Just a Few Months Old, Kynetx Developer Program Spawning a New Generation of Context-Aware Apps

LEHI, Utah, January 22, 2010--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kynetx is leading the client-side revolution with its unparalleled development platform and program. At the heart of the platform is a rules-based language that allows developers to build entirely new web experiences that are cross-site, cross-platform and respond to context in the user’s environment. By leveraging this unique platform, the Kynetx developer program has already garnered more than 300 developers resulting in over 800 applications.

“Unlike any other platform, Kynetx offers developers the technology to easily resolve data mismatches coming from fractured sources of information. This capability results in a new breed of apps that act as powerful context-aware mash-ups,” says Stephen Fulling, Kynetx co-founder and CEO. “Information is only powerful if it touches you when and where you need it…in context. Kynetx gives developers the tools they need for connecting the dots.”

Richard Miller, a lead developer at FamilyLink.com, used the Kynetx Development platform to create a prototype application with the power to extend FamilyLink’s functionality to sites across the web, including Facebook, Gmail, LinkedIn, and Twitter. In just a few days, he crafted the prototype application that extends the experience of FamilyLink users when looking for relatives, adding relatives or communicating with them beyond the FamilyLink site.

“This is exactly the kind of viral growth and entrepreneurial innovation we were hoping would come out of our Developer Program,” Fulling continued. “Richard read a blog post about us, signed up, and was writing a ground-breaking app in minutes. The Kynetx Developer Program offers unparalleled tools and infrastructure to help unleash developers’ imaginations. Clearly, that’s what Richard Miller has done.”

Kynetx recently increased its “mash-up” capabilities with new Twitter API support. The Kynetx Rules Language now integrates with the Twitter API, using Twitter’s OAuth scheme, giving developers the ability to create Kynetx applications that can easily access Twitter data.

“The Twitter upgrade opens a myriad of possibilities for our Developer Program,” says Dr. Phillip Windley, Kynetx CTO. “Using Kynetx, you can create and deploy an app in minutes that understands and responds to Twitter data on any website or web-enabled device.”

Kynetx also offers semi-annual conferences designed for developers to explore ideas and learn from the experts, face to face. The next Kynetx Impact conference is scheduled for April 27th-28th in Salt Lake City. More information and registration can be found at www.kynetx.com.

To sign up for the Kynetx Developer program go to www.kynetx.com.

Demonstration of the Family Link app can be found at http://richardkmiller.com/860.

About FamilyLink

FamilyLink provides the platform for the family social experience. Family members can create family-generated content, preserve interactions, add historical content and communicate across Facebook, e-mail, chat and the Web. FamilyLink is a top 100 Web site and has more than 60 million users, 20 million monthly active users and more than 1 million daily active users. FamilyLink has been the top family application on Facebook since 2007. FamilyLink also leverages its content relationships to provide valuable historical family content. Families can search more than 1.2 billion names to find, tag and integrate ancestors. To learn more about FamilyLink go to www.familylink.com.

About Kynetx

Founded in 2007, Kynetx is a private company that has developed a proprietary rules-based development platform that is the first infrastructure to support the “purpose-centric” web metaphor that is driving the next era of software services and Internet applications. Kynetx offers a developer program that gives programmers access to technology that helps them create cross-platform, context and user-aware apps that stretch across the web.

Contacts:

For Kynetx
Snapp Conner PR
Cheryl Snapp Conner, 801-994-9625
cheryl@snappconner.com

or

FamilyLink
Stephanie Rogers, Steph@familylink.com

The latest build (Build 391) of the Kynetx Rule Language (KRL) includes support for accessing Twitter data intrinsically within the language. Integrating interesting data with KRL is an important part of what makes the language so useful for building cross-site applications that mash-up data and user interactions. But what's really interesting about this release is that we're using OAuth to access the Twitter API and have built primitives into the language for dealing with the Twitter OAuth interaction to save developers from doing it.

Not only are we making it easy for developers to write apps that use Twitter, but this is also the first time that end users will see significantly different behavior from an app than their friend might. An app that uses the Twitter library will use my Twitter data for me and your Twitter data for you. Using OAuth, Kynetx apps can now be personalized.

Using Twitter data inside a KRL app generally involves two KRL patterns: authorize then use and initialize then populate

In the authorize then use pattern, a rule is put in place to check if the app is authorized to take a certain action and, if not, do what is necessary to complete the authorization. What makes this work is using the rule postlude to ensure that the rest of the rules (which presumably rely on the authorization) don't run. Here's an example from an app I wrote to demonstrate using the the new Twitter library:

rule auth is active {
  select using ".*" setting ()
  if(not twitter:authorized()) then
      twitter:authorize()
        with opacity=1.0 and
             sticky = true

  fired {
     last
  }
}

Notice that this rule only fires if the predicate twitter:authorized() is false. The action, twitter:authorize(), is what initiates the OAuth ceremony. The action will pop up a notification in the user's browser that looks like this:

The postlude of the rule (fired {...}) runs the last statement if the rule fires to ensure that nothing else happens. Of course, if the app is authorized, the rule doesn't fire, the OAuth ceremony is not initiated, the last is never executed, and the remaining rules in the ruleset are evaluated.

The initialize then populate pattern is important any time you're working with complex data. With complex data, you will frequently need to do something for each component of an array. That's what the foreach statement does as part of the rule selector: executes a rule once for each member of an array.

The problem is that if we use a foreach to loop over the tweets we get back and use notify to place them on the page, we'll end up with one notification box for each tweet. Not very pretty.

A better solution is to use a rule to place the notification box (the initializer) and another rule to loop over the tweets and place them in the notification box (the populater).

Here's the initialization rule:

rule init_tweetdom is active {
  select using ".*" setting ()

  pre {
    init_div = <<
<div id="tweet_list">
</div>
>>
  }

  notify("Friends Tweets", init_div)
    with sticky=true and
         opacity = 1.0

This is a pretty simple rule that places an empty notification box on the page.

The real work is done by the populating rule:

rule populate_tweetdom is active {
  select using ".*" setting ()
    foreach tweets setting (tweet)
      pre {
        text = tweet.pick("$..text");
        div = "<div style='background-color:#666;margin:2px'>" +
              text +
              "</div>";
      }
      append("#tweet_list", div)
}

This rule loops over the tweets, grabs data out of them using pick, and appends the result to the div in the notification box.

The tweets variable was set in the global block:

tweets =
  twitter:authorized() => twitter:friends_timeline({"count": 8})
                        | [];

After you've gone through the OAuth ceremony at Twitter, wherever you run this app, you will see a box like this that contains the last eight tweets from your friends timeline on Twitter. Here's the results for me:

Of course, if you run this app, either by card or bookmarket, you'll see the results from your friends timeline.

Craig Burton has created a nice tutorial about how all this works. There's some important data in the tutorial about how to get the keys from Twitter for your application. The library is also well documented and the source code for the ruleset is available.

The ability to personalize apps by appealing to personal data elsewhere on the Web is a huge step forward for KRL. Look for other APIs to be embedded in KRL in the near term and, eventually, more general support for OAuth so that developers can use any OAuth protected data source.

Since 2003, I've been running a site called UtahPolitics.org. The site started off as a blog on which I and others posted articles. When I started UtahPolitics.org there was some speculation about my motives. But my motives are simple: create a place I can experiment with new media in an arena that interests me.

Last year, in an effort to continue the experiment, I put up a retweeter for UtahPolitics.org that would retweet any tweet from friends of the @utahpolitics account that contained the tag #utpol. When I did that I also morphed the web site--imperfectly--to a site that just aggregated those tweets. The idea was to move the discussion off of UtahPolitics.org and onto Twitter.

The problem with this is that it's sometimes difficult to follow the thread of a conversation, particularly those about particular pages on the Web. To try to solve that problem, I've build a Kynetx app that will show all the #utpol tweets about page on that page when you visit it. Here's a picture to show you what I mean:

The box on the right is showing any tweets that reference the page its on and contain the tag #utpol. Right now it's tweets by anyone. If that gets to be a problem, I'll restrict it to friends of @utahpolitics so that I have a way to block people.

I'm hoping that you'll use this app to follow Utah Politics during the next legislative session and contribute to the Twitter discussion about specific bills or newspaper articles. Using this app and your Twitter account, you can comment on legislative pages, newspaper pages, and so on. Anyone else who has the app will see your tweets and be able to respond on the page.

You can use this app in one of three ways:

1. Download the AzigoLite Card selector and install the Utah Politics card - this is the most flexible solution since once you have the card selector installed, you can also use other Kynetx apps without any further downloads. Just install the card and go.
2. Install a browser extension - this is probably the fastest and most convinient way to get going. Just download the right extension for the browser you want to use (or several if you regularly use more than one browser) and you're good to go. The following extensions are available:
   • UtahPolitics Extension for Internet Explorer
   • UtahPolitics Extension for Firefox
   • UtahPolitics Extension for Chrome
3. Use a bookmarklet - this is the simplest, but has the drawback of working only when you click on it. You may not always remember to do so and will miss out on people's comments. To use the bookmarket, drag this link to your bookmark bar at the top of your browser
   

   UtahPolitics Bookmarklet

Once you've got something installed, head on over to House Bill 10 on the Utah Legislature's page to see it in action. I've left some test tweets there.

You don't need to do anything special to use it. Just tweet about a page and include the tag #utpol.
All the tweets about a particular page will show up in the app--even from people who don't have it installed. This is an assymetrical communication tool. Note, if there are no tweets about a particular page, you won't see anything--the app doesn't do anything in that case.

If you're interested in how this was made, I've made the source available on the app page. Feel free to ask questions or just copy it and build your own--Kynetx developer accounts are free.

I'm excited to see how this works--I hope it leads to some interesting discussions about Utah politics and gives some insight about how apps like this one--that work on multiple Web sites--can be made more effective.

-Optini launches new customer-centered solutions based on the Kynetx platform as first offering in exclusive agreement to market Kynetx technology to companies in the Direct Selling Industry-

Lehi, Utah, January 4, 2010—One of network marketing’s most successful experts and leaders, Craig Bryson has joined executives John Wright (President) and Joseph Watson (CTO) to create a new company Optini which is focused on user centric solutions which utilizes Kynetx (www.kynetx.com) technology. Optini’s Vu Platform makes direct selling easier and more efficient with permission-based web modules that let marketers tailor the web experience for downline distributors and customers. Integrating data from multiple sources, the Optini Vu Platform gives members a personal, relevant and anticipated experience that increases the satisfaction and efficiency of commerce in the multilevel marketing (MLM) industry.

Direct selling is a $26.9B industry in the U.S. according to the Direct Selling Association (DSA). In the U.S. alone there are more than 15.1M distributors/members—yet the greatest deterrent to new participants is the need to sell face-to-face, often by pitching to a finite group of family and friends (known as a “warm market”). Optini’s products and services allow network marketers to use an automated system that helps them quickly create a larger warm market by facilitating selling across any web site or web-enabled device. By leveraging the places people spend time online anyway (e.g. social networking sites, search engines, etc.), Optini’s Vu Platform reduces the need to sell face-to-face and diminishes the number one reason people say “no” to joining an MLM.

“The Vu platform has the potential to revolutionize the MLM industry by opening the door for the thousands of people who have never considered direct selling before,” Bryson said.

The Kynetx rules-based development platform is gaining traction as a catalyst to the new “Purpose-Based Web” that lets users shape the web to their desired experience in a private and secure way. The new applications can span multiple URLs appearing where users already spend time (like on search engines and social network sites). The ability for Kynetx apps to stretch across the web, (and onto web-enabled devices), gives users a more efficient, enjoyable way to navigate the web (and to conduct business online).

“We are extremely excited about the new horizons Kynetx has opened for user-driven selected apps that create more efficient buying and selling relationships on the web,” said John Wright, Optini co-founder and President. “Kynetx is allowing us to drive online commerce in entirely new ways. We are thrilled to be the exclusive provider of this new technology for the growing network marketing world. Marrying the MLM know-how of Optini with the new breed of Kynetx technology will create selling tools that have never existed before.”

“The Optini Vu Platform is a great example of the new client-side applications that are emerging since our launch of the Kynetx platform at our Impact Conference last October,” said Stephen Fulling, Kynetx co-founder and CEO. “We congratulate Optini for their game-changing application of Kynetx technology in the direct selling space. We look forward to seeing the ways Optini uses our technology to change the face of Network Marketing.”

About Optini
Optini, www.optini.com, is changing the face of network marketing through permission based online marketing tools based on Kynetx technology. Optini’s flagship product is the new Optini Vu Platform to increase the satisfaction and efficiency of conducting multilevel commerce online. Optini’s involvement in the Direct Selling/MLM industry is complimentary to their broader focus on other industries including membership services, ILM (Interactive Local Media, ISP (Internet Service Providers), Publishing, etc.

About Kynetx
Founded in 2007, Kynetx is a private company that has developed a proprietary rules-based development platform that is the first infrastructure to support the “purpose-centric” web metaphor that is driving the next era of software services and Internet applications.

###

PR Contact Information for Kynetx:

Cheryl Snapp Conner or Josh Berndt
Snapp Conner PR
801 994-9625
cheryl@snappconner.com or josh@snappconner.com

PR Contact Information for Optini:

David Politis
Politis Communications
801-523-3730
dpolitis@politis.com

See Business Wire posting here.

by Robert Scoble on January 1, 2010
Scobilizer.com

UPDATE: Part II of this post, which includes the rest of my favorite 25 startups to watch this year, is now up.

I’m watching hundreds of startups, have at least one list of them over on Twitter (500 startups are on that one) and will be starting other lists in 2010 but I’ve been watching the trends on Twitter of what people are talking about and here are 25 startups to watch.

Why?

Because they are the best of breed examples of trends that are bigger than them. Is this list complete? No way, but it gives you a good starting point on some companies who you should be trying out and watching.

I have 15 other companies that I’ll be posting over the weekend, please let me know if you have any companies you are watching and we can watch them together.

#8. Kynetx. Crunchbase entry. Twitter account. Video with founders explaining why Kynetx is an interesting real-time development system. Why is it important? Because it lets developers augment websites and search engines for their customers. AAA can add new data to Google.com for its members, for instance.

Read entire article.

We will release a syntax change to action labels to accommodate a reuse of the : as a namespace separator for actions. The old action label syntax looked like this:

  foo: notify("Hello", "A Note to say hello")

The new syntax uses => like so:

  foo => notify("Hello", "A Note to say hello")

We don't believe that action labels have found widespread use based on a review of the log files and consequently will release this syntax change tomorrow (Jan 7).

Recently Azigo and the Better Business Bureau launched the BBB app that helps people locate BBB accredited business:

The BBB's Accredited Business Locator is powered by Azigo's free, downloadable browser plug-in and displays the "BBB Accredited Business" seal whenever consumers search for products or services using popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing. This seal indicates that a business is reputable and offers one-click access to the BBB report for that business. This provides maximum consumer protection and minimizes the risk of online fraud.

From The Better Business Bureau Launches Service to Protect Online Holiday Shoppers - BBB News Center
Referenced Wed Dec 30 2009 10:47:32 GMT-0700 (MST)

This app is powered by Kynetx and the techniques necessary to make it work have been factored into the Kynetx Rule Language (KRL) so that they're available to everyone. The BBB app required two things that KRL didn't support well:

1. The BBB data set of accredited businesses was very large running to millions of records
2. The BBB was interested in annotating local search results

The problem with large data sets is that previous versions of KRL had an action called annotate_search_results that relied on preloaded data. The Kynetx Network Service (KNS) ensured that the data was available based on information from the KRL program. With millions of records we could hardly just load up the entire data set and there was no way to segment it since you don't know what the user's going to search on (and thus what results are relevant) until they do it. Enter remote

We've added a new option to annotate_search_results called remote (optional parameters to actions are specified using a with clause). The remote option specifies a URL that is the location of a remote data set. When it's used the selector function is ignored (and can be left out) of the annotate_search_results call. Instead the remote data URL is called after the search results are available and passed the relevant data from the results. The remote service uses the data about the search results to query the database and returns a JSONP response that will be evaluated to annotate the results.

Given that this runs after the search results page has loaded, you might think it would be slow, but our experience with BBB has convinced us that it works just fine.

We've also added a annotate_local_search_results action that works just like annotate_search_results, but is specifically tailored to annotate the local results in each search engine.

You can find more information about search annotation in KRL in the documentation. You can also download and try out the BBB app to see how it works for yourself. We've built a sample app so that you can see a sample app that uses these two new methods with remote data.

One other thing: build 384 included the let_it_snow() action because it's winter and snowy Web sites can be fun.

Here at the Kynetx Headquarters, it's snowing like crazy. We'll have a white Christmas this year, and we want to share it with you.

We spend this morning capturing some of our snowfall and packaged it up as a KRL action for your use. Simply call let_it_snow() as an action in your code, and our captured snow will be released onto the page.

I've created a bookmarklet for your enjoyment. Drag it to your bookmarks bar, and click it anywhere to add snow to your experience.

Let It Snow!

Please enjoy, and have a wonderful Christmas!

At our Kynetx Impact conference in November, we announced the ability to deploy Kynetx Applications as browser extensions, for both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Today, we are adding Google Chrome to that list.

Browser extensions are a convenient way to deploy enhanced experiences, but they are a serious pain to build and maintain. The Kynetx platform makes it easy to develop contextual experiences. The ability to click a button and receive a custom branded browser extension for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and now Chrome is awesome. Building browser extensions can be painful, and that's pain worth avoiding.

Chrome currently supports browser extensions in the Beta release for Windows, and they will soon support extensions on OSX and Linux as well. Be prepared with a browser extension for Chrome users.

Head on over to AppBuilder, make some apps, and enjoy the power of one-click browser extension building.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Tool Takes Better Business Bureau Seal Online with Technology from Azigo and Kynetx

-As reported on NPR, New Azigo Tool (based on Kynetx platform) makes the Web More Powerful-

Lehi, Utah, December 17, 2009--Overall holiday spending may be down, but online spending is expected to grow, due in part to tools that make shopping on the Internet more convenient and effective than ever before.

For example, a report on NPR Radio today features a new plug-in for Web browsers from the Better Business Bureau (BBB)to make it easier to see at a glance, from any browser environment, which businesses have earned the BBB seal. The tool was developed by Azigo and uses the Kynetx (www.kynetx.com) rules-based platform to create applications that can span multiple URLs, giving users a more efficient way to navigate the web (as well as conduct highly satisfying and more efficient ecommerce). Kynetx is changing the future of Web Identity and privacy, by moving the power and control of new web applications directly to the consumer, via their desktops, mobile phones, or other client-based technology. Azigo has used Kynetx to create a similar tool for AAA as well.

The evolution (or even the “revolution”) to the kind of client-side applications BBB has just implemented is resulting in a new class of web applications and will help both established and new companies produce new revenue streams, according to web identity pundits Doc Searls, Kim Cameron.




“Consumers have more information than ever at their fingertips, but it can still be tough to figure out which businesses to trust,” NPR says. The BBB has existed for nearly 100 years, registering consumer complaints and policing business practices on behalf of prospective shoppers.

“It used to be [that] you would have to call up your Better Business Bureau to ask about a company, and ask whether it had a satisfactory or unsatisfactory record,” says BBB spokeswoman Alison Southwick in the NPR report.

The tool acts as an overlay on top of a web browser and checks the BBB’s database against the results the search engine pulls up, showing the BBB seal next to every BBB-accredited business. It makes shopping more efficient, gives online shoppers a greater level of assurance, and it’s giving more credence to the BBB standard as well.
About 3.5 million people visit the BBB website each month according to BBB data, and the site’s traffic has been steadily growing. Compared to 27.5 million monthly visits to new sites like Yelp, which let users comment and rate their experiences with local businesses, BBB’s traffic is still small. However, thanks to “client-side” applications from developers like Azigo, which can overlay BBB status results on any browser, this traditional company is adding value within the new “purpose-based” web and BBB’s status is gaining new strength.

Download the BBB App here.

About Kynetx

Founded in 2007, Kynetx is a private company that has developed a proprietary rules-based development platform that is the first infrastructure to support the “purpose-centric” web metaphor that is driving the next era of software services and Internet applications.




###

PR Contact Information:


Cheryl Snapp Conner or Josh Berndt


Snapp Conner PR


801 994-9625


cheryl@snappconner.com or josh@snappconner.com