Grazr 2.0, One-Stop Shopping for All Your OPML Needs?

According to the creators of Grazr (which came onto the market in March 2006), it is a “free and easy way to gather and organize information from all over the Web. Use our drag and drop editor to collect feeds and links to Web pages, and then share them with others on this site, or place them on your own pages with our free widget.” In addition, it has the ability to read twitters. “The Grazr Twitter Reader is the first tool that makes it easy to browse a social graph starting with any individual Twitter user.” Being a huge believer in the power of Twitter, Grazr had found the magic words to get my attention. So let us go under the hood and see if it can deliver.

Personal Observations

Once I logged in and began to prowl around Grazr, my attention immediately focused on the header, MY Reading Lists. The portal to my world of personal reading lists waiting to come to life and shared as I saw fit. The instructions were simple and to the point, I needed to create a reading list according to my likes and dislikes. In this case, I wanted to start with my personal web site. Like Google Reader or any other feed reader, you then continue to build according to choice, or so I thought. This is where Grazr separates the boys from the men and I quickly learned which category I fell into.

As noted prior, Grazr is for all your OPML needs and that is where I ran into problems. I had tried to treat Grazr as I would Google Reader or any other application that I had become familiar. I had assumed and therefore failed the cardinal rule, read the FAQ's and if in doubt read them again, never assume.

While I did scan them (the FAQ’s) I had decided to take the quick and easy route and contact Grazr’s Tech Support and this is where my respect for Grazr grew, big time. I not only received an almost immediate response to my query but what impressed me even more it was from Adam Green, the CEO at Grazr Corp.

I am sure, I tested Adam’s patience sorely with two emails in the same day but he was always quick to respond and answer my questions. Adam also took the time to explain some of the problems Grazr was attempting to overcome as it tried to please its members, no easy task, as any business will testify too. Adam's answers enabled me to have a better understanding of both the growing pains as well as the search to provide simple yet efficient help choices to aid Grazr’s users to understand the application.

My first and main question revolved around my trying to add an URL in my reading list as directed on Grazr.

When I contacted Grazr my dispute was that when I entered an URL to add a site to my reading list, it came up with the message, “ERROR, The URL is not a valid reading list”.

Grazr did provide the alternative of importing a reading list file and the header and in all fairness does state, Import a Reading List (OPML Format). However it also had the choice of entering an URL and I wanted to do just that, enter an URL.

Adam Green (CEO of Grazr Corp) responds

Adam has this to say when presented with my question, “Here is the fundamental issue. We have many ways of allowing people to add information. Too many… The fewer we offer the less complaints we receive.”

He continues by saying, “Let's address the method you point to. You are correct that it is confusing. In the past we tried saying Add an OPML file, but people kept saying "What is an OPML file?" So we took out the words OPML file. Basically, they are synonyms. We will be putting the word back. The basic point is that there are three types of data that you are conflating. OPML is a specific data format. It is the format used by every feed reader we know of. It is not the same as a web page or feed.”

He (Adam) then continued to define the difference between Web Pages, Feeds and OMPL in his explanation of how Grazr worked. In all honesty, it was a real revelation as he methodically explained everything in short simple terms that allowed me understand as I put each example into a mental visual. I had gained a deeper respect for the men and women who strive to keep technology evolving despite the multiple ambiguous meanings that each of us comes to use in our interpretation of software language, as noted by Adam.

For my query about a help file icon as in other software applications, he had this to say, “The answer is very simple. We have removed features repeatedly and usage keeps going up each time. We will continue to do so until we find a level of functionality today's users are comfortable with. I have been making software since 1980. I am learning that Web users understand much less than users did in the past, and will read nothing.”

He had me there, guilty as charged because as I noted earlier, I skimmed the FAQ’s and went right to Tech Support.

Additional Features

As noted on and by Grazr, “The number of information sources we all need to follow keep multiplying. There are blogs, news sites, social networks, photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and podcasts from all over the world. Reading lists are the solution to this information overload. A reading list is a collection of feeds from multiple sources that have been organized into a convenient package. Grazr.com makes it easy to create, share, and publish reading lists on any number of subjects. It's all online for easy access and completely free.”

• Runs within major Web browsers: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari.
• Works on Windows, Mac, Linux.
• Free hosting of reading lists.
• Free drag and drop editor for creating reading lists.
• Free widget for publishing reading lists on your Web pages.
• Compatible with blogging tools, Facebook, iGoogle, Netvibes, Windows Live, and mobile phones, including the iPhone.

A Glimpse into the Future

Grazr has been on the market March of 2006 and as for the future of Grazr, Adam had this to say: “Grazr and ALL current features will remain free while additional features in the works will have a user fee.”

He also stated that Grazr would be adding a merge, sort and filter by key choice in a month (November) and that too would be free up to 20 feeds at one time.

He finished by saying that, "Grazr is a new medium for online collaboration and publishing. It is aimed at knowledgeable workers who need a powerful productivity tool to assist them in gathering, organizing and sharing large collections of links, feeds, and other types of Web data. "

Conclusion

There is so much more about Grazr then one can fully appreciate on first glance and I for one will enjoy looking into it wholeheartedly. Grazr is an option I believe in as having great potential for the business community overall. It is seemingly impossible to write about Grazr and still preserve an unimposing singular article of reasonable length for my readers. Grazr is another of those modern technological wonders that needs to be experienced to appreciate what it has to offer.

Grazr gets two thumbs up without any hesitation. My reasons are not only the PR skills of Adam Green, for whom I would like to, recognize and say thank you for your generous response, but also for the value Grazr has brought to the technological table.

Take a tour and see for yourself.