Spinlets May Be a Tool for Every Site

Posted by Phil Butler on June 7th, 2007

Spinlets is another great tool being developed in an invitation only beta environment. The new service will allow users a practical, easy to use, customizable and best of all a free platform for rich media API integration into web pages and blogs. The Spinlet API features a library of customization tools that enable seamless integration of media while providing “mashup” capability and enhanced content portability. The current Spinlets available for testing include YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, Craigslist and Google Maps with many more on the way.

Vision

Spinlets is being developed by urSpin, a new company with a vision to provide a one-stop distribution point where news, information, Internet applications and content can be accessed. UrSpin is one of the first companies to launch in the United States as well as the People's Republic of China and the company has offices in El Segundo, CA and Beijing, PRC.

The Spinlets development is aimed at bridging the gulf between content and technology by creating the perfect single destination model. The team at Spinlets consists of 5 friends from El Segundo; Robb Fujioka, Kevin Cuxil, Mike Paley, Daryl Okimoto and Dan Miyahara. There is a China contingent as well, but my primary contact has been CTO Kevin Cuxil, the Spinlet “rocket scientist”.

Spinlets the Universal Tool

Spinlets is just one of many tools being developed by urSpin to help developers arm their sites with the best in technology and function. Spinlets are essentially embeddable chunks of code that allow for media aggregation and the creation of mashups into developer's sites from MySpace to Blogger and beyond. The technology behind Spinlets is not new, but the goal of developing a “universal” tool that will operate over a broad range of domains with seamless operation is quite difficult and innovative. The range of media and content further exacerbates this attempt to provide excellent functionality but this is where Spinlets are designed to shine. Spinlets allow users to put their videos, photo albums, music, calendars and other favorites on any page.

Yes and Perhaps 

Embedding is not a new innovation, as virtually every major site offers some way to add this or that to a user's pages or blogs. The critical service that Spinlets is innovating is in the way their API integrates more “seamlessly” and over so many more sites. Anyone who has ever done much embedding of code is aware that this simple task can be anything but easy. Just generating a code is the simple part, but making sure that the little chunks of wonder actually work everywhere is another matter. The real “up side” of Spinlets is in that the service alleviates pain for both users and providers by allowing for wider branding and utilization.

The only down side to Spinlets is that embedding is prevalent on the Web already. The innovation and true flawless integration of the Spinlets will have to satisfy a little more pain than some other “brilliant” technology might. In the final analysis Spinlets needs to be able to code their butts off in order to make their innovation as universal as possible. This startup is one of the rare entities that does not rely as much on user generated content or traffic as it does on the ability of the developer to actually make the gizmo work.

Conclusions

Last week I was testing these Spinlets and experienced some difficulty in embedding them on some blogs. The biggest problem seems to be creating Spinlets that generate universal code that is properly translated by each of many destination sites. As an indicator of progress Kevin and the team worked out several of the Spinlets I tested last week into flawless embedding tools a couple of days ago. The methodology here is very sound and consists of perfecting one Spinlet to function across a multitude of content sites and then to integrate the correct code into subsequent Spinlets.

This startup has all the earmarks of a successful Web 2.0 company. The venue is not actually crowded because of the scope of the vision and the dedication to technical perfection is there. These Spinlets will be seen all over the Web if Kevin and his team can make them as universal as it appears they can. In a way I do not envy him the task because this effort is a labor of love for solving problems. Given what I have seen them do in just a few days I would put my money on Spinlets making embedding the simplest thing in the world.  

Fig. 1.1 A simple test of Spinlets on a blog (above)

Fig. 1.2 Spinlets is actually easier than 1-2-3-4.

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