Google launches Sidebar in latest attempt to make 'push' model work online

By Robert Niles. Posted: 2005-08-22

Like a zombie from a George Romero flick, the PointCast model refuses to die.

The latest incarnation? Google Sidebar aggregrates news headlines, plus custom local weather reports and stock quotes in a desktop application window. Sidebar also adds new features, including the ability to read messages sent to a Gmail account and reader-selected RSS feeds within the Sidebar app.

In the '90's PointCast lured Web users with a similar product, but one that choked corporate networks with its heavy use of bandwidth and system memory. Home users, in the pre-broadband era, couldn't think of using it. Others have tried to develop similar "push"-model news delivery systems since, but users instead have chosen to get their online news delivered through other tools, such as e-mail newsletters and RSS feeds, which do not require their own programs.

Like with many of its recent products, including Google Maps, the Mountain View, Calif., search engine company has released APIs for Sidebar, raising the possibility that innovative developers might concont some interesting mash-ups using Sidebar, along the lines of what online journalists Adrian Holovaty did with Google Maps and Chicago crime data.

Comments:

From Billy Jones on August 22, 2005 at 3:16 PM

Google is no doubt pushing the envelope when it comes to bringing new technology to Internet users, but Google is in-fact beginning to scare me with rumored projects like free nationwide ISP and wireless services that would no doubt crush any competitors. Could it be there's too much power in one place?

From Dennis Jerz on August 23, 2005 at 9:29 PM

Blogs and do-it-yourself RSS feeds have changed the media landscape since the orignial PointCast era. I never saw a use for the old push mode, but I installed Google's new sidebar on my home computer, and I like it. It doesn't feel like push, because most of the content on the panel is plain old text. I can control the rate at which the photos change.

I'll leave it off my work computer, since I'd rather not be distracted. But on my widescreen laptop, it's a good use of the extra horizontal pixels -- which don't do me any good on the fixed-width web designs of many sites, including OJR.

From Robert Niles on August 24, 2005 at 12:33 PM

Umm, not to give too much away, but whole fixed-pixel thing here might be changing soon....

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