Along with taking the wraps off our all-new design, the Ensembli team has also been hard at work on an all-new feature - Topic Pages.

Ensembli’s thousands of users are each following dozens, if not hundreds of topics. However, we also want to make Ensembli useful for people who haven’t joined us yet. So we’re created topic pages, that provide a quick summary of stories within any topic.

Here’s an example of a Topic Page, on Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi - http://ensembli.com/topic/berlusconi. As you’ll see, it’s showing the most recent and relevant stories on ‘berlusconi’ discovered by Ensembli.

Infact, you can change the ‘berlusconi‘ part of that web address to anything subject you want to see a displayed as a Topic Page; for example - http://ensembli.com/topic/apollo 11.

Adding a topic page to your Ensembli account
If you’re an Ensembli user, you can simply click Start following berlusconi now in the left-hand column to add the topic to your list of interests. If you’re new to Ensembli, Topic Pages are a great way to discover what’s currently happening in a particular topic, before deciding to signup.

Sharing Topic Pages
Topic Pages are also a handy way of sharing a roundup of recent and relevant news stories with a friend or colleague. For example, this weekend sees the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo moon landing - you could simple send the link http://ensembli.com/topic/apollo 11 to your friends, by email, Twitter, instant message or Facebook - to show them Ensembli’s range of Apollo 11 stories.

Topic Pages & Search Engines
Topic pages will be a great compliment to search engines. Eventually, as you use Google, Yahoo! or MSN to search for topics, you’ll see more and more results linking to related Ensembli topic pages.

We really think you’ll find our Topic Pages useful - do let us know what you think!

Just over a week ago we took the wraps off an all-new-design for Ensembli’ personalised news service…

When we set out to develop Ensembli, we wanted to keep things, simple, clear and obvious - from the colours we used to the language in which we spoke. As we began to roll out new features - such as our support for Twitter and Facebook - we figured it’d be a great time to spruce up our existing design in preparation for a whole bunch of upcoming stuff.

So our clever design and engineering team haven’t simply applied a ‘lick of paint’, but some of you may have noticed a range of new features. Here’s what we’ve added to your experience…

A new layout - Follow, Discover & Explore
Your screen is now divided into three ‘zones’ - running from left to right - that help you to Follow, Discover and Explore your topics and interests…

Follow
The blue topic bar groups together everything you need to manage the interests you’re following; including adding, removing, selecting, and now reordering, each item.

Discover
The central column, displays stories that Ensembli has discovered for you, within your selected interest, along with controls for reading, sharing (by Twitter and by email), saving and discarding each story. We’ve also added the ability to see a history of all the stories you’ve previously read or indeed all the stories discovered by Ensembli within that topic.

Explore
Finally, the column over on the right-hand side of the screen is an entirely new feature; helping you explore further with interests related to your currently selected topic, topics that’re currently popular with other Ensembli users and some suggestions from our editors.

Don’t forget all your regular features are still here - and if you’re not already using Ensembli for Facebook and Share By Twitter, do take them out for a spin.

We’re toying with with a few new controls that’ll let you adjust how particular sources influence the stories you see; from blocking a particular source to requesting more stories your favourite publishers and even exclusively from them.

So, watch this space - over the next few weeks, you’ll see more new features finding their way into your Ensembli experience.

Wow, it was just a couple months ago that we launched our Share By Twitter feature, one of a number of new features our ferociously smart technology and design team have in store for you.

Today, we’re really happy to announce Ensembli for Facebook, our new Facebook application, that’ll help you follow, discover and explore your Ensembli topics without leaving Facebook!

As well as being able to read stories directly from within your Facebook account, in just a couple of clicks, you’ll be able to share them with your Facebook friends! Ensembli for Facebook is just a taste of the full range of features offered at Ensembli, including history, bookmarking and sharing by email and Twitter.

If you’re an existing Ensembli user…
Simply have your Ensembli username and password ready, then head to the Ensembli for Facebook application page and follow the instructions.

If you don’t already have an Ensembli account…
Don’t worry, you can join Ensembli from within Facebook! Simply head to the Ensembli for Facebook application page and follow the instructions to sign up with a new account.

Like other applications, you can share Ensembli for Facebook with your other Facebook friends as well as share Ensembli for Facebook on your profile page.

We really think you’ll enjoy using Ensembli for Facebook, particularly being able to share your favorite stories directly with your Facebook friends. Do let us know what you think and how we can improve things for you!

Much has been written recently on the demise of RSS as a means of aggregating, personalising and sharing news items. Blogs such as TechCrunch have been talking up the displacement of services like Google Reader with more real-time efforts such as Twitter.

What such analysis fail to account for is the tiny percentage of the web population that actually uses RSS readers or microblogging services - RSS might be in decline amongst the digerati, but the vast majority of web users have simply no awareness of RSS. It’s absurd to think that users of Gmail or Hotmail required users to understand POP3 or IMAP email protocols, yet as an industry we expect consumers of aggregated or personalised news to understand feeds and RSS.

Google Reader and Twitter are the imaginary thought leaders in the market for personalised news - universality, real innovation and experimentation are where companies such as ourselves, Evri and even the New York Times (with Times Reader & Times Wire) are defining what mainstream users will need.

We’re a long way from the reach of either Twitter or Google Reader - and there’s much to be learned from them - but personalised news needs to appeal to more than 5% of the web population if it’s to sustain journalism in the 21st century.

Read more at… Rest in peace, RSS and Google Reader Still Trying To Figure Out This Whole Social Thing. Still Failing

A few months ago, as we began to develop our Share By Email and Share By Twitter features, some of Ensembli’s development team put together an experimental URL shortening service. Out experiment lives at ensemb.li - that’s a Lichtenstein domain if you’re curious!

Though URL shorteners like bit.ly, is.gd and TinyURL have seen a meteoric rise in popularity thanks to Twitter, in recent days, they’ve come under criticism for undermining the fabric of the web.

Joshua Schacter - the founder of Yahoo!’s delicious - recently published some provocative and neccessary thoughts on URL Shorteners, suggesting that the limited longevity of abbreviated links undermines the ‘findability’ of pages and introduces an unreliable middleman. Joshua goes onto recommend a number of best practices - ‘If the data is as important as everyone seems to think, they should own it. And websites that generate very long URLs, such as map sites, could provide their own shortening services‘.

That’s a great piece of advice and something that we’re really happy to have implemented here at Ensembli. Indeed, Google has also launched a shortening app that can be installed on your own domain, using Google Apps.

Read more at Google Short Links and on URL Shorteners.

Mike Wheatley, our CEO has been invited to speak at Social Technologies Summit, part of  the  Futuresonic festival in the Contact Theatre in Manchester, UK on 15 May 2009.

ensembli, a ’smart’ RSS content aggregator for the masses,  is set to revolutionise the way people find information that is relevant to them online. Mike will focus on the company’s recent launch and why ensembli is a service whose time has come.

The Futuresonic festival celebrates art, music and ideas that spring from digital culture.  The  Social Technologies Summit  is a platform for international discussions and presentations on the future of digital social technologies and is attended by some of the most pioneering and influential people in the field.

This year’s keynote speakers include: Stowe Boyd, the man who coined the term ’social tools’ and a leading thinker on the social web, and from the Silicon Valley Contingent,  Jamais Cascio, co founder of Worldchanging.

Last week, we launched the first of our range of upcoming feature enhancements for ensembli - Share by Twitter - which allows users to share stories from their account with their Twitter followers (not sure what Twitter’s all about, find out here).

Previously, ensembli users could share a story with their friends by email, however by integrating support for Twitter, we’re helping reach your friends with a greater degree of immediacy.

So how to get started?

1. Simply head over to your account settings to switch Twitter on.
2. From the services panel on the right, click on Add Twitter.
3. You’ll then be taken to your Twitter account and asked to confirm that you’d like to link your Twitter and ensembli accounts.
4. You’ll then be returned to ensembli.

From then on, each time you open a headline and click on the Share button, you’ll see an option for Twitter right below Email.This window will contain an ensembli link to your story, as well as letting you customise the message before it’s shared with your Twitter followers. Your Twitter message will look something like…

I’m reading this at @ensembli http://ensembli.com/link/1140486

We hope you find Share by Twitter useful and fun - do let us know what you think and watch out for a bunch of other upcoming enhancements!

Sheffield, UNITED KINGDOM – 01 April 2009 – ensembli, the browser-based personalised aggregator for online news, has been selected as a finalist in the 2009 CNET Webware 100 Awards .  ensembli is one of 300 finalists selected by CNET Webware editors from more than 5,000 qualifying Web 2.0 services. The CNET Webware 100 Awards honour the people’s choice in the best web sites and services.

“Being named a finalist is a huge accomplishment for the ensembli team,” said Michael Wheatley, CEO of ensembli. “The selection process started with user nominations, which proves that people are getting real value from our tool. Many people only understand search engines, which means that instead of content that’s most relevant to them, they only see content that’s popular or paid for. What we do is show each person the stories they’ll find most fascinating.”

ensembli first launched its service at DEMO 09, Palm Desert CA and also featured at the British Digital Mission at SXSWi in Austin, Texas.  It delivers three clear sets of benefits:

• For users, it is simple and engaging, saving time and effort;
• For advertisers, hyper-targeted adverts can be served whenever users visit properties operated by ensembli partners, as well as whenever they visit ensembli’s website, so increasing ECPMs;
• For site and portal owners it offers a valuable and sticky service for their users, increasing time on site and advertising revenues.

Michael says: “ensembli is designed for those people who find feed readers, aggregators and other ‘helpful’ technologies just too difficult and too confusing. ensembli’s just about effortless to use, and it gets smarter about people the more they use it. Running our clever personalisation technology over RSS feeds means that we’re helping to improve everyone’s experience of the Internet.”

To vote for ensembli, click here or sign up to use ensembli for free here.

The polls for voting opened on 31 March 2009 and the winners will be announced on 19 May 2009.

The second leg of ensembli’s US tour took Ian to e-Tech in San Jose, and me to San Francisco for a week of meetings. The third leg took me to South by South West interactive (SXSWi) in Austin Texas with Imran and Sherrilynne. Ian departed for home.

SXSWi was a completely different experience from DEMO 09. We attended as part of the UK Digital Mission, expertly organised by Chinwag on behalf of the UKTI - and by the way, if you’re ever going to the US and want to arrange top quality partner, prospect and/or investor meetings, start with the local UKTI rep, they’re excellent and very well connected.

SXSWi was a four-day event. It had approx. 11,000 people attending and was so complex and dynamic that any pre-planning fell apart almost immediately. The advice from SXSWi veterans was ‘go with the flow’ and just talk to as many people as you can. Our focus was to reinforce our DEMO launch, and I especially wanted to talk to news media and potential distribution partners. SXSWi really works through evening parties, of which there are many, sponsored by various organisations who provide free food and drink. So after the conference and trade show sessions, people flock into the bars on 6th Street and party through until the small hours.

Despite the lure of the parties, we ended up doing much of our networking on the Digital Mission trade show stand. It was a magnet for people interested in what the UK has to offer in the digital world, and I did many media interviews, including the BBC and the Guardian. It was a successful event for us, raising our profile further and helping us reinforce our message. I can recommend it for young startups full of energy, enthusiasm and new ideas.

Techfluff.TV’s Hermione Way recorded a trio of shows from the floor of last week’s South by Southwest Interactive festival, including a segment featuring our CEO, Mike Wheatley, at SXSW’s Digital Mission expo stand. The clip also features friend of Ensembli, Sun’s Stewart Townsend.

Skip ahead to 1:14 to hear Mike talk about his SXSW experience…