I am sure by now you know that we have released first beta version of our wordpress plugin – wp-hover.

If you are not aware already –

wp-hover allows wordpress bloggers to add great dynamic content in matter of seconds. Just install the plugin from your admin dashboard and you are ready to add content to your blog post.

While creating  /editing the blog post, just click on blue ‘V’ button that appears on the TinyMCE editor and select hoverlets of your choice, linking it to keywords of your choice as well.

Coming back to the new hoverlet additions – here is a rundown on new hoverlets that have been recently added to wp-hover plugin.

• Crunchbase Hoverlet – Choose any company name and point crunchbase hoverlet, you will see information of that company display inside the hoverlet. The data is picked up from Crunchbase company directory.
• Pubs Info – This hoverlet is build for party enthusiasts and entertainment bloggers – If you want to display nearby Pubs in a particular area, use this hoverlet.
• Flickr Photo – Flickr Photo search . Link any word to it and it will search photos from Flickr and show the images
• Picasa Photo – Picasa Photo search . Link any word to it and it will search photos from Picasa and show the images.
• Wordpress related news – Choose any keyword / Phrase and this hoverlet will display the latest posts from all wordpress.com blogs.
• Google Maps – Point any city / state / Country name to this hoverlet and related map will be shown.
• Price Info hoverlet – You MUST have this hoverlet if you are a product / Gadget blog. This hoverlet pulls up price information for any product that is linked to it.
• Safari Book -  A simple hoverlet that shows related books for the words that linked to the hoverlet
• Twitter Search – This hoverlet will show the latest tweets related to hover linked keyword. Great for twitter enthusiasts
• Twitter profile – Proudly display your twitter profile using this hoverlet.
• Zemanta Artciles – Related Zemanta Articles
• NYTimes Articles – Relates New York Times Articles
• Blinkx Video – Displays related videos from Blinkx Video
• YouTube Video – Displays related videos from YouTube Video
• AOL Video – Displays related videos from AOL Video

And these are not all, we are adding new hoverlets to wp-hover on daily basis, so go ahead and install wp-hover on your blog. Let your visitors be surprised with great dynamic content you will serve.

Yay ! hover.in has crossed  its first million impressions today - the second half million coming in matter of just couple of weeks. What is significant is that we have achieved this feat with just couple of beta publishers.

There is another reason for celebration as well – We have today released the first version of Wordpress hover plugin – wp-hover. Now wordpress bloggers can add hoverlets to their blog in matter of minutes.

The current version allows bloggers to create hoverlets without even registering. While creating a post, just highlight the keyword you want to hoverize and click on wp-hover button on the wordpress post editor. Bloggers can choose from many pre-fabricated hoverlets which include, youtube videos, flickr / Picasa photos, Wordpress related articles, product pricing hoverlet, Slideshare presentations and many more.

Once you have chosen the desired hoverlets, they will show up as hover links in post editor – After publishing the post, a small hover icon will appear next to all the hoverized keywords. When the visitor hovers over those keywords, hoverlet content will show up.

Go ahead give it a try. You can either download it from here, or directly install the plugin from wordpress admin dashboard.

Note: wp-hover currently supports wordpress 2.7 and above

This is the question that I get asked quite often from people who are introduced hover.in for the first time – My answer is simple – We are different in that we allow publisher to take full control of the content to be displayed in a hoverlet (the hover window). Additionally, and importantly, we are site wide and not url based only.

Let me explain this a little further.

Many of the users compare us to Apture. They allow bloggers and publishers to add set of content to their blog/website, like we do – but there are some big differences.

Fully Customizable Content – Unlike Apture, who source content from 40 odd APIs, we allow publishers to show any (and I mean any) content inside the hoverlet. Developers can actually build application on the canvas provided. It could range from  a simple poll, bookmarking application to a complex dynamic keyword based rich content presentation.

hover.in has a concept of community directory, wherein developers can actually build hoverlet content for consumption of other publishers – think of it as the youtube of in-text content delivery. Like you can pick up and embed youtube videos on your blog, you can pick up hoverlets from the content directory and start using it.

Site Wide Content Display: Now thats not all, Apture is url/ post based – meaning, you choose a keyword from a post and choose content from fix set of sources provided. The output would be the post / url will show up the relevant content.

We are completely different – With hover.in, you create one content hoverlet, and that will show up site wide, whether you have 10 pages or million pages.

For example: I want to show an IPL Cricket Video, wherever “IPL” or “cricket” appears – Just create your content hoverlet by embedding the video and choose  keywords as “IPL” and “Cricket” and Voila, every page that has IPL and Cricket as keywords throughout your site will start showing the hoverlet.

So how do we do this?

We do constant crawling of publisher site/blog and that too on priority basis – the pages that will have high hits will show up hoverlets almost immediately, whereas, with lower hits will be processed on lower priority.

The biggest advantage is that even the archived content or posts that have written years back start showing hoverlets.

Other than that hover.in also provides, theme customizations, Link customizations, keyword suggestions etc.

Now let me add here that Apture is a great service and no doubt extremely beneficial to bloggers and publishers - I have used them purely for comparison purposes, as many of the publishers have asked me – “How are you guys different from Apture?”.

If you are interested in trying out hover.in, why not go ahead and register for beta.

Yes, we have taken your suggestions. Many publishers have been giving us feedback, that we needed a simpler dashboard. We heard it and we have taken action. We have just released the spanking new dashboard for hover.in publishers.

We have tried to stick to K.I.S.S principal and made it so easy to start managing and creating hoverlets, that even a novice can do it in less than a minute.

Atleast, thats what we think!

You will have to now give us feedback on whether you find it as simple as we think it is.

Here are some of the screenshots of our new Publisher dashboard.

Main Dashboard Page

Hoverlet properties page

Hoverlet Preview Page

You got to login and check it out for yourself. For any feedbacks or suggestions do mail us at support@hover.in

There is lot happening here at hover headquarters !

Over last few months, not only have a build a great team, but have also added loads of new features – and yet more in pipeline. I am very excited and here is why

Touched Half Million Hovers

Now that may not be a big number, but remember we are still in early beta – and have opened up only for couple of publishers in last couple of months. The response has been not only encouraging, but we have also got tremendous feedback from these publishers.

We have close to 300 publishers who have registered with us and waiting in the wings to try out our services. We will be opening up few more accounts in next couple of weeks. So just hold on for a bit more !

Super fast crawling and hoverizing

We have been constantly improving upon time it takes to first show hoverlets (from the time it is crawled), and I am delighted to say that the time has come down from 4-8 hours to 15- 45 mins. Thats a big jump and I am sure publishers will also be very happy with it. We are also hopeful that in coming few weeks we can get it down to sub 10 mins levels.

Multi Language Support

Hover.in is probably the only in-text platform that supports nearly all local and International Languages. This has been in development for quite some time and over last few weeks it also has been live on one of publishers – Oneindia . The Tamil channel of oneindia has been showing hoverlets over past month and has been very stable. Here is a screenshot of related articles in Tamil Language.

Shiny New Admin Interface

One of the primary feedback we got was that admin section (where hoverlets are created) had to be more user friendly – and we have done exactly that. We will be launching our Shiny new admin interface next week, and believe me, it will really please you. It is fast, user-friendly and most importantly works well with IE 6 (I really hope that it will discarded of the face of Internet sooner than later). A big shout out to Sushant, who has worked tirelessly on it for last 3 weeks.

Developers Blog

We had this in offing for sometime now. We have great set of Developers here at hover.in – and Developers blog will be a place where you will find them ramble on latest in Erlang, Yaws and mnesia (yes, those are the technologies we work on). If that sounds like fun to you – the developer blog is for you :).

If you are web publisher and want to make positive difference to your visitors, why not go ahead and sign-up

With hover.in publishers can create Dynamic Hoverlet, which is a powerful and time saving concept.

What is Dynamic Hoverlet?

Simply put, a Dynamic hoverlet is a single hoverlet that will dynamically change depending on the word that is hovered.

We have created a short video to explain this concept.

Hope this video helped you in understanding the concept of dynamic hoverlets. We will shortly release a pdf tutorial giving you step by step processes to create dynamic hoverlets.

Integrating hover with Blogspot blogs is extremely easy. We have created a short video for users who need to know how Blogspot blogs can be integrated.

If you still have any doubts, please leave comments or mail us at support(at)hover.in and we will be more than happy to clarify them

Integrating hover with wordpress blogs is extremely easy. We have created a short video for users who need to know how wordpress blogs can be integrated.

If you still have any doubts, please leave comments or mail us at support(at)hover.in and we will be more than happy to clarify them

Jia Lynn Yang has written an interesting post on CNN about popularity of in-text ads. She opines that although other form of advertising is seeing decline, in-text ads seem to be the bright spot !

 It’s been a bad couple of months for the online advertising business. Those banner advertisements that run on the top and sides of websites? Down, by many measures. Search advertising, consisting of sponsored links that turn up on Google and other sites? Holding up, but not growing like it used to.

There’s one bright spot in online advertising, though: in-text advertising.

We feel that it is not purely in-text advertising model that works, but the value addition in-text brings to the site visitors, if relevant, informative content (in form of advertorial) is presented to them.

What are your views?

Here is video demonstration for creating hoverlets. This video gives a complete walk-through of hover admin dashboard.

Note: Please see the video in full screen for better visibility. Hover over the video and click on bottom-right icon.

Please not that for newly registered clients it takes between 24 - 48 hours for the hoverlets to show up on their pages. Subsequently it becomes much faster and the pages are continuously crawled.