Second Brain – All Your Content

Second Brain Reloaded Test Release

It's been a while since the last update on secondbrain.com. But today, I'm happy to announce that we've released a test version of Second Brain Reloaded. We’ve rewritten everything and redesigned quite a lot of features:

    * Share your public content stream on your personal profile page
    * Get a personal url to share with other people (reloaded.secondbrain.com/nickname)
    * Automatic synchronization of services
    * Create smart collections that update automatically based on your tags
    * Create custom collections directly from your library
    * See rich previews of content inside your library
    * Comment and rate other people's collections
    * Add public collections as favorites
    * Subscribe to collection via RSS

Go to reloaded.secondbrain.com to try it out. If you were registered on the preview release (www.secondbrain.com) you can use the same nickname and password.

This is just a Test Release and Second Brain is not ready to be used for anything important yet. When we go from Test to Public Beta, we may have to delete things in the database, so don't invest too much in this version, at least not until we tell you it's ready.

We hope that you will spend some time on the test release let us know see how it works for you. If you find something that doesn't work, or something you don't like, please tell us. We will try to fix everything you report so that we can make a nice public release. We're also very curious about any features you would want us to make for you in the near future.

We still have a few more things in store for you that we want to introduce in the public beta release. It is scheduled for next week.

Enjoy and please find some bugs for us:)

Thanks,
Lars (Founder/CEO) and the Second Brain Team

PS:
The old Second Brain Preview release will be discontinued as soon as the Reloaded release is ready. If you have a lot of files uploaded that you'd like to keep, you should download them before October 1st. In the new version, you will be able to use Omnidrive to store up to 1 GB for free.

If you cannot remember your old nickname and password, just go to http://reloaded.secondbrain.com/ForgotPassword and follow the procedure. You can also register a new account if you like.

New Tag Line - All Your Internet Content

I decided to change the tag line from "Your Personal Internet Library" to "All Your Internet Content". I got the inspiration to do this from Johan Høgåsen-Hallesby who also runs a good Norwegian blog on technology and user experiences called mykaroshi. He's one of the early Test Pilots and has been very helpful with feedback and support along the way.

He wrote me an email saying that we basically have two value propositions: the first being "An interface for all your online content", and the other as a "lifestream" service.

The former immediately resonated with me. I found it the perfect introduction to the typical "What is Second Brain?" (which I have been struggling with from time to time, I must admit). After a few days, it also appeared to me a much better tag line than "Your Personal Internet Library". It is much more meaningful and easier to say - and it sets no limits to what we can do - it's our mission to make Second Brain able to handle all your itnernet content.

Second Brain Work Weekend

Last weekend was all work. We'd scheduled a work weekend 6 weeks in advance, b/c we know we will alway need some extra time right before a deadline. We'd saved a bit too many features to finish everything in the weekend, but in the end we were able to deploy a test version to the prod server. In a few hours, I hope to have the Test Release of Second Brain Reloaded live. I will transfer all users from the old Preview release and send an email to registered Test Pilots.

The time for smart aggregators

There has been lots of talk about aggregators and lifestreaming lately. And today, Om Malik writes about it in GigaOm in a post where he describes the aggregators as an approach to vertical search.

The explosion of content on the Internet is making searching for information difficult once again. It is one of the reason we are seeing a sharp increase in the number of companies — vertical search engines and wiki-based collaborations, for example — that want to help us find the information for which we’re looking.

But the biggest aggregators, like Wikipedia, still get more than half of their traffic from Google.

These traffic trends reflect a desire on the part of web surfers to find information smartly aggregated for them. But those surfers still want to start with Google.

This means that Google is the main destination for any vertical search approach to the web. The aggregators add value in the way they collect and bundle information and make it findable through Google.

Second Brain is approaching this from two directions:

1. We encourage our users to create collections of their internet content and make them public. These collections are completely open to the public and any search engine, and they have comprehensive titles and descriptions that makes them findable.
2. Our users have a dedicated search engine inside their library which enables them to do a focused search on all their internet content as well as the rest of the Second Brain community.

We think Google and the rest of the search crowd will be the most important traffic source for Second Brain. We are in the business of aggregating our users internet content into a personal library - a true vertical integrator for the individual. Making their content findable is one of our key value propositions, be it through Google or Second Brain.