Standard
• Shareable
• Open
• Non-proprietary

Popfly only manages to get Graphical and Sharable right. This is worrying but its still in Alpha, so who knows what might happen in the next version. Till then, there is a blog for the team and a few screenshots even.

I found this company which makes a living by creating custom actionscripts for people and companies.

Welcome to Automated Workflows, LLC., a leader in professional AppleScript and workflow automation software integration services and technology.

Primarily serving Macintosh-based clients, we specialize in helping businesses to become more efficient, by developing more consistent and effective workflows, allowing them to cut their expenses and increase their revenue

In their Applescript section they say this.

AppleScript is a scripting language that is installed with the operating system onto every Macintosh computer. Scripting differs slightly from programming. Programming generally allows you to write a compiled application that directly controls the behavior of a computer. Scripting allows you to write a set of instructions to control existing applications on a computer. On a Macintosh, this includes the operating system.

AppleScript's English-like syntax makes it much simpler to learn and write than other languages. Therefore, many Mac users have taken it upon themselves to learn it. There are many resources available for learning AppleScript yourself, including professional training, books, and more.

AppleScripts are written in an editor application, and Apple has included a script editor in the operating system. Simply called "Script Editor," this application can be used by anyone to write, compile, and save AppleScripts. Some other editors are available too, which provide dozens of great features, shortcuts, and assistance for writing scripts of varying complexity. Some of these editors even allow you to apply interfaces to your scripts, making them look and feel just like any other application on the Mac.

Uses for AppleScript

Whether you know it or not, you have probably used AppleScripts in the past. AppleScript is primarily used to automate repetitive tasks that are performed at regular intervals. Many programs such as application installers and email programs use AppleScripts to perform specialized tasks.

Companies use AppleScript for automating all different types of tasks, including the following:

• Image manipulation and conversion
• Desktop and database publishing
• Database maintenance
• Server maintenance
• File/Folder maintenance
• CD/DVD duplication
• Much, much more!

When talking about user generated pipelines people ask if there's really a business to be made in this? Well if automated workflows can make a business off applescripts which are sharable and open (as you can see the code). There success stories good and they also provide consulting service for developers and workflow planning. So you can imagine there would be these types of opptunities if there was a open, sharable and non-propitery pipleline language. Which reminds me I need to look at the I-AM and U-AR drafts.

So to start off with Touchstone is something like I imagine when talking about user generated pipelines and flow. Its acts like a widget engine, so it sits on your desktop and you can interact with it directly using a very slick user interface. But as the website likes to remind us - its not a widget engine, its a alerts/updates and attention management platform. The platform can also can do things on your behalf like pulling down RSS feeds and posting files to the internet. Its also arranges its self like a series of pipes.

Subscriptions (Input) pull down Feeds and other types of data from the web. At the moment only it only has a Feed adapter plugin installed so you can only All types of RSS and ATOM feeds. But you could write a input adapter for almost anything online or offline on your computer. Some of the ideas are here, the Azureus one I'm very interested in. The Feed adapter plugin also gives you the option to subscribe to a OPML file (not URL which is great shame). In my current setup I have subscribed to over 300+ feeds and Touchstone seems to be as slow as it was with one feed. But memory usage is crazy (320meg), luckly I have a gig of memory and don't use my desktop machine for much more that a download and file server.

Priorities (Transform or as Touchstone calls it Items) allows you to filter and transform feed data using a range of plugins. Out of the box you have Phrases to look out for, Rank your sources and Auto-Attention Profiling Results. Phrases will urge Touchstone to look for user defined phrases in subscriptions. Even my desktop aggregator (greatnews) does this, but the Rank your sources I've only seen in blogbridge and this allows you to give certain sources a higher emphase over others. When you mix this with the phrases you can see how much more powerful it is that a standard desktop aggregator. The Auto-Attention I've not played with yet, because I'm currently looking into the U-AR (Universal AttentionData Reader) and I-AM (Inferred Applicability to Me) stuff.

Interruptions (Output) is pretty much what you see or what the platform does with the sources once there transformed/filtered. This is also where things get very interesting. Like Input adapters there is a list of ideas here. But Touchstone Alpha comes with Popup Alerts, Pebbles, News Ticker and Breaking News. All are very configurable, even down to transparency levels and size. Starting with Popup Alert, this does what it says. Little short 2sec popsups at the bottom right of the screen (all configurable). Breaking News is almost the same but pops up in the left corner and has a slightly different emphases. How you config that emphases is still unknown but the adapter is still work in progress. Pop up alert is more complete and configurable. News Ticker controls that large black bar which sits on the top of the desktop (all configurable of course). Most of the time its sits there saying waiting for content but once in a while it will have a scrolling feed on it. You can hover over the headline in question to pause it and a click will open the browser with the permalink or url in question. The most interesting one is Pebbles which republishes your output as another public feed. This means you can subscribe with a standard rss reader and get all the benefit Touchstone gives you with the Transform stage. Which is very useful for example if your wanting to get whats important on your Mobile phone or mini aggregator. I'm subscribed to the feed on my RSS reader on my phone currently, and to be honest its not working out that great at the moment but I'm sure that will change as I teach it my taste more..

Be warned Touchstone Alpha is not very stable but I usually find it stays up if you don't mess with the settings too much. Also running it on my 2.8ghz desktop made it stable enough to work with. I would have it on my desktop machine at work (Intel duo processor) but it does seem to support Proxys correctly yet. And my poor 1.3ghz laptop just couldn't cope with the stress of Touchstone. Even under the 2.8ghz machine Touchstone remains very slow and non-responsive to multiple clicks and drags within a short period. Its CPU usage also flickrs back and forth between idle and 75% at the worst of times.

So generally I really do like Touchstone. The concept works but it needs more work and polishing before releasing on the public. It also needs more adapters to make it very different from desktop aggregators. I think once it can read data from the web in non syndication format like APIs and have outputs to IM and Email. We'll start to see Touchstone really come into its own.

Its not exactly what a application for pipelines and flow but its not that far off either. U-AR and I-AM are very interesting things which could be used to define a USER pipeline. For example I could give away or even sell my APML (attention profiling mark-up language) if it churned out such useful data from a range of sources. So they really have thought about the shareable side of this. Touchstone are keen to make APML like OPML, so it won't be owned by one corp and there for rights free, maybe standardised (if someone body picks it up) and hopefully extendable using namespaces.
But taking a step back a moment, this only defines the middle part of the pipeline not the input or output, I would love to see XProc or something like it used to define the whole process which goes on in Touchstone.

Its also important not to get caught up in the hype of Touchstone. Its still only working with pools of data and its output adapters can not for example automatically download the latest web video which everyone might be talking about. I'm interested to see what's possible outside of pools of data. Currently its focus on Feeds makes a lot of sense, otherwise it would be too abstract a concept and product. But also currently Touchstone has only one feature beyond Blogware, the attention engine. Yes it looks a hell of a lot nicer and easier to use but the basic adapters in Blogwave and Touchstone are a like. Also the experience is simlar, but remember Blogwave had a definable pipeline using batch scripting. Touchstone currently does not.

I look forward to seeing what the next Alpha build brings... Good work Touchstone guys!

Technorati Tags: aggregator, alpha, analysis, atom, attention, blogwave, data, desktop, project, rss, rssreader, i-am, touchstone, transform, u-ar