I will be speaking about social media and blogging in May and June at the following events:
Social Rockstar Workshop
May 16. 2008 - Washington, D.C.
I will be speaking about social media and blogging and making some references to its use in the corporate environment of AOL, Tribune and Classified Ventures where he has lead blogging & social media initiatives. There are a number of local D.C. area social media experts which will be offering perspective followed by workshops.
TECH cocktail CONFERENCE
May 29, 2008 - Chicago, IL
I am co-hosting our first TECH cocktail CONFERENCE bringing attendees access to a day full of amazing speakers, great perspectives and advice in an intimate environment where speakers are approachable. The goal of the conference is to assist attendees by bringing them essential business startup tips, advice and knowledge from a super-cast of successful founders, developers and entrepreneurs. It should be a super day followed by our popular TECH cocktail Chicago 8 mixer event. Use the discount code: somewhatfrank to save on your ticket!
BlogPotomac
June 13, 2008 - Falls Church, VA
I am giving the lunch keynote on social media Friday the 13th for the first BlogPotomac event. BlogPotomac seeks to provide a local “un-conference” on best marketing practices for the social media community in the D.C. metro area.
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Google will be launching Friend Connect tonight to turn the open Web a place for open social apps to run wild as a motivator adoption mechanism for the new Google Gadget 2.0 format with OpenSocial across the Web. With Google powering email and search and collecting user data, I wonder about this new social component and about user controls. I did not get a chance to ask this question on the call due to what may have been technical issues but regardless I wanted to throw it out there to the blogosphere to give their SOMEWHAT FRANK perspectives on the following:
How Does Google Friend Connect Put Users In Control?
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below if you have a SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion.
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Photo of the Week: This photo of tulips taken by Melissa Goodman would somewhat frankly make a nice gift for mom as I wish all the moms out there Happy Mother's Day.
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 5.11.2008
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Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day as it acts as the foundation of your day. A few weeks ago Lijit Networks hosted a breakfast the morning after TECH cocktail DC 2. It at Busboys & Poets in Washington, D.C. and was a lot of fun. I got a chance to capture episode 24 of SOMEWHAT FRANK TV.
With Mother's Day and a bunch of birthdays coming up I have been thinking about the whole gifting process and more specifically paper greeting cards. I think there is still something nice about getting a paper card since it is an artifact but I have found that more of the total inventory of greeting card play music. I find it kind of annoying but it is tough to find a good card anymore. It seems that someone must be buying greeting cards that play music because they seem to be taking up a majority of the Hallmark greeting card rack these days. But with all the social interactions that technology has enabled from your cell phone messages to online e-cards to Facebook gifts that can be sent here is SOMEWHAT FRANK question for you:
Do Paper Greeting Cards Still Have A Place?
Give your SOMEWHAT FRANK opinion in the comments section below.
Photo Attribution: Bashar Al-Ba'noon
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Now here is an interesting and innovative way to explore videos! Leveraging the CoolIris 3D browsing technology, PicLens is able to explore videos and photos via a wall of videos. PicLens allows users to search Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook and recently added the ability to search YouTube in this same 3D fashion - among others.
So next time you get bored with traditional search metaphors for videos or images you might want to install PicLens and search in 3D.
Twitter, like anything, can be a little addictive as we look to reach out and communicate with all our friends and followers. Xefer has pulled together an interesting mashup which leverages Yahoo Pipes and Google Chart API to plot the usage of twitter of a specific user. So of course, I had to plug the somewhatfrank twitter id in and chart it.
Give it a try here for your twitter username.
Xobni, the social email plugin for Outlook, which I highlighted previously has finally opened its doors as a public beta. I initially had some private beta invites that went very fast but I continued to receive inquiries. Now you can get your own copy of the latest Xobni product and test it out for yourself. These are also unconfirmed rumors that Microsoft is bidding to acquire Xobni so it would not be far fetched to think that Xobni could be integrated directly into Microsoft Outlook if the rumor becomes reality.
Photo of the Week: The new Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. hosted the Chicago Cubs last weekend I got a chance to see the "big headed" Presidents Race up close and took this shot.
SOMEWHAT FRANK Weekly Tidbits: 5.4.2008
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The United States is ultimately a startup so I thought that is might be fun to take advantage of living near the nations capitol and show off the main office of the executive branch - the White House. I was able to capture some of the sites and sounds of the White House as part of the spring tour which I found out about through their own use of technology via the White House RSS feeds and podcasts.
I am terrible at pronunciations. Forvo is an online resource that might be able to help by leveraging the wisdom of the crowds to collect and offer audio pronunciations of words. Currently, they offer 14,653 words 13,131 pronunciations in 182 languages.
Twitter has exploded since coming out earlier last year and I have talked about it a number of times and even put my thoughts on video. I even saw my own sister come around and sign up for an account after talking to her about it awhile back and getting the: "why would I want to do that?" reaction.
Twitter recently were reported to take a little more funding thus making an exit price tag more pricey. But I wanted pose the question to the blogosphere and my SOMEWHAT FRANK readers:
What is Twitter worth?
Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
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Now you can make free calls to your friends from your Facebook profile thanks to IfbyPhone, a Chicago-based telephone application platform company that has created Phone-Me-Now.
Phone-Me-Now gives Facebook friends free "click to call" functionality without disclosing their caller ID. I am not really sure if that is a good thing or not but I guess it depends on your objective. I would think it would play to the advantage of a telemarketer but I guess it could be nice to call your friends without disclosing your phone number in case you are trying to keep it private. The Phone-Me-Now application takes advantage of Ifbyphone technology to enable all types of phones (i.e. mobile, VoIP or rotary) to connect via the Web and enables inbound, outbound and click-to-call telephone applications with integrated interactive voice response dialogs.
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Docstoc, the online document community offering, which I have covered a number of times, has raised $3.25 million in a series B round of funding. I got a call from founder and CEO Jason Nazar yesterday to inform me of the news. Congratulations to Docstoc on getting some additional funding and good luck on building the product out in the next couple years.
Additionally, Docstoc announced the creation of the Content Partnership Program which allows content partners to generate revenue off of a content they are sharing through Docstoc. This should help motivate more people to add and share documents on Docstoc.
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TECH cocktail DC 2 the community builder event that took place last Thursday evening in Washington, D.C. showcased six startups from the local area. The event united over four hundred guests for an evening of tech conversations and fun.
This is the last event before the upcoming TECH cocktail CONFERENCE which will unite all the various TECH cocktail cities for a full day conference in Chicago on May 29th. The list of speakers is pretty amazing and the focus of the conference is to help anyone in business to take a more "no nonsense" approach by leveraging technology and the Web (i.e. running a "real" business rather than one setup to simply attract as many users as possible with no real monetization strategy in mind).
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