DaveNet: Sunday, May 25, 1997; by Dave Winer.
Craig's Castanet Channels
From Craig Newmark, craig@cnewmark.com:I have six Marimba Castanet channels delivering list content at transmitter.net:81. While you can download a Castanet Tuner from www.marimba.com, I would recommend that only for early adopters. This is significant mostly because Netscape Communicator Netcaster is shipping in pre-release form, and this is the vehicle through which (potentially) millions of people will see Castanet channels. (Netcaster may not be too stable on your system, if you're burning with curiousity, try the straight Tuner.)
The channels push craigs-list content to you just like e-mail, except that they remember what postings you, on your system, have seen. You can choose to display new items, unread items, or previously read items. The channel will remember your selection, and in the future remember stuff like the size at which you left the channel window. This amounts to client-side personalization.
If new content is published while you're running a channel, even in the background, it'll let you know that something new has happened.
There are four channels which focus on what (I think) meets your needs:
- craigs-list events
- craigs-list jobs
- craigs-list community
- craigs-list apartments
which operate as above.
There's also "notices", an earlier experiment, and "craigs-list events calendar", which is a version of the my site-based applet. The difference is that the applet needs to download the whole calendar database every time you use it, but a channel only downloads differences.
Apparently, the craigs-list channels are the first Castanet/NetCaster channels really delivering live, useful content.
I need your feedback regarding these, and figured I'd get it before I put more work into them.
- Did you like me as "pretzel boy" in the TV spots where I deliver pretzels to bored cosmonauts?
- I'm thinking of splitting off a "for sale" category from "community", but need you to tell me if it's worth it.
- Please take a look at the posting guidelines on www.cnewmark.com before you post, mostly to get the Subject: headers right. When they're not, I have to edit them, not a lot of time, but doing ten of them a day adds up.
- There are currently over 3100 craigs-list subscribers, and http://www.cnewmark.com/ gets over 600 visits a weekday.
Craig Newmark