filtrbox blog

Just created a killer Filtr but not seeing any results?  What gives?  Below are a few suggestions to help you get your result set dialed in.

1) Adjust the Date and FiltrRank sliders

The two sliders at the top of the article pane are designed to help you restrict your view and see just the relevant information.  They work great and any changes are shown immediately but be careful because being too restrictive can leave you with no articles in your view.

2) Select or de-select sources to help control the noise.  The more sources you selected the more articles we will find.  Twitter and Friendfeed can be controlled at either the global or filtr level.  They can both be a bit noisy so include them at your discretion. Sources can be de-selected by clicking on each radio button to uncheck.

3) Selecting Filtrs - Make sure you have only the filtr topics you wish to view enabled by selecting their radio buttons.  In this example I will see only the articles for Red Sox, Mac and money.

4) In the case of too few articles, you may have overly restrictive search terms.  Remember the system is designed to persistently search for the key word or words in your filtr.  In the example below I will only see articles that include all 5 terms biology, marine, whales, dolphins and plankton.  To be more general you could replace the ANDs with ORs in which case you would get articles that have (biology and marine) or (biology and whales) or (biology and dolphins) or (biology and plankton).

5)  Filtrbox is still searching for new articles.  Unlike web search engines Filtrbox performs persistent search.  This means that Filtrbox will continually search for articles that contain your Filtr until you modify or delete it.  Our searches may take a little time to search the far ends of the internet and start bringing results back to you.

If you have tried these adjustments and you are still not seeing the results you think you should, give us a shout at support@filtrbox.com.

Filtrbox went public last Monday, and has been getting some nice pickups in the press and blogworld in the last week.  Thanks to everyone for your support and feedback so far!  The team really turned themselves inside-out to pull the feedback into the release and get it ready in time (thanks guys!).

It has been wonderful to hear from so many people and see the coverage. We love talking to customers and learning how people use Filtrbox to deal with Information Overload and monitor important topics.  If you haven’t had a chance please login to your account to see the newest version and keep the feedback and suggestions coming - we are listening!

Some of our recent coverage:

Inc Magazine - Searching for the next Digg

Network World - Managing the information flood

VentureBeat - Got information overload?

Mashable (podcast) - Offload your Info Over-Load

Fortune Small Business - Saving Small Business from Information Overload

We are excited to announce the addition of Patrick Cameron to the Filtrbox team. Patrick will be heading up our Sales and Marketing efforts going forward is just as psyched as we are about joining us at this important time. With our public debut barely in the rear-view mirror, you can bet there is plenty for him to do!

Patrick has a broad base of experience in sales, product management, and marketing and shares the same entrepreneurial passion as the rest of the team. He was at Akamai and Accenture during the go-go days for both companies and understands how to take great care of customers and grow a business. Bonus: He can keep up with Ari on a bike too

Information Overload and overpriced media monitoring are now a thing of the past! We are thrilled to announce that the Filtrbox media monitoring service is now available to the public. The service emerges from private beta today with an entirely new user interface and a number of new features.From the press release…

Filtrbox (www.filtrbox.com), the media monitoring service of choice for savvy professionals, today announced a disruptive new media monitoring service designed for business professionals that rely on the Internet for gaining knowledge and a competitive edge.  The beta release of the service has been embraced by thousands of users and has received worldwide acclaim across the blogosphere.  Now the service is available to anyone wanting a streamlined solution to monitor, analyze and share content with peers.  Filtrbox eliminates the need for multiple tools reducing cost while increasing productivity. (read the web release here)   

What’s New:

• Entirely new Flex user interface
• Additional sources, including twitter and FriendFeed monitoring
• Search, Sort, and Preferences
• iPhone formatted Daily Briefing emails
• Flagging of important articles
• Google Alerts import
• Drag and Drop Filtr management
• Pro and Team subscription versions
• Content widgets based on custom RSS feeds
• More…

Filtrbox has also announced three versions of the service:Filtrbox: 5 Filtrs and 15 days of article history - FREE! Filtrbox Pro: 25 Filtrs and 45 days of article history - $20/monthFiltrbox Team: 100 Filtrs and 1 year of article history, 6 users - $100/monthSign up today at http://www.filtrbox.com (no CC required!). We hope you’ll agree our easy-to-use rich web application and powerful monitoring features help address information overload and provide a compelling, cost-effective media monitoring solution for anyone who needs to stay in-the-know and on top of their business, competition, or market. Work smarter, save time, and let Filtrbox do the work of monitoring the world’s information for you.For a quick overview, just check out the updated screencasts!

Something happened today that turned out to be a great example of the value of Filtrbox, and it didn’t hit me until after it happened.

We are quite busy over here these days, but I still want to be participating in the key conversations online that have to do with information overload and noise control. Ironically I was prepping for an important call and running thru my Filtrbox account when this article from ReadWriteWeb caught my eye in the dashboard (high ranking, from today). I clicked on the article and then left it up in a tab since I had the call in a few minutes. I came back an hour later and posted a comment. Then one of our users posted a comment giving us a nice plug. Thanks Danny!

The whole discovery-reading-commenting process took me less time than its taking to write this post, and I was able to 1. engage in the conversation about information overload and 2. inadvertently get an independent endorsement for Filtrbox out of it. I would have never gotten to this article if my only mechanism was to subscribe to the RRW RSS feed, because I’d already be thousands of articles behind…I don’t have time to manually search for information overload every day, and I don’t want to comment EVERYWHERE - just on the blogs that have high viewership (and high FiltrRank scores). This is a good example of noise-control at work - I didn’t miss the important post and was able to comment quickly, but I did not have to manually sift through hundreds of articles to find it.

Here’s the article (comments are at the bottom of the post) from ReadWriteWeb on Information Overload. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/info_overload_what_can_we_do.php#comment-58274

Today we released an update to the Filtrbox dashboard that contains a few new features we’ve been working on.

1. Article Sharing - you can now share articles found by Filtrbox via email, or post them to Facebook, Digg or Del.icio.us. There is an email envelope icon to the right of the article title that brings up the sharing box (see below). You need to be logged into your FB/Digg/Del.icio.us accounts to post the links there.

2. Invite a Friend - have a friend or colleague that you think would benefit from Filtrbox? Invite someone to join the private beta by sending them a personalized invitation. Just click on the “Invite a Friend” link on the top right corner of the dashboard and you can send them a note that contains an invite code (see below).

3. Browser tab-control when viewing articles: You can now force articles to open up in new browser tabs by with a CTRL-click on Windows or COMMAND-click on Mac. The default behavior is that articles open into the same target window, overwriting the previous page. Some of you prefer this so you don’t end up with 20 open tabs, and others prefer to have the additional tabs open…so now you can do whichever. Soon we’ll make this a user preference you can set once for your account.

4. New Flex loader - you’ll now see % complete info when the dashboard is loading. If you are on a broadband pipe it should only take a few seconds to load. At least now you have some feedback as to whats going on.

We are working feverishly on a number of other items (some you’ll see in the dashboard, some you won’t) for our next release. If there is anything you’d like to see included or fixed, please drop us a line or post a request on our Satisfaction page.

The Filtrbox team has grown again with the addition of Justin, and we are really excited about him coming on board. Justin is on his way to becoming an RIA/Flex expert and has a great eye for web design too.

He’ll be working on the Flex dashboard primarily, and you’ll see his hand in the software very soon. He’s working on some new sharing features and a Flex skin to update the look of the app. Justin regularly blogs about Flex, Flash, Adobe AIR and all things RIA on his personal blog.

Ari Newman of Filtrbox will be doing a live chat/interview session with the Boulder Daily Camera this coming Monday, 5/12 at 10:00 AM MDT. You can submit questions here http://www.dailycamera.com/chat/ or point your browsers to the same page on Monday to watch or participate in the live web chat. Hear more about Filtrbox and the company’s history and future plans. You can also email in questions to the Daily camera, just email: wallacea {at} dailycamera.com

 Update: chat transcript can be viewed here

As Tom mentioned, we hosted a “bug bash” on Wednesday night and called it PizzaBox, naturally. We invited 20 or so friends to help us test Filtrbox and find bugs, usability issues, etc. Not only was it fun and productive from a QA perspective, it was really educational for us to see so many people using the product at once. The event was a resounding success, and we will definitely do one again.

The recipe we used was simple:

• Invited friends, friends of friends, and colleagues (this provided a good mix of “user types”)
• Relaxed, casual atmosphere (too much structure and its no fun and you are controlling the results)
• Loosely guided testing (we handed out sheets with key areas to test and how to submit feedback)
• Testers brought their own laptops (diverse environments and screen sizes)
• Beer and Pizza (lots of both…)

Why this worked well was simple - everyone who showed up WANTED to be there, and they were happy to play with something new and be critical of it. By having everyone on their own laptops we got to gather test data from 20+ different system configurations, not a standard build like you get in a lab.

We gathered all of the feedback by

1. entering tickets into our bug system in realtime
2. having people email notes and screenshots
3. collecting data “over the shoulder” and seeing their experiences first hand

All in all, we collected as much or more usability feedback as actual product-defect type bugs. Seeing how people “think” and how they interpret the Filtrbox dashboard was really helpful for us. We have a number of areas we want to improve to enhance the overall intuitiveness and workflow within the dashboard.

Thanks to everyone who came out! Filtrbox loves you

If you are looking for a sneek peek at the product or need some help getting your Filtrbox service dialed in, check out the new tutorials on the site.

There are 3 screencasts ranging from 2 minutes to 4 minutes. Topics covered include Filtr setup, Dashboard overview, and FiltrFeeds

http://www.filtrbox.com/video.php

Let us know what else you’d like to see by commenting on this post!