Farfromhomepage, a new startup from Berlin, is set to introduce the first tool to ‘cut and remix’ the whole Web. The promotional blurb which accompanies the launch of the service says it will offer users a new experience, helping them to “combine the freedom of surfing with a movie-like experience.” But what exactly does that mean?
Currently in closed beta, the service, Guido.CreativeBrowsing, works in the same way as a cutting program for films. Different elements like website pages, clips from YouTube and music from SoundCloud can be rearranged on a timeline, commented on and adorned with special effects. The result is a “dynamic tour of web content” which users can browse, and the tool allows them to follow their favourite blogs on one page, to present knowledge in a linked way, to communicate directly with customers or to “use the entire web to tell their stories.”
Swiss co-founder Manuel Scheidegger, who studied philosophy at the Freie Universität in Berlin, said: “There is a ton of storytelling going on online. But [it’s] always in old media, such as videos on YouTube, pictures on Flickr, or games in Flash animations. The browser displays everything separately. But the inspiring fact of the Web is being able to move around and to access different media at once. Having several browser windows open, you suddenly realize that there is a story evolving. That‘s the basic idea of Creative Browsing.”
Will it catch on? Creative browsing certainly seems an intriguing idea. The proof, as always, will be in the pudding – let’s see how people take it when it goes public.