Comments on: Know what you don’t know

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:04:50 +0000

robin – filtrbox added a bunch of new invites to that code, so you should be all set. let me know what you think of the product. enjoy!

By: Robin Grant

Robin Grant — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:40:01 +0000

Hi Seth any chance of a new invite code? the link you gave in your post no longer works

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:34:40 +0000

Dan – It's like you're reading from their pitch! This type of selective content delivery (by filtr or even by score) is exactly where they are headed.

By: Dan Burcaw

Dan Burcaw — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:31:12 +0000

Absolutely. They need to give users many ways to receive their results. RSS is great, but only one tool in the toolbox. For example, I might want to receive super important Filtr feeds via Instant Message if the results are needed in quick-reaction type setting.

FiltrBook might want to think about providing an open API architecture that allows developers to plugin a variety of different “delivery modes” such as they ones you and I have discussed.

By: Dan Burcaw

Dan Burcaw — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:26:42 +0000

Seth, you are absolutely correct. Of course, tuning goes both ways. The user experience needs to encourage usage that prevents a lengthly (and burdensome to the user and thus active usage) trial-and-error cycle.

It might be interesting if they provided a way for users to (optionally) “seed” a URL or text clipping that is highly relevant to what results they hope to receive in an on-going fashion.

I love the idea of a world that downplays keywords.
(one reason I hope PowerSet has moderate success)

A few suggestions, otherwise I think they really have something fantastic that I will no doubt be using (I hate search). Thanks!

By: Aziz Grieser

Aziz Grieser — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:11:20 +0000

I'm definitely going to give it another shot. Didn't have much time the other day. Thanks for the contact info.

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:12:41 +0000

thanks rob – the filtrbox guys feel the same way!

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:12:24 +0000

aziz – i'd encourage you to contact the company directly (ari@filtrbox.com) to walk through your challenge. some of it may be the way the system pulls data as you generate keywords (which is a subset of the data set they search each day – too much to parce quickly as you go through the set-up process). i'm getting very solid results and regularly (daily) come across articles that i without question would have missed had i not been using the service.

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:10:31 +0000

you CAN get your results delivered via RSS so you can read them where you want (you can do this on a per filtr basis if you'd like). the interesting socialthing integration to me would be to autogenerate a filtr with new about your top friends – that'd be pretty neat!

By: sethlevine

sethlevine — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:09:06 +0000

thanks dan. tuning definitely takes a little effort, but is worthwhile. with any service like this you have to be willing to put up with a certain amount of noise (especially if some of your search terms are broad – less so if you've got a list of uniquely named companies)…