RadWebTech has just launched ScrAPPlet, a browser based "blank canvas that makes it easy for
anyone to customize a page, connect social profiles, or design a portable
site with drag and drop ease." While other social network aggregators and bridges have used the "enabling users to connect to multiple accounts" angle, scrapplet has gone for customization and data portability as their lead message. And I’m a sucker for the data portability stuff.
I like the idea and the screenshots, so I went to check it out. Boy is it buggy. I can’t honestly give an opinion of the service, as I couldn’t get it to work right. First, I tried to sign up:
And then….
Hmmm. Ouch. Well, hey, it’s a beta, right? I understand they can be buggy, so let’s try to forge ahead.
So, if you go to the home page after signing up, it does show that I’m logged in:
But clicking on "My Home Page" gives me a 404 again. Aight, fine. Let’s go to My Scrapplets. Okay, so this works, and since I have no scrapplets available, it’s time to make one:
Looks like these thing cost points to make, and I’ve got 500 available. Okay. Works for me. But then……
404.
Okay, I’m out.
Since I really can’t do anything, I’ll just share what the press release says. Maybe they’re just getting slammed right now because they just opened their beta.
Scrapplet Extends, Enhances, and Integrates Facebook, MySpace, Wikis, Blogs, and Websites
Personal and customizable online canvas breaks down Social Media walls to help everyone create, consolidate, and share their Web
December 22, 2008, Fort Lauderdale, FL RadWebTech today announced the public beta release of Scrapplet (www.scrapplet.com), browser-based blank canvases that make it easy for anyone to customize a page, connect social
profiles, or design a portable site with drag and drop ease.Unlike everyday, do-it-yourself Web site builders, Scrapplet is a hub for social profiles, the relationships maintained across each network, as well as a showcase for ideas, thoughts, experiences, and expertise. It started as an application for Facebook and quickly evolved to provide seamless integration with MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and
more. Now as a standalone Web service, Scrapplet makes it easy to drag and drop content and functionality from each network, tying distributed connections together, while creating a new kind of virtual website.
Update: Though I still can’t do anything to create a scrapplet, I happened upon the "explore" page:
Which leads me to the most popular scapplet page:
Click on the above picture to see the most popular scrapplet page.
Well, since I can’t try it out for myself, I can’t say much about the actual data portability and social features. From what I can see, it’s a drag and drop version of geocities. But again, I can’t really judge something I couldn’t try.
