Zude quickly became a very effective way for us to show off our technology. To that end, we have spent the last year focusing on enhancing, refining, and evolving the social computing space — while tactfully embracing advanced technology. We don’t always get it right the first time — but we ARE persistant.

We have also been fortunate to have the funds and a VERY supportive board that have enabled us to focus on the important things — power, performance, flexibility, user experience (and so much more), without concern for today’s revenue. Revenue is NOT the goal — it is a PLEASANT CONSEQUENCE of our efforts.

And now, after nearly a year of living in the shadows — NOW, we continue. NOW we bring it to the world — not perfect, not even close, but with the technical power to evolve, refine, and revolutionize, as well as the financial wherewithall and technical prowess that is always required in such endevours.

And way more than “one or two features” — just ask any of the existing Zude users that profess to be “addicted”. Or, better yet, spend more than a few minutes there and see first hand.

If you haven’t been to Zude recently, then the first thing you’ll notice is (drum-roll please) a new interface! But not simply new — it is just another option (in this case, the default option). Plenty of Zude power-users LOVE the original UI — but others wanted and needed something a friendlier. As software developers, our job is to not only appease both sides, but also to empower and excite both sides — and everyone in between.

But that isn’t the end — it’s barely the beginning. And I suspect (with more than a little bit of insider knowledge) that you are going to see A LOT of evolution and revolution from Zude over the next little bit…

IMHO.

These very basic tools make an extremely rich user experience possible. I use Zude to manage my digital life. If you go to http://www.zude.com/uberzude you will see that I use zude to read the news, manage webex session, host my myspace, host my blog, and host dozens of other blogs as well. What you can not see are the dozens of private and shared pages I have which contain excel, word and powerpoint documents which are easily accessible to my colleagues from around the globe. None of the work done in my 100+ page Zudescape required even 1 line of code.

Another example of how rich an experience can be built and easily managed without code is http://www.zude.com/futureboston . While it was designed by an MIT student he was a student in the school for urban design and not computer engineering. In Future Boston more than 160 people are beginning a dialog about how to make Boston a more livable and global city.

In a completely different direction check out one of my favorite new bands at http://www.zude.com/melismatics . If u click on the “in the studio link” on the left you can play with the band like they are paper dolls and here what they are saying when they are in the recording studio. (they may still be adding a few voices, but you will get the idea)

I was speaking with Liz Strauss yesterday and she was saying that we are not a new MySpace or PageFlakes, She said we were the New Web. When you really dig into Zude and realize how deep you can go and how rich an experience you can create you might start to think about the web in a completely new way. I know that I do.

While I agree that we can always work to make things easier, and we do, I also believe that Zude provides the means to manage an extremely diverse and complex digital existence. We would be delighted to help you build your multidimensional digital persona. So in summary I think Zude is different, it is the best way to manage your: digital life, Rock Band, online civic dialog, landscaping business, insert your life here…

Drop me a line when you are in Zude the next time.

Let me give you a response. I am sure others will too.

Good points. First off: “chicken scratch handwriting look like cursive hand” – nice observation. ZCubes drawing tools have the advanced capability of smoothing your handwriting – it uses advanced algorithms (AI) to do this. This can obviously be switched off, if you wish to do sketches etc.

Secondly, “How about helping simple minded bloggers like you and me concentrate on writing rich content and knowledge management”: ZCubes Enterprise versions focus on much of your knowledge management aspects. Also ZCubes is the SIMPLEST SOFTWARE FOR BLOGGING. All you have to do is to Cubee any content to your Blogs, and there you go. This is so much simpler than having to use a software specifically for blogging. You could be blogging as you are browsing in ZCubes with the ZCubes browser. It is as simple as 1,2,3.

At ZCubes, our focus is not the “myspace generation”. It is the new generation of software. The generation where we do not worry about webpages, spreadsheets, documents, and other segmented nonsense that clutter our lives.

Both Zude and ZCubes are probably headed in the right direction offering complete freedom to novice netizens like me. But I wonder what one can do with these applications? I’ve tried both applications and was able to get a little ahead in ZCubes as compared to Zude which could partially be because of, as you rightly pointed out, the UI issue. The only thing I liked in both applications was the handwrite tool in ZCubes, only because it made my chicken scratch handwriting look like cursive hand.

“The pre-designed templates on which users can build their pages resemble a typical MySpace profile, with features ………. to the site”

Everyone seems to be on the MySpace bandwagon but my question is who’s working for the Non Myspace generation? How about helping simple minded bloggers like you and me concentrate on writing rich content without the hassle of coding or helping an enterprise resolve its knowledge management dilemma through a simple rich content sharing platform. Has ‘Out of the Box’ been replaced by ‘inside the Space’?

• Andy

Which means they might do well.

FYI: Copy/paste or drag-drop of ANY CONTENT is a breeze with ZCubes.

With Advanced Features enabled ZCubes lets you drag-drop files from your hard-drive, and directly extract full web content from ANY site. You can even rotate Google webpage in ZCubes. Others still dream of doing this someday.

However, ZCubes also lets you do fascinating thing with vector animation, content manipulation, real-time sharing, and a lot more! In the pipeline are amazing features that will blow your mind away.

More later!

Its interesting that you’ve metioned and compared ZCubes in your post about Zude. While Zude does have some of the functionality provided by ZCubes, it ia only a very small fraction of the ZCubes list.

In ZCubes, you can integrate unlimited websites (as you’ve indicated), media, RSS feeds, games, gadgets, and EVEN YOUR OWN HANDWRITING AND PAINTING. You can then customize the content by changing backgrounds, layout, fonts etc to your liking. In other words…an extremely powerful tool to help users express themselves. In addition, there is a fully functional built in browser for efficient browsing.

In addition, there are no UGLY navigation and advertisement bars or popus/rollins. We are committed to not diluting the users expression in any way.

They say “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”. While certain self-expression may appear ugly to some, it may be attrative to others. The bottom line is that the users are empowered to express their creativity.

FYI…ZCubes allows drag-drop from Google images, Google video, Wikimedia Commons, YouTube.

Parag Mathur VP, Product Management ZCubes