Why indeed… continued

A particular challenge for Frogans technology is in getting end-users to establish one or several frogans as permanent or semi-permanent elements on their desktops. That’s my challenge as a frogans blogger/evangelist. But it’s also a new challenge for anybody who uses the Internet to reinforce their contact with their public.

Eight-stringed example

Let’s say I’m organizing events for my mandolin orchestra… Don’t laugh! I used to play in one. Anyway, between the rehearsals, recording and constant touring, I’m having a heck of a time keeping the mandolinists, mandolists, mandocellists and bass mandolinists informed about what’s going on. So I publish a frogans at my new frogans address “frogans*bigbadmandolin.schedule” and make it really cool-looking, like a Gibson F-9. I throw in a little PHP so that it requires a password. That way only my orchestra members have access to it.

It looks like their favorite instrument, so they’re more than happy to shrink it to button-size and make it a permanent part of their desktop environment. (It has no access to their system resources, so there’s no paranoia factor.) And I’ve set it up so that if I’ve made a change in the schedule, or if I have an important announcement, an exclamation point will show up on it. That way, the members of my orchestra know to zoom-up my frogans and see what I have to say. Maybe that will mean browsing for more information on the frogans, or hopping on to the orchestra’s website, or even getting back to me by email.

Going global

Now let’s say that the mandolin orchestra starts arousing an international fan base. I publish a freely accessible frogans and make it look like of the logo of everybody’s favorite mandolin orchestra. The fans will be more than happy to have it permanently hang out on their desktops. I chock this frogans full of breaking news, as well as the latest gossip from the mandolin orchestra circuit. I even throw in useful links, and some of which are paid, helping to finance the project. I’m now reaching a select worldwide audience in the blink of an eye, and I’ve only just started thinking about getting a fan-club database going.

The key element here is that the frogans has become a permanent element on the end-users’ desktops. I’m not saying that for a frogans to be effective it has to always be open, but it is its potential to be active and visible and wired, without interfering with all the other activities that computers were built to do, that allows a frogans to be an open window rather than an enclosed corridor to the Internet.

Now let’s say that I want to share my thoughts, photos, favorite links with a select set of friends.

Now let’s say I want to valorise my Web site. A frogans can be an awesome nav-bar.

Now let’s say that my product has cult status potential and a really cool logo.

Now let’s say that someone else continue this list…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Frogans applied. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.