Thanks for the mention of Serena Mashup Composer (www.serena.com/mashups) . While we have talked quite a bit about how business users can also use the product, we are by no means excluding IT.
There is definitely an application for IT to use this for rapid application development to also address the long tail of IT applications.

Since we plan to offer online deployment, enlightened CIOs and IT departments will also give access to these types of tools to their internal customers in the business as long as they can feel secure that it meets their governance guidelines.

Happy to talk about it anytime if you’d like.

Kyle

@Daniel – interesting thoughts about the meaning of local and why a multinational will struggle to create an algorithm for ‘locality’.

@Ramon – I saw the feature but it fell down with my OPML of around 250 feeds.

On the topic of Google, I think the problem it faces is that local means something different to everyone. To paraphrase Simon Willison, in London it’s about where the nearest tube is, and in Oxford it is about where to lock up your bike. This kind of information can only be determined through close interaction with local communities, something a monolithic company like Google will struggle to do.

That said I completely agree that as a republisher (call it aggregator if you like) Google has real strength, but in that scenario it still needs sites like ours to fuel it.

I think Google’s local API is where it’s strength lies, the geo-spatial work they do and the search that sites like ours can leverage. Imagine if Google provided an accurate, freely available directory of businesses all over the world that any local site could plug in, now that would be cool.

Thanks for the write up and glad you found rollSense interesting.

We have been in other startup events and I must say the Mashup Demo has been one of the most useful events to date. Very interesting and friendly people, easy chatting, good atmosphere and free drinks! ;) On the other hand, I think we were the only non-UK company, so I guess this event could benefit from more international exposure.

Regarding our service, actually you don’t need to enter each and every url by hand, which I agree is a tedious task. You can also upload your OPML file, which is the most standard way available today to list the feeds in your blogroll. Almost any feed reader supports exporting all your feeds as an OPML file. Google Reader certainly does under the Settings – Import/Export tab.

Nevertheless, I completely agree that an extra level of automation would be better, i.e. automatically grabbing your Google Reader feeds or your Wordpress blogroll. Thanks for the advice.

Right now, we provide an environment for public facing documents that you could find in public domain, i.e. generally from websites of companies. These websites do not provide interactivity for business documents, hence the birth of edocr.

“My edocr” yet to be fully built will provide on one side (say left hand) performance of your uploads, and on the right hand side the documents you want, e.g. you inform edocr that you are looking for most recent white papers with more than five comments on “private mobile radio”. As the relevant documents are uploaded, these will appear on “your edocr”. Now we begin to add value.

The benefits are obvious to some users. Other’s do not get it. So, on our part, continuous and consistent education is needed. And this is where you and other bloggers (like myself) can help. Please continue to engage in conversation. On behalf of edocr team, we appreciate your engagement very much.