Arcticstartup blog also covered Fruugo situation in their post. Jugding from the comments, many people see lack of advertising as a problem, because outside of tech news, Fruugo hasn’t really made itself visible atleast in Finland. They don’t have the user base to bring in nearly enough cash flow. How to lure customers is a complicated business, and I can’t really say what they should’ve done to succeed in it.

My gut reaction however is that trying something of this magnitude, when the competition is already well established in Europe and elsewhere, is very risky, almost suicidal. Their approach to being a general store for everything sold on web sounds like a huge undertaking, and I propably would’ve done it on smaller scale first: Build a more concentrated site with one or two product categories, see if you can make it appealing enough for sellers to have their product listed on the site and for buyers to use it to find what they’re looking for. Perhaps also strike a deal with some site with product reviews, so you have more content and can genuinely help people with their decisions.

I have a feeling, that building it big and getting it right on the first time just doesn’t work in web applications. The factors that contribute to one’s success are numerous and sometimes it’s just pure luck. Build something, see if it sticks and iterate from there sounds more like a business plan, where risks can be reduced to more manageable level.

Ampparit also has more content to support the portal, like weather and tv data. New feature is also links to Web-TV content. The site’s UI look’s lean and functional.

Site’s portal idea is well executed, and user spends quite a lot time in the site, occasionally clicking a link and then coming back. I guess it provides great value to advertisers. There’s also a pro version to provide coverage of specific subject. All in all it’s a great site for news addicts!

As always, there’s something to be learned here. I suspect the accounts got hacked, because I was logged in on those accounts in a browser tab, while browsing other web sites in another tab. This led them vulnerable to XSS, or Cross Site Scripting. Some malicious web site had a script, that automatically upon my entering tried to post form data to the Gmail account settings page, and make the necessary changes. There’s documented attacks on the large, so this is a serious problem.

I suspect Gmail and every other web based email is always going to be vulnerable to them no matter what they do. New vulnerabilities and exploits on them are constantly discovered. When they are patched, new ones appear later. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. That’s something to think about for everyone, who (like me) use Gmail for work and have sensitive information on them.

How to limit your exposure then? One solution is to logout immediately after you finished reading your emails and continue to browse other web sites. This is not always feasible, and sometimes you just forget it.

I came up with another solution for this problem. Dedicate a browser for email access only. In case of Gmail, you can take for example Chrome browser and use it to only access Gmail/Hotmail/your-email-of-choice, thereby substantially limiting your exposure to XSS attacks. Use something else, like Firefox, for day to day browsing.

In the Instant Messaging business, ICQ was the first and copycats soon emerged. Now there’s a slew of networks using their own protocols, some of them being proprietary, some of them not. The problem is the variety of protocols and networks. Since your friends usually are not at the same network, it requires you to either

a) use many different instant messengers

b) search for a solution that has them all combined

Integrating all of these networks in a one solution is not easy. And even if you develop a product that can boast having them all, making the product as usable as your favourite propritary client is even more difficult. My favourite IM client is Skype, and I must say it really is polished and user friendly client that does everything you need. Sadly, Skype is very closed protocol and so far I’ve only encountered few clients that can access it’s network.

Some solutions for the IM mess

• Fring is a mobile IM client, that can do most of the protocols, like MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo,  Twitter and even Skype! Sadly, it’s ONLY mobile client. I’m really looking forward for them releasing a desktop version.
• Meebo is something really unique. It’s a website, that uses the advanced Web 2.0 techniques to bring the clients into your browser! Meebo also does MSN, ICQ and many others. Sadly, no Skype.

I’ve been exploring Meebo for a while now, and I really like the fact that it’s browser based. Wow, I never thought about that being possible with Javascript, Ajax and some server side magic. In a way, Meebo is a great example of Web 2.0 spirit. It utilizes the browser as an application platform, and does it with style and polished user experience. What’s even better, they are developer friendly and are offering the tools for people who wish to extend their platform. I hope they keep up the good job working towards the holy grail of integration.