April 14, 2000

12:43 PM

deepleaphas launched.
posted by treebjen (46 comments total)

OK. Very cool. Can't wait to see it.

But, for the moment, all I get is "Your DNS hasn't updated yet." Aaaargh! Must...have...patience....

(This is the sound of keyboards everywhere busily figuring out what deepleap actually does....as Ben would say "typity, typity, typity.")
posted by LoganAxis at 12:59 PM on April 14, 2000

It sounds interesting, but... I get this message when I press the button:

Hello lovely alpha user! Well, the day has come! We're finally putting Deepleap out on the net for everyone!

Services will be down until later tonight. Sorry for the trouble!

XO

The Staff.

posted by daveadams at 1:03 PM on April 14, 2000

Try going to http://deepleap.com/ instead.
posted by jkottke at 1:11 PM on April 14, 2000

Guys, try http://deepleap.com instead of www.deepleap.com, they're propigating it right now.

I've been using it for the last few weeks, the most useful thing to me being the first server-side bookmark system that works and it easy. Here's my weblog list

posted by mathowie at 1:12 PM on April 14, 2000

A couple of errors/quirks so far -- it won't print (I get a CGI error on tools.deepleap.com), and no site seems to have search available on metainfo.
posted by delfuego at 1:16 PM on April 14, 2000

Hmmm, nope, I still get the "alpha tester" error I quoted above. Oh well, I'll just sit here and cry while I wait for my turn.

Wah wah wah.
posted by daveadams at 1:19 PM on April 14, 2000

Dave, try this: http://216.30.106.234/.

I think there's only a handful of sites that use the metainfo tools, Amazon and BenBrown.com work with it...
posted by mathowie at 1:22 PM on April 14, 2000

This is pretty cool. Only works with IE5 on the Mac, which is fine with me. It is a little early to be able use all the features it promises, but the ones that are operational are pretty cool.
posted by Awol at 1:31 PM on April 14, 2000

Oh, I could get to the deepleap home page fine. The bookmarklet didn't work. But you gave me the right idea. I edited the bookmarklet to point to the IP address of tools.deepleap.com (216.30.106.235), and that seems to work a lot happier. Thanks for the help, though!
posted by daveadams at 1:39 PM on April 14, 2000

>I think there's only a handful of sites that use the >metainfo tools, Amazon and BenBrown.com work
>with it...

And kottke.org. And your site.

posted by jkottke at 1:42 PM on April 14, 2000

Awol-

You're using a mac, I presume? We're waiting on Thawte to send us the certificate so that we can make it work on Netscape for the mac. This should be within a week, but we can't make any promises.

The reason for this is that NS mac does not allow the user to pass the current page's url in a bookmarklet which kind of negates most of the functions.

Similarly, IE5 on the mac also has messed up bookmarklet code. All spaces are replaced with %20, a standard pratice, which makes URLs nice and escaped but doesn't work very well for Javascript. new String() turns into new%20String() which errors out like nobody's business.
posted by bryanboyer at 1:47 PM on April 14, 2000

ok, I'm an idiot. I got a little excited before proofing that last post. =)
posted by bryanboyer at 1:50 PM on April 14, 2000

Wow, in the past five minutes I made a metadata feed, and now MetaFilter is working in the metainfo panel. That's the most coolest xml use I've seen in ages...
posted by mathowie at 1:53 PM on April 14, 2000

I'm using deepleap now in the UK and it rocks... at least the MetaInfo tab rocks - that really is neat with sites such as MetaFilter (as Matt's just mentioned above).Being in the UK, the DNS hasn't propogated yet on Freeserve's cached servers, however Matt's link above (http://216.30.106.234/) worked fine for me. The app is a bit slow at the moment (to be expected with their first-day-flurry of activity and if the speed is cranked-up then I can see myself using Deepleap rather a lot.Deepleap boys - very well done - Get some teeshirts over to the UK :)
posted by williamtry at 2:15 PM on April 14, 2000

Just one thing I forgot above -- to anyone from Deepleap ? Is there any possibility of a Psion format-function being incorporated into Deepleep as the PalmPilot option doesn't work for us Psioneers ?
posted by williamtry at 2:29 PM on April 14, 2000

Congrats to the DeepLeap folks; I understand they've been working hard... But they must get the refresh (or auto-refresh) thing working in IE. Reloading DeepLeap everytime you want to add a bookmark is toooo slooooow. Click -- wait 10 or 15 seconds and then categorize where it should be? I should just be able to leave the DeepLeap window open all day long, and not have to refresh all the time. Just make it faster, faster, faster, faster, and intuitive, intuitive, intuitive, intuitive.

Oh, and the Palm stuff is clever, but they should figure out how to just have files synch automatically. I'd install some client software in order to enable that... Oh and, and, and...
posted by msippey at 2:53 PM on April 14, 2000

It's neato guys. Great job. This'll be the next big thing. Of course, now Ev & crew are busily figuring out how to link up Blogger with deepleap.

Lane/Bryan/Ben: Could we, pretty please, have a message board or support forum or something where we could post feature requests, etc.??

I'm sure MetaFilter will quickly get backed up with requests for new...er...stuff.

(Now, hopefully, the little flipping "P" isn't a hint.... :o)
posted by LoganAxis at 3:30 PM on April 14, 2000

You can post your feature requests at our feedback page, but we're going to be setting up a whole user support/forum/community thing as soon as we get some free time. :) Oh, and don't think we haven't been talking to the Pyrates already ....
posted by benbrown at 3:35 PM on April 14, 2000

Here I was all ready to post about deepleaps opening and there's already 15 comments. Geezh- great work guys!
posted by TuxHeDoh at 3:48 PM on April 14, 2000

Can I tell you how much I love DeepLeap? Not just because of the technology (nice job Bryan, Ben et al) but also because of the people behind it. I wish I lived in Austin... :-)

I do NOT, however, love the pokiness of DNS propagation.
posted by fooljay at 5:43 PM on April 14, 2000

Jason:

Kottke.org doesn't do anything in my metainfo panel -- that's actually one of the sites I tested before I posted that I couldn't find anything that worked. Strange... what am I doing wrong?
posted by delfuego at 7:13 PM on April 14, 2000

Haven't downloaded it yet, but as far as server-side bookmarks go, I've been using Yahoo Companion for that for a long time with no complaints. Other than the giant Y! on my toolbar all the time.
posted by endquote at 7:44 PM on April 14, 2000

I just created an XML MetaInfo file (deepleap.xml), but the submission page on the DeepLeap site (the one that actually gives you the XML file, and tells you to put it at the above URL and then click the "Import my data!" button) keeps returning with an "XML Error" page.
From my logs, the server never even tries to get the file, so I'm assuming that I'm in the clear here, and it's something at the DeepLeap end of things. If anyone knows otherwise, please pass that along -- I'd love to get the XML munged into their database, and make my site leapable!
posted by delfuego at 8:09 PM on April 14, 2000

My website has a search engine with several parameter names and the three I need to use are Q E and X...
can anyone tell me how i should enter that into the xml file without deepleap reading it as "qex" or "Q%2CE%2CX"
thanks...
posted by Ian at 4:42 AM on April 15, 2000

Ian:

I just wrote a middleman script for my search engine that took the single parameter from deepleap, added the other site-specific parameters, and then passed it to my standard search script. Clean and neat.

Everyone else:

I think that we figured out the problem with their XML submission last night (that I groused about above) -- the script that runs on the deepleap server and requests the XML file from your machine only uses LFs beween lines of the HTTP request, where the spec requires CRLFs. My webserver enforces that spec, so the request got lost at the very topmost layer of the listener, essentially being treated like a bogus connection.
posted by delfuego at 7:46 AM on April 15, 2000

this is the worst webapp i have ever seen... they were late launching because of browser crashing... well they should still not have launched because their fucking mouseovers don't work... The application is archaic, comical and not usefull at all.. sadly its a product or maybe even a feature but sure as hell not a business model.. these people should not have quit their day job in the hopes of building something to flip... they might end up flipping burgers
posted by efader at 8:41 AM on April 15, 2000

That was a bit unnecessary don't you think? The ap wasn't the big WOW that I was expecting, but then again I have been known to get my hopes a bit high now & again. But it is a useful ap with alot of potential.

As for their time frame, nearly every ap is late being released - for a variety of reasons. And I hardly think the lack of functioning mouseover effects should be sufficient reason to not release a beta.

bret schlyer
neoflux
posted by schlyer at 8:56 AM on April 15, 2000

Why the bitterness, efader? I and many others think it's pretty incredible. What's more, your knowledge of internet business models can't be very up to date. They've got a very viable one.

Do you, perhaps, work for Flyswat or Gurunet, because then I could understand your fear.
posted by fooljay at 8:58 AM on April 15, 2000

"The ap wasn't the big WOW that I was expecting"

I seem to be hearing this statement a lot.

Although this app is still in beta, there should have been more testing before such a wide release...if people become jaded on the beta and negative feelings towards a final product equal bad marketing.


Dan
Its Kicky
posted by dangerman at 9:14 AM on April 15, 2000

efader - FYI: I deleted your double post to the front, as it was totally unnecessary and in bad taste. And I moved everyone's posts into here.
posted by mathowie at 9:19 AM on April 15, 2000

RE: the testing issue

We did do quite extensive testing but when it comes to browsers life is always a surprise. There are bugs, but we thought the app had reached a level where it would be silly not to release it. Yeah, we might lose some users from bad initial experiences, but every app loses some users from bad initial experience.

Right now Deepleap functions pretty well on most platforms and that's all that one can hope for on a beta. I certainly hope that people don't pass us off completely, if you want a completely stable product give Deepleap another try when we're out of beta.
posted by bryanboyer at 9:28 AM on April 15, 2000

I think DeepLeap has incredible potential, but I have to weigh in and state that I wish it didn't rely so much on graphic images. I, for one, would be happy to sacrifice aesthetic appearance for a faster loading pop-up. It takes a really long time (even on my fast university ethernet connection) to pop it up each time.If I were using Netscape instead of IE, would hitting the refresh button reload the window with info for the current page in the parent window? What if I have multiple windows open - how would it know which window I want info on?I hope you all implement a help/feedback forum soon on your site. But for now, Bravo and good start!
posted by hit-or-miss at 9:35 AM on April 15, 2000

What a great start. My mind is reeling right now with the possibilities. With some of the middleware (sophisticated stuff) in development now at various stages, it seems like this is coming along at exactly the right moment. The meme has to catch on, and I think deepleap is a great way to help that along.

Colour me impressed, gang. I look forward to watching this build and develop for a long time to come.
posted by mikel at 9:48 AM on April 15, 2000

does anyone else get weird error messages about top secret web projects, or am I just special?
posted by rabi at 4:00 PM on April 15, 2000

I went. I tried it. And maybe I am just missing something really vital, but I don't get it.

As far as I can tell, what this app does is keep my linklist in a separate little window, and I don't see how that differs from just hitting the 'link' button on my browser and have them open up in a list on the left of my screen.

This site says this:

Deepleap is a free, Web-based application that provides simple, immediate access to content and services related to what you're doing, without leaving the page on which you found that information.

..but I don't get it. I can either ask deepleap to run a google search for me, in which case it opens up a new browser window to google for me, OR I can do what I do now, which is just open a new browser window and type in google.com myself.

What am I missing that has so many people here raving? I mean, I would never say it is the worst app in the world, like someone else here did. I guess I just don't get it.

Lovely interface though.
posted by sperare at 5:00 PM on April 15, 2000

sperare:
I like it for what it is -- for example, I can highlight a word in a web page and pop up a dictionary definition of that word, which is something I can't do now -- and for what it can become.
posted by delfuego at 5:37 PM on April 15, 2000

(For all you Manila users out there, I wrote a plug-in today that will Deepleap-ify your site. Grab it while it's hot, and let me know if there are any problems...)
posted by delfuego at 5:54 PM on April 15, 2000

Um, Del? I can do that now; just the way they're doing it: I've a bookmarklet (for those just joining us, that's a JavaScript applet written entirely as a browser bookmart -- really a much neater idea than, say, digital watches) that I got from the guy who, if he didn't originate the idea, has certainly done a lot to publicize it: Steve Kangas at bookmarklets.com.

I have one that points at Merriam Webster, and one for dictionary.com. Also one for Google, and half a dozen others; they really synergize with the bookmark button bar and hierarchical menus there quite nicely.

Cheers,
-- jra
posted by baylink at 9:20 PM on April 15, 2000

Here's the TOC for bookmarklets.com.
posted by EngineBeak at 10:28 PM on April 15, 2000

Aw, but the beauty of deepleap is they're cramming 8-10 bookmarklets into that single window. I don't know about you, but I have a browser bar filled with bookmarklets, and dropping the google and dictionary ones has saved some space for me. And, as deepleap adds functionality, it'll all be in that window, no need to load up the link bar with more options...
posted by mathowie at 1:08 AM on April 16, 2000

This is a sadly negelected thread.
posted by rodii at 6:28 PM on February 10, 2002

Negelected is a sadly neglected spelling.
posted by walrus at 5:19 PM on February 12, 2002

Oh shut up. *pbbt*
posted by rodii at 8:11 PM on February 19, 2002

Hah! Just because you got busted ...
posted by walrus at 2:19 AM on February 20, 2002

*cries*
posted by rodii at 8:53 AM on February 22, 2002