Red Panda, a new platform delivered through a Firefox extension, redefines the way users interact with the web. Its contextual browser independently locates and delivers information, news, blogs, tweets and other media directly related to the user’s own interests. Furthermore, as Red Panda adapts itself to the user’s browsing progression there is no need to manually update or search through clunky news feeds.

Red Panda (www.rdpnda.com) is targeted towards anyone who spends too much time trying to keep up with the overwhelming influx of material available on the Internet today and who would rather have pertinent information brought to them automatically. Red Panda’s patent-pending analytics engine works on its own to locate and provide, through a near-endless variety of media sources, news and information relative to its user’s interests without taking time away from the user at all.

In addition, the Red Panda browser offers an augmented rightclick menu, which simplifies access to common web services such as maps, media, reviews and translations.

Red Panda is a free application for Firefox, and is currently available in both English and French versions.

Download here (English): http://www.rdpnda.com

More information (English): http://www.rdpnda.com/overview.html

Download here (French): http://fr.rdpnda.com

More information (French): http://fr.rdpnda.com/overview-fr.html

Since the birth of Mosaic some 15 years ago the way users access the Internet has not changed much. Despite many more documents and a handful of new languages and protocols, fundamentally user-internet interaction has stayed the same: the user seeks out and asks for a document, which is fetched by a browser and opened up into a window.

Red Panda is a radically different approach. At the heart of Red Panda lies a very fast NPL analyzer which processes web pages on-the-fly. This in turn enables Red Panda, independently, to single out relevant information from everywhere on the net and continuously refine and enrich the user’s options.

Today’s wealth of sources presents us the problem of information overload. Even though more than 60% of users regularly access the web to get their news, only a few do so through an RSS reader or even a start-page such as iGoogle, NetVibes or PageFlakes. Even Google, despite having nearly 1 billion users, could not convince more than 10-20 million users to adopt their start-page software.

The first reason for this lack of interest is quite simple. With so many sources to choose between during customization, the sheer number of options becomes a hindrance. It is tedious for the user to configure a reader or start-page to reflect all of his interests or all of his favorite news sources. The second reason is more subtle; even if this idea of configuration is attractive to savvy users, updating interests remains a chore.

Throughout the day, week and month users’ interests shift unpredictably, requiring constant revision to sources and feeds. Soon users are facing hundreds of articles updating every twenty minutes or so with many of no interest to them at all. Further, new micro-blogging technologies such as Twitter and Facebook increase information flow and density as they update every few seconds or so.

Reconciling this information overload requires a three-face solution: universality (reaching all sources), immediacy (consistent updating) and finally accuracy (results pertaining to the current interests of the users). Red Panda has been designed specifically to address all these requirements, and in so doing succeeds as a true democratized news reader.

When using Firefox with Red Panda’s add-on, a sidebar displays additional information (such as News, Blogs, Tweets and Diggs) directly related to the content of the current main page. A simple click on those sidebar links opens the source instantly without leaving the page the user is on. As an example, when browsing a page in a company website, Red Panda automatically displays news related to both the company itself and to that specific page within the website through links the user can select at his own convenience.

And here is Red Panda’s power: it reverses the typical Internet paradigm. Rather than limit discovery only to what the user must search for himself, Red Panda takes the user’s interests and brings forward intentional, contextual results all on its own.

Try it out now and leave a comment!

Source: Red Panda (www.rdpnda.com)

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 9:23 am and is filed under Innovations, Newcomers, Realtime. 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.