SOMEWHAT FRANK

Good: For People That Give A Damn

Good is a media company aimed at creating a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world. Good, an L.A.-based company founded by Ben Goldhirsh, offers up a print magazine, feature and documentary films, original multimedia content and local events.

The print publication is a work of art as the photos and compelling articles are extremely well done making is difficult to think there is only a month worth of prep time between issues. Good Magazine makes if feel good to become a subscriber as 100% of your subscription cost goes to help the participating charity of your choice. With a goal set of 50,000 subscribers and $1 million dollars given away by mid 2007, Good is about a quarter of the way to its goal.

On the web, Good covers a number of my favorite topics and makes it easy to filter to specific categories like Technology,  Art & Design, Business & Money and Media. Good employs an "It's Good" Digg-like rating system on each article in addition to offering RSS feeds by topic. In addition, Good has created close to a dozen video shorts on a number of different topics. The first video in the SplashCast below is titled, Paying for Your Attention points out how much advertisers are paying for your attention.

Good will be teaming up with Creative Commons, a Good supported organization, to host a party at South By Southwest Interactive on March 12, 2007. If you are headed to Austin for the event I recommend you check it out - judging by its NYC launch party I am sure it will be a GOOD time.

The Attention Economy, Widget Universality, Digg vs. Wired, Google Maps Traffic & Help Locating Starbucks

Photo of the Week: It was a rather crazy peculiar week so I went searching for answers in photographs and found this photo titled very strange moon tonight by Ordinary Guy. It captures the lunar eclipse that occurred on March 3, 2007.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 03.04.07

The Attention Economy: An Overview
Read/Write Web offers a wonderful overview of the Attention Economy. I think the most notable sentence is the following:

"Because of this information explosion, we no longer read - we skim."

The rapid explosion in content has caused a scarcity in attention. Do you read or skim?

Universality of the web widget
Niall Kennedy gets down to the nitty-gitty of explaining some of the differences between widget deployment endpoints from the publisher's point of view, explaining just a few ways a widget must adjust its dialect and structure to adapt and optimize in different widget environments.

Digg Should Sue Wired
Mike Arrington thinks Digg has grounds to sue Wired and explains why in this article. He points to the fact that Wired Magazine’s parent company, Condé Nast, owns Digg competitor Reddit and how they are actively engaged in using Wired to undermine Digg.

Quintura Relaunches With New Interface
Quintura, a Moscow-based company I have highlighted previously has relaunched with a new interface.

Adobe Photoshop Online: It’s Real
Adobe will move Photoshop online as part of a larger move to introduce ad-supported online services to complement its existing products and broaden the company reach into the consumer market.

TouchGraph - Discover the Relationships Contained in Popular Information Sources
Orli Yakuel showcases an interesting search tool that produces a cluster map based off the links to a particular URL. Just remember to get the Java 1.5 toolkit before attempting to run it on your machine. The TouchGraph for Somewhat Frank can be found here.

Google Maps Tailgates Yahoo, Microsoft With Real-Time Traffic Info
Google Maps has caught up with Yahoo and Microsoft in adding live traffic reporting for the United States to their online mapping service.

Data Shows English Blogosphere Has Peaked
Has the English blogosphere peaked in its growth? A new University of Maryland County report seems to think so. What do you think?

Blog Archive SMS-based Starbucks locator, a double shot
Coffee drinkers can now rejoice in the fact you can now send a text message to find out the closest Starbucks. I prefer Dunkin Donuts but either way, I think it is pretty sweet.

Flickr Turns 3
That's right, Flickr, the online photo sharing community owned by Yahoo, has turned three years old and had a big bash to celebrate. Photos can be found here.

Somewhat FeedBurner
Apparently, I have started to receive snail mail at the FeedBurner HQ in Chicago. I guess people think I work for FeedBurner instead of AOL. Either way, I cannot argue with the idea of dual incomes. :)

Group Recipes Community For Food Lovers

Are you a food lover looking for great new food recipe ideas? Group Recipes is an online community dedicated to creating the most useful resource for food lovers. With a wealth of recipe data, Group Recipes enables users to search, browse or share food by taste, location, mood, photo, ingredients, uniqueness, rating, and compatibility. Users can set up their own profile page to help connect with other users, form foodie groups and collaborate on recipes with other users. Group Recipes also offers users a mashup that plots places to dine on a map. Also if you have dreams of being the next Rachael Ray you can take a crack at creating your own cooking show with Group Recipe TV. For example, here is a video recipe for Minty Pea Pasta.

To help users connect with foods they might like, Group Recipes also offers some unique recipe discovery mechanisms which include Recipe Stumbler and Recipe Robot. Recipe Stumbler, is very much like StumbleUpon, as it allows users to stumble onto new recipe offerings at the click of a button. Recipe Robot is a personalization engine that learns about your food likes or dislikes to help determine recommendations to offer users based on a first time food taste test and by keeping track of user attention or click stream data. Recipe Robot offers food compatibility on food items a user encounters.

Bottom-line: Group Recipes is a feature-rich, food community resource that aims to connect recipes with foodies everywhere.

Me.dium For Real-time Attention-based Social Networking Interactivity

Me.dium offers an innovative and compelling application that blends real-time web attention-data with instant messenger social networking capabilities.

Similar to MyBlogLog, you can see when others are visiting a particular site you might be visiting, the major difference is that you can see what sites others around the web are visiting too. Me.dium offers social network capabilities allowing users to connect with other Me.dium users you encounter via instant messenger (shown in the left pane of the screen-shot to the left).

Me.dium requires that you download a browser extension or to be able to interact with others. Me.dium incorporates social interactivity which could act as a discovery mechanism. Me.dium also creates a browsing profile for each of its users and then acts as social matchmaker by connecting users with similar browsing profiles. Stowe Boyd made the following comparisons:

"This is very similar to the Eyebees concept that a client of mine was working on years ago, or other similar ideas, like lluna. However, the design of Me.dium -- embedding this navigator in the sidebar -- is truly great."

I first encountered Me.dium at the TechCrunch 8 event (early November 2006) as they demonstrated their latest creation and they have been busy perfecting the experience every since. At first sight I  thought Me.dium offered a unique community feel however I also instantly thought about potential invasion of web browsing privacy. However, I particularly liked the way that Me.dium handles turning on and off the tracking capabilities they refer to as "sharing" thus putting my privacy concerns at ease. The Me.dium Firefox extension places a "sharing" on/off toggle in the upper right corner of the browser (shown to the right).

The latest version was showcased at the most recent 2007 DEMO conference - watch the Me.dium demo here. Or if clicking the demo link is too much work you could just watch below as Kimbal Musk, Me.dium CEO, demos the product on the Scoble Show.

Bottom-line: Me.dium offers users a unique interactive experience while visiting any web site which could lead to discovery of new friends and web sites.

Web Influencers, Netvibes Security Issues, AIM is #1, Go2Web20.net Revamped, Attention 200 & Design Geekery

It rained quite a bit this week in Silicon Valley so I thought this photo titled rain on tuesday taken by Daisy Romwall was appropriate.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.11.07

The Wizards of Buzz
The Wall Street Journal took an in-depth look at some of the social bookmarking sites that help others to discover the hottest content on the web. These sites include Digg.com, Netscape, Reddit, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Newsvine – all of which empower users to submit content items from around the web. Items are rated and promoted via voting or other mechanisms within the site.The most popular or highest rated items bubble to the top and usually become even more popular as traffic surges towards sources of these hot content items. These social bookmarking sites are managed by a number of users but there are some key influencers that do the most consistent heavy lifting. WSJ put out a podcast to go along with the article and it can be downloaded here.

Netvibes module developer collects web creds, personal content
Niall Kennedy highlights how Netvibes, the personal homepage startup, recently experienced some serious security issues. Netvibes was recently praised by Wall Street Journal reporter Walt Mossberg, but it appears its open-source approach to development has left its users at the mercy of rogue developers. What does this mean? Basically, it means a rogue module developer could take advantage of Netvibes’ users to steal personal information like emails, bank information and just about anything else personal you might find in a homepage module. This is unfortunate for Netvibes as most of its quick growth and development is due to its developer network. I guess Netvibes will have to rethink its security and privacy approach if it or risk losing the trust of its users.

Wall Street Journal IM Ratings: AIM Is #1
What instant messaging product do you use? If its not AOL’s AIM 6.0 you may want to reconsider your choice as an article published this week in the WSJ titled "Rating the New Instant-Messaging Programs" compared AIM 6.0, Yahoo! Messenger 8.1, and Windows Live Messenger 8.1. AIM 6.0 was rated #1.

A Lesson in Viral Video
Inside Higher Education details the events surrounding the Web 2.0 video created by Michael Wusch which Somewhat Frank helped surface in the blogosphere. The article further emphasizes the viral power of the web and the influences of the blogosphere.

Go2web20 Relaunched!
The popular and slick web 2.0 directory created by Orli Yakuel has been revamped and relaunched with a number of improvements which should make the faster and easier to use. It should also offer more information for users. Included in the changes is the creation of a few innovative advertising options.

RocketDock: Add A Mac-like Dock To Your PC
If you are a Mac-lover stuck in a PC-user’s body then you might want give RocketDock a try. Lifehacker recently showcased it as a download of the day so I gave it a try. Upon installing the application created by Punk Software it instantly fulfilled my longing for a Mac-like dock for managing my desktop. Here is an instructional video which details the various configuration options of this nifty little add-on. Oh and buy some schwag or donate to support their development efforts.

31 Places to Monitor Your Reputation Online
If you are into tracking what people might be saying about you online you might want make sure you are checking a bunch of online sources. This article lists 31 places to keep your online reputation in check.

23 Signs That You're Becoming a Design Geek
While developing products I often find myself thinking I am a designer and I know I am not alone. I am admittedly not even close to the skill level of a full-fledged UI designer (like the designers I work with at AOL – they rock!). Nonetheless, this article will give you 23 design geek signs.

Announcing: The Compete Attention 200™
Compete recently posted a list of the top 200 online destinations based on their metrics tracking systems. Surprisingly, Somewhat Frank did not make the Attention 200 – this has to be some sort of mistake.  :-)

Widgets, Modules & Marketing, Breakthrough Ideas of 2007, Google Attention Tracking & Web 2.0 Mainstream

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.04.07

First things first, today is Super Bowl XLI and I am from Chicago which means I will be rooting on the Bears today. The photo above shows the Merchandise Mart in Chicago supporting the team by shining the team's orange and blue colors. Go Bears!

Desktop Modules Help To Personalize Data, Cut Through Clutter
Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal dissects the various personalized start page options. He is a Netvibes user but critiques all the other options as well and even hints at a new version of My Yahoo coming soon.

Widget Marketing
Lee Odden of Online Marketing Blog explains how widgets are a great way to help market your site or blog. He even shows off his recent Widgetbox creation.

Desktop Widgets 101
Mike Arrington takes a moment to point out the differences between desktop and web widgets. Widgets are sexy in 2007 and so I would highly recommend you know what they are.

The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas for 2007
Harvard Business Review's annual survey of emerging ideas considers how nanotechnology will affect commerce, what role hope plays in leadership, and why, in an age that practically enshrines accountability, we need to beware of “accountabalism.”

del.icio.us: overdue new year's resolutions
del.icio.us, the social bookmarking site, has grown to 1.5 million users. This article hints at upcoming integration with Yahoo, its parent company, and user interface updates.

Is Google building the Attention Economy?
Vecosys expresses view on the attention movement and explains Google's recent launch of new products (i.e. Google Reader Trends and Google Bookmark and Search History) that have been leveraging and surfacing attention data.

Mainstream Media Usage of Web 2.0 Services is Increasing
Has mainstream media recognized 'web 2.0'? This article by Read/Write Web takes a closer look at mainstream media adoption of 'web 2.0.'

News Search + Personalization + Social Media = Wikio
Wikio blends news search and personalization in a Digg-like layout. It also offers search and customization options to make it easy to get to items you might like.

Geeks love * tshirts for Sale
I love tee shirts that offer a cool design and this one was created by Cindy Li which fits the bill.

An Inventive Video Journey To Web 2.0

What is web 2.0? Time Magazine recently tagged it "You 2.0" with its mirrored magazine cover naming "You" the person of the year. However, the question has been pondered and explained in a number of video attempts including one by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington which I highlighted previously on Somewhat Frank. A new video recently emerged to take viewers on an extremely creative journey from the beginning of the web to what we are now calling "web 2.0."

The video titled, "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" was created by Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. All I can say is, Michael Wesch thank you for producing this video, I found viewing it extremely enjoyable - well done! 

Media 2.0 Workgroup Formed

The recent changes in the web (i.e. web 2.0) have changed the media landscape. While there are a number of groups dissecting web 2.0 there is not a group specifically for new media or media 2.0. Media 2.0 has moved the power to media from the few to the many. Today there is an answer as the Media 2.0 Workgroup, created by Chris Saad, has officially been announced and can be defined as follows:

"The Media 2.0 Workgroup is a group of industry commentators, agitators and innovators who believe that the phenomena of democratic participation will change the face of Media Creation , Distribution and Consumption. Join the conversation..."

Somewhat Frank, Jeff Pulver, Ben Metcalfe, Jeremiah Owyang and a number of other superb participants have been brought together from a cross-section of disciplines and agendas. I don't necessairily think Somewhat Frank has been categorized quite right yet, but I figure it will all get straightened out with time. As mentioned in the recent Media 2.0 Workgroup announcement:

"Some merely comment, criticize and consult, some develop tools, some live the dream and have started their own Media 2.0 empires and some are fighting from the inside of established media to change the face of ‘business as usual’."

Join us, comment, trackback, nominate your favourite voices for the workgroup and drive the conversation forward. You can find the workgroup at: http://media2.0workgroup.org

CozmoTV Launches Personalized Video Site With Recommendations

CozmoTV, a subsidiary of Cozmo Media which has offices in San Francisco and Boston, recently launched an online video site that focuses on providing users with personalized video recommendations. Users can create custom channels for different types of content. Users can also rate individual videos to on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. These active inputs appear to be used to sculpt personalized video recommendations. According to the CozmoTV web site the idea spawned from the idea that:

“We both loved our TiVo®Boxes and thought that a great service would be to provide simplified search through a Website that would talk directly to your TiVo. (Sorry, TiVo, but we felt that your online scheduler kind of sucked.)”

I first learned of CozmoTV at the TechCrunch 8 Meetup in NYC when I talked with CozmoTV co-founder Alex Rowland. Since CozmoTV had not yet launched I was not able to see a product demo but he did compare CozmoTV to Pandora and TiVo.  I now see the validity in those comparisons though I also think CozmoTV's active inputs personalization model mirrors that of StumbleUpon Video which also recently launched. CozmoTV pulls its videos from YouTube but in doing comparison searches it appears to be only a subset of YouTube videos but as the number of online videos increases I could see this product becoming helpful in sorting through and finding new videos.

CozmoTV created incentives to go check it out and start rating video by offering up 80 Nintendo Wii gaming systems as prizes to the first 80 users who have a user confidence rating of 80 or more. I took some time to see how difficult that might be and I have to admit it is not a walk in the park. I watched and rated hours worth of video and was only able to get my rating up to 10.1%. At this rate, I may be better off looking for a Wii elsewhere but, that aside, I enjoyed creating my own channels and viewing the personalized recommendations.

For other perspectives on CozmoTV's recent launch check out: Rev2.org and Zatz Not Funny!. Also stay tuned to CozmoTV updates via the CozmoTV blog and good luck trying to win a Wii!

Own Your Attention Data with APML

Touchstone, an Attention product created by faradaymedia, announced today (October 1, 2006) an innovative Attention initiative called “Attention Profiling Mark-up Language” or APML with the intent of letting people own their own attention data. 

According to APML.org:

“APML will allow users to export and use their own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows them to export their reading lists from Feed Readers.”

What is attention data? Attention data consists of a combination of all the clicks a person makes online. It could include browser history, purchase history and any site specific preferences.

Possible uses for APML include:

• Keep control of your own Attention Profile - it's very valuable (read attentiontrust.org)   
• Ask Amazon to export an APML file of your Attention Profile (the same one they use to recommend books to you) so you can move to another bookstore (just like OPML lets you easily switch feed readers)      
• Upload your APML file to Digg to get a customized view of Digg stories that match your interests 
• Use your APML to filter incoming alerts (using something like Touchstone)      
• Submit your APML to an Attention Brokerage service to allow synchronized access to your Attention Profile across all APML compatible services. In this way all your sites and services can keep track of your changing interests

There are a couple of other Attention based initiatives which include Attention Trust and GestureBank. It appears that Touchstone is not trying to compete with these other services but instead plans to unify the services based on the participation of the individual user. APML combines all of a users information into one file that can be easily transported. Touchstone is also creating a product (screen-shot below) to monitor, analyze and recommends alerts based on the information it collections. The product sounds similar a product I highlighted previously, that Root offers. For more information on the Touchstone approach check out the Touchstone manifesto.

Bottomline: APML appears to be a step in the right direction however, it will be interesting to see how the rest of the industry accepts this new Attention approach.

Attensa 2.0: Free Enterprise RSS Reader

Attensa, a Portland-based company, has continued to improve upon its enterprise RSS feed reader solution which I highlighted previously, by releasing Attensa 2.0. Attensa believes that an Outlook integrated feed reader is a core requirement for large corporations.

Attensa 2.0 offers all of the same features of the previous 1.5 version including the ability to leverage "attention" click stream data to fight information overload as the most influential information is bubbled to the top. Attensa 2.0 offers the ability to set desktop alerts to deliver server alerts, out of inventory updates, pricing changes or other specify needs. Attensa responded to feedback from its Attensa 1.5 corporate integrations and now offers audio and video podcasts inline. Inline audio and video enabled corporations to easily enable podcasts for corporate training and other internal uses as enclosures do not send users to external sites or intranets sites for playback. The screen-shot to the left shows an audio file being played inline.

Attensa 2.0 is being offered with forum support and a PDF user guide for free! Additional support and access to the Attensa knowledge base can be purchased for $24.95 per year per client. For more information on Attensa 2.0 check out these articles on TechCrunch and the Attensa Blog.

Facebook Redesign Angers Students Over Invaded Privacy

Facebook launched a redesign today (September 5, 2006) which changed the layout of the homepage and introduced a few new features.  The Facebook redesign introduced, "News Feed" which on the surface appears to be an excellent feature. It leverages the users attention to show the most recent activity of the 9.5 million users in the community and displays it on the homepage. The "News Feed" display items in a feed reader like "river of news" stream of Facebook updates. The redesign enables Facebook to harness the attention of its users as TechCrunch highlighted by saying:

"It’s interesting because Facebook clearly gets the idea of an attention metastream, where page views aren’t the currency that matters but rather how effectively the service allows users to communicate. Facebook users will now have a much easier way of staying up to date on what their friends are up to."

Alternatively, the users, mostly undergraduate students around the country do not agree, as they find the "News Feed" feature (shown to the right) an invasion of their privacy and "basically creepy."  Using the "groups" feature of Facebook to rally together, one user, Ben Parr of Northwestern University, created a group called "Students Against Facebook News Feed."  The group's description reads as follows:

"We want to feel just a LITTLE bit of privacy, even if it is facebook. News Feed is just too creepy, too stalker-esque, and a feature that has to go." 

Open since early this morning "Students Against Facebook News Feed" already has over 60,000 members and is growing literally by the minute (it was only 50,000 members when I started writing this article). Group members are pledging to stop updating their profiles until the new features are removed or altered.  There is also a call to "boycott" Facebook on September 12th.

Will users grow more comfortable with the new design? Or will  more of the 9.5 million Facebook users join the revolt? It will be interesting to see how Facebook handles the situation since privacy settings have remained the same yet students feel more exposed.

*Special thanks to LBJ for assisting with this article.

Attensa Goes Corporate: Enterprise RSS

Attensa, the Portland, Oregon-based company specializing in creating business-class RSS solutions, has been busily working on an enterprise RSS solution. No, not the Star Trek Enterprise spacecraft; I am referring to a new hardware product called Attensa Enterprise Suite RSS Server. Attensa Enterprise Suite RSS Server, or AES:RSS for short, is targeted at companies looking for employees to safely and securely use RSS as a communication channel.

There are a number possible uses for RSS within the corporate environment. Anything that can be done via email most likely can be done using RSS with the additional benefit of having increased metrics on the communication’s reach, which can ultimately help to gauge its success. An RSS stream could be used from something as primitive as a mass communication or as targeted as corporate building services communications (i.e. fire drill, fridge cleaning, phone upgrades, etc.). Corporate RSS could be used for secure items such as financial statements, project management, paycheck stubs and top-secret abstractions. Not to mention, corporate RSS could be used for rich-media communications via podcasts and video-casts for shareholder meetings and training, among other things.

AES:RSS is a self-contained Linux-based server that has simplified the deployment process, thus making all of these corporate RSS dreams a simple reality by offering an enterprise solution as a piece of hardware, which comforts even the most stringent corporate IT. Most corporate IT professionals know the ease of plug-and-play hardware versus having to install and configure a server with a product themselves.

A major benefit of the Attensa server solution is that it will go out and pull down RSS feeds for the various users within the corporation once and then distribute them all via the server. This takes some of the stress off the corporate infrastructure by limiting the number of repetitive feed retrievals. Feeds are then presented to user with slick AJAX web-based feed reader. Administrators within the company will also be able to create RSS messages an AJAX web application.

In speaking with Matthew Bookspan, Director of Product  Management at Attensa, the company has been busy with the AES:RSS in addition to revamping its online feed reader, which I highlighted prior to being updated for a post on TechCrunch comparing the online feed readers. Attensa also offers a desktop solution and a mobile solution, both of which sound pretty interesting, though I have not used either of them so cannot comment on their capabilities.

I should mention a few other competitors in the Enterprise RSS space: Newsgator Enterprise Server and KnowNow Enterprise Syndication Solution. Both use similar enterprise server solutions. KnowNow in particular has been implemented by Rentals.com to help manage its lead notification process.

However, Attensa offers more than just the server; Attensa also uses "attention," as I highlighted previously on Somewhat Frank, to offer corporations valuable metrics on usage and influence. Attention can be used by employers to monitor who is producing the most influential content and use it as a gauge for rewards. It also can be leveraged to fight information overload by having the most influential information bubble to the top. I could see Attensa even taking it a step further and look forward to seeing what they come with in the next couple months. The pricing for AES:RSS is still unclear but I would presume is will be comparable to other hardware options like Google Mini and others. Be on the lookout for more to come from Attensa.

NYTimes Invests In Attention With Root

The New York Times announced today that they are investing in a company called Root which focuses on attention. I recently attended Syndicate NY where Seth Goldstein, the CEO and founder of Root, explained how Root is using attention. I do not recall a single mention of a big player in the media industry such as New York Times, Forbes.com or USAToday.com using the Roots system.  However the recent announcement by PaidContent.org that the NYTimes had closed a $12 million dollar round of funding had this to say about Root:

"The company’s technology and service has been adopted by NYTimes.com, Forbes.com (and example on Forbes.com is here) and USAToday.com, to convert its visitors into direct leads, instead of using third party and affiliate lead-gen services. Typically, the lead-gen has been a black-box for publishers, who have no control over the data…Root’s solution hopes to help publishers have control of the data and retain revenue from every lead generated on their sites."

I just wonder if others will jump onto the technology and start paying for highly targeted leads - or attention. For more information on Root check out this Forbes article from January 2006.