Tuesday Tutorial: Importing Browser Bookmarks

September 18th, 2012 • tutorials, updates • 2 comments

Join us on Twitter tomorrow at 4pm pt for our weekly #symchat & view archived chats here.

Tune in every Tuesday as we share a tutorial each week to improve your Symbaloo skills.

This week we introduce you to a new feature that has been highly requested by users, Importing Browser Bookmarks. We now have an easy 3-step process that allows you to quickly import bookmarks from Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Below are detailed instructions for exporting the html bookmarks file for each of these browsers. To start importing head to importer.symbaloo.com

Watch and Learn:

To export favorites from Internet Explorer 8 to an HTML file

To export favorites from Internet Explorer 7 to an HTML file

To export Firefox Bookmarks to an HTML file

To export Chrome Bookmarks to an HTML file

To export Safari Bookmarks to an HTML file

Announcing the New Symbaloo iPad Web App

September 12th, 2012 • mobile, updates • No comments

Today Apple made big news with their confirmation of the new iPhone 5 but over here at Symbaloo we have some big news of our own. Our new Symbaloo iPad web app is now ready for your browsing pleasure. Simply go to Symbaloo.com and your iPad will automatically display a new optimized version complete with a sleek new iPad navigation and no need to download an app from the app store. While this web app is optimized to iPad specs, you should have a similar experience on most tablets. Read more about the iPad app on our press doc here.

Tutorial Tuesday: Get connected with the new LinkedIn Widget

September 11th, 2012 • updates • 1 comment

Join us on Twitter tomorrow at 4pm PT for our weekly #symchat & view archived chats here.

Tune in every Tuesday as we share a tutorial each week to improve your Symbaloo skills. This week we introduce you to a newly released widget for LinkedIn. Find this and many of our other widgets, by searching for the ‘widgets’ webmix in the webmix gallery or CLICK HERE.

Symbaloo iPhone Update 9/5

September 11th, 2012 • mobile, updates • No comments

As of September 5th, 2012, we released an updated version of the Symbaloo and SymbalooEDU mobile app for iOS. Below are the new features that will make using your Symbaloo app even more enjoyable. Be sure to update your app and check them out:

Sorting Tiles:

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Now you can sort your tiles two ways. You can activate the sort by shaking your iPhone then dragging tiles to desired area. Or you can sort via the “Edit” menu.

Refresh Button While Web Browsing:

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We’ve added an option to refresh your screen while you are web browsing.

Webmix Tab Delete:

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You can now delete a webmix tab by holding your finger down on the tab you wish to delete.

Landscape View During Web Browsing:

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There is now the capability to switch to landscape mode when web browsing on Symbaloo.

We received a lot of feedback when the app first launched. Plenty of positives and some improvements. We tried our best to accomodate everyone’s requests. These updates fulfill a majority of the suggestions we received. We will continue to make improvements and add new features so stay tuned! We’d love to hear your thoughts so feel free to comment below and let us know what you think of the current update!

Tuesday Tutorial: Tab Filtering

September 4th, 2012 • updates • No comments

Tune in every Tuesday as we share a tutorial each week to improve your Symbaloo skills. This week we introduce you to a new feature called tab filtering that will allow you to quickly find a webmix by using the search box.

Watch and Learn:

ESCAPING THE TWISTED LONG TAIL

July 26th, 2012 • press • 2 comments

An Open Letter from Symbaloo’s CEO, Klaas Lameijer

With Symbaloo we have nothing to hide. We want to be open, as is our product. With that, I wanted to share my view on the current state of personal resource management (formerly known as start pages), a view that I call the ‘Twisted Long Tail.” Personal bookmarking is the single most underestimated high volume revenue-generating market on the Internet. Why? Because bookmarking is not “in fashion,” even though it is a highly valued way to save your resources.

Fashion Forward Start-Up Culture
The strive for “fashion” amongst start-ups is a twisted tale indeed. The fashionable start-ups are the ones who aim to be ‘Next Big Thing,’ and are influenced by their early adopters, the 1%. They are focused on niche new developments that will appeal to the smallest part of the market while forgetting about the rest of the market, the 99%. This worked for the Facebook’s, Pinterest’s, and Instagram’s or if you enjoy playing the lotto but what about the thousands of other start-ups that don’t make the cut. For most, failure is inevitable because they get lost in their niche and implement changes just for sake of making changes never taking into account the long-term vision for their product. If you want to build a company with long-term sustainability you are better off focusing on a larger target market, like what I call the “two-finger generation,” aka baby boomers, many of which may have never learned to type with more than two fingers. At Symbaloo, we try to do something that makes their lives better and easier and that has become our recipe for success.

The Start-Up ‘In Crowd’ aka Shiny Ball Syndrome
Tech companies develop for the techy early adopters, the 1%. This small market is not a loyal one, as soon as there is something new and shiny they will move on. They trade being the long-time user of said company to be awarded the title of early adopter for the new shiny company. We don’t work on making Symbaloo better for the savviest 1% of our users. We focus on the 99% that are still having difficulties in using the product to it’s full potential. We believe clear tutorials and optimizing usability are just as important as new features.

Stop Chasing Your Own Tail
To survive in this environment you have to stop chasing your own tail. Don’t do something because your competitor is offering it. Darwinism still holds true in that you must adapt and reinvent yourself to survive. There are four lessons we, at Symbaloo, have learned and that we believe contribute to our continued growth year after year.

1. You Have to Feed Yourself
You need to find a model. The whole belief that you can get by without a model like Twitter is a myth. The truth: you can finance yourself until you develop a model but in this current VC state you better have a model before you go back asking for more money. Symbaloo has a very common business model. We have an affiliate model, which basically means we make money when users click a tile and then purchase something. This is the way we can keep Symbaloo free for users and with minimal advertising with low overhead. Never trust a cloud company that is not able to make money to pay the electricity bill!

2. You Have to Find a Target Market
At Symbaloo we found ours rather organically. A student posted this video of her 7th grade science project with our tool. We then polled our users only to find out that a large portion were involved in the education sector in one-way or another. Hence, SymbalooEDU was born and we are on our way to becoming one of the leading education resource management tools. We did this by listening to the needs of teachers, schools and districts.

3. You Need to Improve
Let me make this clear, you need to have a plan for improving your product. It is ok and recommended to listen to the needs and wants of your community but ultimately those needs and wants should line-up with your long-term goals. Additionally you must be able to decipher between what is a need and what is a want. That is what separates you from the thousands of other dying start-ups.
At Symbaloo we decipher between ‘must haves/needs’ and ‘nice to haves/wants’ and implement a certain percentage of each in our roadmap. With that we always cross reference the roadmap with our longer-term goal of being the best resource management tool by making tile navigation increasingly smarter, more social and easily accessible through things like touch and voice. Remember not to develop for the 1% of the savvy users that have wants, listen to the 99% that have needs!

4. You Need to Stay Focused and Committed to that Focus
Just as shiny ball syndrome can distract your users it can also distract your team. You will be tempted to stray off course and many opportunities may present themselves, you have to learn to say no to most and decipher which opportunities to move on. It is important to focus and follow through with your plan, give it a chance to develop and show results so that you can analyze the data and determine the next steps. There is not a day that passes that we don’t dream of how well we could do in the health or travel sector but first we have to prove we can be great in the education sector. iGoogle and Delicious are a perfect example of how a product can fail because their management gave up too soon by getting distracted with shiny new products. But that is ok for us because then we become the best iGoogle alternative.

Lastly, temporary downfalls will happen, they always happen but staying focused and following through is key. Our numbers drastically drop off during summer months and the first time we saw this we didn’t know that it would be a pattern or how we could explain this to share holders. Now we have learned that it is just part of our cycle and we have made adjustments. Always break through any resistance to get to your goal.

Remember This: Focusing on niche markets can put your company in real danger of getting twisted up in the long tail!

Symbaloo as iGoogle alternative

July 24th, 2012 • updates • 1 comment

Google has announced they will be shutting down iGoogle as of November 1^st, 2013. Stating that it no longer fit within the strategy of Google. The company believes that their browser (Google Chrome) will eventually take over all functions.

There has been a negative backlash and even some angry responses since the announcement. This is comprehensible considering there are still millions using iGoogle. It has been an online home to many for quite some time and now they will have to just pack up and figure out where to move.

This post is intended for anyone considering moving to Symbaloo as an iGoogle alternative. Creating a quick and simple start to the Internet is Symbaloo’s core business. We have a dedicated team in the United States and The Netherlands. The company is profitable with affiliates, business solutions and Symbaloo EDU.

Even though tools such as iGoogle and Delicious, both similar to Symbaloo, are shutting down you can rest assured that we will certainly continue to exist.

iGoogle vs. Symbaloo

Symbaloo has often been called an iGoogle competitor. Both services are intended for use as a homepage, however they have slightly different functions. iGoogle functions as a dashboard that tracks numerous blogs and news sources, supplemented with widgets. Symbaloo provides an effortless way to surf the Internet with a visual and easy to customize interface.

Symbaloo: a good iGoogle alternative?

Symbaloo is used worldwide and already favored as an iGoogle alternative in various articles. Below are some benefits to using Symbaloo as an iGoogle alternative:

1. RSS overview – all news on one page

You can add all of your news sources in to a Symbaloo “webmix” similar to that of an iGoogle dashboard and have an overview of all of the current news.

2. Use Symbaloo anywhere and on any device

You can access all of your Symbaloo settings on any computer, smartphone, iPad and tablet since everything is stored online in the cloud. There is also a Symbaloo app that can be downloaded for free.

3. Wealth of useful widgets

Symbaloo contains numerous widgets that populate in the center when used. The most popular of Symbaloo widgets are Weather, rainfall radar, Facebook and traffic reports.

It is important for any user to have quick and easy access to Google search so the center widget box on Symbaloo is always preset with a Google search widget.

iGoogle Importer

An iGoogle importer is already in the works. Once it is available you can import your iGoogle settings to Symbaloo here.

Symbaloo als iGoogle alternatief

July 16th, 2012 • updates • No comments

Google heeft aangekondigd te gaan stoppen met de dienst iGoogle. Dit heeft te maken met het feit dat het niet past binnen de strategie van Google. Het bedrijf gelooft erin dat hun browser (Google Chrome) op termijn alle functies zal overnemen.

Er werd op vele blogs vol ongeloof en ook enige woede gereageerd. Niet geheel onbegrijpelijk aangezien iGoogle toch miljoenen gebruikers kent die van iGoogle hun eigen internetomgeving hebben gemaakt.

Voor iedereen die overweegt Symbaloo als iGoogle alternatief te gaan gebruiken: Symbaloo’s core business is Symbaloo. We werken met een team dedicated aan Symbaloo. Symbaloo is een winstgevend bedrijf dankzij bedrijfsoplossingen en Symbaloo EDU.

Symbaloo blijft dus zeker bestaan.

iGoogle versus Symbaloo

Als concurrent van Symbaloo werd vaak iGoogle genoemd. Beide diensten zijn ooit bedoeld om in te stellen als je startpagina, maar wel met een iets andere invalshoek. iGoogle richt zich met name op een groep gebruikers die een dashboard wil creëren om talloze blogs bij te houden, aangevuld met widgets. Symbaloo is ooit bedacht om het surfen op het internet te vereenvoudigen. De visuele interface is waarmee Symbaloo zich onderscheid. Rust op je scherm, en natuurlijk alles zelf kunnen indelen. Omdat nieuws lezen een van de belangrijkste bezigheden is online, doet Symbaloo op dat gebied niet veel onder voor iGoogle. Er is een aparte RSS pagina functie, waarbij je je favoriete nieuwsbronnen selecteert en samenbrengt op 1 pagina. Een mooi voorbeeld is deze nieuwspagina van Nederlandse kranten.

Symbaloo goed iGoogle alternatief?

Symbaloo wordt wereldwijd in diverse artikelen al genoemd als iGoogle alternatief. Er zijn aardig wat overeenkomsten met iGoogle:

1. RSS overzicht – al het nieuws op een pagina
Op Symbaloo kun je je eigen nieuwsdashboard samenstellen. Voeg nieuwsbronnen toe of verwijder ze.
2. Gebruik Symbaloo overal, op elk device
Op elke computer kun je je eigen Symbaloo blokjes en instellingen gebruiken, omdat alles online in de cloud wordt opgeslagen. Er is tevens een Symbaloo app die gratis gedownload kan worden.
3. Rijk aanbod van handige widgets
Er zijn talloze widgets op Symbaloo te vinden die vanuit het middenblok gebruikt kunnen worden. De populairste zijn die van het weer, buienradar, Facebook en filemeldingen.

Uiteraard is het eenvoudig om vanuit Symbaloo op Google te zoeken, het middenblok is standaard gevuld met de Google zoekfunctie.

iGoogle importer

Momenteel wordt hard gewerkt aan een iGoogle importer. Zodra deze beschikbaar is, kan deze worden gebruikt vanaf deze pagina.

Symbaloo for your Mobile Device is Here!!!

June 4th, 2012 • mobile • No comments

INFORMATION

Check out the instruction video for the Android app.

Here you find the instruction video for iPhone.

Is the New Symbaloo Mobile App for You?

June 1st, 2012 • mobile, updates • 3 comments

The countdown has begun and we are just a few short days away from launching the Symbaloo mobile app. Let me start off by saying, the Symbaloo app is going to be F-R-E-E! With all the anticipation buzzing throughout the Symbaloo community we came up with 10 reasons why this app is for you.