In the early days we would talk about KnowNow and every one would associate us w/ Tibco and Sonic. We would also get lumped with the stock ticker data delivery engines. Yes, we did have quite a few traders use the product through Excel, in dynamically updated web base dashboards and in reverse auction environments as well.

But, I do believe that the Enterprise Syndication Solution (ESS) actually does bring the right application to market.

I associate this application with fantasy football and apartment hunting in San Francisco. Of course, we have the sport sites (ESPN.com, FOXSports.com, FFToday.com, and other similar sites) to cater to the needs to the serious fantasy players. And, yes, craigslist does a great job of giving you the list of aprtments in your neighbourhood.

But, what do you do when you want to look for specific keywords within those data sources? Why should you have to scan the news of 10 sites to ensure that your player will play and is not injured! Why should you wait for an email to alert you that the apartment in your desired area is available? If your attention span is really the commodity, then aren't you wasting it.

Refreshing the web page, the RSS reader, and your mail client will distract you more drastically than one may anticipate. What if you were presented with an update when your specific keywords should up in the information stream. It is the information stream that you are monitoring - a highway of data that you want to monitor with your specific criteria.

ESS delivers this. If you can install Yahoo Messenger, then you can install ESS Deskbar - a utility that presents toasts as articles meeting your criteria show up in the information source! Yes, it grabs your attention when a toast shows up but isn't that exactly when it should?? Check out the first gen Deskbar and let me know what you think.