Serence

Infobox Company
company_name = Serence, Inc.
company_
company_type = Private company|Private
foundation = 2001
location_city = Ottawa
location_country = Canada
key_people = Allan Wille (CEO)
area_served = Global
industry = Software
products = KlipFolio Desktop Dashboard / Widget
homepage = http://www.serence.com

Serence is a Canadian corporation, primarily known for its KlipFolio desktop dashboards or widgets. The company is headquarterd in Ottawa, and is best known in Canada, the USA, and Germany.

History

The story of Serence and KlipFolio begins in 2001 when Allan Wille (CEO) and Peter Matthews (VP Products) pursue their vision of a simple application that assembles information from multiple sources into a single, consistent, and coherent presentation format. Firms like PointCast pioneered a similar market in the mid 1990s. But the convergence of new technologies like XML, RSS, and ubiquitous broadband along with growing expectations from users in the late ’90s hinted at a future that Allan and Peter were excited to explore. Joined a month later by James Scott (CTO), this trio represents the founding drive behind Serence and the KlipFolio community.

The first version of KlipFolio appeared later that year. As an early RSS readers, it leveraged this emerging technology to gather the information required to populate its various Klips. The business idea was to market low cost subscriptions to the KlipFolio technology to millions of Klip developers and consumers. However, the implosion of the dot com bubble impacted how Serence could take KlipFolio to market and capital had to either from friends and family or sales revenue.

2002 represented a year of busy start-up activity for Serence and KlipFolio. The application evolved to include a Java script-based semantic markup language which created relationships among disparate bits of data, helped to present these data bits in a consistent manner, and allowed a web developer to create and modify Klips to his or her taste. Employing a semantic markup language also made KlipFolio inherently portable – appropriate context for the data it presents can be maintained on the desktop, on a mobile device, or even via an automated voice system.

To avoid various integration and performance challenges associated with off-the-shelf code, the Serence team opted for proprietary internal systems including an XML parser and HTTP stack along with tailor made image scaling and png decoding. These developments were all designed to fit within a core code package that is still less than 500 KB.

At the same time, the public’s prevailing interest in start-up technology stories combined with the Serence team’s prevailing interest in media coverage resulted in a unique relationship with The Ottawa Business Journal. As the Serence team grew, pursued investment, research and development, and clients, The Ottawa Business Journal followed the story in a year long series of articles that represented the print equivalent of reality television and wide exposure for a young firm. In 2002 Serence also welcomed The Sporting News as its first client and added an advisory board that helped it define two target markets that could use KlipFolio in two different ways.

For online retailers, publishers, and other e-businesses, KlipFolio was among the first branded desktop applications. It represented an additional opt-in advertising channel that facilitated two-way interaction with customers rather than passive brand promotion. In the words of Peter Matthews, “it’s an advertisement that’s actually useful.” Over time, household names like Staples and Intel began to take advantage of what KlipFolio had to offer for their customers.

For enterprises, KlipFolio is used to display business information from different corporate sources on the desktop. According to James Scott, the approach allows employees to, “maintain a peripheral awareness of performance throughout the work day so that you can immediately focus on the changes that matter without losing time on those that don’t.” To take advantage of these benefits, enterprise clients such as Lufthansa and IBM have since deployed KlipFolio Enterprise to some of their internal teams.

One of the early KlipFolio competitors to emerge in the desktop widget space at the time was Konfabulator. Where KlipFolio presented actual data, Konfabulator expressed information to the user metaphorically. For example, where a KlipFolio weather Klip would summarize weather information into 24 degrees and clear, Konfabulator might use an image of a sunny day to express the same thing. The acquisition of Konfabulator by Yahoo! and its consequent transformation into Yahoo! Widgets has today made it a strong competitor for KlipFolio in the desktop dashboards arena.

Momentum for the KlipFolio community began building in 2003. More and more developers started building new Klips, Serence started seeing more than 1000 KlipFolio downloads a day, and TechTV gave Serence its best media exposure to date. The team also welcomed Fred Dixon as VP Sales from business intelligence firm DataBeacon.

Serence became profitable in 2004 through its growing branded desktop application business and the German market became a hotbed of activity for Klip development, product downloads, and new business - particularly in the publishing industry. By 2005 KlipFolio included a css-based matching architecture to aid in the semantic markup of structured data based on HTML and XML.

So far in 2007, Serence has focused on targeted applications of its KlipFolio technology such as the KlipFolio Dashboard for SugarCRM that was released in August. Serence is also reported to have prototype dashboards operating on both Symbian and Windows Mobile smart phones. KlipFolio took top honours from [http://www.webuser.co.uk/products/KlipFolio_review_3771-216.html/ Web user magazine] in a product review [http://www.download.com/RSS-Readers/3150-9227_4-0.html?tag=dir The Web User Magazine Product Review.] Read the product review yourself.] that included Google Desktop, Yahoo! Widgets, and Windows Vista Sidebar. The CNET site Download.com also lists KlipFolio as its most-downloaded [http://www.download.com/RSS-Readers/3150-9227_4-0.html?tag=dir The CNET Download.com page.] This is the page that shows KlipFolio as the RSS reader that is downloaded most often.] RSS reader.

KlipFolio 4

Serence announced the latest version of its product: KlipFolio 4. Like previous versions, it is available for free download.

Notes and references

ee also

* KlipFolio

External links

This section is a work in progress
* [http://www.webuser.co.uk/ Web User Magazine]
* [http://www.serence.com]
* [http://www.webuser.co.uk]