After being introduced to Craig Barnes and hearing about a project he was resurrecting (story for another post) called panels, I was immediately intrigued. What is panels you ask?
panels is a must have tool for any blogger / content publisher. The panels application focuses on readers and enhancing the browsing experience and delivering deep, relevant information about an entity in a consistent and standardized interface. All of this is delivered for free and with nothing for readers/members to install. When installed panels is unobtrusive, hyperlinks only have a small panels icon next to them (like this link for Apple) letting the reader know more information is available. Information is displayed only if a reader rolls over the icon; the entire link is not taken over.
One line of javascript gets panels installed, or one click for TypePad users. Any website can have a panel, currently panels specializes in displaying data for businesses, schools, non-profits and other similar organizations/entities. There is also a panels widget we call the ‘panel roll’ which allows you to show off what interests you similar to a blog roll, except all sites on the ‘panel roll’ will have their own info panel!
We did a soft launch last week at Beer and Blog where I met Nate DiNiro. Hearing that I recently started to work for panels he offered to do a write up on me in ReadWriteWeb’s new Jobwire.
“Jobwire is a new blog is dedicated to covering news about new jobs that people have been hired for in tech, new media and related industries. At a time of global economic downturn we all know there’s plenty of bad news right now. Other tech news sites are doing a great job covering those stories – on the Jobwire we’re going to cover good news, people getting new jobs.”
I graciously took him up on his offer and he put up a great post. Many thanks to Nate and everyone who has signed up at panels.net, we are currently in beta and accepting a limited number of beta testers. If you have signed up but have not gotten an activation you can ping us on twitter @panelsdotnet. Once activated if you have any problems, feedback, etc. please let us know on our help page on getsatisfaction.
