The objective is to provide another, simplified, way to see and publish information, both textual and visual, through what their creators call "frogans slides"

The technology rests on top of a new application layer, the frogans layer. This layer is independent from the other existing layers like www, e-mail, news, IRC, etc. In fact the address of a "frogans page" would be frogans*name.extension. For example frogans*InfoVis.message44 could be an InfoVis message in frogans format.

In order to maintain this layer and make the existence of world-wide accessible frogans addresses possible, their promoters have built up the so called Frogans Network System. This is a network architecture that contains the applications, protocols and dedicated servers located in strategic places of the Internet backbone.

Frogans slides are edited and visualised with specialised software, the Frogans Publishing System (FPS) that is made up of two parts:

• The Frogans Slide Description Language (FSDL) that allows you to edit and build frogans pages.
  
• The Frogans Player that acts as a browser allowing you to visualise the slides.

Apparently both components attempt to be much more simpler that their web counterparts. They aim to be available in many different operating systems and Internet access platforms (mobile phones, TV, computers…)

The business model is virtually the same as that of the WWW: Frogans.com hosts the new layer and maintains its operativity with money earned from the frogans address allocation (80$ for the 2 first years and 40$ per year thereafter).  The owners of the addressees develop slides with the free FPS software. These slides are hosted in servers maintained by the traditional Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Finally the individuals visualise frogans with the free downloadable Frogans Player. Since May 30th it has been possible to contract frogans addresses at frogans.com. The specifications of the FSDL language will be released in July, but you will have to wait until September 4th in order to download the player and see all the system functioning.

In the meantime you can take a look to the appearance of frogans slides either in the attached images of this article (click on them to see the full size image) or through the images available at the frogans site .  It's impossible to know in advance if frogans will penetrate significantly in the Internet world. Until the system begins to be used we will not see if it really attracts the Internet users.  Frogans is the promise of an Internet easier to edit and to use. Another example of the dynamism and the will to go beyond what Internet is offering today.

In Gaelic frogans means "liveliness, a light state of drunkenness". In September we'll see if this happy state spreads over Internet.

Another article about the topic appeared recently in newsbytes.

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