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.




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Cheryl Snapp Conner or Josh Berndt


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cheryl@snappconner.com or josh@snappconner.com

by Tamara Keith


NPR All Things Considered










A lot of people are rushing to wrap up their online holiday shopping early this week, to take advantage of free shipping offers from retailers. Even as the National Retail Federation predicts overall holiday spending will be down this year, online spending is expected to grow, in part because shopping on the Internet has become so convenient.





Consumers have more information than ever at their fingertips, but it can still be tough to figure out which businesses to trust. A new Web tool from the Better Business Bureau is designed to help.





The BBB has been around for almost 100 years, taking consumer complaints and policing business practices.





"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.

But times have changed — a lot — and the BBB has just released a new plug-in for Web browsers. It's designed to make it easier to figure out which businesses have the Better Business Bureau seal of approval. The plug-in was created by a company called Azigo, which has created a similar tool for AAA.





"It kind of overlays on top of your browser," says Southwick, as she enters an online search for plumbers in Northern Virginia.





The plug-in checks the BBB's database against the results pulled up by the search engine.





"Then you'll be able to see immediately whether they are a BBB-accredited business," Southwick says.





A BBB logo shows up next to the businesses that are accredited. Those businesses have agreed to meet the organization's standards, and have also paid a fee.





But this begs the question: How much is the BBB seal of approval worth these days?





"I'm assuming it's still in existence," says Jennifer Smith, outside of a bookstore in Bethesda, Md. "But I haven't heard of anyone using it for years and years and years."





Others who were asked either hadn't heard of the BBB or hadn't used it in ages.





About 3.5 million people do visit the BBB Web site each month, and the site's traffic has been steadily growing. But when it comes to informing consumers, says Damian Roskill, who works for the Web-tracking firm Compete, there is a lot of competition from sites like Yelp, which lets users comment on and rate their experiences with local businesses.





"About 27.5 million people are visiting the site on a monthly basis, so [it's] just orders of magnitude bigger," Roskill says.





He says the BBB site is a bit old-fashioned, falling into the category of Web 1.0, as opposed to the newer, more interactive Web 2.0 model.





"Just go to their Web site. It feels pretty cold," says Roskill. "Contrast that with going to Yelp and see which one feels more like a place where you want to hang out."





Of course, the BBB isn't trying to be Facebook or Yelp, for that matter. Think of it as one more tool to help you make intelligent decisions about where to shop or whom to hire to fix a leak — and it's in a toolbox that has a lot more choices than it used to.





Read or listen to the story here.





Download and try the BBB app here.

On Wednesday we’re going to have a little dev party at Kynetx for anyone who wants to stop by, ask questions, learn how to program in KRL, or just hang out. The Kynetx development team will be there along with other developers who are using KRL. Come by around 5pm and we’ll stick around at least until 7, later if people want. Here’s the address:

3098 Executive Parkway
Suite 280
Lehi, UT 84043

Suite 280 is in the southeast corner of the 2nd floor. Here’s a link to a Google Map. I hope you’ll stop by, check out our cool new IKEA lamps, and eat some pizza with us.

Check out this excellent interview of Kynetx Founder Phil Windley & Steve Fulling by Robert Scoble. Scoble asks all the right questions about what makes Kynetx's technology so powerful and why it "changes everything."

Video Title:

"Customer-centric, real-time Web apps from Kynetx"

A new platform from Kynetx has tools that let developers use customer preferences to add features to Web sites, regardless of the browser.

Today we released a new workflow in AppBuilder.  You will notice that the flow is much more intuitive. Menus have been renamed or reordered to simplify your development process.  It’s now as easy as Managing, Editing each of the blocks, then Testing, Deploying and Distributing your App as you can see in the example below.

Manage: From this menu you will view your Apps statistics, modify your App’s action card image for the selector, start collaborating on your App with other developers or review the version history of your work.

Edit : The Edit menu allows you to edit the source code for your application. You can edit the Meta, Dispatch, and Global blocks, as well as add and edit rules. After each change, click the save button and your app will be ready for testing.

Note for previous users: The Publish option is missing from the edit menu, as publishing is now automatic with each save. Newly saved (published) versions will NOT be deployed to production automatically. (See Deploy below...)

Test: Testing your App is simply a matter of selecting Test and choosing a Bookmarklet or Action Card format to test.

Deploy: After testing and debugging is complete you are ready to Deploy as shown in the graphic. Simply click the status of the tested version and Deploy your App. Your App is now promoted to Production and ready to Distribute.

Distribute: Once your App has been deployed, you are now ready to distribute your end point to your end users.  Select your end point of choice and generate it and send it out to the world.

If you have any questions or comments, jump on over to the Kynetx Dev Exchange .  Post a question, answer someone else’s question or share your ideas with the community.  We want to hear from you!

This afternoon we releases Build 354 of KNS supporting the addition of a last control statement to postludes. In addition, we also now allow guard conditionals on any statement in a postlude. These are relatively minor additions to KRL in anticipation of some larger features that are coming soon.

The use a last statement in a postlude will halt the execution of the ruleset at that rule if it is executed. So, the following statement would halt execution after the current rule if the rule fired:

fired {
  last
}

This can be useful for rules that initiate action that must be completed before any of the remaining rules in the ruleset are meaningful (like authorization...hint, hint). That saves you from having to guard all of the remaining rules with a premise checking that the action has been completed.

As an example of using a guard condition on a postlude statement, consider this example:

notfired {
  ent:page_count += 2 from 1 if(not_available eq "yes")
}

This would only be applicable if the rule didn't fire and in that case only increment the page_count entity variable if the value of the variable not_available was "yes".

Today we're releasing the Kynetx Developer Exchange. This is a forum, based on the StackExchange service that is the same code that runs StackOverflow, ServerFault, and SuperUser sites. The functionality is excellent and we're hoping that it provides a fruitful place for developers to interact with Kynetx programmers and each other.

Mike Grace, who is now working for Kynetx, has done a good job of seeding it with the questions he's had as he's gotten up to speed. I'll be participating and so will others on the Kynetx team. We hope you'll use it to answer questions about programming in KRL and making the KNS system suit your needs.

To get started, just go to the Dev Exchange homepage and log in using any OpenID, including Google, Yahoo, or AOL. The more you participate, the more cred you'll have.

We released Build 353 of the Kynetx Rules Engine (KRE) this morning. Actually, I should point out that Wade Billings released it and I watched over his shoulder. This is the first time in the history of Kynetx that someone besides me released KRE code. Yeah!! This is an exciting thing in and of itself. Wade's job is to build a continuous integration environment for Kynetx so that code changes appear in production as quickly as possible. Until then, I've pushed the pain on him to ensure he's properly motivated.

The new release adds two new features to KRL:

• The as operator provides a way to coerce primitive values. The most interesting ones are coercing strings and regular expressions. You can construct a string and then coerce the result to be a regular expression for use in a replace:

  my_str.replace(("/this/"+ e).as("regexp"),"do you want a")
  

• You can use math:random to generate random numbers. The function takes an argument and generates a random number between 0 and the argument. For example, you could bind r to a random number between 0 and 9999999 with the following:

  pre {
    r = math:random(9999999)
  }
  notify("Randomness", "A new random number: " + r)
  

  Here's the result showing on my blog:
  

Both of these features were the result of developers asking for something they needed. We can't promise same day turn around, but for small features like this we try to be as responsive as we can. On Monday we'll announce the new Kynetx Developer Exchange where you can ask questions, answer questions, and make feature requests. More on that later.

When writing my Kynetx rules, I like to duplicate as little work as possible. In fact, where possible, I use the same exact rule with a template which pulls from a data structure based on site. Here's an example as to what I mean.

    global {

    dataStructure = { "www.foo.com": { "location":
"http://www.usbchainsaw.com/" }, "www.bar.com": { "location":
"http://www.xkcd.com/"} };

    }

    rule template is active {

    select using "^http://www.foo.com/$|^http://www.bar.com/$" setting()

    pre {

    site = page:url("domain");

    msg = <<

    >>;

    }

    notify("Template",msg);

    }

This allows me to insert a new object into the data structure, change the select statement, and add the domain to the dispatch and my new rule is up and running!</p> <p>This is one way to make writing Kynetx apps much, MUCH faster, simpler, and easier (in my opinion) to debug. Also, change the template in one place, and it propagates to all of the different sites you're using it on.

Check it out and let me know what you think at devservices@kynetx.com

-JAM

Kynetx Impact Conference 2009 - November 18th & 19th

The first ever Kynetx Impact Conference was packed with compelling presentations, discussions, networking, delicious food and great coffee--all for a capacity audience. Heavy-hitters like Kim Cameron, Doc Searls, Craig Burton, Tim Christin and Phil Windley presented some of the most cutting edge information in technology today.

Kynetx Impact Conference Press Release

Jessie Stay's Blog Post

Kynetx Impact Theme Song


Kynetx Wi-Fi Proxy End Point - Photo of Steve & Phil

Day One:

Kynetx Impact Version 1.0 began with a bang! Doc Searls gave a speech on “What happens when users take control.”

Dr. Phil Windley spoke about “The Forgotten Edge” of the internet and how ubiquity and context are the next big shift in how the internet is used.  Phil also debuted two new PSA’s starring Simon, the IT Dummy that described worst practices about how NOT to provide a contextual shopping experience, or a cross-site, context-sensitive app.

Simon the IT Dummy - Shopping at BetterBuy without context

Simon the IT Dummy - Discount Spread Sheets - Not so brilliant App Ideas

Great workshops & speakers!

Food

Great Networking

Delicious Dinner at Thanksgiving Point

Day Two:

Kim Cameron, Chief Identity Architect of Microsoft, spoke about user-centric identity in the client-side revolution and the shift to personalized control of identity.

Tim Christin, Sr. Vice President at Acxiom Corp., spoke about tipping old data models on their ear. By giving individuals control over the data that is shared, it increases the quality of the data and opens up new business models.

More great workshops and presentations!

The Beta Lounge

And Simon!






Craig Burton rounded out the keynote speakers and conference with his innovative thoughts around the Personal Communication Model and the need to empower the individual.

And... Kynetx Love!

To see full agenda, click here.

To receive emails about attending a future Kynetx Conference, please email info@kynetx.com and ask to be placed on the notification list.