The point that we are moving to is that Links are DATA.  We Analyze the properties of the various links based on the Bundles that link in.   In doing so we move closer towards a more holistic understanding of the human generated web.

To simplify.    Lets look at a new LINK Page for Example.

This is a page devoted to a specific link.    You can see that this particular link lives in two bundles created by two different people with different themes and descriptions.    Got it?!!

It is in the infancy right now, however you can see how this can lead to massive organization and analysis of human generated Data.

Enjoy!

Without Further Ado - 5 not so outrageous Predictions for 2009

5 - Apple makes a Mainstream Multitouch Computer that bridges the gap between iPhone and Laptop.

We can see this one coming miles away.  With the announcement last year of Microsoft Surface, which is a touchscreen coffee table and all quiet on Apples Front, it is the logical next step for Apple to take their iPhone magic a step bigger.   We envision either a laptop or portable tablet type thing that people will effectively be able to work on the go.   Apple Tablet speculation comes and goes, but we think 2009 is the year that it breaks through.

4 - Virtual Reality will gain by leaps and bounds.

We may not have even realized it, but the Nintendo Wii is the first ever virtual reality application to go mainstream.    Right now the functionality is limited to simulating swinging a tennis racket or light saber or perhaps correcting your yoga pose, but it is indicative of things to come.    The motion sensing controllers were the first step and next was the Wii Fit which senses balance.

Now what we will be looking for in 2009 is a apparatus that can scale mainstream and completely measure all of your body movements and be affordable and non-obtrusive.    One cool technology that caught our attention was the lightglove which has not quite got beyond the demo phase yet, but uses hookups to the body and measures movements via lightwaves it projects.

Another is the interactive mirror which seems a bit of a novelty at this point, but we can see the technology moving evolving into scanning full body movements for sake of VR simulation.

3.  Social Bookmarking goes mainstream and becomes useful.

Well we all know about Delicious and friends and they seem to be good for what they are.    The later half of 2008 brought us a sort of next-generation of Social Bookmarking where it allows the users to take it a step further and organize their bookmarking into niche targeted groupings and collaborate with the community.

This will continue further and deeper into 2009 with sites like Twine, YouBundle and Google Search Wiki attempting to cross the line between social bookmarking and search with that added layer of human expertise to ensure clarity in the quest for the ultimately targeted search result.

2.  Twitter tries to become more like Facebook.   Facebook tries to become more like Twitter.

I was talking to my non-techie friend the other day who has dabbled with Twitter and he told me that he uses Facebook like I Twitter and the difference is that he is updating all his friends, while I am updating all my colleagues.  With Facebooks attempted purchase of Twitter for 500m in ghost stock in November, it is clear that the two companies are converging to a similar place.

Look for Twitter to add more social features and Facebook to further refine its update and friending system so that it can further blur the line between friend and colleague and access juicy B2B advertising revenues.

1. Google Releases a fully functional Operating System for the PC.   Backhand Microsoft and stabs up Linux.

To get to our number #1 prediction for 2009, we simply have to examine what the tech world is missing.      Its obvious to some.    Windows is Broken, Mac’s are only for distinguished folks and Linux require that you are comfortable with command lines.    Can you see the pain in the Market?    Who is going to attack this pain other than the big Google ?

First Chrome, then Android and in 2009 we will see a Windows machine compatible PC release of Android  (or whatever they will call it)   This release will be so intelligent, free and Windows Driver compatible so it can be one-click installed over any existing Windows installation.   It will have the magic of Linux, but not require a degree in CS in order to be able to constantly use.

Below is the companion Bundle for this Blog Post with all of the links mentioned Bundled and ready to go.

Up until this point it has been a self-funded operation and by this we were able to build a functioning basic site and small but dedicated userbase (Thank you!)

The Funding will be used for

• Scaling to be able to handle user Growth
• Improvements to Visual Design and UI
• Bringing another full time developer onboard
• Execution of data-portability
• Implementation of full wiki-like (not same but similar) collaboration on Bundles to turn them into living entities.

We have the model and the vision and now it is time to expand.   We have contacted and been contacted by a number of investors.   We will chose the investor that shares our vision and encourages us to continue our lean and efficient operation while adding support and knowledge for growth, partnerships and expansion.  For us, the money is just part of the need with the correct investor being paramount.

We are probably looking for somewhere in low-mid 100k’s as we can do quite a bit with limited amounts of capital as we are experts in keeping the burn rate low.   (Bootstrapping taught us this)

If you are an investor and interested in learning more or can recommend a suitable investor, please contact us via our contact form and we can begin a dialogue ASAP.  (we dont stop for the holidays)

We will leave you with an embedded Bundle on VC Funding resources.

Merry Christmas

There we said it.    If we did the same thing 3 years ago it would have been called a ;great sorting algorithm’.   But now the buzzword for ‘great algorithm’  is ’semantic.’   So we will go with it and officially announce what some of you may have already noticed.

If you go to the main bundle page of almost any bundle and scroll to the bottom you will see a section that says  “You may also Like..”

Well we have done a few ’semantic’ things in the backend and are selecting the Bundles that we think will best complement the current Bundle you are viewing.    Check it out and start browsing around it is a great way to explore.  This will also do a few other specialized personalization tricks that we will go more into later.

On a similar note, we are also announcing that we have revamped our Internal Bundle search engine with this new semantic technology.   Now when you search for ANYTHING on YouBundle.com instead of getting boring text results, you will instead get multimedia rich Bundle Boxes with thumbs stats and ratings.   Give it a try.   We have such an eclectic database of Bundles you never know what you search term may return.

To end we will leave you with a Bundle one of our users made on his research on exactly what is the Semantic Web - I suppose we should know as we are now officially part of the Semantic club. 

UPDATE:   We were able to Fix it on our embeds to remove the search bar by appending

&showsearch=0

to the end of the URL see below in our widget it is now fixed

Reports are coming in from all across the internet about the new Search Bar that is plastered across the header of embedded.     Now when this is on a regular size embedded video it is kinda ok.   See

However..

For the sake of providing concise Bundles of Information - the embeded videos within our Bundles are of a smaller size.   So the video will look like.

See it in action here in this embedded Bundle.

UPDATE WE FIXED IT BY ADDING &showsearch=0 to the end of each embed.   Its all good can go home now.   See it working again in the embed below

So if you go to this Bundle you will see that the natural and logical tags for this would in fact be “Bhutan” and probably a few others. So why would you bother then to tag it again as “Bhutan”? There are a few reasons for this

1. By Tagging it you add that Tag to your personal Tag cloud on your profile page.    This tag will go in with all the other tags you have included in your Bundles.   This personal tag cloud serves as sort of a quick navigation around the various Bundles.
2. By Tagging you add weight to the tag and help our semantic intelligence determine the true and best definition of the Bundle.    Meaning that when I look at the Bundle, I know it is “Bhutan” and when you look at it, you know also it is “Bhutan”  however the machine needs us to reinforce that Bhutan is in fact a good tag for this Bundle.

That is All.    Tag and Enjoy!

We have feeds for you to follow the Latest Bundles,  The most recently updated and the Top Bundles as well.

We have feeds so you can follow any of our 24 individual catagories

And we have feeds of our users Bundling creations.   So you can always keep updated when they publish something new.   Just goto any users profile page to grab their feed.      You will find the Feed Icon everywhere on the site.    Start clicking around and add some feeds.

This is a list of some of the known issues with the service that we are working on fixing, just so that you know we are working on it.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Certain widgets do not display.    This is happens on a very small amount of widgets and we are working on resolving it as we speak.   If you install a widget and it does not show, please send us the url of the Bundle and it will help us to root out the problems FIXED.   If this happens again please notify us ASAP.
• Widgets have funny formatting on some Blogs.    On certain wordpress blogs, the widget is taking the CSS of the Blog instead of the widget.    This does not hamper the functionality, but leads to slightly interesting displays.
• Internet Explorer Bundling issues.      Using certain versions of Internet Explorer to actually create a Bundle can lead to some stalling when clearing links after they have been.    The workaround for this is to click the ‘get info’ button again and it will clear and remove.   Or you could just download FireFox.
• Thumbnail screenshots not appearing right away.      Don’t worry if you create a Bundle and there are no thumbnails for the webpages right away.   Check back and they will appear shortly

There are a few other minor ones, but as always, keep sending in those bug reports to bugs at youbundle dot com

UPCOMING FEATURES

Now the good news, we have a few really cool features that we are working on to release very shortly which should improve your Bundling experience.

• RSS Feeds!   Yes There will be an RSS feed on the home page, each category page and possibly for each Bundle and User to keep track of their updates DONE!   RSS Feeds are Active for home page, catagories and users Bundles.   Read about it Here.  In the future we will have individual RSS for Bundle action.   Hold on!
• XML output.   We already have oEmbed for our Widget output, but the XML data pipe will be a full firehose of all the data contained in a Bundle,  this will include thumbs, links, stats and descriptions.   This will really take Bundling to a new level as developers will be able to grab the raw meta data and create wicked mashups of the Bundles.
• Improvement in our recommendation system and Display of Related Bundles.   To create more a web that lets you browse through similar topics.
• There will be a few others such as public and group editing/viewing of Bundles, but this is a little further off in the future so stay tuned.   If you want it faster and you are a LAMP master, then drop us a line.

We can see that the evolution of Bundling is bringing us to a place where the Links become data.   Soon people will be making Bundles of Bundles and out of the Bundle data-verse we will be able to form UBER-Bundles from the meta-USER based on the collected information.     I hate to use the term ’semantic web;’  as it has been so buzzed out,  but the foundations are being laid as we speak.

We will leave you with a Bundle widget on Heisenbergs uncertainty Principle.   Why?    Well because we all need to remember that the mere act of observing an occurrence will change the outcome.

-Bundle On

Since our Launch, many people have come to us with the issue that they had so much information on a subject that if they tried to put all the links into one Bundle then it just becomes a big confused mess and they wanted to know if there was a way to create sub-bundles of links in order to better sort their information.

To answer this need, we have come up with the following workaround-

Lets say that you are into Sewing and have 100 links you want to share -  and 10 of those links are on selecting Yarn and 10 on Needles and 10 cool patterns.    Well  instead of putting these all into one big sewing Bundle, you 1st create individual Bundles on these subjects.   So just a Bundle on Selecting Yarn.   Then after you have made all your sub-niche Bundles - you then make an UBER sewing Bundle.

Maybe within this Bundle you put in a few key links.   However the meat of the Bundle will be made up of Links to YOUR Other Bundles.    All you have to do is input the URL of the Bundle and we will grab the Thumbnail automatically and put it into its own category.   Its that easy.

See the embedded Obama Bundle below.   If you scroll down you will see that in addition to a few key links there are also links to Niche Bundles detailing Obamas Policies on Heath Care and the Iraq War.

Enjoy.

Overall our launch went well, with an influx of traffic,  and steady returning base.    This is how we wanted it so we can debug and scale.   Next up is grassroots community outreach.   For this we plan to reach out to various members of niche internet communities and encourage them to use our toolset and widget in order to share information with their bases.

Already we have found a niche among a few teachers who are using our widget to share information with their classes.

I will leave you with our featured Bundle of the Day which is a collage of pictures by pop artist Shepard Fairy, the same guy who did the Andre the Giant OBEY artwork and the Obama HOPE picture

Enjoy and keep on bundling