Strings Lets You Use the Web in a Whole New Way

Strings is a new aggregation service that aims to make discovering things on the web that you’re interested in much easier. In concept, it’s very similar to Glue, but the implementation and direction is slightly different.

Strings is a social tracking and filtering platform that allows you to share and uncover experiences that are relevant to you. Strings incorporates strong privacy controls, easy filtering, and tracking support that allows your actions on and offline to automatically identify personalized trends worth following.

Not only does strings try to enhance your online life, but it also helps you keep track of things when you’re mobile and even when offline. While other services focus on recommending and targeting things at you, Strings claims to empower you in discovering personalized micro-trends based on your personality.

Strings seems complicated at first, but once you understand the overall picture, it’s much easier to follow along. Once you’ve created your account and signed in, you might want to check your privacy settings as everything is set to “everybody” by default. Your next step is to start adding some trackers. This is where everything starts.

For each website or service that you want to track, you have to “install” a separate tracker. Depending on the site or service you’re trying to track, this will involve simply providing your username, connecting via oAuth, or providing both a username and password. Sites like Amazon, JCrew, and Sephora probably don’t have the oAuth option, so we can’t completely get away from giving up the login credentials.

The Firefox extension provides another way to track your activities. This is the piece that reminds me of Glue. The Strings Browser Extension effortlessly tracks articles, products, and other items of interest while browsing the web. It would be nice if this was offered as a Chrome Extension, but hopefully that’s already in the works.

The last type of tracker involves installing a desktop application. This will allow you to track usage of specific programs like iTunes and TiVo. Here is where Strings bridges the gap between your online and offline life. The desktop app is currently available for Windows and OS X.  You will need to first install the desktop application, and then go back and install the relevant trackers for iTunes and TiVo.

It’s not surprising to see yet another aggregation and filtering service pop up. No service to date has really solved the issue of handling the huge amount of content thrown in front of us on a daily basis. Some services have even made the problem worse by generating more content on top of the aggregated content. Strings does have some useful filtering features and might be just what you’ve been looking for.

About the Author
Rahsheen has been a certified geek since before it was the thing to do. He started programming and tinkering in the 4th grade. Now, Rahsheen mostly writes on various sites about technology trends in social media and mobile. . He is also a musician, singer, rapper, writer, and producer. @rahsheen - +Rahsheen Porter - coachrah.com
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